Quotes About Wilderness

The role of the animal messenger in the dreams of modern city-dwellers is often to recall us to our wild side, and the natural path of our energy.

And nothing . . . disquiets a rationalist more than a forest.

The forests were foris, 'outside.' In them lived the outcasts, the mad, the lovers, brigands, hermits, saints, lepers, the paquis, fugitives, misfits, the persecuted, wild men. Where else could they go? Outside of the law and human society one was in the forest. But the forest's asylum was unspeakable. One could not remain human in the forest; one could only rise above or sink below the human level.

On the ragged edge of the world I'll roam. And the home of the wolf will be my home.

This is the Law of the Yukon, that only the strong shall thrive;That surely the weak shall perish, and only the fit survive.Dissolute, damned and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain,This is the Will of the Yukon—Lo, how she makes it plain!

He dreamed that he and Elvira Campos lived together in a cabin in the mountains. The cabin didn't have electricity or running water or anything to remind them of civilization. The slept on bearskin, with a wolf skin over them. And sometimes Elvira Campos laughed, a ringing laugh, as she went running into the woods and he lost sight of her.

Fitz: Shall we get up tomorrow and go looking for a wild pig? Nighteyes: I didn't lose any wild pigs, did you?

He gave a final shake of his coat. 'I go to the hunt!

The hunt for meat is best, but any hunt is always the hunt, and one is never more alive than during the hunt.

Your wolf still looks out of your eyes. You think that if you stand perfectly still, no one will see you.

Wolves have no kings.

Listening in wild places, we are audience to conversations in a language not our own. I think now that it was a longing to comprehend this language I hear in the woods that led me to science, to learn over the years to speak fluent botany.

That mother of men was made to wander in the wilderness and earn her bread by the sweat of her brow, not by filling her mouth with the sweet juicy fruits that bend the branches low.

When we call a place by name it is transformed from wilderness to homeland. I imagined that this beloved place knew my true name as well, even when I myself did not.

The very last adler leans away from the thread of the trail, as if to set me free.

On the other side was another woman with a garden and a tree. But for tasting its fruit, she was banished from the garden and the gates clanged shut behind her. That mother of men was made to wander in the wilderness and earn her bread by the sweat of her brow, not by filling her mouth with the sweet juicy fruits that bend the branches low. In order to eat, she was instructed to subdue the wilderness into which she was cast.

To be native to a place we must learn to speak its language. Listening in wild places, we are audience to conversations in a language not our own. I think now that it was a longing to comprehend this language I hear in the woods that led me to science, to learn over the years to speak fluent botany.

You think you're in Connecticut, but you're in the jungle.

Here the streets were rivers in just hours, one lightning strike could cause a raging forest fire. Nature was always waiting to take itself back by any means necessary. There was something he liked about that, the violence of it, the truth.

Gwydion stood as a wolf at bay, his green eyes glittering, his teeth bared.

Hunting hawks did not belong in cages, no matter how much a man coveted their grace, no matter how golden the bars. They were far more beautiful soaring free. Heartbreakingly beautiful.

Hunting hawks do not belong in cages, no matter how much a man covets their grace, no matter how golden the bars. They are far more beautiful soaring free. Heartbreakingly beautiful. He

all the wild ways he had shown me, mosses and rushes and heather, the home of the curlew and snipe, and the grazing grounds of the geese, all those enchanted fields and the magical willows lying under the edge of the bog, all were to be spoiled, hidden, sold and disenchanted by that terrible force named Progress.

It was better to be a wild thing in the lovely marshes, than to have a soul that cried for beautiful things and found not one.