"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
"For the duller and fainter we became the clearer was our vision, though only in momentary glimpses. Then, after the sky cleared, we gazed at the stars, blessed immortals of light, shining with marvelous brightness with long lance rays, near-looking and new-looking, as if never seen before." — John Muir Steep Trails
"I had not known that the sunrise was so lavish and that you could actually feel the color when it reached your face." — Craig Childs The Animal Dialogues: Uncommon Encounters in the Wild
"Taking the same trail in the opposite direction is like walking on the other side of time. Everything looks different on the way back. Same trees, same stobs and snags. Same switchbacks and curves; same vistas, same fallen tree bridge across the creek. But going back the way you came, it’s just as easy to lose your footing, but it’s harder to get lost. The light shines on things you didn’t notice on the way there. The path back, it’s the story you tell yourself, afterward." — Alexis M. Smith Marrow Island
"Beauty is the door to another world." — Voytek Kurtyka Alpinist Magazine, Issue 43, "The View from the Wall"
