"If people sat outside and looked at the stars each night, I bet they’d live a lot differently. When you look into infinity, you realize that there are more important things than what people do all day." — Bill Watterson Calvin and Hobbs
"I wonder how [children] will imagine the infinite when they have never seen how the stars fill a dark night sky." — Barbara Kingsolver Small Wonder
"The wilderness holds answers to questions man has not yet learned to ask." — Nancy Newhall
"I’d had this idea that I could push myself physically through anything if I was tough and smart and rugged, and that the push would show me something about myself and my place on the river. That being able to do things alone was a sign of strength, not fear. I’d thought I could conquer the landscape and fully understand the problem of water use. But none of that is true. The tough part is connection, looking across lines and knowing when to push the lever on what you think is right." — Heather Hansman Downriver: Into the Future of Water in the West
"It’s more interesting and fun to honor the reality that no two redwoods are the same, and that if you’ve seen one redwood … you’ve seen one redwood. We are sustained by each redwood truly seen, and we evolve by understanding and being inspired by the differences between each tree, person, culture, mountain range, and creature of the earth. The Funhogs of 1968 were on the road of realizing in each present moment the truism of the iconic John Muir’s observation: “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” If you’ve seen one redwood, you’re connected to them all." — Dick Dorworth Climbing Fitz Roy, 1968, "Viva los Funhogs"
"Keep close to Nature’s heart, yourself; and break clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean." — John Muir via Samuel Hall Young Alaska Days With John Muir
"I’m increasingly interested in making myself a sheet of paper, in forfeiting my privileged status as author and allowing stacked stones, mud mortar, surrounding geology, encompassing weather...to do the writing." — Leath Tonino Adventure Journal, "The Wild and the Old Places Do Not Need You"
"In many parts of experimental science unexpected discoveries are made in a workshop. The book of nature, whose pages are open to all, is read but by a few." — James D. Forbes Travels Through the Alps
"To the brain, the future is as real as the past. The difficulty begins when reality doesn’t match the plan. In nature, adaptation is important; the plan is not. It’s a Zen thing. We must plan. But we must be able to let go of the plan, too. Under the influence of a plan, it’s easy to see what we want to see." — Laurence Gonzales Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why
"Our brain loves to not decide things. We love to default, or revert to the mean, or do what we know." — Sara Boilen Powder Magazine, "Your Heart and Brain Are Working Against You in Avalanche Terrain"
"When we admit that we don’t know, we give ourselves permission to be vulnerable. More importantly, we recognize a starting point from which to gather information." — Dave Richards Backcountry Magazine, "A Certain Uncertainty"
"What we see often has more to do with what we have seen in the past or what we hope or expect to see than it does with what is staring us in the face." — Jill Fredston Snowstruck: In the Grip of Avalanches
"There are still plenty of wild places where one can lose oneself as opposed to getting lost, and just be in a place that you feel perfect in at that moment." — John Hessler
"The view changed incrementally every few dozen steps, and after 50 iPhone photos, you kind of feel like you’ve captured it, but of course you haven’t. When you’re walking somewhere like that, you know it’s special, but you don’t know that years later you’ll feel like maybe you rushed it. Maybe you will make it back there again, maybe you won’t, and it for sure would be different, and even if it’s not different you’ll be a little different, so the whole thing won’t be the same anyway. But damn, what a view." — Brendan Leonard Semi-Rad, "Walking the Knife Edge of Switzerland’s Hardergrat"
"In the first place you can’t see anything from a car; you’ve got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk, better yet crawl, on hands and knees, over the sandstone and through the thornbush and cactus. When traces of blood begin to mark your trail you’ll begin to see something, maybe." — Edward Abbey Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness
"The miracle was that each moment in our lives connected in a long chain to make a unique story, that it was all mystery, that we could shudder in the face of death and also laugh, that we could share burdens with each other, that a succulent could grow in a crack in the midst of all this stone and release oxygen in to the world so that I could live, that love remained waiting. There is wonder in noticing and contemplating and being a part of instead of separate from. In knowing that a thing, if done right, is filled with truth. I climbed. At the top of the wall was the start of my return to Michelle—another place to begin. Right here is also a place to begin, I thought." — Matt Spohn Alpinist Magazine, Issue 65, "Ground Up"
"There are some places so beautiful they can make a grown man break down and weep." — Edward Abbey The Monkey Wrench Gang
"Let the stillness reach a hollowed-out place inside your body—its resonance, loud in its own quietness, expansive in the way of wild. … Do you believe amid the thrum of modern life the sound of any inner silence might become a fable told only under the cover of stars, fading light-years away?" — Sarah Audsley Alpinist Magazine, Issue 65, "An Astonishing Plentitude"
"We believe there are backpacking activities which, if pursued conscientiously, become like Yoga exercises: they give you a clearer understanding and a palpable relationship with your immediate world. We believe that simply walking in the backcountry—taking photographs of nature, painting pictures of it, studying flowers, trees, mosses, and ferns, listening and watching for birds—engenders a special relationship with nature that is unlike any you can find sitting in your living room, or in an office, in a lecture hall, in a church, reading a book, or listening to music. It is a unique relationship. It is an ineluctable relationship. And if you open yourself up to it, let it seep into you, you become a changed person." — The Editor Backpacker Magazine, Issue 1, 1973
"Knowing that you love the earth changes you, activates you to defend and protect and celebrate. But when you feel the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a sacred bond." — Robin Wall Kimmerer Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
