Carrot Quinn Quotes

And then, well . . . He might have slept for a bit. He rather hoped he was sleeping, because he was quite certain he’d seen a six-foot rabbit hopping through his bedchamber, and if that wasn’t a dream, they were all in very big trouble. Although really, it wasn’t the rabbit that was so dangerous as much as the giant carrot he was swinging about like a mace. That carrot would feed an entire village.

I remember reading somewhere that there are only two possible prayers: “help me” and “thank you.” “Thank you,” I say to the universe, before I fall asleep.

no place is how you expect it to be, and the best thing to do is to not want things in the first place.

They say there's a long, narrow ribbon of space-time that stretches from Mexico to Canada. I hear you can live there, for a little while, as long as you keep moving. But be careful, it will break your heart.  

In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or to step back, into safety. -Abraham Maslow

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born. -Anais Nin

Time disappears, and it is just me and the mountain, and the wind. I have always been in this windstorm, I think, as I fight my way forward. And I will always be in this windstorm. Up ahead, on a ridge, is a single tree. Someday, I think, I am going to be reincarnated as that tree. As punishment for every choice I've ever made. Or as a reward.  

I’ve spent every waking moment nurturing and maintaining my relationship with this eighteen-inch by 2660-mile ribbon of dirt.

I’ve been eating this shit for so long that I’ve transcended the need to actually enjoy my food. No more desires. Eat to live, not live to eat.

I think about how no place is how you expect it to be, and the best thing to do is to not want things in the first place. But it’s so hard to do that. So hard.

How long before all grief is accounted for and I can begin the tedious process of sorting through the tangled barrels, picking off the useful bits, letting the wind carrying the rest away.

I love you", says the doug-fir. "I love you so much." I can feel the tree there, the tree underneath me the tree all around me, the tree inside of me. The trees holding each other holding the soil holding me. The trees more patient than anything, save the ocean. The trees with the long view. I can feel their pity- "Little mammal", they say, "with your two legs. Running around saying Where Do I Belong. Making value judgments on the wind, the flowers in the springtime, the shapes of the stars. Little mammal with your trembling heart. I am your home and I love you and I will always be here.

When I get home I spend a few hours typing customer service emails and working on the listings in my online bookstore, which is the other half, besides the dog-walking, of what I call my “Portland hustle”- the way I make my living in this strange city where hipsters with masters degrees fight each other for barista jobs.

When I climb into my tent I feel happy and light. I’ve gone twenty-nine miles today, my longest day ever. Ever ever.

You’d think, too, that at this point in the trail I’d have this figured out. And maybe I have. Maybe I know exactly how much food I should bring, and I chose not to bring it.

I am, at this point, what Instigate calls “vista'd out-” I barely see the views. In fact, I have grown very, very weary of them. Ridgelines, bah! The convoluted surface of the earth! Light and shadow! I am over all of it.

What are you doing?” he shouts, waving his free arm in the air. “Trying to get to Canada,” says Instigate. “Why?

On the other side of the valley are more mountains, partly cloaked in smog. Rows of wind turbines march across the valley floor. As I walk, I imagine that I am leaving the enchanted mountains and descending into the windy valley of a dark lord. The

What a convoluted kaleidoscopic twisted universe we live in. What glory, what heights and depths. I want to hike until I fall apart.

In this moment it is everything, it is the whole universe, spinning away into forever. But still I don't understand it. What is fleeting, and what is mine to keep? Already I feel a great sorrow building inside me, a knowing feeling of loss. How did I get here, and how will I find my bearings once all of this is gone?

We're just mammals, living our imperfect lives on this three-legged dog of a planet. We fuck up for a little while, and then we die. But it's beautiful. So beautiful. And not because some organized religion tells you so but because you know it, in your heart. And nothing can ever take that away from you.

