Methodology

The Via Alpina, a network of long-distance hiking trails in the Alps, was conceived in 2000 by the French hiking association Grande Traversée des Alpes. It acknowledges the Alps as a region with a distinctive natural and cultural heritage. In addition to encouraging the discovery of the Alps by foot, the trails aim to support sustainable development of local communities and the preservation of the natural environment. The construction and maintenance of the trails are subsidised by private and public sector stakeholders from the eight countries they pass through (Italy, Slovenia, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, France and Monaco) and the European Union (Chaumereuil and Morelle 2023a, 2023b; Wei enborn 2015: 30–33). Like other long-distance trails, they pass through mountainous terrain and impressive nature. The trails are challenging, at times rocky, overgrown or narrow, but maintained. They are mostly signed and marked, though not extensively, thus requiring hikers to be familiar with the route beforehand. The trails range from two weeks (300 kilometres, the green trail) to several months (2,500 kilometres, the red trail) in length. The many villages along the way and the convenient infrastructure distinguish the Via Alpina from other long trails, such as the American Pacific Crest Trail and the Appalachian Trail flagship trails.

Most VA hikers are solitary and their backpack contains all the equipment they need for walking, sleeping and eating outdoors. This provides the hiker with flexibility as to where to sleep and how fast to advance. The typical hiker walks alone or less frequently with a partner, with the main motivation being the hike itself, rather than the social life on the trail or contact with villagers along the route (Lum et al. 2020: 173–175). Most VA hikers we spoke to have prior experience in hiking, which provides them with confidence. Some thru-hike the trail, that is walk it from start to end in one time, while others divide it to sections to accord with their time limitations. Unlike alpinists, for whom the essence of the journey involves reaching a destination or conquering a peak, long-distance hikers think ‘the act of moving may be as important as that of arriving’ (Tilley 1994: 31). For most of the VA hikers we studied, the end of the trail is just another spot, framing the larger journey.

We defined a long-distance hike as one that lasts at least two weeks (approximately 300 kilometres), as that is the amount of time from which, as one hiker described it, one cannot sense the end from the start. Our research relies primarily on fourteen semi-structured video interviews with eleven long-distance hikers from the Via Alpina Community Facebook group. Of these, eight walked at least one Via Alpina trail. This method enabled us to reach, view, and communicate with geographically diverse respondents that share the trail experience. The interviews were conducted between January and June 2021, exploring the experience of long-distance hiking and how it relates to the daily lives of the informants. After processing the research data, we conducted three more interviews with informants we already spoke with. The first author's own experience of long-distance hiking guided the semi-structured questions and created intimacy with the interviewees. All interviewees were white from OECD countries, mostly in Western Europe, and they were of various ages. Most were men who hiked alone, though some were women (three), while three were hikers who walked in pairs. The conversations lasted one to three hours, and were recorded and transcribed. Additionally, in March 2021, the first author walked for a week on the yellow trail of the Via Alpina to revive the bodily experience of mountain walking.

Towards the end of the interview process, we formulated a questionnaire on Google Forms with thirty open-ended questions that dealt mainly with the journey experience, its relationship to everyday life and its planning. We posted it on several Facebook groups related to long-distance hiking, and fourteen hikers answered it. They had all walked at least one two-week trail, and many had completed several long-distance trails in Europe. We assumed that a questionnaire would be unintimidating and more effective in extending our findings from the Via Alpina to long-distance hiking more generally. While additional data might be gathered through participatory observation, accompanying the hikers would have significantly altered the walk's character, potentially disrupting hikers’ connections with the environment and themselves, and introducing an intrusive form of sociality into the overall experience. As one hiker explained:

For me walking alone is quiet time, it's calmer. I enjoy nature more because I realised that when I'm with people, also if it's just one other person, often you talk with each other, and it's great, but if it's too much, you don't realise the surroundings, maybe you talk for almost a whole day, and it's good, but you didn't experience nature around you because you were busy talking. It's not negative, but it's different. (Manfred, Switzerland, 50)

