Keith utilizes a rabbit motif throughout the piece to bring forth her theme of the importance of imagination while traveling. Besides the title, Keith introduces the rabbits through their trail as she follows along their prints up the summit. At times, these tracks are the only thing that keep her company on hikes. At the end of the piece, Keith alludes to Alice in Wonderland and compares her following rabbit tracks to how Alice follows the white rabbit to Wonderland. This comparison is used to heighten her argument that more important than any gear, one needs to have an imagination to travel. Like Wonderland, nature is an out of this world place for Keith. As she states in the last paragraph, “certainly your gear and your body...can take your mind places it couldn't otherwise go. But it doesn't happen unless your mind takes your body there first. What you need most is imagination.”
Keith makes this argument very clear with the line of “to climb a mountain is to commit an imaginative act.” While she does put emphasis on the importance of having the right gear, she acknowledges that at the end of the day, the gear doesn't make a traveller, but their mind does.
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