Gary Snyder's The Practice of the Wild is an exquisite, far-sighted articulation of what freedom, wildness, goodness, and grace mean, using the lessons of the planet to teach us how to live.

To rise above treeline is to go above thought, and after, the descent back into bird song, bog orchids, willows, and firs is to sink into the preliterate parts of ourselves.

Everything in nature invites us constantly to be what we are.

To trace the history of a river . . . is to trace the history of the soul, the history of the mind descending and arising in the body.

A tree is a thought, an obstruction stopping the flow of wind and light, trapping water, housing insects, birds, and animals, and breathing in and out. How treelike the human, how human the tree.

Everything in nature invites us constantly to be what we are. We are often like rivers: careless and forceful, timid and dangerous, lucid and muddied, eddying, gleaming, still.

I thought: to be tough is to be fragile; to be tender is to be truly fierce.

I like big, open, spare landscapes. There's lots of room. Nobody bothers you... I feel as if I can think there.

Leaves are verbs that conjugate the seasons.

Honesty is stronger medicine than sympathy, which may console but often conceals.

Finally, the lessons of impermanence taught me this: loss constitutes an odd kind of fullness; despair empties out into an unquenchable appetite for life.

I walk on my sacred path.

You make me feel like a stronger person and I can’t imagine a life without you in it. I need to be where you are.

Sometimes spiritual blessings are much more important than most material goals we pursue in life.

All change, all production and generation are effected through the word.

The shadows are only the darkest when the light is at its brightest.

When a leader is in the Democratic Party he's a boss. When he's in the Republican Party he's nothing but a leader.

I'm older and older. With any experience you have, you know more about yourself.

If you have enough breath to complain about anything, you have more than enough reason to give thanks about something.

Do not seek to be loved at any price, because Love has no price.

I try to view the challenges in my life not as annoyances, but as confirmations of fortitude.