Some of my favorite passages and quotes about nature/wilderness:

“We all travel the Milky Way together, trees and men; but it never occurred to me until this storm-day, while swinging in the wind, that trees are travelers, in the ordinary sense. They make many journeys, not very extensive ones, it is true; but our own little comings and goings are only little more than tree-wavings — many of them not so much.” -John Muir

"Adventure is not in a guidebook

and beauty is not on the map.

Seek and ye shall find." -Terry Russell

"If I had my life to live over again, I'd try to make more mistakes next time. I would relax. I would limber up. I would be sillier than I have been on this trip. I know of very few things I would take seriously. I would be crazier. I would be less hygienic. I would climb more mountains, swim more rivers, and watch more sunsets. I would burn more gasoline. I would eat more ice cream and less beans. I would have more actual problems and fewer imaginary ones. You see, I am one of those people who lives prophylactically and sensibly and sanely, hour after hour, day after day. Oh, I've had my moments and, if I had it to do over, I'd have more of them. In fact, I'd have nothing else. Just moments, one after the other, instead of living so many years ahead of each day. I have been one of those people who never goes anywhere without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a gargle, a raincoat, and a parachute. If I had it to do over again, I would go places and do things and travel lighter than I have. If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall. I would play hookey more often. I wouldn't make good grades except by accident. I would ride more merry-go-rounds. I'd pick more daisies. If you hold your nose to the grindstone rough and you hold it down there long enough you’ll soon forget there are such things as brooks that babble and birds that sing." Nadine Starr

"Even after all this time,
the sun never says to the earth,
'You owe me.'
Look what happens with a love like that.
It lights the whole sky." - Hafiz

"I long for a wilderness, a nature which I cannot put my foot through, woods where the wood thrush forever sings, where the hours are early morning ones and there is dew on the grass, and the day is forever unproved, where I might have a fertile unknown for a soil about me" - Thoreau

"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal."
-Lord Byron