Quotes from Eric Blehm

villages were regularly patrolled by the Taliban.

Wilderness An area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain. —Howard Zahniser Perhaps

But pieces of paper do not stop bullets and rockets. Paper promises that fall from the sky cannot be trusted.

The Taliban began as a Pashtun movement in Afghanistan, then spread into Pakistan. Now the Pakistani Taliban have earned the reputation as the most cruel in the Afghan villages I visited. In Afghanistan, they are away from their own homes and villages and seem to carry out their atrocities more readily. They are trained to be terrorists in the most fundamental sense of the word: to become legendary for the creativity of the horrors they're able to commit.

Our lives are not good—it is not the Afghanistan we remember—but it is still life.

just programmed into the bomb's guidance system. "Hey!" the copilot told the Delta operator. "We don't

There's a great deal of talk about loyalty from the bottom to the top. Loyalty from the top down is even more necessary and is much less prevalent. One of the most frequently noted characteristics of great men who have remained great is loyalty to their subordinates. —General George S. Patton Jr.

How wonderful to wander among virgin hills! I suppose whiteness is a symbol of purity (skin color being an exception) and how pure I found that world. As you've heard me say many times, the mountains are my life. Without them I am nothing. They are perhaps the only reality I know. They are my guru. If I am to learn anything in life, I will learn it there.

Other than hunting down the terrorists responsible for the attacks on September 11, 2001, Amerine suspected that the United States had no comprehensive plan, military or otherwise.

Everett Ruess: A Vagabond for Beauty

I find that in contemplating the natural world my pleasure is greater if there are not too many others contemplating it with me, at the same time. —Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

If you worked hard, believed in what you did, and stayed the course, then success and recognition would follow.

Back in civilization I begin the questioning," wrote Randy. "What to do with life? What kind of life? In wilderness this ceases; the questions aren't answered, they dissolve."   BEFORE

It makes no difference what men think of war…. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting the ultimate practitioner. —Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

Everything has its beauty but not everyone sees it.

and following your ideals is the only thing worth dying for.

Dana asked his wife on numerous occasions, "Wouldn't it be nice to live where you could walk in the woods on a Sunday afternoon?" It became Esther's dream also.

There're a couple of books that discuss this," Heath said to his friend. "On Killing [by Dave Grossman] is a good one. He writes about cops, and he discusses troops from the Civil War all the way up to now.

But ever since I was old enough to be cynical I have been visiting national parks, and they are a cure for cynicism, an exhilarating rest from the competitive avarice we call the American Way…. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst. —Wallace Stegner, 1983

War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting the ultimate practitioner. —Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

Do not trust the Afghans. Do not trust your friends. Do not trust anyone except your enemies.

number of terrorists using it as a base of operations. Over the next few years he became more vocal in his denunciations.

All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible. —T. E. Lawrence

only a couple of miles east of the Helmand River, where villages were regularly patrolled by the Taliban.