Film OF THE MONTH

Mountains: Come Back Home

I was raised in central New Jersey, “Exit 8,” where people said they were going “down the shore” when they headed to Manasquan, Sea Girt, Wildwood, Stone Harbor, or any number of beloved Jersey Shore beach towns.

Compass-wise and vacation-wise, my family was a little unconventional. Instead of heading east to find bliss, we motored north “up the mountains.”

There’s a cabin—we call it “camp”—in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York that’s been in the Sprout family since 1919. It used to take my grandparents two full days to get there. Now, depending on traffic and bladder capacity, we can make the trip in a little over six hours.

We’re not actually in the mountains. We’re on a lake. But the mountains are there, rising beyond the water, quietly reminding us to look up, pay attention, breathe deeply, and appreciate the great outdoors. When we climb them, we revisit that familiar state of mosquito-slapping, sweat-soaked, heart-pumping forward motion—one foot, then another, then another—until effort gives way to wonder.

And that is where I find my bliss.

Climbing mountains isn’t easy, but it is simple. I’m a human being, not a human doing. Mountains help me set down my to-do list and remember what it feels like to simply exist. If existence justifies itself, mountains help justify existence.

Because they give us so much—beauty, challenge, perspective, peace—they deserve our care. Maintaining access to wild places, preserving their fragile beauty, and protecting the forests, trails, waters, and views that sustain us is one way we say thank you.

These days, as summer heat settles in, many of my neighbors dream of heading down the shore. My heart always turns north: up the mountains.
Please enjoy our five-minute video, Mountains: Come Back Home. —Jonathan

“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.”  —John Muir

"The mountain does not care whether we are male or female. It just challenges us.”  —Junko Tabei (First woman to summit Mount Everest)

“When life gets tangled, there’s something so reassuring about climbing a mountain. The challenge is unambiguous.”  —Stacey Allison

“Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity.”  —John Muir

“It’s not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.”  —Sir Edmund Hillary

“It had to do with how it felt to be in the wild... to walk for miles with no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts…”  —Cheryl Strayed

“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.” —John Muir

“The mountains are silent teachers with loud echoes.”  —Reinhold Messner

“The mountains are my refuge and my source of inspiration.”  —Ansel Adams

“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.”  —John Muir