We love a good storyteller. But since the dawn of the written word, only one writer has been able to sum up just how nuts we are for mountains: Our 19th century hot mountain boy, the very deceased John Muir! Here, we’ve chosen the six John Muir quotes that most fully capture exactly how batshit we are for a good mountain.
“The mountains are calling and I must go.”
Classic Muir! This gorgeous quote is inscribed on our iPhone case, tattooed on our lower back, and was our away message on MSN Messenger for four years. Anyone who sees us sharing this quote immediately thinks, “Wow, that person must really love mountains.” And you know what? They’re not wrong! Thanks, John Muir!
“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.”
You got it, John! Every time we see this quote, it just makes us want to drop everything, go find a mountain, and dry hump the ever-loving shit out of it. We are friggin bananas for mountains. You don’t understand. How could you? The only person who understands how crazy we are for mountains is a Scottish-American naturalist and author from the 1800s.
“Keep close to Nature’s heart… and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.”< Well John, our spirits must be filthy, because all we ever want to do is climb mountains. Seriously, if it we didn’t have bills to pay and pets to feed, we would spend every waking moment at an elevation no less than 1,500 feet. Just like our hero, John Motherfucking Muir. “Going to the mountains is going home.”
Mmmhmmmm yas Muir!!! What we love most about this quote is how it says that going to the mountains is like going home. So true!! We just want to bang this quote into some sloppy calligraphy, overlay it onto a VSCO-edited photo of Yosemite, then throw it up on Tumblr for all the other Muir-heads out there to reblog. Shout out to our beautiful online mountain-lovin’ community!
“We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us.”
Quivering is exactly what we do every time we think about big sexy mountains. How is it possible that an author born in 1838 could understand our love of mountains so? We can’t question it too much. All we can do is screen print this quote on a gray crewneck and head for the Pacific Northwest ASAP.
“Of all the mountain ranges I have climbed, I like the Sierra Nevada the best.”
A little more specific than his other quotes, and all the better for it. While we have never personally been to the Sierra Nevada mountain range, if it’s got an endorsement from our boy John, it’s got to be a real banger. Excuse us while we turn on private browsing on Safari and Google image search some photos of this immaculate mountain chain.
These six quotes totally capture what we love so much about mountains. They’re big, you can go to them, and they’re nice! We’re fucking bonkers about mountains, and thanks to John Muir, the whole world can know it.
