"It is in these moments of fear and discomfort that I feel most alive. Moments when I want nothing more than to be safe and warm at home – this is when I need to lean into the uncertainty of the endeavor just a little further. How is it that such an objectively dangerous and useless pursuit can give so much meaning and purpose to my life? Life is not to be preserved, it is to be lived, and there I was living it feeling the cold, the fear, the awe of the landscape, the brush of the elements." — Miles Fullman "Journey to Utgard", Alpinist Magazine, issue 93
"The landscape was a breathtaking display of ice and fire: the sweeping architecture of the peaks and the silent grandeur of the light that played over them." — Miles Fullman "Journey to Utgard", Alpinist Magazine, issue 93
"I saw a river of clouds drifting through the canyon below us, swallowing the ground and remaking it into a moving mass of shadows, curves, and drifts that was the most spectacular portrayal of beauty my eyes have had the pleasure of taking in. I started crying in disbelief. Then crying in belief. How often is it that we have the opportunity to pause and take in the moments of beauty that surround us? I had not experienced something that forced me to see my own grandeur and the beauty of it all, or to reckon with the work that I've put into arriving here. I found myself in the center of all of that, celebrating this arrival as I felt my humanity swimming through my body as I swam my way up the chimney... A pause to let yourself listen to and sing with the birds, to witness the magnificence of your surroundings, and yourself within them; a pause to allow yourself to be in awe." — Heather Smallpage "The Fluidity of Grief and Beauty", AAC Guidebook, issue XVI
"We can't fail if we never give it an honest try, or whatever Yoda didn't say." — Aidan Multhauf Alpinist Magazine, Issue 87, "Twenty Classic Climbs in Twenty Days"
"He was an artist and life was his medium." — Derek Franz Alpinist Magazine, Issue 87, "Fabulous Roman Candles"
"Because nature is not a place to visit. Nature is who we are." — Ada Limón You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World
"When you talk about rules, you can sound like a fuddy-duddy, but Rules are actually very creative. They are not just for rule-followers. In fact, often as soon as I make a Rule, I realize I will eventually have to—will want to— break it. It’s only a matter of time. Rules are the structure that enable us to go a little wild on a regular basis. Preferably every day." — Katie Arnold The Rules, Work in Process
"The night gradually faded and dawn turned to morning, the great peaks reassembling themselves on both sides of the valley, forming a massive corridor." — Jeff Lowe Khumbu Possibilities: Survival at the Limits of the Known, Summit Journal, Issue 321
"I really try to see [each spot I visit] with new eyes, because I don't want to become complacent just because I've lived here for so long. I want to see everything new all the time. [I want] to be always open and aware of my environment and the new things that it's telling me, or the old things that it's reminding me of." — Alexandra de Steiguer HumaNature Podcast Episode 124: The Woman of Star Island
"Fear lives in a past experience or in a future assumption of what might happen." — Kimmy Fasani Outside Podcast: What Snowboarding Has to do With Parenthood, Loss, and Cancer
"I didn't need to "get away", I needed to get "to", to simplicity. I wanted to be lean and hard and sunbrowned and kind. Instead I felt fat and soft and white and mean." — Audrey Suthernland via Stephen Casimiro "Lean and Hard and Sunbrowned and Kind", Adventure Journal
"The air is thinner, clearer, the views longer. You can see every which way, in all directions—bowls and cirques, high ridges, mountains beyond mountains. You are in the air, almost flying. The climb has been taxing, but here at the edge of the sky, the mountain gives you all its energy, fills you with a kind of exhilaration you rarely feel down low, in the trees. Here you are closer to the sky. You are sky." — Katie Arnold Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World
"It would be so much easier to stay home now, but then I wouldn’t find out what happens next." — Katie Arnold Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World
"“So where’s your motor?” I answer without thinking, “In the river beneath my feet.” ... Beneath my shoes was solid ground, but the mountains are fluid, alive. They have a flow, an energy older and wiser that can carry me...I’d felt it with my whole being on Hope Pass, my legs absorbing energy from the earth, my torso bending to the slope of the hill, the slope showing me how to run on water beneath my feet, my body flowing uphill the whole way. The energy wasn’t mine, it was bigger than me. It was all around, limitless." — Katie Arnold Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World
"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us." — JRR Tolkein via Gandalf The Lord of the Rings
"Our stories are built from bits and pieces, broken fragments we string together, determined by chance and choice, accident and intent—sudden bursts of understanding that illuminate the truth of who we are." — Katie Arnold Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World
"All ways. Always." — Cory Richards The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
"Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. / Just keep going. No feeling is final." — Rainer Maria Rilke Go to the Limits of your Longing
"I marvel at how quickly unfamiliar experiences transform into mundane reality." — Cory Richards The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
"Every climb feels impossible until you stand on top." — Cory Richards The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
