Nathaniel Philbrick Quotes

To the lost man, to the pioneer penetrating a new country, to the naturalist who wishes to see the wild land at its wildest, the advice is always the same - follow a river. The river is the original forest highway. It is nature's own Wilderness Road.

The expedition of Messrs. Lewis & Clarke for exploring the river Missouri, & the best communication from that to the Pacific ocean, has had all the success which could have been expected.

We have an extensive system of highways, ports, locks and dams, and airports.

He gave us the lakes for our Northern boundary, and the rivers stretching to the seas upon whose waters floats our commerce to the nations of the world; while man has done all that can be done by science to bind us together.

Some of them profess to be well acquainted with all the principal waters of the Columbia, with which they assured me these waters had no connection short of the ocean.

I went for a walk in the Arctic Circle without map or compass. Fortunately, I was only lost for hours, not days.

… a people occupied as we are in opening rivers, digging navigable canals, making roads

Rivers are highways that move on and bear us whither we wish to go.

I started out thinking of America as highways and state lines. As I got to know it better, I began to think of it as rivers.

Though the words Canada East on the map stretch over many rivers and lakes and unexplored wildernesses, the actual Canada, which might be the colored portion of the map, is but a little clearing on the banks of the river, which one of those syllables would more than cover.

Winds flap the sail, tortoise and snake are silent, a great plan looms. A bridge will fly over this moat dug by heaven and be a road from north to south. We will make a stone wall against the upper river to the west and hold back steamy clouds and rain of Wu peaks. Over tall chasms will be a calm lake, and if the goddess of these mountains is not dead she will marvel at the changed world.

Rivers are roads which move, and which carry us whither we desire to go.

The more I see of deer, the more I admire them as mountaineers. They make their way into the heart of the roughest solitudes with smooth reserve of strength, through dense belts of brush and forest encumbered with fallen trees and boulder piles, across canons, roaring streams, and snow-fields, ever showing forth beauty and courage.

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.

Mapping, both literal and metaphorical, has always been about our quest for knowing.

Specifically choose not to take a GPS. Just create a challenge. You can climb Everest or walk across Antarctica with minimal gear and still have that sense of adventure. But in terms of exploration, Google Earth has this world mapped down to the square foot.

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.'

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.

I have my mountain man moments like hiking in the woods.

The earliest maps were 'story' maps. Cartographers were artists who mingled knowledge with supposition, memory and fears. Their maps described both landscape and the events, which had taken place within it, enabling travellers to plot a route as well as to experience a story.

A tourist follows a trail; a mountaineer finds one.

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

We were just looking at maps.

Christopher Columbus, who said to Queen Isabella, No, you got it wrong! The world is round. You're flat! Never got a dinner!