Bill Walker > Quotes

“Hike your own hike”
― Bill Walker, Skywalker: Highs and Lows on the Pacific Crest Trail

“Martina had a strikingly athletic physique. Throw in her alluring personality and she was destined to be amongst male pilgrims all along the way.”
― Bill Walker, The Best Way: El Camino de Santiago

“The better part of the tour was the gossip offered up by the tour guide. It seems a certain Genoese sailor used to frequent a married woman here in Burgos. Being a highly skilled navigator, this seaman was particularly well-versed in seasonal rhythms. His mistress’ husband was in the shipping business, and gone six months a year, allowing the swashbuckling Genoan to swoop in to fill the seasonal vacuum. Like most Genoese, this sailor—Christopher Columbus—was attracted to the cosmopolitan flair that Burgos offered. The guide went on to point out that this same Captain Columbus would later delay his departure for the New World from the Galapagos Islands for over a month, when he fell into the arms of an especially delectable, but married, island woman. I guess I am just naïve. After all, how much of a surprise is it that the world’s greatest explorer of all time was also a bit peripatetic when it came to sleeping arrangements.”
― Bill Walker, The Best Way: El Camino de Santiago

“The Allman Brothers were from my hometown of Macon, Georgia, so requesting this song was a small lapse into provincialism. In 1972, the group’s guitarist, Duane Allman, had died when his motorcycle had crashed into the back of a peach truck. They subsequently named the album they had been working on, Eat A Peach. Its memorable lyrics, which came pouring out of Wisconsin’s machine at 9,000 feet in the California mountains, go as follows: Well, I’ve got to run to keep from hiding And I’m bound to keep on riding And I’ve got one more silver dollar But I’m not gonna’ let ‘em catch me, no Not gonna’ let ‘em catch the midnight rider. The song is a paen to freedom and independence, which, come to think about it, is kinda’ what the PCT is. And the God’s-honest-truth is that for the next two days this song carried me a total of fifty miles in an elevated state of morale.”
― Bill Walker, Skywalker: Highs and Lows on the Pacific Crest Trail

“Perhaps the moral of the story is that as uncivilized as we humans so often act, we are ultimately civilized beings. The sad thing is that so many of the people who got off the trail in this fashion would have been perfectly happy if they could have just forced themselves to hoist their pack, hitch back to the trail, and take the very first few steps. The challenge simply lay in beginning.”
― Bill Walker, Skywalker: Highs and Lows on the Pacific Crest Trail

“Walking the AT is not recreation,” he began. “It is an education and a job. And walking the entire AT is not ‘going on a hike,’ but a journey with deeper ramifications.”
― Bill Walker, Skywalker: Close Encounters on the Appalachian trail

“Europe is the land of great cathedrals. Chartres and Notre Dame in France are world-class by any conceivable measure. Salisbury Cathedral in England is in a class by itself, despite its remote location. St. Peters in Rome is a mecca, and to a lesser extent Rheims in Germany. My amateur eye would unhesitatingly add to that hallowed list, Burgos Cathedral here in northern Spain. It is widely considered one of the finest examples of Gothic architecture in Europe. Inspired by the French cathedralism of the Middle Ages, it doesn’t look Spanish in the least.”
― Bill Walker, The Best Way: El Camino de Santiago

“It was Christmas-card beautiful—enough to stir the emotions of even the most hard-bit soul.”
― Bill Walker, Skywalker: Highs and Lows on the Pacific Crest Trail

“Someone—somewhere—pointed out that if you are miserable when you’re alone, then the problem is that you are keeping bad company.”
― Bill Walker, Skywalker: Highs and Lows on the Pacific Crest Trail