Wilderness Series Quotes

Making the best of things is a damn poor way of dealing with them. My life has been a series of escapes from that quicksand.

Wilderness areas are first of all a series of sanctuaries for the primitive arts of wilderness travel, especially canoeing and packing. I suppose some will wish to debate whether it is important to keep these primitive arts alive. I shall not debate it. Either you know it in your bones, or you are very, very old.

We need a new ethic of place, one that has room for salmon and skyscrapers, suburbs and wilderness, Mount Rainier and the Space Needle, one grounded in history.

It's never too late to have a happy childhood.

Perhaps meditation is simply anything we do with our full attention, full awareness, full heart. Anywhere we find truth, or love. Something we do, not to be the fastest, or the best, or to win a prize, or to make a lot of money, but simply because we love it. Whatever it may be.

Every prophet has to come from civilization,” Churchill would explain, “but every prophet has to go into the wilderness. He must have a strong impression of a complex society . . . and he must serve periods of isolation and meditation. This is the process by which psychic dynamite is made.

Must be frustrating being a scientist. There you are, incrementally discovering how the universe works via a series of complex tests and experiments, for the benefit of all mankind - and what thanks do you get? People call you "egghead" or "boffin" or "heretic", and they cave your face in with a rock and bury you out in the wilderness. Not literally - not in this day and age - but you get the idea. Scientists are mistrusted by huge swathes of the general public, who see them as emotionless lab-coated meddlers-with-nature rather than, say, fellow human beings who've actually bothered getting off their arses to work this shit out.

Wild beach is my primordial address.

From everything that I'd read, End Timers were waiting for the collapse of civilization the way fans of the Twilight series awaited the trailer for Breaking Dawn.

Walking. Rhythmic walking. When I’m backpacking I’m backpacking. There is nothing else. No phone to answer, no email to check, no bills to pay, no errands to run. Nothing but backpacking.

What she read was a series of short connected lyrics, “Isis in Darkness.” The Egyptian Queen of Heaven and Earth was wandering in the Underworld, gathering up pieces of the murdered and dismembered body of her lover Osiris. At the same time, it was her own body she was putting back together; and it was also the physical universe. She was creating the universe by an act of love.

I know of no better way to live my life than from the perspective of that old man. The ninety-year-old me. Because I always know what he would say. And it’s never, “I should have worked more, saved more, bought a nicer car, a bigger house, been more responsible.

I prefer to be wrong to save the wildness of the right.

[Grant] himself had discovered the Army of the Potomac’s one weakness, the lack of springy formation, and audacious, self-reliant initiative.

Joe Johnston would have retreated after two days of such punishment,” Ulysses S. Grant noted,

It is no use speaking in soft, gentle tones if everyone else is shouting.

Wilderness is our only hope. The one place we can always come back to.

Don’t be one way, Wishing for another, Only to arrive at the new way, Wishing for the first.

Beauty is indeed a choice. Day by day, moment by moment, we choose love or hate, life or death, light or darkness. The seeds for both are contained within all things, both living and nonliving. It all depends on what we focus on. We create our own world. Focus on beauty and beauty you find. Focus on darkness and darkness will prevail. Beauty guides through the heart. Darkness through the mind.

If we slowed our lives down enough to allow for naps, wouldn’t we all have more enjoyable days, more productive days? Why do our work ethics tells us to work more? Work harder? Work longer? Anything less than eight hours—unacceptable. Towards the end of our workday, how productive are we, really? Are we actually working at that point, or just staring at a computer screen, staring at the clock? Passing the time?

It’s all too easy to assume that the darkness in this world lies outside of ourselves. That others are to blame. Yet only when we learn to see the darkness inside of ourselves, can we hope to develop compassion for the darkness in others. For even the darkest of places contain the seed of light.

When you hike through the forest you have no choice but to experience every step. The slow speed at which you move through the wilderness allows you to experience the landscape in such an intimate way. You have the opportunity to slow down and look across every stunning mountain vista, touch the blossoming azaleas, feel the cool mist of the waterfalls, and smell the rich scents of the forest as you pass through it. You have the opportunity to experience this paradise that is our planet.

The man, who goes afoot, prepared to camp anywhere and in any weather, is the most independent fellow on earth.” —HORACE KEPHART, 1904

I’ve got vodka in the fridge.” Maggie snorted. “It’s nine A.M.” “We’ll put orange juice in it.

Lincoln believed he had finally found a general who understood the grim math of war and who possessed the resolve to do what needed to be done, as unpleasant as it would be.

Wilderness. My problems are over the moment I step out onto the trail, pack loaded, schedule free.

