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Canyons Quotes

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Canyons Quotes

“The train was moving too fast to see much beyond the pines stepping up rock walls, but she knew from memory the bird species that would be endemic. She could picture the colored plates in her textbooks- the greater roadrunner, with its shaggy pompadour crest; the yellow eyes of burrowing owls; the shiny, jet-black plumage of the phainopepla, which gobbled up hundreds of mistletoe berries a day. She'd missed the Festival of the Cranes by only a few weeks. How tempting, to find herself just hours from Bosque del Apache, and the Rio Grande. She imagined lying on her stomach, binoculars trained on the sandhill cranes and snow geese in their winter quarters, watching in wonder the mass morning liftoffs and evening fly-ins. It was an old desire, but even now, though she knew the impossibility of it, it persisted; the world as one giant aviary she ached to see, all of its feathered inhabitants in their natural environment, a thousand times better to hear their cries dampened by verdant jungle foliage or echoed across the wells of canyons than to listen to abbreviated bits of captured songs emanating from a machine.”

BirdsCanyonsMigrationsAlice KesslerSouthern America
Book:The Gravity of Birds
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“This landscape is animate: it moves, transposes, builds, proceeds, shifts, always going on, never coming back, and one can only retain it in vignettes, impressions caught in a flash, flipped through in succession, leaving a richness of images imprinted on a sunburned retina.”

NatureBeautyMindfulnessMemoryLandscapeCanyonsNational ParksGrand CanyonSouthwestNature Writing
Book:Downcanyon: A Naturalist Explores the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon
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“The incline and height of the rocks increased sharply, making his climb more difficult. He needed his other hand totally free, as he knew his pursuers would as well. He holstered his pistol. He'd gotten more than three- quarters of the way to the top when even two free hands were barely enough to continue upward. The steps be- gan sloping on top, so that there was less and less to stand on. His legs pushed, toes searching for holds, arms pulling, fingers clutching, each new ascent more difficult than the last as the steps began to disappear altogether, until he found himself clinging to a nearly vertical slab of granite. Still he pushed upward, his chest and stomach in constant contact with the rock beneath, his hold growing more tenuous each moment. He looked up. Rock walls soared above him on both sides. He prayed there was somewhere to keep going, because he couldn't see it now. Up and up he climbed, every so often finding a small outcropping to grasp, but having to stretch more for each one, his legs almost dangling free as his boots sought purchase in the rock niches. Several times small rocks he tested for support broke free and clattered down the mountain. They fell, hit, split apart, and hit again, until they made a distant thud at the bottom. He shut his eyes, thinking he might sound like that, only softer. If it got any steeper, he knew, he couldn't hold on any longer.”

AdrenalineCanyonsRock ClimbingFree SoloPhysical Feat
Book:Empires of Sand by David Ball
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“You came up this gut-wrenching road yesterday by yourself?" Cassie exclaimed. "You deserve a good cuffing just for driving this goat path on your own." "It's not so bad once you get used to dodging the ruts." "You've got some nerve calling these canyons ruts." "Cassandra Hudson, where is your sense of adventure?" "I dropped it off going over that last rut-crossing when only two wheels were on the ground." "Those ones are a bit exhilarating, aren't they?" Alexandra shot Cassie a quick look and wink. "Keep your eyes on the road!" "What road?" "Exactly!”

HumorousRoadExhilaratingCanyonsRutsGoatLarkspur
Book:Larkspur
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“There can be nothing in the world more beautiful than the Yosemite, the groves of the giant sequoias and redwoods, the Canyon of the Colorado, the Canyon of the Yellowstone, the Three Tetons; and our people should see to it that they are preserved for their children and their children's children forever, with their majestic beauty all unmarred.”

PeopleWorldShouldChildrenBeautifulThreeForeverGiantsMajesticCanyonsColoradoGroveRedwoodsYosemiteYellowstoneMajestic Beauty
Book:In the Words of Theodore Roosevelt: Quotations from the Man in the Arena
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“In the Grand Canyon, Arizona has a natural wonder which is in kind absolutely unparalleled throughout the rest of the world. I want to ask you to keep this great wonder of nature as it now is. I hope you will not have a building of any kind, not a summer cottage, a hotel or anything else, to mar the wonderful grandeur, the sublimity, the great loneliness and beauty of the canyon. Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it.”

