As I walk .. as I walk .. / The universe .. is walking with me .. / Beautifully .. it walks before me .... / Beautifully .. on every side .... / As I walk .. I walk with beauty.

To underestimate one's thirst, to pass a given landmark to the right or left, to find a dry spring where one looked for running water - there is no help for any of these things.

If you ever, ever, ever meet a grizzly bear, / You must never, never, never ask him where / He is going, / Or what he is doing; / For if you ever, ever dare / To stop a grizzly bear, / You will never meet another grizzly bear.

Ride your emotions as the shallop rides the waves; don't get upset among them. There are people who enjoy getting swamped emotionally, just as, incredibly, there are people who enjoy getting drunk.

Man is a great blunderer going about in the woods, and there is no other except the bear makes so much noise. ... The cunningest hunger is hunted in turn, and what he leaves of his kill is meat for some other. That is the economy of nature, but with it all there is not sufficient account taken of the works of man. There is no scavenger that eats tin cans, and no wild thing leaves a like disfigurement on the forest floor.

The palpable sense of mystery in the desert air breeds fables, chiefly of lost treasure. ... It is a question whether it is not better to be bitten by the little horned snake of the desert that goes sidewise and strikes without coiling, than by the tradition of a lost mine.

All mountain streets have streams to thread them, or deep grooves where a stream might run. You would do well to avoid that range uncomforted by singing floods. You will find it forsaken of most things but beauty and madness and death and God.