368 Quotes About Wilderness

It’s not the quiet ‘in’ the woods. Rather, it’s the quiet ‘of’ the woods. For I don’t want quiet to be ‘in’ me. Like the woods, I want it to be ‘of’ me. And I have found that few things can instill that in me like the woods can.

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.

If you have not touched the rocky wall of a canyon. If you have not heard a rushing river pound over cobblestones. If you have not seen a native trout rise in a crystalline pool beneath a shattering riffle, or a golden eagle spread its wings and cover you in shadow. If you have not seen the tree line recede to the top of a bare crested mountain. If you have not looked into a pair of wild eyes and seen your own reflection. Please, for the good of your soul, travel west.

You can stretch to your fullest in this land, Emma, and not touch any edges. There's no dream too big for the wilderness. I'd hate to see it tamed and carved up into little fiefdoms.

There is happiness here that others have found, though it must be floating on the dreams they’ve drowned. I shall live my life with buoyancy. My hopes and dreams wait ahead of me.

If happiness required me to ignore my thoughts and questions, then I hoped to never be happy.

You can feel the anarchy and wilderness through words, and the peace and heavens as well.

Every man should wake up alone and spend thirty minutes outside. He should spend thirty minutes with the rising sun listening for birds while pacing back and forth in ponderous thought, with a cool breeze on his nose and his arms stretched into the open air. He should spend thirty minutes alone with whatever view is available. Then he should go back to sleep.

Swarms of bees, beetles, soft music of the world, a gentle humming; brent geese, barnacle geese, shortly before All Hallows, music of the dark wild torrent. (Medieval poem by a monk of Ynys Enlli, an island off the coast of Wales)