Hiking in nature, walking on mountains, and seeking that unique peace and adventure to replenish your energy, can be an ecstatic experience. These hiking poems about adventure in the great outdoors, show how different poets were affected.
It is not by chance that there is something special about hiking and walking, just enjoying the moment. The longer the experience, the more you receive from your surroundings. Even fatigue shows something within, beyond the physical strains. It can reveal the thousands of thoughts that come through your mind and what they are about.
Many things are revealed, and if you are lucky and careful, listening inside, you will notice how things shift in your head from moment to moment.
Is that all? No. Something even more profound happens as you go deeper, silencing the inner dialogue. After all, being mindful is walking meditation.
Seeing the thousands of thoughts rapidly moving through your mind is -by itself- a revelation. It may be easy or tough to let those thoughts be, but the process is an apocalypse of things happening.
We believe you will love these poems about hiking in the mountains and the poems for hiking in the woods.
5 Poems to Read on Your Next Hike
It is not by chance that people seek to be in nature. They even try to resemble nature in their houses and around them. Having pots with flowers and gardens and trees in their backyard shows how deeply connected we are, not with concrete, steel, and glass, but with fundamental things of our existence.
The -seemingly- quiet and unmoveable elements of nature seem serene as we hike through them or when we climb on mountains. That peaceful stability can change us.
The effort we put into going to mountain tops does change us. We encounter the very fabric of our existence, and it shows us that we can overcome our weaknesses and do even greater things.
Hiking in nature is a profound school that teaches us every single moment when we can listen.
Here are five poets about hiking that can reveal something profound to each of us.
1. Grass
“The grass so little has to do, —
A sphere of simple green,
With only butterflies to brood,
And bees to entertain,
And even when it dies, to pass
In odours so divine,
As lowly spices gone to sleep,
Or amulets of pine.
And then to dwell in sovereign barns,
And dream the days away, —
The grass so little has to do,
I wish I were the hay!”
— Emily Dickson
2. Night On The Mountain
The fog has risen from the sea and crowned
The dark, untrodden summits of the coast,
Where roams a voice, in canyons uttermost,
From midnight waters vibrant and profound.
High on each granite altar dies the sound,
Deep as the trampling of an armored host,
Lone as the lamentation of a ghost,
Sad as the diapason of the drowned.
The mountain seems no more a soulless thing,
But rather as a shape of ancient fear,
In darkness and the winds of Chaos born
Amid the lordless heavens’ thundering–
A Presence crouched, enormous and austere,
Before whose feet the mighty waters mourn.
— George Sterling
3. Sleeping in the Forest
I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated as light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.
—Mary Oliver
4. Fall Falling
Red orange yellow
Remembering green
Once securely attached
Frivolously free
Floating twirling
Dancing to the earth
Stores and storied sunlight
Resting in sweet celebration
— Ilan Shamir
5. The Cloud
I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother’s breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley
Aren’t these poems unique? One can ask themselves if these are only about nature and hiking and mountains and adventures.
These hiking poems have a meditative nature and can make us wonder if they are beyond outdoors, but mostly “indoors.” Maybe, when we observe outside, we are helped to look inside and seek a deeper meaning in life or to find our true nature.
Nothing compares to sleeping under the clear night sky on a mountain top. There are studies for that, and there is a reason why mountaineering is considered a fantastic experience—being in direct contact with the galaxy above, staring at the myriad of stars, far from the noise of sounds and lights of the city. Some claim that something divine is revealed at such moments, but couldn’t it be other than our true self?
Enjoy hiking and nature. You may find this article interesting: Go Exploring: Best Dolomites Hiking Trips.