Best 284 quotes in «wilderness quotes» category

That’s what mountains do, they taunt you, lure you to the freedom of the wilderness, and it is fucking exhilarating.

The American woods have been unnerving people for 300 years. The inestimably priggish and tiresome Henry David Thoreau thought nature was splendid, splendid indeed, so long as he could stroll to town for cakes and barley wine, but when he experienced real wilderness, on a vist to Katahdin in 1846, he was unnerved to the cored. This wasn't the tame world of overgrown orchards and sun-dappled paths that passed for wilderness in suburban Concord, Massachusetts, but a forbiggind, oppressive, primeval country that was "grim and wild . . .savage and dreary," fit only for "men nearer of kin to the rocks and wild animals than we." The experience left him, in the words of one biographer, "near hysterical.

The beauty of Africa is not man made, it is natures gift to humanity.

… the countryside and the village are symbols of stability and security, of order. Yet they are also, as I have noted, liminal spaces, at a very narrow remove from the atavistic Wild. Arcadia is not the realm even of Giorgione and of Claude, with its cracked pillars and thunderbolts, its lurking banditti; still less is it Poussin’s sun-dappled and regularised realm of order, where, although the lamb may be destined for the altar and the spit, all things proceed with charm and gravity and studied gesture; least of all is it the degenerate and prettified Arcady of Fragonard and Watteau, filled with simpering courtier-Corydons, pallid Olympians, and fat-arsed putti. (It is only family piety that prevents me from taking a poker to an inherited coffee service in gilt porcelain with bastardised, deutero-Fragonard scenes painted on the sides of every damned thing. Cue Wallace Greenslade: ‘… “Round the Horne”, with Marie Antoinette as the dairymaid and Kenneth Williams as the manager of the camp-site….’) No: Arcadia is the very margin of the liminal space between the safe tilth and the threatening Wild, in which Pan lurks, shaggy and goatish, and Death proclaims, from ambush, et in Arcadia ego. Arcadia is not the Wide World nor the Riverbank, but the Wild Wood. And in that wood are worse than stoats and weasels, and the true Pan is no Francis of Assisi figure, sheltering infant otters. The Wild that borders and penetrates Arcady is red in tooth and claw.

The forest is blanketed by the greenest ferns and moss and bonsai-like trees, a wild majesty that beckons hobbits and pixies and elves and dreamers.

The dusk rapidly deepened; the glades grew dark; the crackling of the fire and the wash of little waves along the rocky lake shore were the only sounds audible. The wind had dropped with the sun, and in all that vast world of branches nothing stirred. Any moment, it seemed, the woodland gods, who are to be worshipped in silence and loneliness, might stretch their mighty and terrific outlines among the trees.

The farther you venture into the forest the more valuable the fruit.

The death of a real deer at my hands was just a vaporous, remote presence that hovered over the figure of the paper deer forty-five yards away at target six of our archery range, as I tried to hit the heart-lung section marked out in heavy black.

The forest, far from the mundane and familiar world of the city, provides the appropriate setting for exceptional figures, both holy and mythic. Here, as in the world landscapes, figures and settings are truly matched; and as Reindert Falkenburg and myself have argued, the remoteness and grand scale of the forest or the earlier mountain wilderness signal the sanctity of or gravity of the human scene, however small in scale, which the discerning viewer must seek out and read as significant.

The moment her hymen was plucked from her body in the wilderness, Her soul was taken from sanity.

The moon had spread over everything a thin layer of silver--over the rank grass, over the mud, upon the wall of matted vegetation standing higher than the wall of a temple, over the great river I could see through a somber gap glittering, glittering, as it flowed broadly by without a murmur. All this was great, expectant, mute, while the man jabbered about himself. I wondered whether the stillness on the face of the immensity looking at us two were meant as an appeal or as a menace. What were we who had strayed in here? Could we handle that dumb thing, or would it handle us? I felt how big, how confoundedly big, was that thing that couldn't talk, and perhaps was deaf as well. What was in there?

The marketplace is an institution that teaches self-advancement, private acquisition, and the domination of nature. Its way of thinking is incompatible with the round river. Ecological harmony is a nonmarket value that takes a collective will to achieve.