Before you have your dreams, your dreams have you, and every day pushes a night before it while the wilderness follows.

Life is a series of disappointments, Mr. Tolland. Life is a series of promises that come to nothing.

I know that the best adventures are often off-trail, and blissful solitude will be guaranteed.

series of infatuations for admired writers.

We come from the Earth. We return to the Earth. It happens over and over and over. You might say, we are the Earth. We’ve only to step away from our world of plastic and concrete to understand.

What if there were a secret back-door portal to enlightenment? A shortcut, so to speak. I believe that the answer lies here, in wilderness. The shortcut is the long walk. However, you must go it alone. Once you get past the jitteriness of day one, the cravings of day two, and the loneliness of day three, meditation comes easily and naturally. Months of tension can be released in just a few days.

I liked being with Wilder. The world was a series of fleeting gratifications. He took what he could, then immediately forgot it in the rush of a subsequent pleasure. It was this forgetfulness I envied and admired.

Incapable of conquering true wilderness,” he writes, “Europeans were highly competent in the skill of conquering other people. . . . They did not settle a virgin land. They invaded and displaced a resident population.”51

Writing is an exhausting and demoralizing task that destroys human conceits. Writing an elongated series of personal essay opens a person’s mind to explore paradoxes and discover previously unrealized personal truths. Writing is as arduous as any trek into the wilderness. Every sentence takes a writer deeper into the jungle of the mind, a world of frightening inconsistencies created by our waking life’s desire that the world of chaos conform to our convenience.

The Desert Fathers believed that the wilderness had been created supremely valuable in the eyes of God precisely because it had no value to men. The wasteland was the land that could never be wasted by men because it offered them nothing. There was nothing to attract them. There was nothing to exploit. The desert was the region in which the Chosen People had wandered for forty years, cared for by God alone. They could have reached the Promised Land in a few months if they had traveled directly to it. God's plan was that they should learn to love Him in the wilderness and that they should always look back on the time in the desert as the idyllic time of their life with Him alone. The desert was created simply to be itself, not to be transformed by men into something else.

Border crossing' is a recurrent theme in all aspects of my work -- editing, writing, and painting. I'm interested in the various ways artists not only cross borders but also subvert them. In mythology, the old Trickster figure Coyote is a champion border crosser, mischievously dashing from the land of the living to the land of the dead, from the wilderness world of magic to the human world. He tears things down so they can be made anew. He's a rascal, but also a culture hero, dancing on borders, ignoring the rules, as many of our most innovative artists do. I'm particularly drawn to art that crosses the borders critics have erected between 'high art' and 'popular culture,' between 'mainstream' and 'genre,' or between one genre and another -- I love that moment of passage between the two; that place on the border where two worlds meet and energize each other, where Coyote enters and shakes things up. But I still have a great love for traditional fantasy, for Imaginary World, center-of-the-genre stories. I'm still excited by series books and trilogies if they're well written and use mythic tropes in interesting ways.

No matter how bad your life can ever get, how low you can feel, how much society lets you down, you can always come back here. You can always go home. You can lose everything, but no one can take away your Wilderness. She’s always here. Waiting. Ready to welcome you back with open arms. Ready to welcome you home.

In our cities of concrete and steel, we’ve removed ourselves from these cycles. We’ve forgotten the circle of life and the interconnectedness of all things. A shift in consciousness is all that is required. Life is abundant, with plenty to go around, until things fall out of balance. We will either evolve, or we will die.

Dream on, Bullwinkle.” “Oooh, a classic cartoon reference. Now you’re talking my language.” I couldn’t help a grin. “You like cartoons?” “Hell yeah! The classics, though. Looney Tunes, Rocky and Bullwinkle, Mickey Mouse, The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Transformers. I’ll even include the 1990s Batman animated series, but I usually stick to pre-1990.” I

Plant a stick in the ground and lie down on your back. Looking at the top of the stick like a gun sight, line this up with a star. After several minutes, the star will appear to have moved as the earth has rotated. If the star moves left, you are facing north. If the star moves up, you are facing east. If the star moves right, you are facing south. If it moves down, you are facing west. The

Remember me with smiles and laughter, for that is now I will remember you all. If you can only remember me with tears, then don't remember me at all. [6/5/2019 -correct authors: Michael Landon and Blanche Hanalis, written for "Little House TV series, "Remember Me, part 1" episode.] this is verified from curators of the Laura Ingalls Wilder museum - Laura Ingalls Wilder did not write this quote.

