Tag Archives: Outdoors Quotes

Practical Pessimism

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“We might be accused of being a tad pessimistic. In fact, that is not entirely true, because while we do believe that we could, at any moment, lose our incomes and end up destitute, we also believe in ourselves enough to be confident that our jobs are not our only source of support. And that attitude is, ultimately, what led us to our current lifestyle. Seeing what was happening, we decided to not allow circumstance to force us into a situation where we might have to make that very difficult decision between feeding ourselves and having a place to live.”

–Browsing Nature’s Aisles: A Year of Foraging for Wild Food in the Suburbs by Wendy Brown and Eric Brown

Food and Perceptions of Poverty

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“What happened in this country, especially since the Industrial Revolution, was that wild foods were deemed of lesser quality, and therefore less desirable, than cultivated foods. The prevailing attitude seemed to become that if one had to forage for food, that meant that one was too poor to purchase food, and in this Land of Opportunity, where everyone could and should be rich, being poor was akin to being worthless and lazy. Only those who were very desperate foraged, and only in times of extreme hardship … or only for certain foods.”

–Browsing Nature’s Aisles: A Year of Foraging for Wild Food in the Suburbs by Wendy Brown and Eric Brown

Thrill of Facing Fear

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I keep climbing, not only because I can’t back down without falling but because I feel so good all of a sudden. I faced my fears and won.

–If You Lived Here, I’d Know Your Name: News from Small-Town Alaska by Heather Lende

Learn Without Fear

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“What we lack in education and experience, we more than make up for in gumption, and a willingness to put ourselves out there. We know a lot more today than we did a year ago, and  each new lesson has empowered us with a deeper understanding of how capable we are, if we allow ourselves to simply learn, without fear.”

–Browsing Nature’s Aisles: A Year of Foraging for Wild Food in the Suburbs by Wendy Brown and Eric Brown

Gardens Are Heaven

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The late Harold Epstein said that the first thing he did after he got to Heaven, after picking a flower he’d never seen before, was to thank God for the priceless gift of garden insanity.”

–God Bless You Dr. Kevorkian, by Kurt Vonnegut

Note: In this book ‘Garden insanity’ = being an avid and passionate gardener.

Environmental Empowerment

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“It is empowering to believe we can stay in good health by making the right choices in lifestyle. It is equally empowering, however, to realize that these choices also extend to the natural world, the environment.”

–Animal, Mineral, Radical: Essays on Wildlife, Family, and Food by BK Loren

Burden of Convenience

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“It’s not that I abhor convenience. It’s that I feel slathered in it. It no longer feels like a privilege, but like a burden…”

–Animal, Mineral, Radical: Essays on Wildlife, Family, and Food by BK Loren

We Need What We Fear

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“If the lion, in all its dark, nocturnal otherness, in all its light, internal sameness, does not exist for future generations, if we destroy its habitat, or call open season on it, what could we possibly find to replace it? It is precisely because we fear large predators that we need them. They hold within them so many things we have lost, or are on the verge of losing, personally and collectively, permanently and forever. If we sacrifice the fear, we also sacrifice the strength, the wildness, the beauty, the awe.”

–Animal, Mineral, Radical: Essays on Wildlife, Family, and Food by BK Loren

Trail Magic

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“There is a phenomenon called Trail Magic, known and spoken of with reverence by everyone who hikes the trail, which holds that often when things look darkest some little piece of serendipity comes along to put you back on a heavenly plane.“

–A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail (Official Guides to the Appalachian Trail) by Bill Bryson

Community Defined

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“If diversity’s what it’s all about, then our neighborhood is all that and a bag of chips. But without a shared sense of purpose, diversity spells conflict and isolation, not opportunity. I figure that tract of land is what brought us together. None of us is about to give that up.”

“Before I stepped out of my house that cold morning three years ago, I might have told you “community” was some kind of Up with People fantasy—like-minded folks sharing a Norman Rockwell moment. Now I think community has little to do with like minds. It has to do with very differently minded people finding a way to get along because we all live in, are connected to, and share a sense of place.“

–Animal, Mineral, Radical: Essays on Wildlife, Family, and Food by BK Loren