In addition, the first author, a passionate practitioner of long-distance hiking, drew on his previous experience walking a long trail in the French Pyrenees for a month and a half (GR10/HRP, 900 kilometres). Similar to the Via Alpina in many ways, it also traverses a Western European mountain range and can be accomplished in a period of several weeks to several months. The experience led the author to reflect on hikers’ planning and motivations, and how they position the experience in relation to the everyday structures of society. This approach gives the place of pride to the lived, embodied experiences of the hikers, rather than to the images and discourses that pre-shape the experience of hiking the Alps (Tilley and Cameron-Daum 2017: 4–9).

In the following sections, we will provide a short history of walking in the Alps and the emergence of the Via Alpina, followed by a brief discussion of the scholarship on hiking. We then examine how planning, technology and walking a path structure the experience of walkers; elaborate on the relation of clock time and natural time; and discuss physical and mental challenges and the pleasure gained through overcoming them. In conclusion, we relate the interaction of Eros and Logos to the contemporary reality of omnipresent technology, alienation and uncertainty.

Walking in the Alps: From Dangerous Barrier to Natural Attraction

Historically, the Alps were perceived as a dangerous place, home to bandits (as well as dragons and witches) and a natural obstacle for pilgrimage, commerce and settlement (Fleming 2004: 51). Routes through the Alps were often built for military or political purposes such as creating regional identities or exerting control over territory, but they changed over time to accommodate additional needs such as trade, toll collections and mail delivery (Bernier 2007: 3–4; Harriss 1972; Stadel 1986: 40). Typically, those routes were narrow and were constructed (at least in some areas) of rough stones that favoured the use of carriages and animals over walking (Harriss 1972: 180). The Alps’ importance as a crossroads decreased as it was subdivided amongst several states and following the establishment of major commercial centres along the Atlantic coast instead of the Mediterranean (Stadel 1986: 43–44).

Since the mid-eighteenth century, the Alps have attracted visitors keen about its natural qualities. Scientists ventured into the unknown region eager to demystify and rationalise nature (Klein 2011: 523–524). Central to the change in attitude towards mountains were the writings of the Romantic poets of the eighteenth century, often inspired by their own walks in the Alps. They transformed the view of mountains from ‘warts and potholes in the face of the earth to the most majestic objects on the terrestrial globe’ (Nicolson 1959: 29). Romantics such as Rousseau and Wordsworth believed that consumption of nature entails spiritual and aesthetic values that contribute to personal self-development, contrary to the alienated, stressful and precarious modern reality (Edensor 2000; Seaton 2012; cf. Solnit 2000: 104–117). Mountaineers set their foot on one peak after another, treating nature as a space to unite with and conquer as one. Thus, walking across the Alps should be seen as a modern phenomenon reflecting a change in collective imagination, from seeing the Alps as a frightful and limiting space to an admired and inspiring one, a transformation from ‘mountain gloom to mountain glory’ (Nicolson 1959).

Technological advancements enabled the construction of infrastructure for trains and cars that facilitated faster transportation to and across the Alps. They also contributed to the development of a distinct sphere of nature-based tourism. As walking long distances became less a necessity in everyday life, it became a valued leisure, health and even spiritual activity (Chamberlin 2016). Walking paths and huts were built by Alpine Clubs and through the initiative of local stakeholders (Anderson 2012: 167–168; Wei enborn 2015: 26–27). Their goal was to make the Alps’ beauty accessible in a safe way to the urban middle class. While the romantic motivation for nature excursions was ‘anti-modern’ at its core, the Alpinists were proud modernists. They aspired to develop the Alps towards modernity and celebrate industrial progress and the imposition of order on nature through functional planning and calculation (Anderson 2012). Thus, the development of the Alps embodies both modernity and the resistance to it, or in other words, the ambivalence of modernity.

