"I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept." — Angela Davis
"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
"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
"I found a new kind of forgetting. Crystalline moments of freedom from searching for my old self. There was no other "me." Whoever I was, whoever I used to be, didn't matter. What mattered is that I was here, on a rock in the desert where an ocean once was. A place that barely resembled its old self." — Caroline Treadway "A New Forgetting", Summit Magazine, issue 321
"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"
"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
"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
"[Doubt is part of my process.] We’re conditioned to see doubt as a sign of insecurity and weakness. I wanted to be one of those people who roll through challenges without a second thought. But doubt is natural, and when we learn to stop resisting it, it becomes a potent source of strength. It doesn’t hinder our creativity. It fuels it. Doubt means we’re asking questions, which means we’re alive and awake, paying attention, willing to do things without a guaranteed outcome, to stretch beyond our edge, and grow in unknown ways." — Katie Arnold What the HELL Was I Thinking?, Work in Process
"Adventure. The word is ad-venture, to venture toward. No big declarations of peril, challenge, daring, conquest. No guarantee of making it. Just trying toward." — Audrey Sutherland Paddling North
"Resilience doesn't come from comfort. And so I'm not wishing you a life free of discomfort. I'm wishing you a life where you can handle the discomforts that are inevitably going to come. And I think about that's what my journey in the mountains so much has taught me is not how to prevent all of the things that don't feel good, but how to lean into the ones that are there to teach us." — Melissa Arnot Reid Outside Podcast, "Climbing Everest is Easy Compared to Surviving an Abusive Parent"
"If we stay in the story too long, it becomes a cage." — Cory Richards The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
"I know how seductive holding on to suffering can be because I’ve done it. In many ways it feels safe. I know how powerful the identity of brokenness can be and I have many versions of this story." — Cory Richards The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
"In Zen, not knowing is considered a form of wisdom. Being willing to accept uncertainty brings you closer to the truth of life. When you no longer hold fast to fixed ideas or outcomes, to what you want to happen, you see more clearly what is happening." — Katie Arnold Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World
"If I went into a story or assignment with a preconceived idea of what would happen, or worse, a meticulous outline, I’d get stuck even before I began. Over time, I learned to write not to make something happen, but to find out what happens—to write my way into knowing." — Katie Arnold Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World
"The flip side of freedom is avoidance, and for years we’d been sliding into fixed, unspoken assumptions and interpretations of who we were, separately and together: I was independent and strong (read, unloving and stubborn). He was steady and reliable (read, emotionally unavailable). We’d been storing up these stories about ourselves and each other for so long that we’d started to believe them, and, at the same time, we hated them. Hated them so fiercely it sometimes felt as though we hated each other...If I can channel compassion, I am not mad." — 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
"'Your body is ready. Your body knows what do. Trust that and get out of your own way.'" — Natalie via 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
