"White Rabbit" Response

I really loved Holly Keith's piece. I felt the solemnity and wonderment in her hike up the White Mountains. A prevalent theme was reverence of nature. In the beginning, Keith describes her journey of following a rabbit's tracks throughout the mountain before realizing that the rabbit is not following the same path as her. She writes, "I am intuiting the way" (1). Her language evokes imagery of hunting or tracking an animal as another animal would. By using the word "intuit", Keith paints a picture of her connection with nature. Throughout the rest of the piece, she describes the steps and preparations needed in order to get a rewarding climb. She writes that the reward often varies but an imagination is needed in order to achieve this reward. "To climb a mountain is to commit an imaginative act," she writes (7). She goes further, stating that she didn't learn this "until all the tracks were gone and I could enter wonderland alone" (7). In order to receive the reward of hiking, the climber needs to revere nature and be one with it.