Terrain Navigation Quotes

You create a pile of dirt and then drive over it. We may have to learn to drive all over again.

You conquered the landscape with the soles of shoes, not the tires.

Unless you know the mountains and the forests, the defiles and impasses, the lay of the marshes and swamps, you cannot maneuver with an armed force. Unless you use local guides, you cannot get the advantages of the land.

I once drove a pair of horses from New York to Vicksburg, and to this day I can almost map out that country as I saw it then, with its hills and valleys, villages and rivers. Yes, I naturally attribute something of my success in railroad building to the interest I take in such things.

Humans can actually read a landscape, go through a lot of rocks - crack them open, throw them, pick up the next one. Rovers are great - they do amazing science - but it is a lot more tedious process; they go much less far than a human can cover in a day.

We didn't know if the rover could climb up or down the hills of the crater.

We are here for what amounts to a few/hours,/a day at most./We feel around making sense of the terrain,/our own new limbs,/Bumping up against a herd of bodies/until one becomes home./Moments sweep past. The grass bends/then learns again to stand.

I like to think that I can run, but I remember once running up and down through different terrains while on set in Iceland, and I face planted.

It's about the pleasure of being in the mountains, traveling efficiently over the terrain, having that sense of dynamic motion which you don't get when you're on foot.

The question is: how you cross uneven ground, how you assemble networks around you.

As my men could profitably employ themselves on these streams, I moved slowly along, averaging not more than five or six miles per day and sometimes remained two days at the same encampment.

Always get over heavy ground as lightly as you can.