The car has made our cities uninhabitable. It is also the best way to escape them. Hurry and take the road to the roadless area, because it won't be roadless long. Too much demand. The gas pump doesn't know the beauty which it helped to see; and so the gas tax comes pouring in the the pavement comes pouring out. And so we push that Big Wheel nearer the edge. The land of the free and the home of the auto dump. But man was born to wander.
--Terry and Renny Russell

Go fish and hunt far and wide day by day -- farther and wider -- and rest thee by many brooks and hearthsides without misgiving.
--Terry and Renny Russell

Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth. Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures. Let the noon find thee by other lakes, and the night overtake thee everywhere at home.
There are no larger fields than these, no worthier games may
here be played . . .
--Terry & Renny Russell

Grow wild according to thy nature, like these sedges and brakes, which will never become the English hay. Let the thunder ramble; what if it threaten ruin to farmers' crops? That is not its errand to thee. Take shelter under the cloud, while they flee to carts and sheds. Let not to get a living by thy trade, but thy sport. Enjoy the land, but own it not . . .
--Terry & Renny Russell

One of the best--paying professions is getting ahold of pieces of country in your mind, learning their smell and their moods, sorting out the pieces of a view, deciding what grows there and there and why, how many steps that hill will take, where this creek winds and where it meets the other one below, what elevation timberline is now, whether you can walk this reef at low tide or have to climb around, which contour lines on a map mean better cliffs or mountains. This is the best kind of ownership, and the most permanent.
It feels good to say ``I know the Sierra'' or ``I know Point Reyes.'' But of course you don't -- what you know better is yourself, and Point Reyes and the Sierra have only helped.
--Terry & Renny Russell

Nature might have made Sphinxes in her spare time or Mona Lisas with her left hand, Blindfolded. instead she gave the grain of sand, the polished river stone, The Grand Canyon. So you went to the Louvre: What did you see? After the first Artist Only the copyist.

The World is round and the place which may seem like the end may only be the beginning.
--Ivy Barker Priest

The sunshine on my path
was to me a friend.
--William Cullen Bryant

He who resolves never to ransack any mind but his own, will soon be reduced, from mere bareness, to the poorest of all limitations; he will be obliged to imitate himself, and to repeat what he has before often repeated.
--Sir Joshua Reynolds, Discourse to Students of the Royal Academy, December 10, 1974

Without enough wilderness America will change. Democracy, with its myriad personalities and increasing sophistication, must be fibred and vitalized by the regular contact with outdoor growths -- animals, trees, sun warmth, and free skies -- or it will dwindle and pale.
--Walt Whitman

I looked into the face
of a beautiful woman.
Her eyes
were the trees.
Her smile
was the sunlight that floated
on and through
the grass.
Her hair
was the blue sky and clouds
soft to the touch.
It was a perfect romance
as I
stood on the mountain
and stared
at her face.
--Unknown, I Looked Into The Face

Science has never drummed up quite as effective a tranquilizing agent as a sunny spring day.
--W. Earl Hall

To My Friend
You have such a positive outlook on life
Your words are always encouraging
Your face is lit up with excitement
Your actions are so straightforward
Your inner self helps you achieve so much
When people are around you
they seem to absorb uplifting attitudes
When I think of you
I can only think of happiness
and how lucky I am to know you.
--Susan Poliz Schirtz

I am part of my environment, and my environment is part of me.
When I maim the earth, I wound me. When I pollute a stream, I
poison me. When I fill the sky with smog, I choke me. For this is
my world. I am the world, and the world is me.
--Unknown

They sleep generally in the open air, in winter as well as in summer, subjected to every inclemency of the weather. As may well be imagined, a buffalo hunter, at the end of the season, is by no means prepossessing in his appearance, being, in addition to his filthy aspect, a paradise for hoards of nameless parasites. They are a rollicking set, and occasionally include men of intelligence, who formerly possessed an ordinary amount of refinement.
--J.A. Allen

Play for more than you can afford to lose, and you will learn the game.
--Winston Churchill

Mountains and deserts, with their sparse life at the limit of existence, make one restless and disconsolate; one becomes an explorer in an intellectual realm as well as in a physical one.
--George Schaller

Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling, and spending their lives like serfs.
--Henry David Thoreau

For oft when on my couch I lie,
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye,
Which is the bliss of solitude,
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
--William Wordsworth

This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and glowing, on sea and continues and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.
--John Muir

