I always take music with me to the mountains...but I never listen to it while I'm hiking.
The music theme seems to fall into a number of different categories though.
There are those songs that whenever I hear them I am immediately taken back to the mountains. These are songs that I have listened to either during the road trip to the mountains, or in the car inbetween trailheads. Some of them may be related to the mountains...some not. The list would be long but two that come to mind are James Taylor's
Carolina In My Mind , which one could argue is related to a mountain experience, and a second being Neil Young's
The Old Laughing Lady, which probably has nothing to do with mountains. They just conjure up great memories of some great trips.
Then there are those songs where the poetic theme makes them, for me at least, great mountain songs. This would include:
The Decemberists
Rise to Me...
Big mountain, Wide river
There's an ancient pull
These tree trunks, these stream beds,
Leave our bellies full And Van Morrison's
Hymms to the SilenceOh I wanna go out in the countryside
Oh sit by the cool, clear, crystal water
Get my spirit, way back to the feeling
Deep in my soulThen there are those songs that get stuck in my head while I'm on the trail...and I keep singing it to myself over and over again. Two that I can actually remember would be from last year's Colorado trip when I couldn't get Neil Young's
Expecting to Fly out of my head. And on another trip a number of years back to RMNP when I kept singing Supertramp's
Asylum. Of course, on that trip on one particular day I did find myself off trail, bushwhacking during a thunderstorm...so maybe the lyrics were related to the mountains
.
Please don't arrange
To have me sent to no asylum
I'm just as sane as anyonehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpsaQq0Of2U