An adventurous life does not necessarily mean climbing Mountains, swimming with sharks or jumping off cliffs. It means risking yourself by leaving a little piece of you behind in all those you meet along the way.
~Shawna Grapentin

Always in the big woods when you leave familiar ground and step off alone into a new place, there will be, along growth a feeling of curiosity and excitement, a little nagging dread. It is the fear of the unknown, and it is your first bond with the wilderness that you are going in to.

What you are doing is exploring. You are undertaking the first experience, not of place, but of yourself in that place. It is an experience of our essential loneliness; for nobody can discover the world for anybody else.

It is only after we have discovered it for ourselves that it becomes a common bond and we cease to be alone.
~ Wendell Berry

The real secret to freedom seems to lie in the ability to deal with ambiguity, the capacity to tolerate noise and yet hear within its wild randomizing abandon the possibilities of innovation and transformations.
~William Thompson

I find the great thing in this world is not so much about where we stand, as in what direction we are moving…

We must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it, – but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.
~ Oliver Wendall Holmes

Men go back to the mountains, as they go back to the sailing ships at the sea, because in the mountains and on the sea they must free up, as did men of another age, to the challenges of nature.

Modern man lives a highly synthetic kind of existence. He specializes in this and that. Rarely does he test all his powers or find himself whole. But in the hills and on the water the character of a man comes out.
~ Abram T. Collier

Climbing is akin to love, It’s hard to explain. We endure the pain for the joy that comes with discovering ourselves and the planet.
~ Cory Richards