Walking, Hiking, Thinking and Self-discovery

Walking is an integral part of who we are as human beings. As a physical activity and as a unique way of movement, it impacts individuals and how they experience the world. It provides a space for action in relation to which the walker finds his own place. Rebecca Solnit (2001: 5) describes walking as opening a balanced space within a person:

Walking, ideally, is a state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned, as though they were three characters finally in conversation together, three notes suddenly making a chord. Walking allows us to be in our bodies and in the world without being made busy by them. It leaves us free to think without being wholly lost in our thoughts.

The slow rhythm of walking mirrors the pace of thinking. Throughout history, thinkers have found in it a safe space in which they could articulate their feelings of alienation from the society in which they lived: ‘A solitary walker . . . is unsettled, between places, drawn forth by desire and lack, having the detachment of the traveller rather than the ties of the worker, the dweller, the member of a group’ (26). As such, a walker in nature is less likely to feel monitored and perform according to social conventions than when walking short distances in the city or in everyday life (Edensor 2008).

Leisure walking was non-existent until the eighteenth century, and walking away from one's hometown was identified with the poor, criminals and the homeless. The development of fast and cheap transportation technologies led to the new perception of walking as a favourable leisure activity as part of the modern discourse of corporeal reflexivity (Edensor 2000: 82–83). Recreational walking can be largely categorised into two groups. The first includes more conventional forms of walking such as ‘promenading’, ‘wandering’ and ‘strolling’ which are relatively easy, relaxing, sociable and open for spontaneous participation by people of varied abilities. The other group includes ‘hiking’, ‘marching’, ‘hill-walking’ and ‘trekking’ which require planning and are characterised as physically demanding, challenging, adventurous and rewarding (Kay and Moxham 1996).

The temporal and spatial detachment from everyday life when walking in the mountains distinguishes hiking from other forms of walking and is capable of changing people's orientation in ways that impact their life paths after their return home (Frey 1998; Slavin 2003; Wei enborn 2015: 77–78). The lived experience produced by the extensive engagement with nature through immersive walking positively affects mental health ‘through the synergistic effects of the benefits associated with walking and with exposure to nature’ (Mau et al. 2021: 2) and is seen as a ‘pure antidepressant’ (Svarstad 2010: 97). Sustained long-distance walking is shown to improve physical health as well (O'Mara 2019). Detachment, multi-sensuality, relaxation, simplicity, spirituality, immersion and satisfaction are some of the main experiences of long-distance hikers (den Breejen 2007; Hitchner et al. 2019; Wei enborn 2015). By interrogating the experience of walking the Via Alpina, we explore how walkers construct a sense of self that resists the mechanisation and alienation of contemporary work life, without opting out of society.

Planning, Navigation Technology and Walking the Path

For VA hikers, planning, technology and hiking equipment are indispensable, although, unlike amongst Appalachian Trail hikers, they are not displayed as a symbol of expertise and status (Littlefield and Siudzinski 2012). The planning and navigation are done almost entirely with digital maps, GPS devices and applications, as paper maps are perceived as cumbersome, expensive and heavy. Hikers can be roughly divided into minimal and intensive planners. The minimal planners seek flexibility and restrict their preparation to collecting information on food supply points and water refills. They use a digital GPS route and will occasionally set for themselves anchors in the trajectory that they expect to reach in a given period of time, or plan the first days’ sections in greater depth.

