Backpacking with the Saints: Wilderness Hiking as Spiritual Practice

Written by Belden C. Lane

Narrated by Jim Denison

Carrying only basic camping equipment and a collection of the world's great spiritual writings, Belden C. Lane embarks on solitary spiritual treks through the Ozarks and across the American Southwest. For companions, he has only such teachers as Rumi, John of the Cross, Hildegard of Bingen, Dag Hammarskjöld, and Thomas Merton, and as he walks, he engages their writings with the natural wonders he encounters, demonstrating how being alone in the wild opens a rare view onto one's interior landscape, and how the saints' writings reveal the divine in nature.

The discipline of backpacking, Lane shows, is a metaphor for a spiritual journey. Just as the wilderness offered revelations to the early Desert Christians, backpacking hones crucial spiritual skills: paying attention, traveling light, practicing silence, and exercising wonder. Lane engages the practice not only with a wide range of spiritual writings, but with the fascination of other lovers of the backcountry, from John Muir and Ed Abbey to Bill Plotkin and Cheryl Strayed. In this intimate and down-to-earth narrative, backpacking is shown to be a spiritual practice that allows the discovery of God amidst the beauty and unexpected terrors of nature. Adoration, Lane suggests, is the most appropriate human response to what we cannot explain, but have nonetheless learned to love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Jul 31, 2019
• ISBN: 9781515946021

Reviews for Backpacking with the Saints

[Greg LaMay · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a book filled with lots of little nuggets of knowledge and I will listen to it more than once.

Lot of basic / mindful / spiritual information.

Highly recommend!

[b22johansen · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is an excellent combination of travel memoir and spirituality textbook. Be prepared that it is definitely not an easy travel memoir read. The author is an academic, and it is thus written with that style. However, it is written quite well if you are prepared to read this style of book. Each chapter has a small story from the author's outdoor experiences and then talks about a saint that the author either read on that trip or who's writings relate to the experiences of the trip. Overall it is a great way to introduce these spiritual masters from many religions as well as introduce the reader to the theme of wilderness spirituality.