Back home, Huxley drew from this experience to compose a series of audacious attacks against the Romantic love of wilderness. The worship of nature, he wrote, is "a modern, artificial, and somewhat precarious invention of refined minds." Byron and Wordsworth could only rhapsodize about their love of nature because the English countryside had already been "enslaved to man." In the tropics, he observed, where forests dripped with venom and vines, Romantic poets were notably absent. Tropical peoples knew something Englishmen didn't. "Nature," Huxley wrote, "is always alien and inhuman, and occasionally diabolic." And he meant always: Even in the gentle woods of Westermain, the Romantics were naive in assuming that the environment was humane, that it would not callously snuff out their lives with a bolt of lightning or a sudden cold snap. After three days amid the Tuckamore, I was inclined to agree.

Though Wilder blamed her family’s departure from Kansas on “blasted politicians” ordering white squatters to vacate Osage lands, no such edict was issued over Rutland Township during the Ingallses’ tenure there. Quite the reverse is true: only white intruders in what was known as the Cherokee Strip of Oklahoma were removed to make way for the displaced Osages arriving from Kansas. (Wilder mistakenly believed that her family’s cabin was located forty—rather than the actual fourteen—miles from Independence, an error that placed the fictional Ingalls family in the area affected by the removal order.) Rather, Charles Ingalls’s decision to abandon his claim was almost certainly financial, for Gustaf Gustafson did indeed default on his mortgage. The exception: Unlike their fictional counterparts, the historical Ingalls family’s decision to leave Wisconsin and settle in Kansas was not a straightforward one. Instead it was the eventual result of a series of land transactions that began in the spring of 1868, when Charles Ingalls sold his Wisconsin property to Gustaf Gustafson and shortly thereafter purchased 80 acres in Chariton County, Missouri, sight unseen. No one has been able to pinpoint with any certainty when (or even whether) the Ingalls family actually resided on that land; a scanty paper trail makes it appear that they actually zigzagged from Kansas to Missouri and back again between May of 1868 and February of 1870. What is certain is that by late February of 1870 Charles Ingalls had returned the title to his Chariton County acreage to the Missouri land dealer, and so for simplicity’s sake I have chosen to follow Laura Ingalls Wilder’s lead, contradicting history by streamlining events to more closely mirror the opening chapter of Little House on the Prairie, and setting this novel in 1870, a year in which the Ingalls family’s presence in Kansas is firmly documented.

I like to walk home by the Cliff Walk, and as I never can break off when once I’ve begun it, I generally end up by doing all four miles. I bring a book along and read a hundred pages in every one of my favorite retreats, while the sun goes down and the almost-Italian sea goes through a series of enchanting metamorphoses between its headlands and rocks. The homes of the rich are all but on the Walk and almost all open now, but never once have I encountered a Real One out walking. . . .

TIMELINE OF LAURA INGALLS WILDER’S LIFE 1865-Laura’s sister Mary is born in Pepin, Wisconsin 1867-Laura Ingalls is born in Pepin, Wisconsin 1869-The Ingallses move to Indian Territory, Kansas 1870-Caroline Ingalls, “Carrie,” is born in Kansas 1871-The Ingallses return to the Big Woods of Wisconsin 1874-Lives in a dugout near Walnut Grove, Minnesota 1875-Charles Frederick Ingalls, “Freddy,” is born 1876-Laura’s brother, Freddy, dies at nine months old Laura moves with her family to Burr Oak, Iowa 1877-Grace Ingalls is born in Burr Oak 1879-Mary becomes blind after a fever 1880-The Ingallses begin homesteading in De Smet, Dakota Territory 1885-Almanzo Wilder and Laura Ingalls marry 1886-Rose Wilder born in De Smet 1894-The Wilders move to Mansfield, Missouri 1932-Little House in the Big Woods is published when Laura is sixty-five 1954-Laura awarded the first Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, for her eight-book Little House series 1957-Laura (age ninety) dies at her Rocky Ridge home in Mansfield

National Park. This I must keep reminding myself. Our parks serve a great purpose, not just for preservation, but also as a funnel. The Designated Route. Mobs of tourists, RVs, buses, and family station wagons out on summer vacation need a place to go. Our national parks serve this purpose, complete with entrance fees, advance reservation campgrounds, snack bars, game rooms, bowling alleys, roped-off viewpoints, paved trails, lodges, and reserved backcountry campsites. Permit required. For a fee.