The new dam, of course, will improve things. If ever filled it will back water to within sight of the Bridge, transforming what was formerly an adventure into a routine motorboat excursion. Those who see it then will not understand that half the beauty of Rainbow Bridge lay in its remoteness, its relative difficulty of access, and in the wilderness surrounding it, of which it was an integral part. When these aspects are removed the Bridge will be no more than an isolated geological oddity, an extension of that museumlike diorama to which industrial tourism tends to reduce the natural world.

The nation’s forests were being cut faster than they could grow back. In the 1890s, while Aldo was growing up, the United States had begun to set aside forest reserves to protect the trees. Then, while Aldo was in high school, one of the country’s first forestry schools opened at Yale University. Aldo knew immediately what he wanted to do. If he could become a forester, he could get paid to work in the woods all day. How could a job get any better?

The need for wildness is written within our genes, in a language we are just beginning to understand. And in wilderness we will find the Rosetta Stone that can unravel this ancient language of our bones.

The negatives he did manage were made in the hour or two when the sun seemed to rally with a yellowy light reminiscent of an egg yolk; usually, it looked pale as a pearl on the steely blue or leaden sky above the snow-scrubbed lake. That's a purple passage fit for a novel but hardly descriptive of the actuality of that winter, which was almost past enduring.

The oceans are the planet's last great living wilderness, man's only remaining frontier on Earth, and perhaps his last chance to prove himself a rational species.

The old school of thought would have you believe that you'd be a fool to take on nature without arming yourself with every conceivable measure of safety and comfort under the sun. But that isn't what being in nature is all about. Rather, it's about feeling free, unbounded, shedding the distractions and barriers of our civilization—not bringing them with us.

the only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.. live wild dont be a normal person.. to become presence, means accepting the risk.. and be sure if u don't take risks u'll have a wasted soul..

The people who build high, strong fences are the ones who survive the best. You deny that reality only at the risk of being driven into the wilderness yourself.

There is a silence in the imminence of animals and also in the echo of their noise, but the dread silence is the one that rises from a wilderness from which all the wild animals have gone.

There is nothing wrong with technology. It's a gift! I don't think we should keep our kids away from the modern conveniences of our time, but I do believe it's time to regain some balance. Children can benefit from technology, but they need nature. Let them have their video games and Internet, but make sure they are getting equal amounts of mud, dirt, sticks, puddles, free play and imagination.

... there's a silent voice in the wilderness that we hear only when no one else is around. When you go far, far beyond, out across the netherlands of the Known, the din of human static slowly fades away, over and out.

The trees were friendly, they gave me rest and shadowed refuge. Slipping through them, I felt safe and competent. My whole body was occupied. I had little energy to think or worry.

The west coast is a mecca for wild hearts, wild minds, wild spirits and I’m a WMD—I’ve got so much energy I’m about to explode.

The wilderness leads to wonder of the moment.

The wilderness once offered men a plausible way of life," the doctor said. "Now it functions as a psychiatric refuge. Soon there will be no wilderness." He sipped at his bourbon and ice. "Soon there will be no place to go. Then the madness becomes universal." Another thought. "And the universe goes mad.

The world of nature, at once a vision of exquisite beauty and an arena of brutal savagery, is a dynamic system of delicate balances.

The world of wonder is wonderful wilderness.

The world we know is dwarfed by the worlds we don't. Why not explore them all? Being out there in the wilderness, you have no idea what'll happen, really. It could be just you and this gorgeous night sky, or maybe you are surfing and some big ass wave comes at you, and if you don't ride that sucker, it'll put you under and have you for lunch, or you might turn a corner on a hike and there's some beautiful deer and her little fawn-- now that has meaning, all of those things, and I need more of that and less of trying to make money so I can pay bills to live in a way I just don't care about anymore.

They arrived without warning on a perfect Indian summer day.

This is what I have learned in these short weeks in the refuge: You cannot afford to make careless mistakes, like meditating in the presence of wolves, or topping your boots in the river, or losing a glove, or not securing your tent down properly. Death is a daily occurrence in the wild, not noticed, not respected, not mourned. In the Arctic, I've learned that ego is as useless as money. Choose one's travel companions well. Physical strength and prudence are necessary. Imagination and ingenuity are our finest traits. Expect anything. You can change your mind like the weather. Patience is more powerful than anger. Humor is attractive than fear. Pay attention. Listen. We are most alive when we are discovering. Humility is the capacity to see. We are meant to live simply. We are meant to live joyfully. Life continues with and without us. Beauty is another word for God.

