“Spraying to kill trees and and raspberry bushes after a clear-cut merely looks unaesthetic for a short time, but tree plantations are deliberate ecodeath.”

Your mind slides into a groove, and once it is in that groove, has difficulty noticing anything outside of it. During this time, my sense must be sharp; that is the main thing – to be sharp, yet open.

I already had a good start. As a teenager in rural Maine, after we came to America, I had learned hunting, fishing, and trapping in the wilderness.

My Maine mentors had long ago taught me to make home brew. I owned a rifle, and I’d already built a log cabin. The rest should be easy. I thought I’d give it a shot.

Trying to live in harmony with the dictates of nature is probably as inspirational as living in harmony with the Koran or the Bible. Perhaps it is also a timely undertaking.

Barry L. Jacobs and colleagues from the neuroscience program at Princeton University showed that when mice ran every day on an exercise wheel, they developed more brain cells and they learned faster than sedentary controls. I believe in mice.

Running is perhaps the most fundamental of all sports, and it is economically the least costly to perform.

Conditions are seldom ideal, and if one waits long enough for ideal conditions one is just making excuses.

The essential thing is to run period! And to do it for a long time and consistently and then everything will take care of itself.

I do not yet want to form a hypothesis to test, because as soon as you make a hypothesis, you become prejudiced.

For those that endure until spring, existence is reduced to its elegant essentials.

We are social animals. We like to feel a part of something of beauty and power that transcends our insignificance. It can be a religion, a political party, a ball club. Why not also Nature? I feel a strong identity with the world of living things.

As a consequence, it is the most democratic and most competitive of all sports because individual merit can prevail despite economic equality. It is a sport for everyone, the whole world over.

Edward Abbey said you must brew your own beer; kick in you Tee Vee; kill your own beef; build your cabin and piss off the front porch whenever you bloody well feel like it.

The very idea of “managing” a forest in the first place is oxymoronic, because a forest is an ecosystem that is by definition self-managing.

People should be happy to see you when you show up to a club because you’re a good person. And stop caring about what the industry is “looking for”. Just say what you think is funny. .

Without loving and caring for others, most of us stand little chance of communing with God/the Divine Wisdom, no matter how many years we may spend in silent prayer.

Similarly, only people as misanthropic as myself can be counted on not to have to lie to others, since we have the unique luxury of not caring what sort of opinions others formulate about us.

I have seen what a laugh can do. It can transform almost unbearable tears into something bearable, even hopeful.

I have a medical condition, all right. It’s called caring too much, and it’s incurable. Also, I have eczema.

Selfish is caring for ourselves at others’ expense … Self-care is taking care of ourselves so that we can be there for others.

Trauma really does confront you with the best and the worst. You see the horrendous things that people do to each other, but you also see resiliency, the power of love, the power of caring.

I don’t care if you’re obscene, filthy, horrendous — as long as you’re honest.