I pursued Gary into the wilderness of Delta Vega. I didn’t stand a chance against him. Either I got lucky or he was just too overconfident. He slipped, and I phasered a giant bolder that crushed him. It was the first person I’d killed face-to-face. I never saw the faces of the beings who lost their lives battling me ship-to-ship. This face, Gary’s face, is one I still see every day. He had been looking after me for almost ten years, and in a few short days he was turned into some kind of monster. Yet in my nightmares

He peeled the towel that imprisoned us away and let it fall. I felt it slide softly off my backside, and I felt, too, his rising excite¬ment, hard, erect, pressing against me. My nipples were erect, straining, aching, pressed against his strong warm damp chest, the tangle and pattern of his hair. He was a beast, an animal. My excitement was rising again, to match his. It was as if my heart were about to burst or to flip flop, breathless, into a dark abyss. “Of course, you are crazy, my darling, but, then, so am I.” He kissed me and his oh-so-clever hands seized my waist, tighten¬ing, and then sneaking up my backside, pulling me, pressing me closer, into him. He kissed me again, and his lips moved down my neck to my shoulder and then to my breasts. “Oh,” I said, “Oh.” He bent over me, kissing my collarbone and then my breasts, carefully, slowly, his hands traveling down my back, and over my backside; suddenly, he was on his knees, kissing the whorl of 101 my belly button; then he was forcing me open, gently, gently, his tongue exploring caressing, devouring … “Oh …” I exhaled a deep, shuddering breath. I tipped on the very edge. He bit me, gently. Oooooh! He pulled in the reins, the bit and bridle, of the frisky frothing filly that I had become; this sudden halt made me wilder, crazier; then, once again, he brought me, trembling, up to the very, very edge of the cliff – of orgasm, of loss of self. Then he pulled me back. I blinked and trembled. Around the two of us, there was a whole world, a whole universe. It seemed too vivid to be real, like the backdrop in an opera. Venus was brighter and lower now. The sky had turned deep indigo. One by one, stars appeared.

We all have things we love to do. And it’s the people around us who love us that help us unlock these dreams. It’s ONLY when you find the people you love that you can create and flourish. Henry Ford was 45 when he started his third car company and created the assembly line. He did this once he eliminated all the people who tried to control him at prior companies. Colonel Sanders was 65 when he started KFC. Laura Ingalls Wilder was 65 when she wrote her first book. The book launched the Little House on the Prairie series. This was after she had been totally wiped out in the Great Depression and left with nothing but she started to surround herself with people who encouraged her and pushed her to pursue writing to make ends meet. 4.“What humanity has collectively learned so far would make up a tiny mark within the circle. Everything we all have to learn in the future would take up the rest of the space. It is a big universe, and we are all learning more about it every day. If you aren’t listening, you are missing out.” The other day someone asked me if I believe in God. There’s no answer. Always have reverence for the infinite things we will never know.

Remember: Between mountains lies the valley. You may have tumbled down from your former heights. You may have been thrown down. Or simply lost your way. But now you find yourself here. It is a low point. So? A long desert. A desolate valley. Either way, you’ll need to cross it. You’ll need patience and endurance and most of all love. You can’t let this period make you bitter. You have to make sure it makes you better. Because people are counting on you. Don’t give up hope. Don’t give up on them. They know not what they do. You, on the other hand, do know. This desert, this wilderness was given to you to cross. It’s part of your journey. To struggle makes the destination glorious. And heroic.

They say that wisdom comes with age. So who could be wiser than the sky, with its eternal sunsets, thunderstorms, stars, galaxies? Who could be wiser than the rocks, these monoliths of stone, witness to all, over the eons of time? There’s an all-knowingness out here. It lies within all this silence and stillness. A wisdom so profound that it transcends words. An understanding so pure it cannot be explained, cannot be taught, nor grasped by the human mind. Only felt. Experienced firsthand. When I tap into this wisdom, a switch is flipped, a reversal happens. My mind, always up front, driving and controlling everything, takes a back seat. And my soul, hiding quietly in the back seat, jumps up to take shotgun.

I am consoled only to see that I was not mistaken: Chicago is just as I remembered it. I was here twenty five years ago. My father brought me and Scott up to see the Century of Progress and once later to the World Series. Not a single thing do I remember from the first trip but this: the sense of the place, the savor of the genie-soul of the place which every place has or else is not a place. I could have been wrong: it could have been nothing of the sort, not the memory of a place but the memory of being a child. But one step out into the brilliant March day and there it is as big as life, the genie-soul of the place Which, wherever you go, you must meet and master first thing or be met and mastered. Until now, one genie-soul and only one ever proved too strong for me: San Francisco—up and down the hills I pursued him, missed him and was pursued, by a presence, a powdering of fall gold in the air, a trembling brightness that pierced to the heart, and the sadness of coming at last to the sea, the coming to the end of America. Nobody but a Southerner knows the wrenching rinsing sadness of the cities of the North. Knowing all about genie-souls and living in haunted places like Shiloh and the Wilderness and Vicksburg and Atlanta where the ghosts of heroes walk abroad by day and are more real than people, he knows a ghost when he sees one, and no sooner does he step off the train in New York or Chicago or San Francisco than he feels the genie-soul perched on his shoulder.