This was true mountain country, now, and true wilderness. Valley meadows, leafy trees halfway up the slopes, then evergreens gradually taking over at the higher altitudes... their road wound its way up and down through tree-tunnels that only intermittently allowed them to see the sky. It would have been a lovely journey under other circumstances. The weather remained fair, and remarkably pleasant, even if the night was going to be cold. She had only read about the wilderness, never experienced it for herself, and she found herself liking it a lot. Or- parts of it, anyway. The way it was never entirely silent, but simply 'quiet'- birdsong and insect noises, the rustle of leaves, the distant sound of water. She had never before realized how noisy people were. And the forest was so beautiful. She wasn't at all used to deep forest; it was like being inside a living cathedral, with beams of light penetrating the tree-canopy and illuminating unexpected treasures, a moss-covered rock, a small cluster of flowers, a spray of ferns. These woods were 'old', too, the trees had trunks so big it would take three people to put their arms around them, and there was a scent to the place that somehow conveyed that centuries of leaves had fallen here and become earth.

[Thoreau's] famous night in jail took place about halfway through his stay in the cabin on Emerson's woodlot at Walden Pond. His two-year stint in the small cabin he built himself is often portrayed as a monastic retreat from the world of human affairs into the world of nautre, though he went back to town to eat with and talk to friends and family and to pick up money doing odd jobs that didn't fit into Walden's narrative. He went to jail both because the town jailer ran into him while he was getting his shoe mended and because he felt passionately enough about national affairs to refuse to pay his tax. To be in the woods was not to be out of society or politics.

Though American scenery is destitute of many of those circumstances that give value to the European, still it has features, and glorious ones, unknown to Europe...the most distinctive, and perhaps the most impressive, characteristic of American scenery is its wildness

The only reliable thing about Benji has always been that he's unreliable. But to everyone's surprise, nature managed to get through to him where people failed. When someone learns to be in the forest as a child, it's like gaining an extra language. The air talks here, and Benji understands. It's mournful and wild.

The question haunted me, and the real answer came, as answers often do, not in the canyon but at an unlikely time and in an unexpected place, flying over the canyon at thirty thousand feet on my way to be a grandmother. My mind on other things, intending only to glance out, the exquisite smallness and delicacy of the river took me completely by surprise. In the hazy light of early morning, the canyon lay shrouded, the river flecked with glints of silver, reduced to a thin line of memory, blurred by a sudden realization that clouded my vision. The astonishing sense of connection with that river and canyon caught me completely unaware, and in a breath I understood the intense, protective loyalty so many people feel for the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. It has to do with truth and beauty and love of this earth, the artifacts of a lifetime and the descant of a canyon wren at dawn.

There, about a dozen times during the day, the wind drives over the sky the swollen clouds, which water the earth copiously, after which the sun shines brightly, as if freshly bathed, and floods with a golden luster the rocks, the river, the trees, and the entire jungle.

There are no shortcuts through the wilderness of life.

There is always an adventure waiting in the woods.

...there is something which impresses the mind with awe in the shade and silence of these vast forests. In the deep solitude, alone with nature, we converse with God.

There may be days when I can't help an animal in need, but the day will never come that I won't try.

There's been a lot to get used to here." Esther laughed. "Isn't that the truth. I don't know if you ever get used to it really. It just gets in your blood so that you can't stand to be anywhere else.

There seems to be no way to save wildness from human intrusion without establishing and enforcing rules and regulations that are themselves intrusions on what, by definition, are meant to be areas outside humanity's control.

The sea is a desert of waves, A wilderness of water.

The wilderness is a place for spiritual rebirth.

The wilderness is a seed of words.

The wilderness is a test, whether we will walk in the ways of God.

The wilderness is a place of an encounter with the Creator.

The writer Richard Manning has argued that 'the most destructive force in the American West is its commanding views, because they foster the illusion that we command.