Quotes from Kim Heacox

Uncle Austin used to say that when men set out to destroy each other, the first victim was always the same: truth.

you have to meet the outer world with your inner world to keep your soul anchored. If not, existence will crush you.

Before dragging it down through mosses, sedges, and small twin flowers—plants the deer had eaten all its life—he'd taken a sharp knife to the belly, opened it and found a fragrance, the moist smell of Earth, something Gramps had spoken of. He had said that when it happens, when the deer gives itself to you this way, it's a gift the hunter must accept with gratitude.

The best thing Dr. Folsom taught me (though I didn't realize it at the time) was not how to see nature but how to get along with people who see it differently. It is better to touch a heart than it is to teach a fact.

Alaska's governor Walter Hickel, a champion of development, builder of shopping malls, and proponent of wolf control, told NBC News, "You just can't let nature run wild.

She quoted First Lady Eleanor Franklin: "Do at least one thing each day that scares you.

Pull yourself together and land on your feet because it's better than landing on your head.

What would it have been like to live back then, when stories colored the world and even the sky listened?

Whining makes you angry, and anger makes you bitter.

Awhile back, Gramps had told James to start bathing in the ocean, to get ready, get tough. "To become a warrior?" James asked. "No, the world has too many warriors. You'll be a peacekeeper, a healer.

Our frustration with others is always greatest when we're frustrated with ourselves

It takes a while to understand that there is something out there bigger than you, something greater than what you've designed for yourself.

He kept thinking about Uncle Austin, how he taught him to build a fire in the rain, to sharpen a knife, to regard ten cords of wood as money in the bank, to read the wind and tides with intention, to catch a fish, to build a snare, to live off the land and sea and not just survive, but thrive; to know a thousand things with animal senses—to be smart, strong, sensual, alive, more alive than you'll ever be indoors.

We must pass through the prism of our own destruction to see a new and better light.

I'm telling you this because I believe all our hearts run together in the same way. We collide and accrete and become something of a whole, an amalgam of hearts and dreams, of friends, neighbors, and fellow travelers who influence each other across generations.

This I was certain: Glacier Bay offered a clarity more profound than any book; an original text, a reminder that our language evolved as we moved away from places like this, not into them.

The more centered you are, the less you occupy the center. That's when awareness begins.

You know what appeals to me about philosophy? Nobody wins.

The lesson is simple. Be patient, stay put.

One day the Inuit journeyed out to gather grass along the coast. When they got to where they were going and found the grass stunted by a late spring, they sat down and in Nansen's words "waited for the grass to grow." The lesson is simple. Be patient, stay put.

Our frustration with others is always greatest when we're frustrated with ourselves.

To watch an animal so exquisitely fitted in its world was better than any ballet.

The greatest gift we can leave this world is the forest and the sea the way we found it, separate and the same, the oldest home of all, older and more beautiful than all the things industrious people pride themselves in building.

Maybe it's not what we have that makes us who we are, it's what we're missing. A chromosome, a kidney, a sister, a feather, a bay.