Photos

"Do you know the origin of the word 'saunter'? It's a beautiful word. Away back in the Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when peoople in the villages which they passed asked where they were going, they would reply, "A la sainte terre, to the Holy Land". And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunters. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not 'hike' through them."

"John Muir lived up to his doctrine. He was usually the last man to reach camp. He never hurried. He stopped to get acquainted with individual trees along the way. He would hail people passing by and make them get down on hands and knees if necessary to see the beauty of some little bed of almost microscopic flowers. Usually he appeared at camp with some new flowers in his hat and a little piece of fir bough in his buttonhole."

"You can't do these things if you rush through life in a big automobile at high speed; you can't know these things if you "hike" along the trail in a speed competition. These are the peculiar rewards of the man who has learned the secret of the saunterer!"
--- by Albert Palmer during an early Sierra Club saunter with John Muir.

This image is of one of the series of waterfalls known as Eagle Falls, tumbling from Tahoe's Desolation Wilderness into Emerald Bay. Located near Highway 89, California.