Thus is appears that everything here is marching to music, and the harmonies are all so simple and young they are easily apprehended by those who will keep still and listen and look
--John Muir

O', these vast, calm, measureless mountain days inciting at once to work and rest! Days in whose light everything seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us God.
--John Muir

These beautiful days must enrich all my life. They do not exist as mere pictures -- maps hung upon the walls of memory . . . but they saturate themselves into every part of my body and live always.
--John Muir

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.
--John Muir

Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling, and spending their lives like serfs.
--Henry David Thoreau

No pain here, no dull empty hours, no fear of the past, no fear of the
future . . . Drinking this champagne water is pure pleasure, so is breathing the living air.
--John Muir

I . . . am always glad to touch the living rock again and dip my hand in the high mountain air.
--John Muir

Society speaks and all men listen, mountains speak and wise men listen.
--John Muir

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village through;
He will not see me topping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely dark and deep . . .
But, I have promises to keep
and miles to go before I sleep
And miles to go before I sleep.
--Robert Frost, Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The wind will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.
--John Muir

The great thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving.
--Oliver Wendell Holmes

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry that I couldn't travel both
And be one traveler I stood
And looked as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other one just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear
Though as far as the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step and trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence;
Two roads diverged in a woods, and I
I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference.
--Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old time is still a--flying:
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying
--Robert Merrick

In a field I am the absence of field. That is always the case.
Wherever I am, I am what is missing. When I walk I part the air and
always the air moves in to fill the space where my body has been.
We all have reasons for moving. I move to keep things whole.
--Mark Strand

Then here's a hail to each flaming dawn
And here's a cheer to the night that's gone
And may I go a roaming on -- until the day I die
--On a grave marker in the Adirondacks

God has infinite time to give us; but how did He get it? In one immense tract of lazy millenniums? No, He cut it up into a neat succession of new mornings.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

To see a world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
--William Blake (on his grave in St. Pauls, London)

An agreeable companion on a journey is as good as a carriage.
--Max 143, Publius Syrus

He that riseth late must trot all day.
--Ben Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanac

He who reads the landscape without the aid of maps as a matter of habit, becomes as sophisticated of eye as it is popular to believe the bat is sophisticated of ear.
--Barry Lopez

Always in a big woods when you leave familiar ground and step off into a new place there will be, along with the feelings of curiosity and excitement, a little nagging of dread. It is the ancient fear of the unknown, and it is your first bond with the wilderness you are going into. What you are doing is exploring. You are undertaking the first experience of our essential loneliness for nobody can discover the world for anyone else. It is only after we have discovered it for ourselves that it becomes a common ground and a bond, and we cease to be alone.
--Wendell Berry

For afterwards a man finds pleasure in his pains, when he has suffered long and wandered long. So I will tell you what you ask and seek to know.
--Homer, The Odyssey

I'd rather wake up in the middle of nowhere than in any city on earth.
--Steve McQueen

The sun does not shine for a few trees and flowers, but for the wide world's joy.
--Henry Ward Beecher

Afoot and lighthearted I take to the open roads
Healthy and free, the world before me.
The long brown path before me leading
wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good fortune,
I myself am good fortune.
Henceforth I whimper no more,
Postpone no more, need clothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries,
querulous criticisms.
Strong and content I travel the open road.

--Walt Whitman, from: Leaves of Grass

It was kind of solemn, drifting down the big, still river, laying on our backs, looking up at stars, and we didn't even feel like talking aloud.
--Mark Train, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

All that glitters is not gold. All who wander are not lost.
--William Shakespeare

This is about a stretch of mountain country that started out as just a place. It is only an uncivilized piece of country, but something is there that can touch a person. Those summer days somehow brought me closer to an earth that was real and good. I began to discover a few simple goods that satisfied more than all the entertaining gadgets and conveniences a factory could turn out. I discovered self--dependence and time that flowed without calibrations, and a kind of beauty that appeared in the absence of invented things. I met people. The days were not loaded in advance, but the sun would come up and there would be, and by dusk it had proved its worth.
--Dave Caffey, from Head for the High Country

. . . A thousand fantasies begin to throng into my memory . . . On sands and shores and desert wildernesses
--John Milton

I have been told with some regularity that by walking out and away I am ``escaping from reality.'' I admit that the question puts me on the defensive. Why, I ask myself, are people so ready to assume that chilled champagne is more real than water drawn from an
ice--cold mountain creek? Or a dusty sidewalk than a carpet of desert dandelions? Or a Boeing 707 than a flight of graceful white pelicans soaring in unison
against the sunrise? Why, in other words, do people assume that the acts and emotions and values that stem from the city life are more real than those that arise from the beauty and the silence and the solitude of wilderness?
--Colin Fletcher, from the Complete Walker

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. To affect the quality of the day -- that is the highest of arts.
--Henry David Thoreau

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
--Henry David Thoreau

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
--Henry David Thoreau

Sometimes it is better to travel than arrive. For my part, I travel not
to go anywhere, but to go.
--Travels with a Donkey

Of what avail is an
open eye, if the
heart is blind?
--Solomon Ibn--Gabirol..

