My father use to say if coal died, the country died. He was right. Our economy rests on the back of the coal miner. If we did not have the black diamonds of the mountains to burn, we would lose more than half of the nation’s energy reserves.
The alpine environment is very delicate. I’ve been able to see change in the mountains in the 20 years that I’ve been climbing full-time. Glaciers have receded. The tree-line is changing. That’s very rapid to see nature changing in a 20-year period.
The mountains seem to have conquered us long before we set foot on them, and they will remain long after our brief existence. This indomitable force of the mountains gives us humans a blank canvas on which to paint the drive of discovery and, in the process, test the limits of human performance.
Television was restricted by my parents. They encouraged reading more than anything. It wasn’t done in a let’s-get-educated kind of way, it was: ‘This looks like it might be fun so let’s do it.’ There were a lot of castles, art galleries, museums and mountains to climb.
I would like to explore and see this country. I have had so many opportunities to see it from the air! I would like to climb the mountains that I wished I could climb at the time but had to get back to Washington.
I’m a grandmother with dogs and nice friends here in the Rocky mountains. Ever see the movie A River Runs Through It? That’s where I live. It’s beautiful, no two ways about it.
Before the advent of the Web, if you wanted to sustain a belief in far-fetched ideas, you had to go out into the desert, or live on a compound in the mountains, or move from one badly furnished room to another in a series of safe houses.
What we can do now is contribute to a clearer understanding of what happened that day on Everest in the hope that the lessons to be learned will reduce the risk for others who, like us, take on the challenge of the mountains.
I take all day to climb mountains and then spend about 10 minutes at the top admiring the view.
Oman overall has great animal and plant biodiversity because it has mountains, desert, coastal areas and rich coral reefs.
For the ‘Rai-kirah’ books, I began with the image of Aleksander riding the great wastelands, and that quickly morphed into the desert. Because I wanted my slave market cold and miserable, I chose to set the opening scene in the empire’s summer capital in the mountains.
People say to me, ‘Ooh, L.A. is so plastic.’ Sure, it’s mountains to the right, oceans to the left and pretense in the middle, but who… has to hang out in the middle?
Becoming a parent has changed the risk calculus for me. But it might be age, too, and seeing a lot of friends die in the mountains. Will I take the same risks I took in my 20s? Probably not, but I will always push myself in the mountains.
I rode a bike around town when I was a kid, with my friends, but I never got into cycling as a sport or activity. But, it is really pleasant. It’s really nice to hit the mountains with all the trees and everything. I get it.
Montreal is not what I’m used to. I’m used to big mountains and the outdoors. I’m not much of a city guy.
I was a very unpredictable child. I’d pack a bag and go off and do a hike in the mountains for 10 days.
The mountains are dangerous. Only an unintelligent person will say they are not dangerous.
What an enthusiastic devotion is that which sends a man from the attractions of home, the ties of neighbourhood, the bonds of country, to range plains, valleys, hills, mountains, for a new flower.
Kids in Alaska don’t know they’re growing up on the Last Frontier. It’s just what they see on the license plates, and it’s something tourists like to say a lot because they’ve never been around so many mountains and moose before.
We were also fortunate enough to engage in our service a Canadian Frenchmen, who had been with the Chayenne Indians on the Black mountains, and last summer descended thence by the Little Missouri.
In Canada, I climbed some mountains with the Alpine Club of Canada, which taught me a lot about stamina.
For a short time we lived quietly. But this could not last. White men had found gold in the mountains around the land of winding water.
A queer fellow and a jolly fellow is the grasshopper. Up the mountains he comes on excursions, how high I don’t know, but at least as far and high as Yosemite tourists.
I like it when it rains; I like it when it snows. I like seasons. I like trees. I like mountains. I like rivers. And with that around me, I write.
How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!
We are under no delusions as to the innate goodness even of very small children. They are bad a great deal of the time, but before it has been knocked out of them, they see no limit to the potentialities of the human will. Theirs is the faith to move mountains, because they do not yet know the fearful heft of them.
I won’t ski in the backcountry the day after a big storm anymore. The mountains are so humbling. As soon as you think you’re on top or crushing it, that’s when you need to be really careful.
That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.
Under the snowcapped mountains of Fiordland National Park, freshwater streams empty into the saltwater fiords, creating a unique ecosystem. This is a heavily wooded park, so the water in the streams is stained with tannin, a substance found in plants that makes clean water seem dirty, though it isn’t.
The view of the Rocky Mountains from the Divide near Kiowa Creek is considered one of the finest in Colorado.
I want to do everything. I want to be the president, I want to learn Tae Kwan Do, I want to climb mountains. I’m always bugged by the notion that I can’t do everything.
The Rocky Mountains realize – nay, exceed – the dream of my childhood. It is magnificent, and the air is life-giving.
I love all of the ecosystems – mountains, deserts, rainforests. They’re beautiful, and nature has so many different flavors to it.
I would love to go and live in the mountains… and make jam.
I could sit at home, watch TV, and go for the odd run. But to be the best, you have to make this sacrifice, keep going away and doing blocks of training in the mountains.
I am proud to be a daughter of the mountains.
I find all food irresistible. I have friends who live in the mountains in France. One of them sells vegetables, and to walk through her garden when everything is bursting out – it’s impossible not to eat something.
Fertile soil, level plains, easy passage across the mountains, coal, iron, and other metals imbedded in the rocks, and a stimulating climate, all shower their blessings upon man.
The place is really exceptional and I am fascinated and inspired, as Nagaland with its lush greenery and picturesque mountains as well as the peaceful atmosphere reminds me of my country Jamaica.
We had this incredible pass over the Himalayas, and to just see all of that pollution that’s riding up against those mountains from the south is just really heartbreaking.
Adventure has to do with private, personal experiences. But, the possibilities, there are millions of unclimbed mountains – I have seen in the Eastern part of Tibet, mountains 6,000-6,500 meters high, vertical walls twice as tall as the Eiger… but nobody is going there, because they aren’t 8,000-meter peaks.
So I’ve been pushed farther and farther out into the mountains, but at the same time realizing that that experience is really nice and I’m glad I’m getting pushed out there farther.
I love the Altai Mountains. Crimea, despite all the conflict, is a remarkable place historically, culturally and physically. The mountains drop down into the sea. Porpoises swim in the shallows. Horses gallop through the grass. There are huge rocks, castles, caves.
Within two hours of where I live, you have mountains and desert as location. I like the natural elements that abstract into light, texture, shape and shadow.
Faith moves mountains, but you have to keep pushing while you are praying.
Franschhoek – French Corner – is a place which serves South Africans as a kind of sophisticated fantasy, an alternative version of what life could be. The small town is enclosed by wild mountains, at this time of year blue and dusty green.
It was night and I could see a large and calm lake, reflecting the moon. Black mountains rose around it. I arrived from between two of these mountains, I looked at the lake and the moon, and that was it, nothing else happened.
The nice thing about gag manga is how it has this aspect where, at the very least, you’re permitted to come out with anything. In my case, anything can talk. Like the mountains.
It sounds pretentious to say I ‘divide’ my time, but when I am home, that usually means my house in Atlanta or my cabin in the North Georgia Mountains. The latter is where I do the majority of my writing.
I grew up in the small town of Greenfield Center, New York, which is in the foothills of the Adirondacks not far from the city of Saratoga Springs. It is a place I love, close to the forests and the mountains.
If you drive to, say, Shenandoah National Park, or the Great Smoky Mountains, you’ll get some appreciation for the scale and beauty of the outdoors. When you walk into it, then you see it in a completely different way. You discover it in a much slower, more majestic sort of way.
