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“Childhood is a wilderness.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“And now it was official: I loved REI more than I loved the people behind Snapple lemonade.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

“I'd read the section in my guidebook about the trail's history the winter before, but it wasn't until now—a couple of miles out of Burney Falls, as I walked in my flimsy sandals in the early evening heat—that the realization of what that story meant picked up force and hit me squarely in the chest: preposterous as it was, when Catherine Montgomery and Clinton Clarke and Warren Rogers and the hundreds of others who'd created the PCT had imagined the people who would walk that high trail that wound down the heights of our western mountains, they'd been imagining me. It didn't matter that everything from my cheap knockoff sandals to my high-tech-by-1995-standards boots and backpack would have been foreign to them, because what mattered was utterly timeless. It was the thing that compelled them to fight for the trail against all the odds, and it was the thing that drove me and every other long-distance hiker onward on the most miserable days. It had nothing to do with gear or footwear or the backpacking fads or philosophies of any particular era or even with getting from point A to point B.

It had only to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles for no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts, streams and rocks, rivers and grasses, sunrises and sunsets. The experience was powerful and fundamental. It seemed to me that it had always felt like this to be a human in the wild, and as long as the wild existed it would always feel this way. That's what Montgomery knew, I supposed. And what Clarke knew and Rogers and what thousands of people who preceded and followed them knew. It was what I knew before I even really did, before I could have known how truly hard and glorious the PCT would be, how profoundly the trail would both shatter and shelter me.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

“I want to set a record. Not just any record, but an athletic record. One that everyone will know me for. One that my dad will be proud of. I don't know what it will be, but I will do it. I have a lot of weaknesses, but I have two critical strengths. I am stubborn and I am smart.”
― Heather "Anish" Anderson, Thirst: 2600 Miles to Home

“.. And now it was official: I loved REI more than I loved the people behind Snapple lemonade.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

“And so, despite the complex web of paths, waterfalls, cliffs, as a hiker wanders downhill, drainages merge, faint, abstract paths coalesce, thicken, until there is one path �� the one, natural, trodden way.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“I was passive by nature. I had always been. Arguing felt unnatural and uncomfortable. I was always agreeing even when I didn’t really, instinctively looking for ways to forfeit power, to become more dependent, to be taken care of. I realized how intensely Icecap reminded me of Jacob. They were similar, both diligent and harsh in their judgments—and my big brother’s sureness had always comforted me.

But as I ran on sore legs to keep up with Icecap, my tendency toward silence stressed me.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“Though I was starved for contact, I didn’t stop to talk to any of these strangers. I had forgotten how to convincingly speak the polite things strangers say to each other.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“My mother overstated the dangers of the world �� invented threats. And so I saw: Starbursts�� hoof-made gelatin never gave me mad cow. Mad cow was not a threat to me. And so I thought: most risks weren’t truly real.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“In a world where we seem to be beset by a trend towards 'manualising treatment modalities' the person-centred approach stands and says NO, that is not the way forward.”
― Richard Bryant-Jefferies, Counselling a Survivor of Child Sexual Abuse: A Person-Centred Dialogue

“My body was smarter than I was. I was with someone who would never hurt me, and so I finally relaxed.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“We are more than a speck of carbonic flesh flung upon an unimportant hulking mass of earth. Within each of us is the godhead we so desire to know, or as may be the case, wish to forget.”
― Justin Arn

“I’ve spent every waking moment nurturing and maintaining my relationship with this eighteen-inch by 2660-mile ribbon of dirt.”
― Carrot Quinn, Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail

“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.”
― Carrot Quinn, Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail

“Krenuvši na ovo putovanje bio sam čovjek potpuno urušene vjere u ljude. Živio sam u okruženju koje me je sustavno gazilo, uvjeravalo da ne vrijedim takav kakav jesam, da moram postati netko drugi da bih bio dovoljno dobar, u okruženju u kojem sam uvijek bio drugi, manje vrijedan, onaj koji ne zaslužuje. A takav nam je i svijet. Suvremeno nas društvo uvjerava da vrijedimo onoliko koliko zarađujemo, koliko posjedujemo, kako smo sposobni izgraditi carstvo na muci drugih, koliko smo sposobni prodati se, zadiviti druge i pružiti usluge i znanja koja se mogu prodati i unovčiti. Tko se tu ne uklapa, tomu se dobro ne piše”
― Nikola Horvat, Baring Epitaph: Story from Pacific Crest Trail

“Vrijeme na thru hikeu gotovo da i ne postoji. U današnjem svijetu satova čovjek je izgubio pojam o tome što znači živjeti neograničen vremenom. Vrijeme je suprotnost �����č�ԴDz���i. Vječnost je božanska. Osjetiti �����č�ԴDz��� znači osjetiti svemir i njegov spokoj. Tek kroz spokoj čovjek biva izmijenjen.”
― Nikola Horvat, Baring Epitaph: Story from Pacific Crest Trail

“I refuse to let this suffering be for nothing. In fact, I refuse to suffer." I whispered to myself as I pushed each tent stake into the ground. "I can adapt. I am adapting." Another long day was done and I was forty-two miles closer to Canada.”
― Heather "Anish" Anderson, Thirst: 2600 Miles to Home

“I knew with certainty now—I could say no, and he would stop. Above all, I felt the fierce beauty of the choice. I knew now what it was that had held me from falling into my desire to be with him fully: I first needed to make sure he was a man who would respect my 'No.”
― Aspen Matis

“If I couldn't find the trail before dark, I could wake tomorrow disoriented and desperate, without having even made any new miles; my loss of the PCT should have distressed me, but a new instinct led me forward. In this moment of despair I was refusing to stop fighting. I asked the mountains for some guidance, the strength to get myself out of here, and pulled wild power from within myself I'd never known I'd had.

I was no longer following a trail.

I was learning to follow myself.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“Divljina je ta originalnost. U njoj čovjek otkriva najprije sebe i svoja ograničenja, potom okolinu i njenu povezanost s transcendencijom, a najzadnje svoje mjesto u toj okolini. Nalazeći svoje mjesto u okolini čovjek se okreće smislu. Divljina je mjesto vraćanja onamo gdje je sve počelo, kako je bilo osmišljeno prije ljudske intervencije. Divljina je jeka postanka. U njoj osluškujemo originalnu Stvoriteljevu zamisao, ne samo o nama samima, već i o cijelom svemiru.”
― Nikola Horvat, Baring Epitaph: Story from Pacific Crest Trail