If you want the rainbow

“If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.” – Dolly Parton

I have one speed…

“I have one speed and it’s forward” – Jim Walmsley

“Win or lose, there’s a measure of victory in the endeavor” -Martin Litton

It’s great to be fast…

“It’s great to be fast, but it’s better to be a great person.” -Shalane Flanagan

Never Grow a Wishbone

For My Daughter By Sarah McMane “Never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be.” – Clementine Paddleford “Never play the princess when you canbe the queen:rule the kingdom, swing a scepter,wear a crown of gold.Don’t dance in glass slippers,crystal carving up your toes —be a barefoot Amazon instead,for those shoes will surely shatter

The End of Poetry

“Enough of osseous and chickadee and sunflowerand snowshoes, maple and seeds, samara and shoot,enough chiaroscuro, enough of thus and prophecyand the stoic farmer and faith and our father and tisof thee, enough of bosom and bud, skin and godnot forgetting and star bodies and frozen birds,enough of the will to go on and not go

Suppose We Say

“Suppose we say that wilderness invokes nostalgia, a justified not merely sentimental nostalgia for the lost America our forefathers knew. The word suggests the past and the unknown, the womb of the earth from which we all emerged. it means something lost and something still present, something remote and at the same time intimate, something

We Need a Refuge

“We need a refuge even though we may never need to go there. I may never in my life get to Alaska, for example, but I am grateful that it’s there. We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope…” -Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

All That Is Human

“All that is human is melted with the sky and faded out beyond the mountains and I felt, as I feel — is it a paradox? — that a man can never find or need better companionship than that of himself.” Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

There Are Lonely Hours

“There are lonely hours. How can I deny it? There are times when solitaire becomes solitary, an entirely different game, a prison term, and the inside of the skull as confining and unbearable as the house-trailer on a hot day.” -Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire