17 Quotes by Kyle Rohrig

Out there in the woods, there’s no one to impress and no one to judge you. The only people you’ll see are your fellow hikers, and they don’t care what you look like, or what you wear. It’s when you get past this attitude of judging people by their surface appearance that you’re able to genuinely get to know someone on a deeper, more personal level. This is why relationships formed on the trail are so strong. In.

I had come to realize that this whole place and experience is what you make of it. Your attitude and frame of mind determined everything.

I went out there to live on a whim and have the freedom to stop whenever I got tired, or whenever I reached a place that was so beautiful that I couldn’t possibly pass it up. You don’t have that freedom when slack packing.

We don’t give our animal friends enough credit for the lives they lead until we try to imagine ourselves in their position. Only then will you find the respect for these creatures they undoubtedly deserve.

Any question or piece of advice you needed about the trail, he had an answer that was spot on. Probably the greatest advice he gave was that it wasn’t a “one size fits all” answer. He encouraged and gave you the confidence to trust in yourself to figure things out on your own and find out what works for you, while simultaneously dropping little hints to help you along.

Try to imagine the helplessness you might feel if it were you that was stuck in that spot, completely exhausted and in pain with steep 1,000 foot climbs on either side of you. Imagine how defeated you might feel if you knew that you had to climb one of them in order to reach any kind of decent cover for camping.

I periodically scanned the sides of the trail with my headlamp looking for eye shine. As a loose rule, the eyes of non-threatening animals reflect green in false light, while predator’s eyes reflect yellow.

If only I would’ve known that Virginia was going to chew me up and spit me out onto the rocks of Pennsylvania, I might not have been so excited.

Dreading and complaining wasn’t going to make the mountains disappear.