Jane doesn't watch very much television. She used to watch it more. She used to watch comedy series, in the evenings, and when she was a student at university she would watch afternoon soaps about hospitals and rich people, as a way of procrastinating. For a while, not so long ago, she would watch the evening news, taking in the disasters with her feet tucked up on the Chesterfield, a throw rug over her legs, drinking a hot milk and rum to relax before bed. It was all a form of escape. But what you can see on the television, at whatever time of day, is edging too close to her own life; though in her life, nothing stays put in those tidy compartments, comedy here, seedy romance and sentimental tears there, accidents and violent deaths in thirty-second clips they call bites, as if they were chocolate bars. In her life, everything is mixed together.

Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the classic series Little House, lived that idea, facing some of the toughest and unwelcoming elements on the planet: harsh and unyielding soil, Indian territory, Kansas prairies, and the humid backwoods of Florida. Not afraid, not jaded—because she saw it all as an adventure. Everywhere was a chance to do something new, to persevere with cheery pioneer spirit whatever fate befell her and her husband. That isn’t to say she saw the world through delusional rose-colored glasses. Instead, she simply chose to see each situation for what it could be—accompanied by hard work and a little upbeat spirit. Others make the opposite choice. As for us, we face things that are not nearly as intimidating, and then we promptly decide we’re screwed. This is how obstacles become obstacles. In other words, through our perception of events, we are complicit in the creation—as well as the destruction—of every one of our obstacles. There is no good or bad without us, there is only perception. There is the event itself and the story we tell ourselves about what it means. That’s a thought that changes everything, doesn’t it?

His Sons, the fairest of her Daughters Eve. Under a tuft of shade that on a green Stood whispering soft, by a fresh Fountain side They sat them down, and after no more toil Of thir sweet Gardning labour then suffic’d To recommend coole Zephyr, and made ease More easie, wholsom thirst and appetite More grateful, to thir Supper Fruits they fell, Nectarine Fruits which the compliant boughes Yeilded them, side-long as they sat recline On the soft downie Bank damaskt with flours: The savourie pulp they chew, and in the rinde Still as they thirsted scoop the brimming stream; Nor gentle purpose, nor endearing smiles Wanted, nor youthful dalliance as beseems Fair couple, linkt in happie nuptial League, Alone as they. About them frisking playd All Beasts of th’ Earth, since wilde, and of all chase In Wood or Wilderness, Forrest or Den; Sporting the Lion rampd, and in his paw Dandl’d the Kid; Bears, Tygers, Ounces, Pards Gambold before them, th’ unwieldy Elephant To make them mirth us’d all his might, & wreathd His Lithe Proboscis; close the Serpent sly Insinuating, wove with Gordian twine His breaded train, and of his fatal guile Gave proof unheeded; others on the grass Coucht, and now fild with pasture gazing sat, Or Bedward ruminating: for the Sun Declin’d was hasting now with prone carreer To th’ Ocean Iles, and in th’ ascending Scale Of Heav’n the Starrs that usher Evening rose: When Satan still in gaze, as first he stood, Scarce thus at length faild speech recoverd sad. O Hell! what doe mine eyes with grief behold, Into our room of bliss thus high advanc’t Creatures of other mould, earth-born perhaps, Not

... man is generous with the word "fool" and is ready to serve it up to his neighbor twenty times a day. It is enough to have one stupid side out of ten to be accounted a fool, aside from the nine good ones ... in the world chronicle of mankind there are many whole centuries which, it would seem, should be crossed out and abolished as unnecessary. There have been many errors in the world which, it would seem, even a child would not make now. What crooked, blind, narrow, impassable, far-straying paths mankind has chosen, striving to attain eternal truth, while a whole straight road lay open before it, like the road leading to a magnificent dwelling meant for a king's mansions! Broader and more splendid than all other roads it is, lit by the sun and illumined all night by lamps, yet people have flowed past it in the blind darkness. So many times already, though guided by a sense come down from heaven, they have managed to waver and go astray, have managed in broad daylight to get again into an impassable wilderness, have managed again to blow a blinding fog into each other's eyes, and, dragging themselves after marsh-lights, have managed finally to reach the abyss, only to ask one another in horror: where is the way out, where is the path? The current generation now sees everything clearly, it marvels at the errors, it laughs at the folly of its ancestors, not seeing that this chronicle is all overscored by divine fire, that every letter of it cries out, that from everywhere the piercing finger is pointed at it, at this current generation; but the current generation laughs and presumptuously, proudly begins a series of new errors, at which their descendants will also laugh afterwards.

