Rimbaud in the Alps (1878)

  The truest and most horrible claim made for modern transport is that it “annihilates space.” It does. It annihilates one of the most glorious gifts we have been given. It is a vile inflation which lowers the value of distance, so that a modern boy travels a hundred miles with less sense of liberation and pilgrimage and adventure than his grandfather got from traveling ten (C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy).

Even as a passionate hiker, I can barely imagine what does it mean to cross a mountain pass in winter, with the equipment they had at the time.