Ian Marshall Quotes on Literature (2 Quotes)

When I was hiking, I would bring the literary works that were about that place in my pack - and I would be reading, for instance, if I was up in the White Mountains, I would have a collection of Hawthorne short stories. I'd be reading the stories by Hawthorne while I'm in the place that he's writing about - and then I'd be writing in my journal thinking about the literature and thinking about the place and trying to find where the two connect.

The appeal of the Trail to me, as someone who's interested in American literature, is that it's almost a time-travel machine - to walk on a mountain that is not too different today than the way it might have been 200 years ago. And just to read what a writer has written about that piece of terrain, and to try to experience the same thing, that feels magical to me - to feel that, Here I am, in the same place that Henry Thoreau was.