I conceive that the land belongs to a vast family of which many are dead, few are living, and countless numbers are still unborn.
--Nigerian Chieftan

Yet I have a quirk inside. I kind of like it when the natural world clobbers our technological universe. So what if hurricanes, earthquakes, mosquitos, and idiot cattle make my life miserable? Thank God nature can still kick me and all my gadgets in the teeth!
There has to be something else, going deeper, traveling farther back. When you wind up in a place that becomes a real home, you cannot simply attribute your arrival to casual accident, not in this nation of inveterate rovers. And when the place is so much of a home that almost immediately the land back East, where you did most of your growing up, looks like a foreign and cluttered planet covered with sickly green mold, you cannot cavalierly slough off this arid, wide--open territory as just another casual watering spot in the musical chairs of life.
One of the oldest and most important drives is to locate, return to, stake claims upon the country of one's origins. These origins are physical, psychic, spiritual. Many of us forgot them generations ago -- perhaps our forefathers, or our ``melting pot'' politicians, forgot our roots for us: and in a lifetime, we never discover them again. Others among us are luckier: our people protected these sacred origins, sometimes by refusing to lose a native language or to sell an old house or a piece of land . . . sometimes by saving letters, diaries, old photographs . . . and sometimes by passing down, from one generation to the next, stories, history, and a special sensibility -- approaching instinct -- to land, politics, religion that becomes almost a genetic trait in the blood.
I set sail for this place, then, many generations ago.
And I cannot lose it now, for I have always had it. It is as strong in me as the stone that rolls from the top of the mountain to the bottom of the gorge: it is as swift in me as the darting swallows: it is inevitable as the snow falling past my window. Before I even knew the name of this place I could have proven to you that had always existed in my heart, and in the hearts of my family that went before me. It is as immaterial in me as a dream, and as solid as sunshine and horses. That star, my star, has always been suspended exactly above this spot on earth: its shadow, the size and brightness of a dime, contains the mystery of my unique, and universal, heritage. I have known that crab apple tree outside my window all of my life, and all of my father's life before that. There is a continuity in the blood that transcends geography, language, skin color, time. In 1942, in Castle Hot Springs, Arizona, my maternal great--grandfather, writing in his native French, began a poem by saying ``Arizona skies, your splendor haunts me.'' So I embrace ravens, magpies, killdeer, my neighbors, their sheep, the mountains. My brothers speak many languages. In Taos I learn new superficial statistics that differentiate slightly the customs here from the customs over there, but deep down I have always understood the pattern of clouds over these tiny pastures. And I have these same times before on my mother's guitar, on a great--grandfather's clarinet.
When I got here, finally (when my body caught up to the rest of me,) my life became a victory.
--John Nichols, from If Mountains Die, A New Mexico Memoir (pg. 5)

No sane man in the hands of nature can doubt the doubleness of his life. Soul and body receive separate nourishment and separate exercise, and speedily reach a state of development wherein each is easily known apart from each other. Living artificially, we seldom see much of our real selves. Our torpid souls are hopelessly entangled with our torpid bodies, and not only is there a confused mingling of our own souls with our own bodies, but we hardly possess a separate existence from our neighbors.
The life of a mountaineer seems to be particularly favorable to the development of soul--life, as well as limb--life, each receiving abundance of exercise and abundance of food.
--John of the Mountains, 77

For there are some people who can live without wild things about them and the earth beneath their feet, and some who cannot. To those of us who, in a city, are always aware of the abused and abased earth below the pavement, walking on grass, watching the flight of birds, or finding the first spring dandelion are rights as old and unalienable as the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We belong to no cult. We are not Nature Lovers. We don't love nature any more than we love breathing. Nature is simply something indispensable, like air and light and water, that we accept as necessary to living, and the nearer we can get to it the happier we are.
--Louise Dickenson Rich

When night is almost done,
And sunrise grown so near
That we can touch the spaces,
It's time to smooth the hair

And get the dipples ready,
And wonder we could care
For that old faded midnight
That frightened but an hour.
--Emily Dickinson

The morning hangs a signal
Upon the mountain crest,
While all the sleeping valleys
In silent darkness rest.
From peak to peak it flashes,
It laughs along the sky
Till glory of the sunshine
On all the land shall lie.