Most of the informants were intensive planners. They were not satisfied with downloading the GPS route but rather validated it by cross-referencing routes that other hikers have uploaded to blogs, websites and navigation apps (such as Komoot) or by examining the route in various digital maps. This process gives the hikers a sense of security in the face of possible risks. It also provides a chart of progress, especially for those who need to stick to a given time frame, such as work vacations. Most informants enjoyed the planning process and saw the reward of planning as harvested on the trip itself:

I like to plan everything on the maps and . . . to invest as much time and effort as possible so that I don't have to worry during the hike itself. On the hike it's just looking at the map and seeing OK, I'm on the right track, and I don't care whether it's right or wrong because I know I did everything I could before. (Manfred, Switzerland, 50)

Planning gives the hiker the opportunity to focus on the thing that matters most – the walking experience. The accomplishment of the path is facilitated through meticulous planning, proper equipment, GPS devices, knowledge of opening times of services in villages along the route and awareness of alternatives in the case of extreme weather conditions. Thus, the technological elements of Logos modernity do not subdue the walker; rather, they are harnessed to the search for freedom, self-empowerment and existential authenticity.

Renou (Canada, 31), who set out to do the red trail in the summer of 2021, feared that he might overstep his limits in the first few days and exhaust himself. Consequently, he limited himself in advance to a certain number of kilometres per day, determined by potential places to camp. As such, the plan serves as a lighthouse that provides direction to the freedom experienced in the trip.

The detachment from daily life is made possible by planning and the travel to the starting point; but it is life on the trail that draws the hiker into a different state of consciousness. The hikers must go through a period of adjustment and discomfort until they access this mental state. During the first days, the mind is still preoccupied with daily affairs, and the body is getting used to the new rhythm, but after that, as Igor (Slovenia, 47) describes it:

the subconscious, the peace of walking starts to work and penetrate. When you stop the income of all information that we are putting in everyday life, a reverse process comes to being, instead of in, all the things that you were not aware of and swept under the carpet start to come out.

In the summer of 2021, Igor embarked on his third Via Alpina. Every few years, he devotes most of his annual vacation days to a long trail. For some of the informants, it is the highlight of the year, while for others it is a meaningful one-time experience where they can realise their love for walking in nature or reconnect to the things that matter most to them.

The term meditation in motion came up many times. This is a state in which one thinks of everything and nothing at the same time, and in which the stream of thoughts is clearer and freer. Thus, some qualities of meditation, such as reflexive relaxation and discipline, are experienced in the hike (Choe et al. 2014). If Igor described it as a space where the subconscious is exposed, others describe it as an endless sequence in which one thinks about the path, nature, past and future as a detached observer.

Not all hikers experience the trip as something transformative, but everyone experiences it as a unique experience. For Raphael (France, 43), the hiker undergoes a spiritual experience through which they can discover themselves:

When you walk you are always in the present moment, step by step, you are present . . . But the thoughts that you have in your mind are not very useful, so you don't care about it. And one moment you are going to have a thought which is more important, the real one, the real important one, and at that moment you are going to change a bit.

Hikers do worry about where to sleep, what to eat, the weather, store opening times, aches and pains. These worries are fundamentally different from those of everyday life because they are existential, basic and clear and therefore accessible and solvable. Dealing with these problems reinforces the experience of simplicity in ways that often last into life at home. The inward contemplative experience generated by walking, combined with the withdrawal from everyday complex problems and pressures, creates the supportive space for an existentially authentic experience. Hikers can devote themselves to ‘self-making’ and explore alternative identities which are more in line with what they perceive to be their true self. Thus, even if walking is socially structured and dictated by norms and various physical factors, in nature hiking these become looser than in the ‘over-smooth, regulated fabric of much urban and suburban space’ (Edensor 2008: 138) that desensualises everyday walking experience. Moreover, these effects are not seen as a restriction of agency on the part of the hikers (Slavin 2003: 2). The plan becomes subject to the person instead of the other way around. In the service of Eros, Logos intensifies the detachment from the everyday, enabling the body to better respond to nature and the inner self, and providing increased agency and flexibility.

At the same time, the charted path of the Via Alpina creates an awareness of purpose. As Edwin Straus formulates it: ‘Whenever one body moves along a forest path . . . the body's locomotion in such cases is forward-tending, since the place-to-come is experienced as an aim’ (in Casey 1987: 196). The planning fuels imagination and desire, while bodily movement along the path immerses the walker in the present moment, maintaining a sense of progression; each step is also, in the end, movement towards a goal.

