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• Here are some quotes relevant to this trip, and wilderness in general. Most of these quotes are ones that I've picked out of Edward Abbey books. (my favorite author) If anyone has any suggestions for quotes, send them my way.

“Wilderness. The word itself is music.
Wilderness, wilderness… We scarcely know what we mean by the term, though the sound of it draws all whose nerves and emotions have not yet been irreparably stunned, deadened, numbed by the caterwauling of commerce, the sweating scramble for profit and domination." -Edward Abbey Desert Solitaire

“We are preoccupied with time. If we could learn to love space as deeply as we are now obsessed with time, we might discover a new meaning in the phrase to live like men.” -Edward Abbey Desert Solitaire

“The best of all sauces is hunger.” -Edward Abbey Desert Solitaire

Nine planets surround the sun…
Only one does the sun embrace…
But Upon this watered one…
So much we take for granted…
So, let us sleep outside tonight…
Lay down in our mother’s arms…
For here we can rest safely…
-Dave Matthews Band - One Sweet World

“The river, the canyon, the desert world was always changing, from moment to moment, from miracle to miracle, within the firm reality of mother earth. River, rock, sun, blood, hunger, wings, joy—this is the real……”
-Edward Abbey The Monkeywrench Gang

Avoid the polluted herd,
Shun the reeking flock;
Live like that stoic bird
The eagle on the rock.
-Elinor Wylie

"No pain here, no dull empty hours, no fear of the past, no fear of the future. These blessed mountains are so compactly filled with God's beauty, no petty personal hope or experience has room to be."
-John Muir Summering In The Sierra

“Walking makes the world much bigger and therefore more interesting. You have time to observe the details.” -Edward Abbey The Journey Home

“Walking stretches life and prolongs life. Life is already too short to waste on speed.” -Edward Abbey The Journey Home

“We agree that getting up early, before anyone else, gives one a feeling of moral superiority that may last, on a good day, all day long. Furthermore, early morning is the sweetest time of day, any day. That’s when your senses are keenest, your mind liveliest, your heart most alive and hopeful.” -Edward Abbey One Life At A Time, Please

“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.” -Henry David Thoreau

“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.” -Henry David Thoreau

“I drive on, indulging the reveries of a solitary wanderer, keeping an eye peeled for topaz, amethyst, opal, beryl, tourmaline, obsidian, agate, crystal-loaded geodes. This is rock-hound country—a place for hounding rocks. But I am satisfied to look and touch, and leave each stone where it belongs, in situ. Every rock should be regarded as what some call “leavitrite”: leave it right where it is. The same holds for what’s left of original America: love it or leave it alone." -Edward Abbey The Journey Home

“It is my fear that if we allow the freedom of the hills and the last of the wilderness to be taken from us, then the very idea o freedom may die with it.” -Edward Abbey The Journey Home

“Our world is so full of beautiful things: fruit and ideas and women and good men and banjo music and onions with purple skins. A virtual Paradise. But even Paradise can be damned, flooded, overrun, generally mucked up by fools in pursuit of paper profits and plastic happiness.” -Edward Abbey The Journey Home

"So much for all that. Now I can do no more than offer one final prayer to the young, to the bold, to the angry, to the questioning, to the lost.
Beyond the wall of the unreal city, beyond the security fences topped with barbed wire and razor wire, beyond the asphalt belting of the superhighways, beyond the cemented banksides of our temporarily stopped and mutilated rivers, beyond the rage of lies that poisons the air, there is another world waiting for you. It is the old true world of the deserts, the mountains, the forests, the islands, the shores, the open plains. Go there. Be there. Walk gently and quietly deep within it. And then—
May your trails be dim, lonesome, stony, narrow, winding and only slightly uphill. May the wind bring rain for the slickrock potholes fourteen miles on the other side of yonder blue ridge. May God’s dog serenade your campfire, may the rattlesnake and the screech owl amuse your reverie, may the Great Sun dazzle your eyes by day and the Great Bear watch over you by night."
-Edward Abbey Beyond The Wall

Ambition:

I wish to be
an inspector of volcanoes.
I want to study cloud formations
and memorize the wind
and learn by heart the habits of
the ponderosa pine.
While we sit here
in our air-conditioned offices
rattling fresh documents
and arranging new wars
wasting time and squandering eternity
some really great things
are happening OUT THERE.
viz.,a buzzard sails above Deadhorse Point
five thousand feet above the Colorado River
and rolling down the sands of Grand Gulch
unseen by any human eye
a rumbling flood pours down to meet
another at the mouth of Happy Jack Wash.
Magpies are wheeling through the blue
of Magpie Arch above the land of Moab
and way down far in Stillwater Canyon
a blue heron stalks beneath the plumes
of lavender tamarisk. My God
I'm missing it all
sitting here in this office
with the windows that don't open
sixty-seven floors above the street
reading the New York Times
world's funniest newspaper
(think of all those joyous young pines
with who-knows-what aspirations of their own
cut down to feed a pulp mill)
and staring through the glass
from time to time
down into the smoking lanes
of the world's busiest graveyard.
-Edward Abbey

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