John Burnside Quotes

For the information of young hunters, I will just say, in this place, that whenever a fellow gets bad lost, the way home is just the way he don't think it is. This rule will hit nine times out of ten.

We were working under very harsh conditions on 'Zero Kelvin.' We were up there in the Arctic, closer to the North Pole than to a hospital. Sometimes you had to sleep in small Arctic tents with guns to protect yourself from polar bears and stuff.

Once, I got lost in the middle of the desert and had to follow the North Star to find the dirt road where my truck was parked a few miles away. Another time, I got stuck in quicksand for two days.

To the lover of wilderness, Alaska is one of the most wonderful countries in the world.

Mountaineering is one of the most difficult sports - we are away from routine life for days, living in tents, and it requires high degree of physical and mental strength.

I grew up in the north woods of Canada. You had to know certain things about survival. Wilderness survival courses weren't very formalized when I was growing up, but I was taught certain things about what to do if I got lost in the woods.

The most remote place I've been to was in Greenland. I remember setting out for a solo hike from a small cabin, itself several hours' boat ride from the nearest settlement.

I like to run in a new place to help me find my way around.

The area inside the Arctic Circle contains 8 percent of the earth’s surface and 15 percent of its land…. The Arctic produces 40 percent of the world’s palladium, 20 percent of its diamonds, 15 percent of its platinum, 11 percent of its cobalt, 10 percent of its nickel, 9 percent of its tungsten, and 8 percent of its zinc.

The true alpinist doesn't want any infrastructure, he wants to go into the wild. And the odds of getting killed there are relatively high. And most people are sensible enough not to want that.

I moved at age 22 to Montana to be able to walk in really wild woods, where the chances of being killed by a bear or mountain lion are not zero.

Yeah, I like going away for camp. It brings out the savagery.

Never to get lost is not to live, not to know how to get lost brings you to destruction.

We took special pride in the fact that climbing rocks and icefalls had no economic value in society...We were like a wild species living in the edges of an ecosystem - adaptable, resilient and tough.

The wilderness rescued me. I have been shaped by my experiences in the great outdoors. Feeling comfortable in the wild gave me the confidence to be who I am, not who others want me to be.

I think, as a young guy, I was always drawn to being in wild places. Climbing was a logical extension of that.

A tourist follows a trail; a mountaineer finds one.

Phoney: Here's your problem Fone Bone! We're off the map! Get a bigger map!

Oh my goodness, I hate camping. I am like Frida times 1,000. I have always been attracted to wilderness stories, à la the movie Badlands, when Sissy Spacek and Martin Sheen are in the woods on the lam - maybe because it scares me a little.

When you're lost in those woods, it sometimes takes you a while to realize that you are lost.

I'm a little lamb who's lost in the wood.

The explorer is the person who is lost.

When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods: what would become of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall? Even some sects of philosophers have felt the necessity of importing the woods to themselves, since they did not go to the woods. They planted groves and walks of Plantanes, where they took subdiales ambulationes in porticos open to the air. Of course, it is of no use to direct our steps to the woods, if they do not carry us thither.

It is a real wilderness, and those who go there should not feel too safe.

The Lewis and Clark tale has all the all the elements that one would want to put into a movie. It has the, continual threat for life; it's got the thread of Indians; it's got disease. It has daily risk where these men may go under the water. It's got the fight with the elements. It's got the el the role of the unknown continually threatening them.