“[When asked about the word "hike":] I don't like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains — not hike! Do you know the origin of that word saunter? It's a beautiful word. Away back in the middle ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going, they would reply, 'A la sainte terre,' 'To the Holy Land.' And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not 'hike' through them.”

—  John Muir

statement by Muir as remembered by Albert W. Palmer in The Mountain Trail and its Message http://books.google.com/books?id=odROAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA28 (1911), pages 27-28
1910s

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John Muir 183
Scottish-born American naturalist and author 1838–1914

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