"It is the job never started that takes the longest to finish." — Samwise Gamgee The Lord of the Rings
"By cleverly using new tools and mapping the unknown, we can redraw the line between the possible and the impossible." — Natalia Martinez Alpinist Magazine, Issue 75, "Living Maps of Patagonia: Toward a New Future of Exploration"
"Complaining is contagious, so I’m trying not to drive down that road anymore. I want to be the one at the wheel when people buckle up, grab the “oh shit” handle, and get ready for a weird and wild ride. Because life sucks sometimes, but not most of the time, and hitting the gas and going anyway is a whole lot better than complaining about it." — Steph Wright Oru Kayak, "Go Anyway"
"Internal reflection was more important than external appearance; personal growth took precedence over material acquisition." — Dick Dorworth Climbing Fitz Roy, 1968, "Viva los Funhogs"
"We’re in such a rush, looking for happiness in one place and then another. We walk like sleepwalkers, without any enjoyment of what we are actually doing. We are walking, but in our minds we are already doing something else: planning, organizing, worrying. ... Every time we return our attention to our breath and our steps, it’s as if we wake up." — Thich Nhat Hanh How to Walk
"When you walk, arrive with every step. That is walking meditation. There’s nothing else to it." — Thich Nhat Hanh How to Walk
"Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling." — Margaret Lee Runbeck
"It wasn’t about winning. It was about fighting. Continuing the project of improvement. The intention and effort was what built character. Not success." — Jedidiah Jenkins To Shake the Sleeping Self: A Journey from Oregon to Patagonia, and a Quest for a Life with No Regret
"We all change, when you think about it. We’re all different people all through our lives. And that’s okay, that’s good, you’ve got to keep moving, so long as you remember all the people that you used to be." — 11th Doctor Doctor Who, "The Time of the Doctor"
"I, too, want to create a cartography for my life that only I can draw. It's no longer that important to me to place a flag on a summit and check it off on my map. What matters most are the questions that I ask myself between each mountain, and the answers that lead me to the next one. I want to grow with the evolution of these lines and with the spaces between them." — Kazuya Hiraide, translated from Japanese by Hiko Ito Alpinist Magazine, Issue 75, "A Map of the Heart: From Shispare to Rakaposhi"
"If you want to be someone who is brave, live with courage. If you want to be someone who is honest, tell the truth. If you want to be someone who is strong, do something that requires strength. Do those things and therefore become the kind of person who would do them. Wishing or aspiring to be a certain way does nothing. You must act. You must act that way until you are that way." — Carolyn Highland Out Here: Wisdom from the Wilderness
"It turns out there is a difference between wanting to be something and wanting to become something. Wanting to be something indicates a hope that somehow you will be struck by lightning and suddenly be that thing you wanted to be. Wouldn’t it be nice if I were suddenly, somehow, more outgoing, more confident. Hoping to be something is passive, and passivity gets you nowhere. Being is a state, and becoming is a process. And to be, you must become. Becoming requires work. Becoming requires action. Becoming means deciding you’re going to achieve something and taking real quantifiable steps in that direction." — Carolyn Highland Out Here: Wisdom from the Wilderness
"It used to be, on many days, that I could close my eyes and sense myself being perfectly happy. It’s a worthy thing to ponder, but maybe being perfectly happy is not really the point. Maybe that is only some modern American dream of the point, while the truer measure of humanity is the distance we must travel in our lives, time and again, 'twixt two extremes of passion—joy and grief,' as Shakespeare put it. However much I’ve lost, what remains to me is that I can still speak to name the things I love." — Barbara Kingsolver Small Wonders
"I envision the future version of myself that has transcended a difficult moment, that has figured out a tricky situation, that has the answer to a burning question. I imagine her out there waiting for me, and it’s a sort of comfort. Future me has gotten through this. ...Sometimes I’d arrive at that place up in the distance and realize I was the future me I had been looking at." — Carolyn Highland Out Here: Wisdom from the Wilderness
"The important thing is to go as far as possible despite the uncertainty, instead of wondering if it might have been possible after not even trying." — Kei Taniguchi Alpinist Magazine, Issue 68, "Pandora's Box" by Akihiro Oishi
"The universe has to move forward. Pain and loss, they define us as much as happiness or love. Whether it's a world, or a relationship... Everything has its time. And everything ends." — Sarah Jane Smith Doctor Who, "School Reunion"
"Courage isn’t a matter of not being frightened, you know. It’s being afraid and doing what you have to do anyway." — 3rd Doctor Doctor Who, "Planet of the Daleks"
"We are all existing on thin ice, not only in the mountains. Each loss evokes the often-invisible voids beneath our feet. Each threshold moment can seem to open a multitude of branching, alternative timelines, like the patterns of frost on a window, curling into infinite fractal forms, tracing phantom narratives of falls untaken, ice unbroken, illnesses uncaught, decisions unmade." — Katie Ives Alpinist Magazine, Issue 77, "Of Thin Ice"
"Whenever you fall, pick up something." — Oswald Theodore Avery
"It’s a good thing to have all the props pulled out from under us occasionally. It gives us some sense of what is rock under our feet and what is sand." — Madeleine L'Engle The Summer of the Great-Grandmother