During the journey, the rhythm of walking and the state of mind that accompanies it change at different times and in different landscapes. Thus, temporalities that are often excluded back home suddenly find place.

Natural Time and Clock Time

The Via Alpina hiker spends anywhere from two weeks to four months walking a path. Each attempts to find ways of restricting the domination of striated clock time, and create space for immersive experiences and the smooth time of duration. We will explore how this is accomplished and how the temporalities experienced on the hike relate to those controlling life back home.

For some long-distance trail hikers, the accomplishment of the trail in a given time frame is crucial for their satisfaction. Thus, it is subject to clock time (as in working life), and the hikers’ experience is detached from being in the present, notwithstanding their immersion in nature (Menzel 2017: 123–124). While the literature on hiking reports ambivalence regarding GPS applications insofar as it distances the hiker from direct experience with nature (Rogers and Leung 2021; Symonds 2017), in the case of the thru-hikers we interviewed on the VA, it seems clock time has a more dynamic relationship with other times. During the trip, clock time is still present – for example, with respect to grocery store opening hours – but weather, daylight hours and body feelings are dominant in the rhythm and organisation of the day and the trip.

Perhaps the area in which clock time seems to dominate is that of pre-trip planning. Travellers set aside free time in advance to make it fit other commitments such as work, family and studies. Yet, the very fact that they manage to participate in such an activity gives them a sense of being free in relation to other people (Kane and Tucker 2004: 228). Moreover, the planning stage transforms the hike from an abstract idea to a feasible journey, especially for first-time hikers:

When you just think about it, it's unimaginable how you can do it, but when you start to look the path becomes more familiar to you . . . You take a GPS track [of the trail], put it on Google Earth, and then scroll it, then you see it goes like this, this mountain, that valley, hut here, hut there. When you start the planning and divide it by hours of day that you think you can walk, then you can figure your goal. With the Via Alpina I came up with one hundred days – three months and some days, and every few days I will make a day of no walking, and then it becomes real. You can feel it, you can touch it, you can imagine it and then it stops to be something big and unimaginable, but it becomes structured, something you believe you can do. (Igor, Slovenia, 47)

Through planning and bracketing off a period of time, the hike increases desire and cultivates an imagination that allows the feelings of the journey to percolate, even if to a limited extent, into subsequent everyday life. Being distant from work means one has more agency in managing their availability. As one hiker responded:

Being free means not getting called often, not having to respond to text messages, and not to work. Because when I'm home and somebody texts me, they expect me to answer in a certain amount of time. And if I'm on the Via Alpina, people know I'm in the mountains, I don't have any service, and even if I have, they don't really know. That's a lot of freedom. You can do whatever you like, you're alone. (Christina, Switzerland, 29)

Beautiful landscapes are a source of wonder and enjoyment for hikers, but even more, as one interviewee, Inger (Norway, 72) described it, it is the body in nature that is meaningful to her. In this sense, rhythm is a process that combines submission and control (Slavin 2003: 10). Marina (Germany, 30), another hiker, responded:

On the move, the daily rhythm is more natural. I can listen to myself better. The day-night rhythm, the rhythm of activity and rest, is more natural and healthier . . . I feel more resilient and mentally stronger than in everyday life.

In the workaday life, people must adjust their actions to an arbitrary, abstract schedule. During a hike, on the contrary, there is a certain detachment from the coercive nature of clock time, and the course of the day comes to be directed by bodily conditions:

On the trail, you don't say I will start walking at eight o'clock; you start walking when you finish taking down your camp, and you have lunch when you're feeling that you're hungry, and not because your boss said it's time for lunch. You have dinner when you're ready to have dinner, not because it's four or five p.m. When you're back home, you're more getting in the routine, by the watch. (Bjørn, Norway, 62)

The rhythm of the trip refers not only to walking speed but to the entire flow of the day: starting and ending hours; considerations in choosing a sleeping spot; what, when and how to eat; breaks; rest days. Most hikers did not follow a single VA trail throughout, but connected, cut and attached trails in the planning stage or while walking. This way, hikers have a certain flexibility, and can experience their own time in accordance with their needs and wants (Elsrud 1998).

