Let m ij be the hitting (mean first passage) time from state i to state j in an n-state ergodic homogeneous Markov chain with transition matrix T . Let Γ be the weighted digraph whose vertex set coincides with the set of states of the Markov chain and arc weights are equal to the corresponding transition probabilities. It holds thatwhere f ij is the total weight of 2-tree spanning converging forests in Γ that have one tree containing i and the other tree converging to j, q j is the total weight of spanning trees converging to j in Γ, and q = n j=1 q j is the total weight of all spanning trees in Γ. Moreover, f ij and q j can be calculated by an algebraic recurrent procedure. A forest expression for Kemeny's constant is an immediate consequence of this result. Further, we discuss the properties of the hitting time quasi-metric m on the set of vertices of Γ: m(i, j) = m ij , i = j, and m(i, i) = 0. We also consider a number of other metric structures on the set of graph vertices related to the hitting time quasi-metric m-along with various connections between them. The notions and relationships under study are illustrated by two examples.