Trekking Quotes - Page 8

• In the evening, I walked alone down to the Lake by the side of Crow Park after sunset and saw the solemn coloring of night draw on, the last gleam of sunshine fading away on the hilltops, the seep serene of the asters, and the long shadows of the mountains thrown across them, till they nearly touched the hithermost shore. At distance hear the murmur of many waterfalls not audible in the day-time. Wished for the moon, but she was dark to me and silent, hid in her vacant interlunar cave.

  Thomas Gray

  Distance, Sunset, Dark

  11 Copy quote

• Nature, and the original system that created us, must always remain somehow with us, the bedrock of our movements and actions. What is our duty? To live a life.

  Rick Bass

  Journey, Hiking, Movement

  Rick Bass (1997). “The Lost Grizzlies: A Search for Survivors in the Wilderness of Colorado”, p.236, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you don't know where you are, you don't know who you are.

  Wendell Berry

  Journey, Hiking, Where We Come

  24 Copy quote

• Isn't it really quite extraordinary to see that, since man took his first step, no one has asked himself why he walks, how he walks, if he has ever walked, if he could walk better, what he achieves in walking .. questions that are tied to all the philosophical, psychological, and political systems which preoccupy the world.

  Honore de Balzac

  Philosophical, Journey, Men

  4 Copy quote

• Put you hand before your eyes and remember, you that have walked, the places from which you have walked away, and the wilderness into which you manfully turned the steps of your abandonment ... It is your business to leave all that you have know altogether behind you, and no man has eyes at the back of his head - go forward.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Eye, Journey, Men

  4 Copy quote

• I don't climb mountains. Mountains climb me. The mountain is myself. I climb on myself.

  Nanao Sakaki

  Journey, Hiking, Mountain

  10 Copy quote

• Of course it is of no use to direct our steps to the woods, if they do not carry us thither. I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit.... What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?

  Henry David Thoreau

  Journey, Thinking, Hiking

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.395, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Not to have known - as most men have not - either the mountain or the desert is not to have known one's self. Not to have known one's self is to have known no one.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Journey, Men, Hiking

  Joseph Wood Krutch (2010). “The Desert Year”, p.126, University of Iowa Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The thrill of tramping alone and unafraid through a wilderness of lakes, creeks, alpine meadows, and glaciers is not known to many. A civilization can be built around the machine but it is doubtful that a meaningful life can be produced by it.... When man worships at the feet of avalas creations. When he feels the wind blowing through him on a high peak or sleeps under a closely matted white bark pine in an exposed basin, he is apt to find his relationship to the universe.

  William O. Douglas

  Meaningful, Sleep, Journey

  11 Copy quote

• It is an old custom of these people to pick up a stone and toss it on the pile. Perhaps it is a symbolical lightening of the load they carry, perhaps a small offering to the gods of the trails.

  Louis L'Amour

  Journey, Hiking, Offering

  Louis L'Amour (2004). “The Lonesome Gods”, p.74, Bantam

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Wilderness has been characterized as barren and unproductive; little can be grown in its sand and rock. But the crops of wilderness have always been its spiritual values - silence and solitude, a sense of awe and gratitude - able to be harvested by any traveler who visits.

  David Douglas

  Spiritual, Gratitude, Journey

  David Douglas (1989). “Wilderness Sojourn: Notes in the Desert Silence”, HarperCollins

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• It was a pleasure and a privilege to walk with him [H.D. Thoreau]. He knew the country like a fox or a bird, and passed through it as freely by paths of his own.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Journey, Hiking

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2004). “Thoreau”, p.21, The Minerva Group, Inc.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Paradise is the here and now, the actual, tangible, dogmatically real Earth on which we stand. Yes, God bless America, the Earth upon which we stand.

  Edward Abbey

  Real, Journey, Hiking

  9 Copy quote

• The lessons we learn from the wild become the etiquette of freedom.

  Gary Snyder

  Journey, Hiking, Lessons

  Gary Snyder, Jim Harrison (2010). “The Etiquette of Freedom: Gary Snyder, Jim Harrison, and the Practice of the Wild”, p.13, Counterpoint Press

  48 Copy quote

  Show source

• We are kindred all of us, killer and victim, predator and prey, me and the sly coyote, the soaring buzzard, the elegant gopher snake, and trembling cottontail, the foul worms that feed on our entrails; all of them, all of us. Long live diversity, long live the earth!

  Edward Abbey

  Journey, Snakes, Hiking

  Edward Abbey (1968). “Desert Solitaire”, p.34, Simon and Schuster

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• The wisdom of age: don't stop walking.

  Mason Cooley

  Birthday, Journey, Hiking

  5 Copy quote

• Simplicity in all things is the secret of the wilderness and one of its most valuable lessons. It is what we leave behind that is important. I think the matter of simplicity goes further than just food, equipment, and unnecessary gadgets; it goes into the matter of thoughts and objectives as well. When in the wilds, we must not carry our problems with us or the joy is lost.

  Sigurd F. Olson

  Thinking, Journey, Hiking

  Sigurd F Olson (2012). “Reflections from the North Country”, p.117, Knopf

  109 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  8 Copy quote

• Everyone can identify with a fragrant garden, with beauty of sunset, with the quiet of nature, with a warm and cozy cottage.

  Thomas Kinkade

  Sunset, Journey, Garden

  20 Copy quote

• I walk without flinching through the burning cathedral of the summer. My bank of wild grass is majestic and full of music. It is a fire that solitude presses against my lips.

  Violette Leduc

  Summer, Journey, Fire

  12 Copy quote

• 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.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I know the joy of fishes in the river through my own joy, as I go walking along the same river.

  Zhuangzi

  Passion, Journey, Walking Away

  7 Copy quote

• There's some end at last for the man who follows a path; mere rambling is interminable.

  Seneca the Elder

  Journey, Men, Hiking

  6 Copy quote

• All paths lead nowhere, so it is important to choose a path that has heart.

  Carlos Castaneda

  Philosophy, Heart, Journey

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  16 Copy quote