The time on the path also makes one appreciate more ‘the little things in life that we often don't pay attention to’ such as ‘sun, rain, a rainbow, a flower, the stars, a gentle word, a laugh, a respectful and appreciative relationship with oneself and one's fellow people’. These are perceived as ‘what is really important in life’ (Marina, Germany, 30) and evoke an expression of gratitude lacking in daily experience, where one is kept busy by worries, stress and uncertainty. The time out of everyday life gave the women informants in particular a sense of freedom, as they were freed from obligations to others, which is more expected of women. They gain control over time on the trip and fill it individually with meaningful content (Elsrud 1998: 328). Some women informants note that they want to be an inspiration to other women, some through blogging about their trip, to encourage other women would to obtain their freedom. They felt liberated from society's preconceptions, empowered by their autonomy in decision-making processes.

Unquestionably, the smartphones carried by hikers bring clock time into the field. Walking with a smartphone can invoke a ‘digital temporality of contemporary networks that displaces human temporality of the past, present and future’ (Sokalidi 2021: 71). VA hikers selectively unplug. Thus, for such travellers, ‘the meaning of travel is not a complete escape, nor a dualist distinction between escape and return, but recovery, balance, and adjustment. . . . People try to master their self-existence, reflect on the relationship between themselves and the world, and derive meaning from it in a controlled way’ (Zhang and Zhang 2022: 9). So although smartphones are used by long distance hikers, they are used less than in daily working life, as hikers remain focused on the trail (Rogers and Leung 2020).

The restraint in the use of technology provides a further example of how Logos, by removing some of the basic uncertainties of navigation, makes place for the rhythms of body and nature and empowers hikers with agency and flexibility. In the next section, we delve deeper into the corporeal experience in nature by discussing physical and mental challenges.

Challenges, Solitude and Self-realisation

You're going to suffer no matter where you go, right? Even if you go to any of these really comfortable resort trips, I mean people go there and they still experience a lot of suffering . . . You still have your human life there which is full of its own crap. And what really helps overcome that, is choosing a fulfilling challenge that you can't dedicate time to in your everyday life because you're busy with the grind. (Renou, Canada, 31)

When the first author hiked in the mountains, the encounter between body, self and nature created challenges he had to face. VA hikers share these feelings and see overcoming challenges as an indispensable element in the experience they seek.

Peter Varley and Tristan Semple (2015) describe certain adventure tourism experiences that prioritise duration in nature as their key element. Participants experience discovery and immersion, in which time is re-felt through harmony between bodily and natural rhythms. Walking long distances with a backpack causes physical hardship and exhaustion. The hikers’ limits are extended beyond what they thought they could achieve. Rain, lightning storms or scorching sun cause discomfort, delays in progress and sometimes danger. Daily activities, such as cooking and sleeping arrangements, are done independently under field conditions. Injuries such as blisters, cuts or back and knee pain abound. All these challenges require mental resilience. As Arthur (Israel, 35) described it, ‘in practice the challenge is 20 percent physical and 80 percent mental’.

Bjørn is awaiting his retirement so he can hike beyond a few weeks a year, because for him, the longer the hike, the more challenging it is:

Long-distance hike, you have to finish it. Once you start it, you know it will take many days, weeks, and even months to complete, and that's a challenge. . . . You feel you have to cope with that and whatever nature throws on you, and when you succeed, it gives you satisfaction.

Without the challenges and struggles, some of the satisfaction and aura of crossing the Alps would have dissipated. Standing firm in the face of challenges makes hikers feel empowered and strong, and can help them in their daily lives by raising their confidence and self-esteem.