A while later I stop in a stand of big doug-firs and lean my body against one of them. The bars of yellow sun are scattered just so and I push my face into the deep rutted bark of the tree smelling the spider webs there, the dust, the hardened pitch. Big doug-fir, I think. What do I need to know right now. I love you, says the doug-fir. I love you so much. I can feel the tree there, the tree underneath me the tree all around me, the tree inside of me. The trees holding each other holding the soil holding me. The trees more patient than anything, save the ocean. The trees with the long view. I can feel their pity- Little mammal, they say, with your two legs. Running around saying Where Do I Belong. Making value judgments on the wind, the flowers in the springtime, the shapes of the stars. Little mammal with your trembling heart. I am your home and I love you and I will always be here.

It’s just me up here on the mountaintop, between the earth and sky. It’s just me, the sound of my breath as I push myself up to the ridge; it’s just me, beneath the Milky Way. The stars are singing to me, the air that rises from the valleys; all of this is for me. There is a peace inside of me, a feeling of emptiness. Above me the galaxy is spinning, or I’m spinning, or we’re all spinning. There is no time, I think. There has never been any time. There is only this.

forward

the

When you hitchhike, people tell you their secrets. You exist in a liminal space between what is real and what is not, a sort of leaf come unstuck from an eddy. The driver feels as though talking to you, the hitchhiker, is like stuffing a note into a bottle and tossing it into the sea.

I have not "cowboy camped" in a long time. When you cowboy camp, you do not set up a tent. Your roof is the stars, and you are cradled by the wind. Insects crawl over you in the night. They pause on the bridge of your nose. They check their watches. They are running late. They hurry down your cheeks, muttering to themselves. They don't think of you, of your heavy human worries. They have their own lives.

I could lie down in a sunlit clearing and sleep forever. Let the forest digest me.

I suddenly realize how lucky I am to have never had a father.

How long until the ghosts catch up to me? Until they crowd around me, shouting away anything wonderful in my world. Until they grab my ankles and attempt to drag me underground, back into the darkness.

I had learned that you couldn't escape the darkness entirely, but you could learn to live above it. Grief was an ocean but you could reach the surface and bob there, where the light was.

Try to get support while you're doing this," he said, his eyes kind. "Talk to someone who knows about grief. Don't white-knuckle your way through this." I started crying, and he handed me a box of tissues. I felt like he could see right through me.

And maybe, one of these nights, talking with Tara in the yellow light from the oil lamp, we'll stumble upon answers; answers to the riddles that are stuck like thorns into the darkest parts of our hearts.

I love you, says the doug-fir. I love you so much. I can feel the tree there, the tree underneath me the tree all around me, the tree inside of me. The trees holding each other holding the soil holding me. The trees more patient than anything, save the ocean. The trees with the long view. I can feel their pity- Little mammal, they say, with your two legs. Running around saying Where Do I Belong. Making value judgments on the wind, the flowers in the springtime, the shapes of the stars. Little mammal with your trembling heart. I am your home and I love you and I will always be here.

She smells like hotel soap and the mountains, like wind and fabric softener.

Petrichor,

They say that the way you do one thing is the way you do everything,

The hikers are all starting to look the same to me -- fit white dudes in safari wear, powering over the passes faster than I will ever be able to. One of these hikers is wearing a sort of sweat-soaked towel around his neck, and presently he stands above the trough and wrings out the towel into the water. Today the spring is running, and a little water trickles from the pipe into the trough. But the spring is not always running, and hikers after us will have to filter directly from the stone trough. No bueno, I think. Another man, dressed nearly identically, appears and dips his sweaty shirt into the trough. No bueno, I think again.

The negative things I used to obsess about are just sort of gone. I seem to have worked through all of them while pounding out miles in the desert, worn them down like worry stones until there was nothing left at all, just sand that slipped through my fingers and away.

I am always sober. It's my lot in life. I don't know why, I can't explain it. At least not in any way that makes sense to other people. Alcohol makes me feel sick. Or, I don't like to be intoxicated.