"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
"What do you mean the wind is not alive?
" — Traci Brimhall Mouth of the Canyon, You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World
"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
"Public lands are our public commons, breathing spaces in a country that is increasingly holding its breath. ... These are places of peace and renewal, where landscapes of beauty become landscapes of our imaginations. We stand before a giant sequoia and remember the size of our hearts instead of the weight of our egos." — Terry Tempest Williams "Public lands are our public commons", The New York Times
"Kai Whaley during his unplanned descent of Shaolin (V17), Red Rock National Conservation Area, NV. (I love the phrase "unplanned descent" to describe falling!)" — American Alpine Club Guidebook XIV
"We experience all sorts of “lasts” without necessarily recognizing it in the moment. We forget, swept up in the next chapter of our lives. And while some things are meant to be fleeting, others we aren’t so quick to let go of. And that is how you know what’s really important to you." — Jen Gurecki Prison, birthing children, and cancer, Redefining Radical
"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
"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
"I have to believe in complete healing. I have to surround myself with people who believe it, too. I have to see it and feel it and live it. I have to train my mind to heal my body...This is how it works: my mind transporting me back to a time when I was healthy, and, at the same time, ahead to when I will be again...I dream about walking. The setting and characters change, but the plot is always the same: I’m injured and on crutches and then, without thinking, I take one free step and then another...I no longer refer to my left leg as my broken leg: it’s my healing leg...Recovery isn’t something that will happen. It is happening...Healing isn’t a mysterious, passive process that’s happening to me, but one that I am creating." — Katie Arnold Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World
"Anything we do for a long time can become stale if we’re not careful. Suddenly there are conditions, demands, desires for recognition, success, profit, improvement. In Zen, this is called “gaining idea,” and it’s antithetical to zazen. “Our way to sit is not to acquire something; it is to express our true nature,” Suzuki Roshi wrote. “That is our practice.”" — Katie Arnold Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World
"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
"“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
"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
"The first rule of rivers is the first rule of Zen. Don’t fight the current. Go with it, not against it." — Katie Arnold Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World
"All ways. Always." — Cory Richards The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
"It is a story of me, and a story about the stories we tell ourselves. It’s about the brain and the heart: mine and maybe yours. It’s a story of the binaries that draw us to the middle. It is black and white and right and wrong and joy and despair. It is success and failure and madness. It is the before and the after and everything in between." — Cory Richards The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
