Wilderness Navigation Quotes

A rule about portages: the longer and harder they are, the fewer people will make them.

The long, long road over the moors and up into the forest - who trod it into being first of all? Man, a human being, the first that came here. There was no path before he came.

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.

I write - though perhaps it sounds pretentious to say so - to make a clearing in the wilderness, to find out what I care about and what exactly to make of it.

In this place were a number of savages who had come for traffic in furs, several of whom came to our vessels with their canoes, which are from eight to nine paces long, and about a pace or pace and a half broad in their middle, growing narrower toward the two ends. They are very apt to turn over, in case one does not understand managing them, and are made of birch bark, strengthened on the inside by little ribs of white cedar, very neatly arranged. They are so light that a man can easily carry one. …. When they want to go overland to a river where they have business, they carry them with them. From Chouacoet along the coast as far as the harbor of Tadoussac, they are all alike.

Anyone ever lost in the wild knows that nature wants you dead.

If it's January, I'm dead in three hours. But in June, I'd be hungry, but I'd make it out. I'd find my way without a map or compass. I say that with confidence. I can build a fire without a match.

The way of a canoe is the way of the wilderness, and of a freedom almost forgotten.

Anyone who doesn't believe that the forest is a deadly place has never been lost in one.

I have climbed several higher mountains without guide or path, and have found, as might be expected, that it takes only more time and patience commonly than to travel the smoothest highway.