Understanding the base numbers and the spectrum that each number works on makes personal growth and the interaction with others more natural as you are able to look beneath the surface and see what is really going on, what energies are in play, and what vibrations shape the outlook someone has on life.

The real world is outside. Away from our man-made cells of concrete and steel. It’s out there. Don’t be fooled. You always have a choice. Remain part of the machine or walk away, out into the great mystery of life. Go now. Find your treasure.

OH, NIETZSCHE The last Christmas Eve of the nineteenth century was very cold Piercing winds and snow stuffed themselves into the cracks of every door and window As professors of philosophy gathered in the Golden Hall Their nonsense and hollow academic jargon were winning applause Feeling a chill, professors furrowed their brows And refined ladies unconsciously pulled their collars closed No one paid attention to the chill, no one even responded But the howling wind outside the window Swept across Europe’s wide sky Outside, Nietzsche was wandering around in the wilderness His thoughts were accompanied by the snowy winds and howls of wolves In this frozen world his thoughts shed their skin again and again Like a bloody struggle to be free of incorporeal chains He relentlessly pursued the truth No one could understand his eccentric and arrogant disposition No one could answer his disdain for this world For only a blizzard of manuscripts accompanied him Weathered by a tormenting disease Nietzsche bitterly suffered from his solitary meditation His discontent with thoughts surged like gales blowing the heavy snow Sweeping the sky and earth with a wild fervor What a pure yet brutal world At that moment the bells of a new century were ringing The generation of heroes Nietzsche called “supermen” From “Martin Eden” penned by Jack London To the old man who went fishing with Hemingway Have already shocked the whole world Through so many sleepless nights he endured the torture of disease Yet nurtured the poetic longing of solitude and indifference An infant thought undergoes the trauma of birth To finally cry out in an earth-shattering voice Nietzsche, before the sunrise changed the world The entire sky shimmered with your incandescent thoughts The nearly extinguished candle was burning your final passion Nietzsche, oh Nietzsche, let us walk on together

They had jerrybuilt the beaches from San Diego to the Golden Gate, bulldozed super-highways through the mountains, cut down a thousand years of redwood growth, and built an urban wilderness in the desert. They couldn’t touch the ocean. They poured their sewage into it, but it couldn’t be tainted. There was nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn’t cure.

Nature is feeling. Art invokes feeling, so the more we bring art into our lives, our cities, the more we welcome nature back into our beings. Art mimics nature. So with art we bring the natural world back into our stale, mind-dominated society. If we can’t bring the masses into the wilderness—would we want to?—why not bring nature to the masses? The effect on the heart and mind is substantial, and helps tune us

In wilderness, we are immersed in truth. It becomes abundantly clear that our pain derives from our false sense of separation. Here, that separation is utterly and completely gone—gone like a bad dream. We’re returned to our natural order and place in the world.

Damon Wilder was a man driven to the edge of sanity. Moving to this tiny town on the coast was his last effort to hang onto life.

plants, and the Earth: a tiny speck of dust hurling through space, in a universe full of infinite galaxies. And all of this within an even larger void of all-consuming nothingness. This is reality. Not some idealistic fairytale version of the world, but the real actual truth. And it’s spellbinding. In wilderness, we see that our lives are utterly and completely meaningless. And in this we find meaning. The lesson is always the same.

plants, and the Earth: a tiny speck of dust hurling through space, in a universe full of infinite galaxies. And all of this within an even larger void of all-consuming nothingness. This is reality. Not some idealistic fairytale version of the world, but the real actual truth. And it’s spellbinding. In wilderness, we see that our lives are utterly and completely meaningless. And in this we find meaning. The lesson is always the same. We

It exists for our amusement—and there is nothing wrong with it—so long as we realize that the real world is outside, with the rest of nature, and should be treated as such. When we preserve wilderness we preserve what is real, natural, and essential to our health and well

