Hiking Quotes
You lift your head, you’re on your way, but really just to be walking, to be out of doors. That’s it, that’s all, and you’re there. Outdoors is our element: the exact sensation of living there.
And as we know from the pilgrimage diaries of Swami Ramdas, it is when we renounce everything that everything is given to us, in abundance. Everything: meaning the intensity of presence itself.
I would never have started this trip if I had known how tough it was, but I couldn't and wouldn't quit.
The trees were friendly, they gave me rest and shadowed refuge. Slipping through them, I felt safe and competent. My whole body was occupied. I had little energy to think or worry.
There was so little I wanted to carry. Packing my backpack took me all of four minutes
...we’re not even really hiking, more like meandering in cinematic light.
And now it was official: I loved REI more than I loved the people behind Snapple lemonade.
I was the director of my life, it was already true, and I would soon lead myself to my dreamed-of destinations.It was the task of my one thousand miles of solitude.
The way to self-love and admiration is to behave like someone whom you love and admire.
Do you know how fast you are walking? ... To get a close estimate, count the number of steps you take in a minute and divide by 30... :)
You don’t need extra food, extra water, extra clothing for extra warmth – anything extra. You don’t need soap or deodorant. Everything you carry you should need daily.
My relationship with my mother trapped me in the identity of a child.
Living as Wild Child, I could no longer be Debby Parker comfortably — this name that I’d been given at birth that defined me before I’d had the chance to define myself.
He hadn’t treated me with the love and compassion I wanted, but I was worthy of that love, and someday some boy would have it for me. I hadn’t found it yet, but I would find it soon.
My path, beyond doubt or denial. I just hadn’t looked toward it. I wasn’t lost. I’d always known the way. If I’d only allowed myself to look. I had never been lost, only scared.
death is not a pretty flower that had almost pricked me. It was not a small annoyance I could simply bypass and quickly disregard. It was really The End.
I sensed he was the one who might be able to see me clearly, the way I most wished to be seen.
I felt like I belonged to an ancient tradition of all young people given this same task of finding their own ways through to the futures they wanted for themselves.
Fire is not essential. Fire is warm comfort. From fire, cultures are born.
I wanted both things: strength in my independence and also this new desire. This felt like the beginning of a new kind of love.
It felt amazing to make visible my boundaries.The rumors dissipated, then changed. Eventually I turned down enough men that I became the girl who turned down men.
I was no longer following a trail. I was learning to follow myself.
She taught me only how to need to be taken care of. I was here because I needed to learn to take responsibility for making my own decisions — to earn my own trust.
Though I was starved for contact, I didn’t stop to talk to any of these strangers. I had forgotten how to convincingly speak the polite things strangers say to each other.
He understood. In lovesickness we had found a common language.
I walked without breaks, slept through nights without waking, inhumanly smooth – a small machine.
Rest fixed most things. Sleep was my sweet reward. I treated bedtime as both incentive and sacrament.
Children believe they are immortal, death is an empty word like the name of a country they’ve never been to on a time-faded map. I wasn’t a child anymore.
I realized that no, no one would actually come to save or even stop me, I had absolutely no choice. The scale tipped: the moment not doing it became more difficult and unbearable than just doing it.
Because I feared I couldn't walk to Newton Centre without her, I needed to hike through desert, snow and woods alone.Childhood is a wilderness.
It was heartbreaking to realize how we can fail the people we most love without even trying.
.. And now it was official: I loved REI more than I loved the people behind Snapple lemonade.
If I could mark clearly, convincingly and consistently what was good for me and also what was bad—if I could say yes and also no, as if it were the law—it would become my law.
I had once again proven that again alone, I was again enough.
…my books are derived from city images, and the city of my dreams or nightmares is Mexico City. (The Art of Fiction, No. 68. The Paris Review, No. 82, Winter 1981.)
