Henry David Thoreau Quotes

I actually grew up watching 'Survivorman' and Bear Grylls. I know that pine needles are a good source of vitamin C and just random facts from watching the stuff.

Take a trip to the forest and experience the greatness of getting on your knees and picking your own food and going home... and eating it.

I like squirrels. They're so adventurous.

I talk to children in schools all over the world, and I've found that both boys and girls are fascinated by how hunter-gatherers manage to survive entirely on what's around them in their environment: trees, rocks, animals and plants.

I don't really know any survival skills of any kind.

I can't start a fire with two sticks or hunt rabbits or anything like that.

You can pick wild strawberries with your eyes closed, locating them by smell, for they are two parts perfume to one part taste. An hour of searching might yield a handful if you're lucky. Wild strawberries can't be encouraged, nor can they be discouraged: They come to you unbidden and unearned. They appear, or do not, by the grace of the sun.

I like the skill set required to be an outdoorsman - to cook food over fire and to climb rocks without ropes, to move around using nothing but yourself and maybe some rudimentary tools.

Part of the beauty of wilderness schooling is that the overheads are very low. You want a classroom? Build a shelter from nature's store. You want to eat? Forage for it.

I've tried to eat little shrubs before. We were on an unsupported 20-plus day traverse, following the migration of endangered antelope across the Chang Tang Plateau. We were like, 'Oh, this is what they ate; we should try it.'

Trees are essentially growing chairs. There are lots of primates that sit and sleep in them.

As a child and young adult, I delighted in being able to identify almost any wild plant or animal.

I'm happy to feed the squirrels - tree rats with the agility of point guards - but in fair weather, they frighten my finches. They leap from snowbank to porch to feeder and stuff their cheek pouches with chickadee feed.

There's always hand-to-hand combat. All you need is to come up with a knife, and you'll at least stand a chance. If I get jumped, I'm dead!" I can hear my voice rising in anger. "But you won't! You'll be living up in some tree eating raw squirrels and picking off people with arrows.

I'm in the woods so much I can tell you which plants are edible.

You only need sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns.

He may travel who can subsist on the wild fruits and game of the most cultivated country.

The squirrel in my yard really knows his way around the neighborhood.

It is easiest to lose your way in the forest after it is cut.

As God contains all good things, He must also contain a sense of playfulness -- a gift he has shared with Creatures other than ourselves, as witness the tricks Crows play, and the sportiveness of Squirrels, and the frolicking of Kittens.

The squirrel has not yet found the acorn that will grow to the oak that will be cut to form the cradle of the babe that will grow to slay me.

Generally speaking, there's a difference. Moose nose is just pure cartilage. It's not just the end of a chicken leg, it really is - imagine the cartilage of game meat.If I ever took the spare tire off of my car and was on a survival show, and Bear Grylls was like, "What you need to do in a survival situation is eat your tire," I'd be like, "That's moose nose!"

When the blackberries hang swollen in the woods, in the brambles nobody owns, I spend all day among the high branches, reaching my ripped arms, thinking of nothing, cramming the black honey of summer into my mouth; all day my body accepts what it is. In the dark creeks that run by there is this thick paw of my life darting among the black bells, the leaves; there is this happy tongue.

Let me tell you, if you have never seen an agitated squirrel you have seen very little, nor have you heard much, because the sound of an angry squirrel is not to be forgotten.

The first time I came across the birds and the bees in actual flight, I couldn't identify the formation.