Above the generations
The lonely prophets rise
While truth flings dawn and daystar
Within their glowing eyes:
And other eyes, beholding,
And kindled from that light;
And dawn becomes the morning,
The darkness put to flight.

The soul hath lifted moments,
Above the drift of days,
When life's great meaning breaketh
In sunrise on our ways . . .
Behold the radiant token
Of faith above all fear;
Night shall be lost in splendor
And morning shall appear.
--unknown, The Morning Hangs a Signal

Who walks with Beauty have no need of fear; The sun and moon and stars keep pace with him.
--David Morton

The birds I heard today, which, fortunately, did not come within the scope of my science, sang as freshly as if it had been the first morning of creations.
--Henry David Thoreau..

He who has achieved this state
Is unconcerned with friends and enemies,
With good and harm, with honor and disgrace.
This therefore is the highest state of man.
--Lao Tzu..

This is the first time for the girl, a
time of revelation.
Mysteries unravel at this height,
patterns emerge.
She stands woman--tall, shoulder to shoulder,
with the sun and laughs to think that
such a splendid world had ever frightened her.
All that she sees, farm and forest, pasture and
prairie, city and country, and continent,
stretches before her like tomorrows filled with promise . . .
She was born to this kingdom.
In time it will be hers to explore, to
make her own.
One climb is over, another just beginning.
She is rich in days, wealthy in possibilities.
And here in this crowning moment,
For the very first time . . .

She knows.
--Edward Cunningham, King of the Mountain

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan--like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to ``glorify God and enjoy Him forever.''
--Henry David Thoreau..

Those who know do not talk.
Those who talk do not know.

To Touch and Feel is to Experience. Many people live out their entire lives without ever really Touching or being Touched by anything. These people live within a world of mind and imagination that may move them sometimes to joy, tears, happiness or sorrow. But these people never really Touch. They do not live and become one with life.
--Hyemeyohsts Storm Seven Arrows..

I touched the nothingness of air once and felt nothing. I
touched it again and felt a breeze.
I filled my lungs with air and smelled nothing. I filled my body
and soul with it and smelled the violets.
I read a tight--fisted poem once and realized nothing. I read it
again and was surprised to see it burst into blossom and reveal its
inner palm.
To look once is to be blind. To look again is to see inside.
To run quickly and glance is to realize nothing. To move slowly
and become what you look at is to realize that nothing does not
exist.
Do you see what really is or do you see what you want it to be?
Is he saying what's in his heart or what he thinks is in yours?
To see a person is to know what he is.
To see through a person is to know why he is like that.
To know what a forest is you must become part of the green
coolness that is that forest. And when you return they'll say
''Where have you been,'' and you'll reply ``I've been in a forest.''
And they will look at you and sigh and wonder when you will learn that you can't go around pretending to be what you aren't. And you will know what they are thinking and say ``But how can I know what a forest feels unless I feel it too?'' And they'll wonder when their problem child is going to change and begin to learn something useful.
--Nancy Woods

What a joy it is
to feel the soft, springy earth under my feet
once more,
to follow grassy roads that lead to ferny brooks
where I can bathe my fingers in a cataract of rippling
notes,
or to clamber over a stone wall into green fields that
tumble and roll and climb in riotous gladness!
--Helen Keller..

The fact remains that the people who profess to know about these things and to love them haven't the vaguest notion of how to see nature. They don't know where to find it, they don't know how to experience it , and if they demonstrate the existence of it they do so on a field trip which is more a social outing than a field trip. If anything, they do more damage to nature by their activity than they do if they never brought the kids out at all. The point is that people should find these things out for themselves. You shouldn't have to go to some expert to know that if you look here or there you'll find something. You're there -- look! It's as simple as that.
--T.J. Walker..

To allow mystery, which is to say to yourself: there could be more, there could be things we don't understand; is not to damn knowledge.
--Barry Lopez

We are affected like the earth, and yield to the elemental tenderness; winter breaks up within us; . . . accumulated masses of ice and snow dissolve, and thoughts like a freshet pour down unwonted channels.
--Henry David Thoreau, Journals 1853