MenWorldWantKindHas BeensAgeAsksNaturalWonderWonderfulLonelinessBuildingSummerHotelMarsGrandeurArizonaCottagesCanyonsGrand CanyonSublimityWonder Of NatureNatural Wonders
Author:Theodore Roosevelt
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“I remember as a ranger the first time I stood alone on Inspiration Point over at Canyon Station looking out over this beautiful land. I thought to myself how lucky I was that my parents' and grandparents' generation had the vision and the determination to save it for us. Now it is our turn to make our own gift outright to those who will come after us, 15 years, 40 years, 100 years from now. I want to be as faithful to my grandchildren's generation as Old Faithful has been to ours. What better way can we add a new dimension to our third century of freedom?”

WayWantYearsFirstsHas BeensInspirationBeautifulRememberTurnsParentVisionGenerationsLandCenturyLuckyFirst TimeDeterminationThirdsAddFaithfulDimensionsStationsGrandparentGrandchildrenBetter WaysRangersCanyonsMy GrandchildrenParents And GrandparentsBeautiful Land
Author:Gerald R. Ford
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“Maybe you weren't born with a silver spoon in your mouth, but like every American, you carry a deed to 635 million acres of public lands. That's right. Even if you don't own a house or the latest computer on the market, you own Yosemite, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and many other natural treasures.”

IfsHouseBornNaturalMillionsLandComputerMouthsAreasDeedsTreasureGoldenSilverGatesRecreationSpoonsAcresCanyonsGrand CanyonYosemiteYellowstoneSilver SpoonsPublic Lands
Author:John Garamendi
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“The moon is looking down into the canyon, and how marvelously the great rocks kindle to her light! Every dome, and brow, and swelling boss touched by her white rays, glows as if lighted with snow.”

IfsLightWhiteRocksMoonSnowTouchedBossRaysBrowsKindlesCanyonsLooking DownDomesSwelling
Book:STEEP TRAILS: California - Utah - Nevada - Washington - Oregon - The Grand Canyon: Adventure Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Nature Essays and Wilderness Studies from the author of The Yosemite, Our National Parks, A Thousand-mile Walk to the Gulf & Picturesque California
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“If you understood a business perfectly and the future of the business, you would need very little in the way of a margin of safety. So, the more vulnerable the business is, assuming you still want to invest in it, the larger margin of safety you'd need. If you're driving a truck across a bridge that says it holds 10,000 pounds and you've got a 9,800 pound vehicle, if the bridge is 6 inches above the crevice it covers, you may feel okay, but if it's over the Grand Canyon, you may feel you want a little larger margin of safety.”

IfsWayWantNeedsFeelsMayLittlesStillsUnderstoodOkaySafetyAssumingDrivingVulnerableBridgesPoundsVehicleInchesTruckMarginsCanyonsGrand CanyonCrevice
Author:Warren Buffett
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“Perhaps there is no other way of reaching some understanding of being than through art? Writers themselves don't analyze what they do; to analyze would be to look down while crossing a canyon on a tightrope. To say this is not to mystify the process of writing but to make an image out of the intense inner concentration the writer must have to cross the chasms of the aleatory and make them the word's own, as an explorer plants a flag.”

WayWritingLooksArtWould BeProcessUnderstandingCrossesPlantIntenseReachingConcentrationFlagsCrossingsExplorersCanyonsChasms
Book:Living in Hope and History
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“A great many film stars perched on unstable ravine edges in the canyon systems of Los Angeles will, like the cemeteries there, eventually slide down to join their unfortunate fellows in the canyon floors, with mud, cars, and embalmed or living film stars in one glorious muddy mass. We should not lend our talents to creating such spectacular catastrophes.”

ShouldFilmStarsTalentCarCreatingMassFellowsEdgesGloriousGreat MenLos AngelesUnfortunateCatastropheMudSlidesSpectacularCemeteryUnstableMuddyCanyonsFilm Stars
Author:Bill Mollison
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“Of course, now I am too old to be much of a fisherman, and now of course I usually fish the big waters alone, although some friends think I shouldn't. Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise.”

ThinkingSoulBigsLightCoursesSoundWaterMemoriesExistenceHalfFourSeaSummerRiversWesternFishesBoatRhythmMy SoulEveningLakesFishingLengthFadesFishermanMontanaArcticCanyonsFly FishingSummer DaysRivers And Water
Book:A River Runs Through It
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“I fished upstream coming ever closer and closer to the narrow staircase of the canyon. Then I went up into it as if I were entering a department store. I caught three trout in the lost and found department.”

IfsThreeFoundLostSeaRiversCaughtFishesStoresBoatDepartmentLakesFishingEnteringCanyonsTroutStaircasesDepartment StoresLost And Found
Book:Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America ; The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster ; And, In Watermelon Sugar
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“On the lip of the Grand Canyon. I've always wanted to do that. My very first TV special out of the Olympics was on a glacier in Alaska. Right after that one, I went and pitched this idea to skate in three National Parks. Like Voyageurs National Park, because it freezes over and you have these little islands that you can skate around. [The networks] were like, 'Way too expensive.'”

