"This is the most beautiful place on Earth. There are many such places. Every man, every woman, carries in heart and mind the image of the ideal place, the right place, the one true home, known or unknown, actual or visionary." — Edward Abbey Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness
"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
"We all have a place, a city park, a mountain trail, a desert flower, a perfect beach break. Some place that brings us outside. Outside our work, outside our lives, outside ourselves. We might share them with others, but they feel like they are just for us. Most often, they are not. These places, as natural and beautiful and untouched as they seem, are larger than us. To exist, these places require effort. So understand the places you love. Learn who works to protect them, and who makes decisions on their behalf. Give your efforts to these places, and truly get outside." — Amy Morrison Stay Wild Magazine, Spring 2015, insert
"When my companion finally turns and walks into the meadow toward the road, I linger. I am not ready to render myself back into a human being, not ready to return to a car and an asphalt highway. I want to stay just a moment longer. I peer into the forest, where every bit of darkness and light has a face, a set of eyes looking out at me. Nothing emerges. I feel the tug at my back, my friend walking away, and I turn to catch up and become human again." — Craig Childs The Animal Dialogues: Uncommon Encounters in the Wild
"When the aromatic savour of the pine goes searching into the deepest recesses of my lungs, I know it is life that is entering." — Nan Shepherd The Living Mountain
"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
"I have written of inanimate things, rock and water, frost and sun; and it might seem as though this were not a living world. But I have wanted to come to the living things through the forces that create them, for the mountain is one and indivisible, and rock, soil, water and air are no more integral to it than what grows from the soil and breathes the air. All are aspects of one entity, the living mountain. The disintegrating rock, the nurturing rain, the quickening sun, the seed, the root, the bird—all are one." — Nan Shepherd The Living Mountain
"I think that the wilderness can be a great teacher and that it has much in common with feminist ideas. And by feminism I mean getting in touch with your own values, intelligence, resourcefulness, physical capacities, and general ability to live a rich and satisfying life of your own, not only with, but also apart from, friends and loved ones. There is nothing like severing connections to outside resources—both mechanical and human—to show a person how much she or he can really do. Since women have traditionally been taught that they cannot handle tough situations, the confidence gained on wilderness outings can be particularly valuable for them. I believe that even one weekend backpacking, even in not very difficult surroundings, can have a tremendous and lasting effect on the spirit which will carry over into all aspects of life." — Maggie Nichols via Anne LaBastille Women and Wilderness
"Your experience will greatly improve when you begin to exercise agency over your own outdoor experience. Try new things. Build a skill set. Shrug off doubts, rude remarks, and stereotypes. Surround yourself with people who support you. Know your limits and honor them. Know your ambitions and shoot for them. There is more to gain from your time outside than you can ever lose in trying." — Ruby McConnell A Woman's Guide to the Wild: Your Complete Outdoor Handbook
"For women wanting to get outdoors, the best advice I could give them is choose your own adventure. Take control of your own trips, and say this is what I want to do and where I want to do it, and start exactly where you want." — Evelyn Lees Teton Gravity Research, "Steep Jobs: Wild Women of the Wasatch" Episode 6
"Under all this dirt the floor is really very clean." — Lydia Davis Can't and Won't, "Housekeeping Observation"
"Writers write into a silence that can linger for a long time." — Laurence Gonzales Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why
"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." — Antoine De Saint-Exupery Airman's Odyssey
"Beauty is the door to another world." — Voytek Kurtyka Alpinist Magazine, Issue 43, "The View from the Wall"
"Separation is not always segregation." — Ibram Kendi How to Be an Antiracist
