The compact between writing and walking is almost as old as literature -- a walk is only a step away from a story, and every path tells.

The compact between writing and walking is almost as old as literature -- a walk is only a step away from a story, and every path tells.

Touch is a reciprocal action, a gesture of exchange with the world. To make an impression is also to receive one, and the soles of our feet, shaped by the surfaces they press upon, are landscapes themselves with their own worn channels and roving lines. They perhaps most closely resemble the patterns of ridge and swirl revealed when a tide has ebbed over flat sand

Knowing another is endless,' Shepherd had written; 'The thing to be known grows with the knowing.

Those who travel to mountain-tops are half in love with themselves, and half in love with oblivion.

By speaking of greater forces than we can possibly invoke, and by confronting us with greater spans of time than we can possibly envisage, mountains refute our excessive trust in the man-made. They pose profound questions about our durability and the importance of our schemes. They induce, I suppose, a modesty in us.

Humans are animals and like all animals we leave tracks as we walk: signs of passage made in snow, sand, mud, grass, dew, earth or moss.... We easily forget that we are track-markers, through, because most of our journeys now occur on asphalt and concrete--and these are substances not easily impressed.