"We know that we want to be more present, but very often we don’t do it. We need a friend or a teacher to remind us. The Earth can be that teacher. It is always there, greeting your feet, keeping you solid and grounded." — Thich Nhat Hanh How to Walk
"We’re in such a rush, looking for happiness in one place and then another. We walk like sleepwalkers, without any enjoyment of what we are actually doing. We are walking, but in our minds we are already doing something else: planning, organizing, worrying. ... Every time we return our attention to our breath and our steps, it’s as if we wake up." — Thich Nhat Hanh How to Walk
"Every time we take a step on this Earth, we can appreciate the solid ground underneath us." — Thich Nhat Hanh How to Walk
"Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling." — Margaret Lee Runbeck
"There are things you can’t control, so you’d better know how you’re going to react to them." — Laurence Gonzales Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why
"People love to blame a place for their own failures." — Jedidiah Jenkins To Shake the Sleeping Self: A Journey from Oregon to Patagonia, and a Quest for a Life with No Regret
"It wasn’t about winning. It was about fighting. Continuing the project of improvement. The intention and effort was what built character. Not success." — Jedidiah Jenkins To Shake the Sleeping Self: A Journey from Oregon to Patagonia, and a Quest for a Life with No Regret
"I, too, want to create a cartography for my life that only I can draw. It's no longer that important to me to place a flag on a summit and check it off on my map. What matters most are the questions that I ask myself between each mountain, and the answers that lead me to the next one. I want to grow with the evolution of these lines and with the spaces between them." — Kazuya Hiraide, translated from Japanese by Hiko Ito Alpinist Magazine, Issue 75, "A Map of the Heart: From Shispare to Rakaposhi"
"Alone had always felt like an actual place to me, as if it weren’t a state of being, but rather a room where I could retreat to be who I actually was." — Cheryl Strayed Wild
"It turns out there is a difference between wanting to be something and wanting to become something. Wanting to be something indicates a hope that somehow you will be struck by lightning and suddenly be that thing you wanted to be. Wouldn’t it be nice if I were suddenly, somehow, more outgoing, more confident. Hoping to be something is passive, and passivity gets you nowhere. Being is a state, and becoming is a process. And to be, you must become. Becoming requires work. Becoming requires action. Becoming means deciding you’re going to achieve something and taking real quantifiable steps in that direction." — Carolyn Highland Out Here: Wisdom from the Wilderness
"Saying something is impossible is a great way to get out of having to try." — Carolyn Highland Out Here: Wisdom from the Wilderness
"By taking off the pressure of having to excel at or master an activity, we allow ourselves to live in the moment. You might think this sounds simple enough, but living in the present is also something most of us suck at. Think about how focused you become when you’re presented with something totally new to accomplish. Now, what happens when that task is no longer new but still taps into intense focus because we haven’t yet mastered it? You’re a novice, an amateur, a kook. You suck at it. Some might think your persistence moronic. I like to think of it as meditative and full of promise. In the words of the Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki, 'In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind, there are few.’ … By exposing ourselves to the experience of trying and failing we might develop more empathy. If we succeed in shifting from snap judgments to patience, maybe we could be a little more helpful to one another—and a whole lot more understanding. If we accept our failures and persevere nonetheless, we might provide a respite from the imperative to succeed and instead find acceptance in trying. Failing is O.K. Better still, isn’t it a relief?" — Karen Rinaldi New York Times, "(It’s Great to) Suck at Something"
"Well shit, at least you tried." — Unknown
"Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. Suffering is ultimately created by a resistance to what is, by a sense that the universe owed you something different than what you got, that things were supposed to be a different way." — Carolyn Highland Out Here: Wisdom from the Wilderness
"The important thing is to go as far as possible despite the uncertainty, instead of wondering if it might have been possible after not even trying." — Kei Taniguchi Alpinist Magazine, Issue 68, "Pandora's Box" by Akihiro Oishi
"The rope comes tight to my harness and I follow it into the maze of snow flutings. My movements feel in tune with our environment. A rhythmic tempo takes over my thoughts: I simply kick, step and breathe. Our line of ascent feels like water flowing uphill, naturally rolling through the terrain. An expression of life rather than a fight for survival." — Michael Gardner Alpinist Magazine, Issue 77, "Worth the Weight"
"If you are given two options, take the harder one because you’ll regret it if you don’t. At least if you take the harder one and fail, you’ll have tried." — Alison Hargreaves Interview
"Perhaps [Charles] Pratt's ultimate wisdom took the form of acceptance: understanding that veiled depths surround us. Which, like looming exposure, might suddenly jump at you. Or like serendipitous beauty, might delight. Both sensations are perfectly OK, equally wondrous. And the shapes they assume depend more on your mindset than on the thing itself." — Doug Robinson Alpinist Magazine, Issue 74, "Letters to a Young Climber"
"When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. ... Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." — Viktor Frankl Man’s Search for Meaning
"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing." — Helen Keller The Open Door
