Tofu and futons. The adepts of Orientalism seem to spend most of their lives reclining. They can't quite summon the energy to crawl up onto a chair. Even their Yogic exercises are carried out in a prone or sitting position.

Why this cult of wilderness?... because we like the taste of freedom; because we like the smell of danger.

I believe that there is a kind of poetry, even a kind of truth, in simple fact.

I come more and more to the conclusion that wilderness, in America or anywhere else, is the only thing left that is worth saving.

Man's deliberate destruction of his own habitat -- planet Earth -- could serve as a mighty theme for a mighty book worthy of a modern Melville or Tolstoy. But our best fictioneers confine themselves to domestic drama -- soap opera with literary trimmings.

May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.

When the writer has done his best, he then should proceed to do his second best.