WayFirstsLittlesIdeasWantedThreeSportsSpecialTvsLipsIslandsParksExpensiveOlympicsFreezeAlaskaSkatesCanyonsNational ParksGlaciersGrand Canyon
Author:Brian Boitano
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“I can't get over the exciting beauty of New York - the pencil buildings so high and far that the blueness of the sky floats about them; the feeling that one's taxis, and shopping, all go on in the deep canyon-beds of natural erosions rather than in the excrescences of human builders.”

HumansI CanFeelingsNaturalSkyNew YorkBuildingGoes OnBedExcitingShoppingGet OverPencilsFloatsTaxiBuilderCanyonsErosion
Book:Letters: New worlds for old, 1943-46
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“Anybody who travels knows that you're not really doing so in order to move around - you're traveling in order to be moved. And really what you're seeing is not just the Grand Canyon or the Great Wall but some moods or intimations or places inside yourself that you never ordinarily see when you're sleepwalking through your daily life.”

KnowsMovingOrderSeeingWallMovedMoodDaily LifeFinding YourselfRoutineExploringCanyonsGrand CanyonTreat YourselfSleepwalkingGreat Wall
Author:Pico Iyer
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“But to carve the Grand Canyon, Earth required millions of years. To excavate Meteor Crater, the universe, using a sixty-thousand-ton asteroid traveling upward of twenty miles per second, required a fraction of a second. No offense to Grand Canyon lovers, but for my money, Meteor Crater is the most amazing natural landmark in the world.”

WorldYearsEarthUniverseNaturalMillionsLoversThousandTwentiesMilesSixtyOffenseExtinctionFractionsMost AmazingCanyonsLandmarksAsteroidsGrand CanyonMeteorsCraters
Author:Neil deGrasse Tyson
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“Life is a thin narrowness of taken-for-granted, a plank over a canyon in a fog. There is something under our feet, the taken-for-granted. A table is a table, food is food, we are we - because we don't question these things. And science is the enemy because it is the questioner. Faith saves our souls alive by giving us a universe of the taken-for-granted.”

LifeGivingSoulScienceLife IsUniverseEnemyTakenAliveFeetTablesGrantedFogTaken For GrantedCanyons
Author:Rose Wilder Lane
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“Science, freedom, beauty, adventure: what more could you ask of life? Aviation combined all the elements I loved. There was science in each curve of an airfoil, in each angle between strut and wire, in the gap of a spark plug or the color of the exhaust flame. There was freedom in the unlimited horizon, on the open fields where one landed. A pilot was surrounded by beauty of earth and sky. He brushed treetops with the birds, leapt valleys and rivers, explored the cloud canyons he had gazed at as a child. Adventure lay in each puff of wind.”

ChildrenEarthAsksSkyFieldsColorAdventureWindElementsBirdRiversLaysCloudsFlyingFlightFlamesAviationGapsHorizonValleysSparksPilotsAngleUnlimitedCurvesWirePlugsGreat AviationCanyonsPuffAviatorEarth And SkyOpen FieldsTreetops
Author:Charles Lindbergh
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“I live just outside of Salt Lake City in a place called Emigration Canyon. It's on the Mormon trail. So I feel deeply connected, not only because of my Mormon roots, which are five or six generations, but because of where we live. There isn't a day that goes by that I'm not mindful of the spiritual sovereignty that was sought by my people in coming to Utah.”

PeopleFeelsSpiritualCitiesFiveGenerationsSixRootsConnectedLakesSaltSovereigntyTrailsCanyonsUtahEmigrationSalt Lake City
Author:Terry Tempest Williams
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“When I'm standing in the middle of the salt flats, where you swear that the pupils of your eyes have turned white because of the searing heat that is rising from the desert, I think of my childhood, I think of my mother, my father, my grandparents; I think of the history that we hold there and it is beautiful to me. But it is both a blessing and a burden to be rooted in place. It's recognizing the pattern of things, almost feeling a place before you even see it. In Southern Utah, on the Colorado plateau where canyon walls rise upward like praying hands, that is a holy place to me.”

ThinkingFeelingsHandsEyeBeautifulMotherFatherWhiteChildhoodMiddleWallPrayingHolyBlessingStandingPatternsBurdenDesertHeatRisingFlatsSouthernSaltRootedSwearGrandparentRecognizingPupilsCanyonsColoradoUtahHoly PlacesSouthern Utah
Author:Terry Tempest Williams
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