“Another glorious Sierra day in which one seems to be dissolved and abs...” — John Muir Quote

“Another glorious Sierra day in which one seems to be dissolved and absorbed and sent pulsing onward we know not where. Life seems neither long nor short, and we take no more heed to save time or make haste than do the trees and stars. This is true freedom, a good practical sort of immortality.”

“It seems strange that bears, so fond of all sorts of flesh, running the risks of guns and fires and poison, should never attack men except in defense of their young. How easily and safely a bear could pick us up as we lie asleep! Only wolves and tigers seem to have learned to hunt man for food, and perhaps sharks and crocodiles.”

“Sheep, like people, are ungovernable when hungry.”

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”

“Take a course in good water and air; and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.”

“The practical importance of the preservation of our forests is augmented by their relations to climate, soil and streams.”

“We tend to forget that life can only be defined in the present tense.”

“They say time heals all wounds, but that presumes the source of the grief is finite”

“Genealogy becomes a mania, an obsessive struggle to penetrate the past and snatch meaning from an infinity of names. At some point the search becomes futile – there is nothing left to find, no meaning to be dredged out of old receipts, newspaper articles, letters, accounts of events that seemed so important fifty or seventy years ago. All that remains is the insane urge to keep looking, insane because the searcher has no idea what he seeks. What will it be? A photograph? A will? A fragment of a letter? The only way to find out is to look at everything, because it is often when the searcher has gone far beyond the border of futility that he finds the object he never knew he was looking for.”

“Do I perform sometimes in a manic style? Yes. Am I manic all the time? No. Do I get sad? Oh yeah. Does it hit me hard? Oh yeah.”

“Time is fluid, like the wide sky that fades into bright orange in a sunset in The Ozarks. Every moment is meant to be sipped and savored like a slow mimosa.”