"A venturesome minority will always be eager to set off on their own, and no obstacles should be placed in their path; let them take risks, for godsake, let them get lost, sunburnt, stranded, drowned, eaten by bears, buried alive under avalanches - that is the right and privilege of any free American."
- Edward Abbey
“I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news”
― John Muir
.... Francis of Assisi (c. 1182-1226), spent many days, weeks, and even months walking the roads of Umbria and letting nature teach him. Francis knew and respected creation, calling animals, sun and moon, and even the weather and the elements his brothers and sisters. Through extended time in nature, Francis became intimately connected with non-human living things and came to recognize that the natural world was also imbued with soul.
Almost all male initiation rites—including those of Jesus and John the Baptist (see Matthew 3:13-17)—took place in nature, surely for that reason."
~ Richard Rohr
" I thought I was in good shape - in college, I'd been running every morning, and I had just gained my black belt in Tae Kwon Do. But backpacking was something else. A friend who had finished the Appalachian Trail several years earlier had told me, "nothing gets you in shape for the trail, short of putting your pack on and walking." Damn, she was right, I thought grimly as I lurched down the trail "
(Lucy & Susan Letcher. Southbound: The Barefoot Sisters.)
"They noticed that I'd lost some weight, but I told them it was nothing compared to the "emotional fat"- all the things I thought I could never do without that had melted away along the Trail."
~ Bill Irwin. Blind Courage
"I believe there is a certain sense of awe and renewal for anyone who spends much time exposed to Nature."
~ Bill Irwin. Blind Courage
"Earl Shaffer completed what is generally accepted as the first continuous end-to-end hike of the A.T. in 1948. His thru-hike became the inspiration for thousands of others who set out to walk the distance and be changed by the Experience.
"Some hike the trail for only a day and find themselves renewed. But continuous weeks in the God made world can yield a fortune of insight
~ Bill Irwin. Blind Courage
"It was not an intellectual awareness. It was spiritual. For me, it was the difference between drawing the molecular structure water and drinking from a spring. My fellow hikers discovered it by watching the sunset, not the lights of Manhattan. It happened on the footpath, not a freeway"
~ Bill Irwin. Blind Courage
".... rainfalls in the mountains, the water runs to the Sea, the evaporation forms clouds and the whole thing starts over. On the trail, I saw it with my soul for the first time."
~ Bill Irwin. Blind Courage
"Despite my aching feet,my sense of winder continued to grow."
~ Bill Irwin. Blind Courage
"In later years of Benton MacKaye's life, he described the threefold purpose of the A.T as 1) to walk, 2) to see, and 3) to see what you see."
~ David McCasland & Bill Irwin. Blind Courage
"Francisco told us the other night in Tosantos that by this point of the Camino we were past our initial aches and pains. Looking around here, I see little to support that view. Nowhere have I observed so many pilgrims looking quite so medieval, hobbling about on chafed and bleeding feet, their blisters pierced and threaded, their knees and ankles trussed. Walking is a mystery. There’s no predicting who will have problems. We have all met, on the one hand, that perky seventy-year-old who covers thirty kilometres a day with ease and, on the other, that strapping young athlete whose feet were a disaster from day one. Some pilgrims, when they run into troubles, rest or adjust. Others drive themselves, determined to overcome the pain, or convinced that pain is an integral part of pilgrimage, or trying to keep up with their walking companions or their itinerary."
(Robert Ward. All The Good Pilgrims)
"But with such grand displays as Nature is making here, how grand are her reservations, bestowed only upon those who devotedly seek them!"
(John Muir. Steep Trails)
"One would be at an endless Godful play, and what speeches and music and acting and scenery and lights!—sun, moon, stars, auroras. Creation just beginning, the morning stars "still singing together and all the sons of God shouting for joy"'.
(John Muir. My First Summer In The Sierras)
Last line changes perspectives. .. does it not?
"I am 41 years old, and I’ve worked since getting out of college as a computer programmer. I’m in decent shape for a person who’s been holed up in an office for so long. I’m married and have three little girls. Our fifteenth wedding anniversary will pass in my absence. Nothing is wrong with my life. My family is outstanding. I have what most people would consider to be a decent job. I’m not unhappy, and I’m not hiking to escape from anything. My life is precariously normal. I’ve been told that taking this trip at this time in my life is irresponsible, a charge I won’t contest. Maybe doing it later in life would make more sense. But my father had bypass surgery and my mom is fighting cancer. My opinion of “later”is jaded.
I’m headed for Maine.
(David Miller. AWOL On The Appalachian Trail)
"Most people are on the world, not in it -- have no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them -- undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate."
- John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir, (1938), page 320
"To equip a pedestrian with shelter, bedding, utensils, food, and other necessities, in a pack so light and small that he can carry it without overstrain, is really a fine art"
(Camping and Woodcraft, Horace Kephart)
While I was out shooting, I got to thinking how I never actually got around to ordering my own bow last spring. I went inside and check out National Archery Supply and I nabbed a sweet Bowtech Factory clear out. A 2008 Bowtech TomKat for a whopping 45% discount.
