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“We take too much of our heritage for granted. Harriman State Park is not Mt. Vernon. Nor is it Yosemite. But heritage cannot be measured on a scale...”
― Mary E. Reed, Harriman: From Railroad Ranch to State Park

“Few things in this world evoke scrotum-shriveling fear in a man like a group of frowning women, enraged to the point of atypical silence, ambling toward him with an obvious agenda.”
― Michael Gurnow, Nature's Housekeeper

“Do we allow unlimited visitation, or do we restrict numbers to protect a delicate ecosystem? Do we heavily advertise the park, enticing paying visitors, generating needed money for Idaho's park department, or do we sacrifice financial benefits to better preserve natural ones? Do we log diseased trees, interfering with nature, or do we allow trees to rot and fall, possibly endangering lives? Do we inexpensively repair historic structures, or do we meticulously restore them? Do we maintain this park as closely as possible to the condition in which Idaho received it, or do we develop it for multiple uses; allow overnight visitors; permit all-terrain vehicles; provide paths for those unable to navigate unpaved trails?”
― Mary E. Reed, Harriman: From Railroad Ranch to State Park

“I had married an environmentalist and didn’t know it.
I knew without having to look that there was no tree hugging indemnity clause even in the fine print of our marriage certificate. But we’d been manacled together in the Catholic Church. I wondered if I could get some leverage with the religious institution if I pinned my wife with the label of nature-worshipping Wiccan or possibly even Druid.”
― Michael Gurnow, Nature's Housekeeper

“At least Ozymandias had a statue erected in his name. If I were to have died at that moment, the only thing I had managed to erect in my honor was a shrine to China’s manufacturing capabilities.”
― Michael Gurnow, Nature's Housekeeper

“If owning frivolous articles of excess were indeed the trappings of malevolence, my home was ready to play host to the Axis powers.”
― Michael Gurnow, Nature's Housekeeper

“I'd somehow managed to get an executive stuck in a tree. Instead of a saucer of milk and 'Here kitty, kitty, kitty,' someone might want to bring a hedge fund and a recording of George Bush promising 'No new taxes.”
― Michael Gurnow, Nature's Housekeeper

“As soon as the first piece of foliage came within blade’s reach, my student started frantically swinging the machete like he was defending his virtue from a trove of drunken, handsy woodland elves. 'I feel like I’m in the movie Predator,' he said as he decapitated a flower.”
― Michael Gurnow, Nature's Housekeeper

“My wife simply quoted, 'For better or worse.' It was only then that I realized the phrase was not multiple-choice.”
― Michael Gurnow, Nature's Housekeeper

“I had not been prepared for my employer’s approach to vehicular navigation, which was a simple case of being unable to tell the difference between a very large, multi-windowed van that could accommodate a mobile disco and a Formula One racer.”
― Michael Gurnow, Nature's Housekeeper

“April is the cruelest month.' So begins T.S. Eliot’s 1922 masterpiece, a 434-line poem titled 'The Waste Land.' Until my employment as a trail maintenance worker, this had simply been a line on a page, albeit a line fraught with metaphorical import and potential. Now I saw it for what it was—a big fat lie—because Eliot grew up in St. Louis and no one forgets what a Missouri summer is like. If the Nobel laureate had been truthful with himself, the opening verse would start out, 'June’s a bitch.”
― Michael Gurnow, Nature's Housekeeper

“In the course of all of the compass-spinning twists, roller coaster hills, and sphincter-contracting turns, I hadn’t noticed that we had stopped at the top of a very large ridge. The beginning of the trail was not pleasant, inviting, or even remotely civil; it was recreational molestation at its best.”
― Michael Gurnow, Nature's Housekeeper

“My wife also contributed to my poison ivy education. She taught me women have an aversion to 'red, bumpy men' and are not the least bit aroused by any part of the male anatomy which happens to be infected. However, this was not a problem. My infestation was so severe, the act of scratching produced orgasmic waves of delight that made me consider scheduling weekly au naturel pilgrimages through lush, rolling fields of the devil vine.”
― Michael Gurnow, Nature's Housekeeper