The trail itself mediates the encounter with the wildness of nature. Any deviation from the trail demands extra effort and time (Menzel 2017) and is to be done only for good reason. On a prolonged backpacking trip for example, an infinite number of paths are in principle available to the traveller. Travellers must craft their way through countless considerations, temptations and preferences, but as they are immersed in themselves, they are absent from the world (Ingold 2015: 132). By progressing along a marked path, the destination gives the hiker strength to continue and endure even the most unbearable moments. Unquestionably, the risks and uncertainties involved in hiking the Alps are fewer than they were in the past, and the level of skill required for hiking in the mountains is lower due to advanced infrastructure and technology (Beedie and Hudson 2003: 627–628). We should see this, however, not as a decline in the authenticity of the experience of nature, but as a means for achieving experiential authenticity through the balance of Eros and Logos, of the person and the tools at their disposal.

Most VA hikers take to the road alone. Even though this presents greater danger in the face of challenges, lack of emotional support, frustration and loneliness, it is rare for hikers to join up to walk for an extended length of time with other hikers who they meet along the way. As one hiker explained:

It's not easy to walk together. You need to maintain the same rhythm. And walking slower than your own pace is not very pleasurable; walking faster neither. So, walking together, alongside each other, is something we rarely do. (Jean-Louis, France, 68)

Solitude allows freedom from dependence on others. If one makes a mistake, one can only blame oneself, and any success can be directly credited to one's own endeavours. Thus, while previous research emphasised the importance and desirability of social life on the trail (Lum et al. 2020), the support it provides, and the communitas of fellow travellers, here it is solitude and the personal quest that are highly valued. What we do find on the VA is an alternative conceptualisation of sociality: a loose network of individuals who are connected through the challenges they face and their particular lifestyle on the trail, which stems from the experience of walking the path. As one respondent formulated:

We all have something in common . . . When we walk the same trail we pass the same sections, if you cross a river or a path, or whatever you have experienced, they must have also experienced. So we can talk about things that lay ahead of us, how would it be to get there, would there be a thunderstorm tomorrow, how do you cope with being in the mountains on a storm, equipment and so on. (Bjørn, Norway, 62)

As Hitchner et al. (2019: 88), referring to long-distance hiking as pilgrimage, have formulated:

Everyone must overcome his or her own challenges on the way. . . . The shared nature of this physically and emotionally intense experience creates a sense of kinship with others facing the same challenges, although it is simultaneously a personal journey of self-discovery and self-reflection in which many hikers seek solitude.

While social interactions along the way do exist, they are usually not sought out. Nonetheless, the journey along the path is a cultural act ‘since it is following in the steps inscribed by others whose steps have worn a conduit for movement which becomes the correct or “best way to go”’ (Tilley 1994: 31). The fleeting contact on the route, along with the sharing of their experiences on internet sites after the journey and providing future hikers with tips and practical information, give hikers a sense of belonging to a subculture (Fondren and Brinkman 2022), an imagined community that transcends national borders.

Conclusions: Long-distance Hiking as a Holistic and Empowering Experience

On the one hand, without being limited and guided by Logos, Eros can still bring punishment and suffering. On the other hand, Logos is a means to happiness. (Wang 2000: 40)

Regimentation and surveillance, acceleration and technological control of time, a deteriorating environment, the subservience of the body to the machine, fragmentation of the self and uncertainty about the future are all prominent elements of contemporary life. Some of those concerned about these forces choose to opt out and join enclaves or found communities where they sacralise nature (Ivakhiv 2001) or live off the grid, while many others submit to these processes as inevitable. Thinkers like Bauman suggest that these forces have been internalised and that postmodern human beings no longer seek the stability and identity of their modern (and pre-modern) predecessors, celebrating instead fluidity, movement and the escape from fixed identities. Our research on the Via Alpina hikers suggests an alternative response: that of people living within European societies, who seek a more organic relation to nature and the environment. For VA hikers, long-distance walking is a way of limiting the domination of technology, experiencing a more holistic sense of time, rediscovering nature and their bodies, overcoming physical and mental challenges, gaining control over their lives and experiencing freedom.

