Yvon Chouinard Quotes

I did find Calypso — but only once, far in the depths of the very wildest of Canadian dark woods, near those high, cold, moss-covered swamps. … I felt as if I were in the presence of superior beings who loved me and beckoned me to come. I sat down beside them and wept for joy.

How terribly downright must seem the utterances of storms and earthquakes to those accustomed to the soft hypocrisies of society.

The whole wilderness seems to be alive and familiar, full of humanity. The very stones seem talkative, sympathetic, brotherly.

Nature chose for a tool, not the earthquake or lightning to rend and split asunder, not the stormy torrent or eroding rain, but the tender snow-flowers noiselessly falling through unnumbered centuries, the offspring of the sun and sea.

Those [forest] reserves are not merely for the convenience and benefit of the people near them, but they are the property of the nation and for its greatest good. It is unreasonable to suppose that they should be destroyed or imperiled for any local convenience, as a mere present to men engaged in one local industry.

Happy will be the men who, having the power and the love and the benevolent forecast to [create a park], will do it. They will not be forgotten. The trees and their lovers will sing their praises, and generations yet unborn will rise up and call them blessed.

This time it is real — all must die, and where could mountaineer find a more glorious death!

To the sane and free it will hardly seem necessary to cross the continent in search of wild beauty, however easy the way, for they find it in abundance wherever they chance to be.

I've had a great time in South America and South Africa. Indeed it now seems that on this pair of wild hot continents I've enjoyed the most fruitful year of my life.