To Hope Is To Give

The Object We Call A Book Is Not The Real Book, But Its Potential, Like A Musical Score Or Seed. It Exists Fully Only In The Act Of Being Read; And Its Real Home Is Inside The Head Of The Reader, Where The Symphony Resounds, The Seed Germinates. A Book Is A Heart That Only Beats In The Chest Of Another.

It Had Come To Me Not In A Sudden Epiphany But With A Gradual Sureness, A Sense Of Meaning Like A Sense Of Place. When You Give Yourself To Places, They Give You Yourself Back; The More One Comes To Know Them, The More One Seeds Them With The Invisible Crop Of Memories And Associations That Will Be Waiting For You When You Come Back, While New Places Offer Up New Thoughts, New Possibilities. Exploring The World Is One Of The Best Ways Of Exploring The Mind, And Walking Travels Both Terrains.

A Lone Peak Of High Point Is A Natural Focal Point In The Landscape, Something By Which Both Travelers And Local Orient Themselves. In The Continuum Of Landscape, Mountains Are Discontinuity -- Culminating In High Points, Natural Barriers, Unearthly Earth.

Walking, Ideally, Is A State In Which The Mind, The Body, And The World Are Aligned.

There Are Those Who Receive As Birthright An Adequate Or At Least Unquestioned Sense Of Self And Those Who Set Out To Reinvent Themselves, For Survival Or For Satisfaction, And Travel Far. Some People Inherit Values And Practices As A House They Inhabit; Some Of Us Have To Burn Down That House, Find Our Own Ground, Build From Scratch, Even As A Psychological Metamorphosis.