“When someone doesn't show up, the people who wait sometimes tell stories about what might have happened and come to half believe the desertion, the abduction, the accident. Worry is a way to preten...”

“In her novel Regeneration, Pat Barker writes of a doctor who 'knew only too well how often the early stages of change or cure may mimic deterioration. Cut a chrysalis open, and you will find a rott...”

“They are all beasts of burden in a sense, ' Thoreau once remarked of animals, 'made to carry some portion of our thoughts.' Animals are the old language of the imagination; one of the ten thousand ...”

“Perhaps walking is best imagined as an 'indicator species,' to use an ecologist's term. An indicator species signifies the health of an ecosystem, and its endangerment or diminishment can be an ear...”

“[In mountaineering, if] we look for private experience rather than public history, even getting to the top becomes an optional narrative rather than the main point, and those who only wander in hig...”

“The famous Zen parable about the master for whom, before his studies, mountains were only mountains, but during his studies mountains were no longer mountains, and afterward mountains were again mo...”

“When the world shifts its focus on heart over mind, we will finally experience a beautiful global village for our children.”

“Women scheme when they are weak, they lie out of fear. Men scheme when they are strong, they lie out of arrogance.”

“Sometimes it's not always straightforward, but it's not always confusing either. You just have to respect a person's decisions without disrespecting them.”

“He went on, but I tuned him out. I made eye contact and nodded occasionally, but I didnt hear what he was saying. I had heard it all before. Even men who shouldve known betterovereducated progressi...”

“There is always a man eager to explain my mental illness to me. They all do it so confidently, motioning to their Hemingway and Bukowski bookshelf as they compare my depression to their late-night ...”