182 Quotes by Aspen Matis

A red leaf danced from a branch like a dropping flame, down into the calm blue lake. A gust had broken it free. There was a cold bite in the wind. It was now deep autumn in the mountains.

In the aftermath of destruction, a silence settles – the stillness of fresh loss. People’s cheerful chatter is fainter, the blue color of sky dimmer; now that horror is undeniable and feels inescapable, the value of life seems lessened.

We aren’t afraid of what we can explain.

But the truth was stranger than an aimless road, it always was.

My relationship with my mother trapped me in the identity of a child.

I sensed he was the one who might be able to see me clearly, the way I most wished to be seen.

Already, this little-walked gigantic trail through my country’s Western wilderness held in my mind the promise of escape from myself, the liberation only a huge transformation could grant me. This walk would be my salvation. It had to be.

The PCT would lead me to an otherworld, through the sadness I felt here, out of it.

My mother overstated the dangers of the world – invented threats. And so I saw: Starbursts’ hoof-made gelatin never gave me mad cow. Mad cow was not a threat to me. And so I thought: most risks weren’t truly real.