#limb

Every mountain top is within reach if you just keep climbing. ↗

— Barry Finlay

#africa #clean-water #climbing #education #inspirational

When people tell me they can’t afford to join a gym, I tell them to go outside; planet Earth is a gym and we’re already members. Run, climb, sweat, and enjoy all of the natural wonder that is available to you. ↗

— Steve Maraboli

#earth #gym #nature #outside #run

This obsession is a curious thing. Sometimes wonder about the merits of devoting so much of myself to a singular climbing objective. Much of the time it beats me down, leaves me hanging my head in despair. But then there are the moments that bring me to life. When excitement wells up inside my chest in a way that doesn’t happen in every day life. Today my fingertips were cracked and bleeding. I made no progress despite great conditions. Now I am on the ground and can hardly contain my excitement to get back on the wall. It’s a crazy rollercoaster and I owe my family and partners a great deal for encouraging me through it all. ↗

— Tommy Caldwell

#encouragement #obsession #perseverance #rock-climbing #family

Let me get you all some punch,” I said. “You're leaving us?” said Isabel, sounding panicky. “I'll be right back,” I promised. “If anyone comes near you, just scream and run. ↗

— Kenneth Oppel

#funny #humor #kate #matt #oppel

Mountains seem to answer an increasing imaginative need in the West. More and more people are discovering a desire for them, and a powerful solace in them. At bottom, mountains, like all wildernesses, challenge our complacent conviction - so easy to lapse into - that the world has been made for humans by humans. Most of us exist for most of the time in worlds which are humanly arranged, themed and controlled. One forgets that there are environments which do not respond to the flick of a switch or the twist of a dial, and which have their own rhythms and orders of existence. Mountains correct this amnesia. By speaking of greater forces than we can possibly invoke, and by confronting us with greater spans of time than we can possibly envisage, mountains refute our excessive trust in the man-made. They pose profound questions about our durability and the importance of our schemes. They induce, I suppose, a modesty in us. ↗

— Robert Macfarlane

#climbing #mountains #wilderness #imagination

Traveling at night toward the stars, I thought yet again how very far away they were, and how you could travel your whole lifetime and never reach even the closest one. But even if you knew you couldn’t have something, it didn’t stop you wanting it. I wondered if Kate was to be my star, and I’d spend my life gazing upon her but never reaching her. ↗

— Kenneth Oppel

#life

It's time to make love, douse the glim; The fireflies twinkle and dim; The stars lean together Like birds of a feather, And the loin lies down with the limb. ↗

— Conrad Aiken

#coitus #fireflies #intercourse #lamb #limb

As she walked along she dramatized the night. There was about it a wild, lawless charm that appealed to a certain wild, lawless strain hidden deep in Emily’s nature—the strain of the gypsy and the poet, the genius and the fool. ↗

— L.M. Montgomery

#emily #nature

Climbing K2 or floating the Grand Canyon in an inner tube; there are some things one would rather have done than do. ↗

— Edward Abbey

#climbing #done #floating #grand #grand canyon

It isn't the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it's the pebble in your shoe. ↗

— Muhammad Ali

#climb #mountains #out #pebble #shoe