The writings take all manner of literary forms: folktales, myths, essays, travelogues, and poetry of both ancient and modern times. We hear from familiar voices--Whitman, Muir, Chekhov, Conan Doyle--and from those not so familiar but equally fascinating, including Russian naturalist Nikolai Prejevalsky and English lady adventurer Isabella Bird.

The mountain experiences described in these works are enormously varied as well. They range from the powerful altitude-induced vision of Simon Bolivar atop Mount Chimborazo, to a Victorian-era pleasure trip in the Alps as recounted by Mrs. H.W. Cole, to V. K. Arseniev's tale of survival and rescue in a Siberian mountain storm. Yet whether they speak of profound spiritual journeys, easy pleasure trips, or face-to-face encounters with death, all these voices are raised in collective celebration of the glories and terrors of the most awe-inspiring of Earth's natural treasures.

1. Mount Katahdin /Henry David Thoreau
2. Mountain people /Martin Frobisher
3. Front range /Walt Whitman, Isabella Lucy Bird
4. Sacred geography /Navajo text
5. Songs for the mountain world /Akimel O'Odham, Chiricahua Apache, Cheyenne, Southern Paiute, Wind River Shoshone, Tewa, Tohono O'Odham, and Paiute texts
6. Sierra Nevada /John Muir, Mary Austin
7. Mount Saint Helens /Ursula K. Le Guin
8. Popocatepetl /Fray Lâopez De Gomara
9. Climbing to the middle of the world /Aimâe Felix Tschiffely
10. Andes /Kechua and Spanish folk songs, Simâon Bolâivar, Ida Pfeiffer, Charles Darwin
11. The Tepuis of Guyana /Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
12. Mountains of Africa /Ashanti, Wachagga, Giyuku, Xan, and !Kung folktales, Pliny the Elder
13. The mountains of the moon /Abu El Fadel
14. The ascent of Kilimanjaro /H.H. Johnston
15. Mysteries of the highlands /John Barrow
16. Table Mountain /Joshua Penny
17. High Japan /Japanese myths, Dåogen Kigen, Bashåo, Nanao Sakaki, Asuka Gasei, Yoshinori, Ota Dokan, Kayano Shigeru
18. Sakhalin /Anton Chekhov, Maritime Chukchee folktale
19. Storm /V.K. Arseniev
20. Mountains of China /Han Shan, Li Po
21. Mountains of Mongolia /Nikolai Prejevalsky
22. Himalayas /Susan Rijnhart, Zahiruddin Muhammad Båabur, Sir Martin Conway, Hindu myth, Sikkimese hymn, Photius, Mark Twain
23. Frontiers /Richard Francis Burton, T.E. Lawrence
24. Central Asia /Kirghiz epic, Sven Hedin
25. Anatolia /Frederick Burnaby, Bob Shacochis
26. Zion /Hebrew text
27. Hellas /Archilochos, Sappho, Alkman, Pausanias
28. Mountains of water and mystery /Russian folk poems, Romanian and Bulgarian folktales
29. Highlands /Dorothy Wordsworth, William Butler Yeats, Scottish folk songs, Alastair Borthwick
30. Mountains of Europe /John Ruskin
31. Volcano /Jon Thorlaksson
32. Vesuvius, Etna and the Apennines /Pliny the Younger, Carlo Levi, Franciscan text
33. Sierra /Antonio Machado
34. Alps /Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Sir Leslie Stephen, Mrs. H.W. Cole, Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway
35. Mountain dreaming /Australian aboriginal myths
36. Mount Cook /Freda Du Faur
37. Mount Kare /Isabella Tree
38. Pele /Hawaiian myth — The mountains of Erewhon /Samuel Butler
39. Cataclysm /Bertolt Brecht
40. The hollow-men and the bitter-rose /Ren§e Daumal
41. The ends of the earth /Estonian folktale, Sir John Mandeville.