Hikers strive for a holistic experience achieved by walking. Holistic does not mean perfection, but wholeness – that is, acceptance of reality and all it encompasses. Through facing challenges, hikers feel they can perceive the world as an entirety, in which the absolute good is not sincerely good, because it is relative and conditioned. The daily encounter with nature, a central source of challenges, transforms this intellectual understanding into an embodied experience. Hikers experience nature as part of their being and recognise the relative insignificance of their daily routine. The core of the experience is in the individual process, and it takes root through personal choices and rhythms and in the loose networks of sharing moments – a mix of unexplainable, uncontrollable serendipitous moments of encounter and some planned ones. Through solitude, physical hardship and prolonged contact with nature and their bodies, hikers become aware of hidden parts of themselves; by accepting the present as a cosmic fact, they may attain a higher degree of freedom.

Freedom would not have been possible without the creation of the appropriate preconditions. Peace of mind is achieved through reducing the need to deal with insignificant matters during the trip and eliminating a survival-like mindset. To facilitate this, the walker harnesses technology, but without becoming a slave to that technology. Logos is present in the trip in the exact doses that enable Eros to flourish. Hikers can be self-sufficient not only because of the equipment they carry but also because they feel they have the strength to fulfil their dream. Through conscious decisions on planning and technology, they become the directors, spectators and main characters, but the plot and the exact feelings that arose in them remain unknown until the moment of the experience itself. Instead of compromising by joining a group, curtailing the trip or hiring services, they govern their physical and mental challenges to earn their independence. The potential for self-realisation inherent in long-distance walking is miraculously intensified when participants become aware of the forces at work in their decision-making processes. Thus, Eros, through conscious encounter with Logos, develops into a deeper and more nuanced experience.

The reconciliation of challenges, responsibility and personal autonomy express a striving for a freedom that involves commitments and unpleasantness. An illusory freedom of luxury, complete removal of restrictions or total detachment from the everyday will lead, at some point, to a sense of lack, as opposed to freedom. The Via Alpina case demonstrates the potential for achieving positive freedom, one that affirms one's ability to achieve intrinsically valuable capabilities and well-being (Sager 2006: 468) through conscious action and taking responsibility on the path to self-discovery:

Beyond any role, without a care, I'm aware that every decision I make – including doing nothing – will be no one else's responsibility but my own. Here I am: me and myself. What an encounter! What an opportunity! Or not? Indeed this new state of mind, inspired by leisure can be our second chance, a second arrival, a new opening for our inner self. (Cohen-Gewerc and Stebbins 2013: 19)

The popularity of long-distance hiking, like the growing phenomenon of contemporary spiritual pilgrimages and other movements celebrating a slowing down of time and a return to nature, is informed by the fragmentation and alienation of postmodern society, even as it provides alternatives to it. As Rob MacFarlane (2012) states: ‘The contemporary passion for pilgrimage . . . clearly speaks at some level to the late-modern experience of displacement, and to the retreat of dwelling as a feasible mode of living . . . It . . . is surely part of a broader desire to reconnect with landscape and nature, provoked by the increasing dematerialisation and disembodiment of virtualised existence’.

The spaces of the Via Alpina work on people; they may provide healing and integration for the fragmentation in people's lives. They offer space – the transcendence of the confines of home and routine essential for the postmodern subject (Bauman 1996: 30–31). Yet the hike is not a mere escape or an expression of rootlessness. Rather, hikers ‘create a pattern, a tapestry of familiar places, in order to gain knowledge of, master, and feel at home in a larger geographical space’ (Sager 2006: 471). They do this by acquiring a bodily knowledge that is site and motion-specific – ‘grown along the way’ (Ingold 2004).