Tramps, Mountains and Unicorns

The Glacier Park Hike of Vachel Lindsay and Stephen Graham

Authors

  • Michael Hughes Lancaster University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v8i3.267

Keywords:

Tramping, Glacier National Park, Vachel Lindsay, Stephen Graham, Thoreau, nature spirituality

Abstract

In the late summer of 1921 the British travel writer Stephen Graham and the American poet Vachel Lindsay hiked northwards through Glacier National Park. Both men had in their different literary spheres established a reputation as refugees from modernity, writing books and poems that tried to articulate a vision of alternative societies, where life could be free from the materialism and corruption of western civilisation. The two men retreated to Glacier Park both to discuss their ideas and to seek a natural world where they could find a solace they could not find elsewhere. Both of them wrote books about their sojourn in Glacier Park, presenting it as a place where the mundane could give access to the numinous, and the place itself become an arena for a remaking of the self. Their books and their experiences provide access to a series of important questions ranging from the agency of the material landscape through to the challenge of capturing the spiritual in the language of both poetry and prose. ?

Author Biography

  • Michael Hughes, Lancaster University
    Professor of Russian and International History

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Published

2014-12-16

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Hughes, M. (2014). Tramps, Mountains and Unicorns: The Glacier Park Hike of Vachel Lindsay and Stephen Graham. Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, 8(3), 267-286. https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v8i3.267