In Micah 5:2 God eliminated all the cities of the world and selected Bethlehem, with a population of less than one thousand people, as the Messiah’s birthplace. Then through a series of prophecies he even defined the time period that would set this man apart. For example, Malachi 3:1 and four other Old Testament verses require the Messiah to come while the Temple of Jerusalem is still standing (see Psalm 118:26; Daniel 9:26; Zechariah 11:13; Haggai 2:7-9). This is of great significance when we realize that the Temple was destroyed in AD 70 and has not since been rebuilt. Isaiah 7:14 adds that Christ will be born of a virgin. A natural birth of unnatural conception was a criterion beyond human planning and control. Several prophecies recorded in Isaiah and the Psalms describe the social climate and response that God’s man will encounter: His own people, the Jews, will reject him, and the Gentiles will believe in him (see Psalms 22:7-8; 118:22; Isaiah 8:14; 49:6; 50:6; 52:13-15). He will have a forerunner, a voice in the wilderness, one preparing the way before the Lord, a John the Baptist (see Isaiah 40:3-5; Malachi 3:1). Notice how one passage in the New Testament (Matthew 27:3-10) refers to certain Old Testament prophecies that narrow down Christ’s address even further. Matthew describes the events brought about by the actions of Judas after he betrayed Jesus. Matthew points out that these events were predicted in passages from the Old Testament (see Psalm 41:9; Zechariah 11:12-13). In these passages God indicates that the Messiah will (1) be betrayed, (2) by a friend, (3) for thirty pieces of silver, and that the money will be (4) cast on the floor of the Temple. Thus the address becomes even more specific. A prophecy dating from 1012 BC also predicts that this man’s hands and feet will be pierced and that he will be crucified (see Psalm 22:6-18; Zechariah 12:10; Galatians 3:13). This description of the manner of his death was written eight hundred years before the Romans used crucifixion as a method of execution. The precise lineage; the place, time, and manner of birth; people’s reactions; the betrayal; the manner of death—these are merely a fraction of the hundreds of details that make up the “address” to identify God’s Son, the Messiah, the Savior of the world.

To hike quickly here would be like racing through an art gallery. -- Wilderness, The Gateway To The Soul, Scott Stillman

Thornton Wilder: The problem of telling you about my past life as a writer is like that of imaginative narration itself; it lies in the effort to employ the past tense in such a way that it does not rob those events of their character of having occurred in freedom. A great deal of writing and talking about the past is unacceptable. It freezes the historical in a determinism. Today’s writer smugly passes his last judgment and confers on existing attitudes the lifeless aspect of plaster-cast statues in a museum. He recounts the past as though the characters knew what was going to happen next.

INTERVIEWER: So that you have not eliminated all didactic intentions from your work after all? Thornton Wilder: I suspect that all writers have some didactic intention. That starts the motor. Or let us say: many of the things we eat are cooked over a gas stove, but there is no taste of gas in the food.

oak can help relieve sinus congestion and headaches.

Bushcraft” is a term for wilderness skills and is the practice of surviving

you must master a unique skill set that includes firecraft, navigation, trapping, creating shelter, tracking, and the use of tools, both modern and primitive.

Bushcraft” is a term for wilderness skills and is the practice of surviving and thriving in the natural world.

Another woman writer who, like Edith Durham, fell in love with this part of Albania, was the American, Rose Wilder Lane, at that time the highest-paid woman writer in the USA. Her mother was Laura Ingalls Wilder, whose even better-known books of the Little House on the Prairie series were much loved by generations of little girls.

PACO Book 5 in the Night Rebels MC Series Coming in December, 2017

When a child dies, we’re thrown into a forbidding wilderness that seems virtually unpopulated. We’re stunned, shattered, and feel very much alone. Then people start coming forward, or we happen to trip across them here and there. They too have lost a child. We can see grief we understand in their eyes and on their shoulders. Yes, they are in the same club.

When an experience is an unusually powerful emotional event, there may be a series of reactions. These are both common and normal. Signs and symptoms of critical-incident stress include the following: 1. Physical—enduring fatigue, sleep dysfunction (either needing too much or insomnia), change of appetite (eating too much or too little), gastrointestinal upset, headache, backache, chills, nausea, muscular twitches or tremors, shock-like symptoms (especially in acute stress), hyperactivity, or its opposite, underactivity. 2. Emotional—anger, irritability, fear, grief, anxiety, guilt, depression, feeling overwhelmed, identification with the patient(s) in a rescue, emotional numbness, feelings of helplessness or hopelessness. 3. Cognitive—memory loss, especially anomia (the inability to remember names); inability to attach importance to things other than the incident; concentration problems; loss of attention span; difficulties with calculations, decision-making, and problem-solving; flashbacks; nightmares (especially recurrent ones), amnesia for the event; violent fantasies; confusing the importance of trivial and major tasks.

