The world is big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.
I am often asked if I am not lonely on my solitary excursions. It seems so self-evident that one cannot be lonesome where everything is wild and beautiful and busy and steeped with God that the question is hard to answer.
Man is always and everywhere a blight on the landscape.
In the woods is perpetual youth.
What is worthwhile in life? I think it is worth living and dreaming. If you don’t you may be dead anyhow – inside.
Raindrops blossom brilliantly in the rainbow, and change to flowers in the sod, but snow comes in full flower direct from the dark, frozen sky.
They tell us that plants are not like man immortal, but are perishable-soul -less. I think that is something that we know exactly nothing about.
All the world was before me and every day was a holiday, so it did not seem important to which one of the world’s wildernesses I first should wander.
Of all the fire mountains which like beacons, once blazed along the Pacific Coast, Mount Rainier is the noblest.
It may not be easy, life isn’t easy, but dreams keep you alive.
All wilderness seems to be full of tricks and plans to drive and draw us up into God’s light.
Memories may escape the action of the will, may sleep a long time, but when stirred by the right influence, though that influence be light as a shadow, they flash into full stature and life with everything in place.
And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.
Every morning, arising from the death of sleep, the happy plants and all our fellow animal creatures great and small, and even the rocks, seemed to be shouting, “Awake, awake, rejoice, rejoice, come love us and join in our song. Come! Come!
Beauty beyond thought everywhere, beneath, above, made and being made forever.
But we are governed more than we know, and most when we are wildest.
Come to the woods, for here is rest,... climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.
The soft light of morning falls upon ripening forests of oak and elm, walnut and hickory, and all Nature is thoughtful and calm.
If people in general could be got into the woods, even for once, to hear the trees speak for themselves, all difficulties in the way of forest preservation would vanish.
Go where we will, all the world over, we seem to have been there before.