Sauntering Quotes - Page 7

• As I went walking That ribbon of highway I saw above me The endless skyway I saw below me The lonesome valley This land was made for you and me.

  Woody Guthrie

  Journey, Land, Hiking

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• I will look at the footprints going in and out of the water and dream up a small blue good to talk to.

  Gerald Stern

  Dream, Journey, Hiking

  Gerald Stern (1981). “The red coal: poems”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)

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• The English literary movement at the end of the 18th century was obviously due in great part, if not mainly, to the renewed practice of walking.

  Leslie Stephen

  Journey, Practice, Hiking

  Leslie Stephen (2012). “Studies of a Biographer”, p.265, Cambridge University Press

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• The art of walking is at once suggestive of the dignity of man. Progressive motion alone implies power, but in almost every other instance it seems a power gained at the expense of self-possession.

  Henry Theodore Tuckerman

  Art, Journey, Men

  Henry Theodore Tuckerman (1850). “The optimist”, p.135

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• Beauty surrounds us, but usually we need to be walking in a garden to know it.

  Rumi

  Journey, Garden, Hiking

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• Once in a lifetime, perhaps, one escapes the actual confines of the flesh. Once in a lifetime, if one is lucky, one so merges with sunlight and air and running water that whole eons, the eons that mountains and deserts know, might pass in a single afternoon without discomfort.

  Loren Eiseley

  Running, Journey, Air

  Loren Eiseley (2011). “The Immense Journey: An Imaginative Naturalist Explores the Mysteries of Man and Nature”, p.16, Vintage

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• If a walker is indeed an individualist there is nowhere he can't go at dawn and not many places he can't go at noon. But just as it demeans life to live alongside a great river you can no longer swim in or drink from, to be crowded into safer areas and hours takes much of the gloss off walking - one sport you shouldn't have to reserve a time and a court for.

  Edward Hoagland

  Sports, Journey, Rivers

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• When man ventures into the wilderness, climbs the ridges, and sleeps in the forest, he comes in close communion with his Creator. When man pits himself against the mountain, he taps inner springs of his strength. He comes to know himself.

  William O. Douglas

  Spring, Sleep, Journey

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• The path up and down is one and the same.

  Heraclitus

  Journey, Hiking, Path

  c.500 BC Quoted in Kirk, Raven and Schofield (eds) The Presocratic Philosophers (1957), ch.6.

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• Recreation in the open is of the finest grade. The moral benefits are all positive. The individual with any soul cannot live long in the presence of towering mountains or sweeping plains without getting a little of the high moral standard of Nature infused into his being ... with eyes opened, the great story of the Earth's forming, the history of a tree, the life of a flower or the activities of some small animal will all unfold themselves to the recreationist.

  Arthur Carhart

  Flower, Eye, Animal

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• Whenever we make changes in our surroundings, we can too easily shortchange ourselves, by cutting ourselves off from some of the sights and sounds, the shapes or textures, or other information from a place that have helped mold our understanding and are now necessary for us to thrive. Overdevelopment and urban sprawl can damage our own lives as much as they damage our cities and countryside.

  Tony Hiss

  Cutting, Journey, Sight

  Tony Hiss (2010). “The Experience of Place: A New Way of Looking at and Dealing With our Radically Changing Cities and Count ryside”, p.12, Vintage

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• The rule of thumb for the old backpacking was that the weight of your pack should equal the weight of yourself and the kitchen range combined. Just a casual glance at the full pack sitting on the floor could give you a double hernia and fuse four vertebrae. After carrying the pack all day, you had to remember to tie one leg to a tree before you dropped it. Otherwise you would float off into space. The pack eliminated the need for any special kind of ground-gripping shoes, because your feet would sink a foot and a half into hard-packed earth, two inches into solid rock.

  Patrick F. McManus

  Journey, Feet, Hiking

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• Think what a great world revolution will take place when ... [there are] millions of guys all over the world with rucksacks on their backs tramping around the back country.

  Jack Kerouac

  Country, Journey, Thinking

  Jack Kerouac (1986). “The Dharma Bums”, p.203, Penguin

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• Of all exercises, walking is the best.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Life, Exercise, Journey

  Thomas Jefferson (2004). “Light and Liberty: Reflections on the Pursuit of Happiness”, p.13, Modern Library

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• What you're missing is that the path itself changes you.

  Julian Smith

  Journey, Hiking, Missing

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• Details of the many walks I made along the crest have blurred, now, into a pleasing tapestry of grass and space and sunlight.

  Colin Fletcher

  Journey, Hiking, Space

  Colin Fletcher (2014). “The Secret Worlds of Colin Fletcher”, p.105, Vintage

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• Mostly, two miles an hour is good going.

  Colin Fletcher

  Journey, Two, Hiking

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• A week of sweeping fogs has passed over and given me a strange sense of exile and desolation. I walk round the island nearly every day, yet I can see nothing anywhere but a mass of wet rock, a strip of surf, and then a tumult of waves.

  John Millington Synge

  Journey, Hiking, Islands

  John Millington Synge (2008). “The Aran Islands and Connemara”, p.39, Mercier Press Ltd

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• It seems possible to give a preliminary definition of walking as a space of enunciation.

  Michel de Certeau

  Journey, Hiking, Space

  "The Practice of Everyday Life".

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• There is a life-force within your soul, seek that life.
  There is a gem in the mountain of your body, seek that mine.
  O traveller, if you are in search of that
  Don't look outside, look inside yourself and seek that.

  Rumi

  Journey, Hiking, Soul

  Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi, “There Is A Life-Force Within Your Soul”

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• Some mountaineers are proud of having done all their climbs without bivouac. How much they have missed ! And the same applies to those who enjoy only rock climbing, or only the ice climbs, onyl the ridges or faces. We should refuse none of the thousands and one joys that the mountains offer us at every turn. We should brush nothing aside, set no restrictions. We should experience hunger and thirst, be able to go fast, but also to go slowly and to contemplate.

  Gaston Rebuffat

  Journey, Hiking, Rocks

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• And I have been able to give freedom and life which was acknowledged in the ecstasy of walking hand in hand across the most beautiful bridge of the world, the cables enclosing us and pulling us upward in such a dance as I have never walked and never can walk with another.

  Hart Crane

  Beautiful, Journey, Hands

  Brom Weber, Hart Crane (1970). “Hart Crane: a biographical and critical study”

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• Farewell we call to hearth and hall! Though wind may blow and rain may fall. We must away ere the break of day. Far over wood and mountain tall.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Rain, Fall, Farewell

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings”, p.82, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• All walking is discovery. On foot we take the time to see things whole.

  Hal Borland

  Time, Journey, Discovery

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• Backpacking is the art of knowing what not to take.

  Sheridan Anderson

  Art, Journey, Hiking

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