A note on the file folder said More series material in box 3312. “That one, Molly.” Reed pointed to the box on the top shelf in the corner. “Get that one. Look for two stories from the series. The folders might have something written on them.” Still on the higher shelf, Wilson heaved the box nearer, opening to the case of Cyras Makepeace. “Remember that case, Tom? Wilderness guide whose customers died hiking?” “Yeah, it’s all coming back. Cyras arranged to make himself a beneficiary on their insurance policies before his clients had wilderness accidents. They never charged him even after a couple of exhumations.” “Here’s the last one on the series,” Wilson said, just as the lights flickered, the floor shook from the presses, and the board she was standing on cracked. “Look out!” Wilson caught herself but the box crashed, files spilled on the floor at Reed’s feet He bent down to collect them. He reached for a black-and-white mug shot and he froze. “Jesus Christ!” Realization rushed at him with all the fury and the earth-shaking thunder of the presses, driving him to his knees as he studied the face that met his in the flickering light.

GOLDIE Book 4 in the Night Rebels MC Series Coming in August, 2017 Goldie,

Who wrote it first? Who was borrowing from whom? Such were the questions that roiled the women after the publication of Let the Hurricane Roar and lay uneasily between them as Lane prepared to leave Rocky Ridge Farm for good. For the first time since Wilder had begun writing her children’s series, they would be forced out of their long-established routine of editorial conferences masked as teas and social visits. As they took up their consultations by mail, putting all their queries, complaints, and arguments down on paper, the question of how much the daughter would be allowed to influence the mother’s work—and how much she could borrow for her own—assumed new urgency.

Cognizant

We are all in the “wilderness” until we allow Jesus in our lives! This is my inspiration behind my book series.

Let’s start the show.” Tameka pressed play before hurrying back to her seat. In less than ten minutes, Tameka and Royce were made happy. They cheered at a series of explosions as the bad guy escaped with the swirly blue cube.

I’m still aching from last night. You still know how to hit that spot so good. ;) Call me later, stud.

Palmer has learned over the course of many years of “consolations and desolations” to accept either experience as part of the journey, while allowing neither to determine her level of commitment to God. If anything, the more desolate she feels emotionally, the more firmly she clings to the Word of God. Palmer’s journey included many seasons in the dark, many bouts of emotional desolation and absence of spiritual assurance. For Palmer these seasons were experienced as a kind of testing in the wilderness, not unlike the testing of Jesus in the wilderness, whose sustenance was the naked word of God.39 This kind of spiritual combat, as already described elsewhere, marked Palmer’s spiritual journey throughout her lifetime.

Laura Ingalls Wilder. She published the first book in the Little House on the Prairie series at age sixty-five.

But he was so erratic and unreliable, and this was reconfirmed—though not on purpose—by

You’re hot and cold. It’s confusing. So I want to know why you think you like me.

Thanks for the great time. –D

The wise will go upstairs, undo buttons and hair, fold themselves within the covenant of flesh and make love wilder than any weather. — Bob Hicok, from “Weather,” The Legend of Light (The University of Wisconsin Press, 1995)

When we learn to seek light in the darkest of places, and brighten it with our own, only then can we hope to evolve.

I’m not here to tame or conquer, I’m here to connect. To find the gateway. I know it’s out here. If I’m not careful I could miss it.

Work? Stress? Bills? The past? What past? Everything is perfect now, And when is it ever not now?

I was born to walk the Earth, experience the amazing beauty of this planet, and witness the splendor and magic of all things—to be overwhelmed by a ray of sunlight, touched by an encounter with a frog, and mystified by the texture of a rock wall. I was born to splash through the creeks, sing through the canyons, laugh with the squirrels, just as I did as a small child in the woods behind our family’s home. I was born to be a kid, and not take life too seriously, or get sidetracked by a career, a project, or anything that ties me down to the life of bills, shiny new toys, status, and pavement.

The secret to life is now. In every living moment. Whatever that moment may look like.

How much better to simply let things be as they are, and witness life with a sense of humor? It is quite silly, after all.

At the first itch of loneliness we pick up the phone, log onto the internet, knock at the neighbor’s door, or start a project. What about boredom, depression, anger, sadness? We run. Constantly we’re running from our emotions. Our society is one of quick fixes. There’s a pill for depression, a gadget for boredom, social media for loneliness, the pub for sadness. We are afraid of being with our emotions. We are afraid of being with ourselves.

But if we take away our story, our past, what’s left? Searching for an answer, we pick up a spiritual book, surf the web, call up a friend. We run! What if we just stopped? Felt the breeze on our face, the sun on our back. Focused on the lighting, the shapes, the colors.