He thought of getting home and building a cabin so high that not a soul but the nighthawks passing across the clouds in autumn could hear his sad cry.

Men ask the way to Cold Mountain.
Cold Mountain: there's no through trail. Han-shan

Inman, a wounded soldier, turns his back on the carnage of the Civil War to begin the long, perilous walk home to Cold Mountain, and to Ada, the woman he loved before the war began. While Inman's journey through the devastated South becomes an Odyssey, Ada struggles to scratch a living from the land her father left to her when he died. As they each confront a transformed world, neither knows whether the other is still alive.