"We are animals. We, like the otter, can digest the flesh of smelt in our gut and can roll to our backs, hands clutched over our chests. We, like the smelt, come to the edge of the sea to live and we scatter when there is fear. We lick our fingers clean, sleep when we must, and dream when we sleep, like any animal. We are also animals who are taking up an incredible amount of space for our size." — Craig Childs The Animal Dialogues: Uncommon Encounters in the Wild
"The drive was long and pleasant. Open stretches allow the mind to wander. What happens in the high desert where no one trespasses? Are there places where the ground squirrels and rattlesnakes have never had to hide from a human? But even on the most remote stretches of the road, there were signs of the carelessness and irreverence of man. After driving without seeing another car for an eternity, we pulled over to stretch our legs. There, caught in the gnarled branches of a sage brush, was a Lays chip bag. Half buried in the sandy ground, a dark beer bottle sat forgotten. These signs of ingratitude beg some deeper questioning about selfishness. The person who tosses the bottle out of the window is acting selfishly: “I’m don’t with this and I don’t want it near me anymore.” And further: “I don’t care to consider what happens to this item after it passes from my hand.” An inability to see beyond one’s body and one’s moment is a sad and pervasive trend amongst humans." — Clea Partridge Stay Wild Magazine, Winter 2018, "Alvord Desert, Oregon"
"We are shaped and fashioned by what we love." — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"If people sat outside and looked at the stars each night, I bet they’d live a lot differently. When you look into infinity, you realize that there are more important things than what people do all day." — Bill Watterson Calvin and Hobbs
"I feel the urge to share these wild places with everyone, but I also covet the solitude that is only possible in places where humans are scarce." — Rebecca Robinson Voices from Bears Ears: Seeking Common Ground on Sacred Land
"I’d had this idea that I could push myself physically through anything if I was tough and smart and rugged, and that the push would show me something about myself and my place on the river. That being able to do things alone was a sign of strength, not fear. I’d thought I could conquer the landscape and fully understand the problem of water use. But none of that is true. The tough part is connection, looking across lines and knowing when to push the lever on what you think is right." — Heather Hansman Downriver: Into the Future of Water in the West
"It’s more interesting and fun to honor the reality that no two redwoods are the same, and that if you’ve seen one redwood … you’ve seen one redwood. We are sustained by each redwood truly seen, and we evolve by understanding and being inspired by the differences between each tree, person, culture, mountain range, and creature of the earth. The Funhogs of 1968 were on the road of realizing in each present moment the truism of the iconic John Muir’s observation: “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” If you’ve seen one redwood, you’re connected to them all." — Dick Dorworth Climbing Fitz Roy, 1968, "Viva los Funhogs"
"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe." — John Muir My First Summer in the Sierra
"We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." — Albert Einstein
"As complex as the brain is, the world is more so. The brain cannot process and organize all the data that arrive. It cannot come up with a reasonable course of action if everything is given equal weight and perceived at equal intensity. That is the difficulty with logic: It’s step-by-step, linear. The world is not." — Laurence Gonzales Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why
"Rational (or conscious) thought always lags behind the emotional reaction." — Laurence Gonzales Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why
"We think we believe what we know, but we only truly believe what we feel." — Laurence Gonzales Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why
"The more intensely we want something, the more reasons we will likely find that make it okay." — Jill Fredston Snowstruck: In the Grip of Avalanches
"What we see often has more to do with what we have seen in the past or what we hope or expect to see than it does with what is staring us in the face." — Jill Fredston Snowstruck: In the Grip of Avalanches
"To treat your facts with imagination is one thing, to imagine your facts is another." — John Burroughs
"In the inner workings of his brain, he had tagged it a happy, rewarding place. (Ali: the opposite is also true)" — Jill Fredston Snowstruck: In the Grip of Avalanches
"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
"I felt it was for this I had come: to wake at dawn on a hillside and look out on a world for which I had no words, to start at the beginning, speechless and without plan, in a place that still had no memories for me." — Laurie Lee As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning
"This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls." — John Muir John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir
