Home News, Special Events, and Links What’s it all about? Why do we do what we do? WILD GUYde Adventures, LLC 1047 Stuart St. Harrisonburg, VA 22802 (540) 433-1637 lester@wildguyde.com “It would be well perhaps if we were to spend more of our days and nights without any obstruction between us and the celestial bodies…” (Henry David Thoreau) “I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion.” (Henry David Thoreau)

The Thoughtful Outdoor Traveler: Ideas to ponder on your pilgrimage On Safety: “Go carefully lads, be careful; a single moment’s enough to make one dead for the whole of one’s life.” (G. Pecoste) . “It is the momentary carelessness in easy places, the lapsed attention, or the wandering look that is the usual parent of disaster.” (A.F. Mummery) “He may, with the good luck which sometimes attends children, drunkards, and persons of weak intellect, escape the dangers without even knowing that they were there. But if he affronts too often forces whose powers he had not attempted to understand, he will in the long run succumb.” (Lord Schuster) “There is an educative and purifying power in danger that is to be found in no other school.” (Albert F. Mummery, in The Pleasures and Penalties of Mountaineering) “A good scare is worth more to a man than good advice.” (Ed Howe) “The thing to be wished for is, not for the mountains to become easier, but for men to become wiser and stronger.” (Edward Whymper) “A mountain has never been climbed until you are safely down, and for descending climbers, a mountain sets an ingenious trap. After you’ve made it to the top, you have the feeling that all the hard part is over. This is the siren lure that leads to that one careless step.” (Grant Pearson, in To the Top of Denali) “The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it.” (Proverbs 27:12) “The prerequisite for misadventure is the belief that you are invincible, or that the wilderness cares about you. The wilderness does not care about your human rights. The unvigilant perish; the prudent survive.” (Daryl Miller) “The rigid person is a disciple of death; the soft, supple, and delicate are lovers of life.” (Tao Te Ching) “Courage divorced from logic becomes hubris, in which arrogance etches away the old honesty. The good vibes of kharma silently change into the false understandings of hubris.” (Galen Rowell) “Many of our mistakes in life, both physical and moral, are the result of hurry.” (Lester Zook) On Nature, and our visits there: “The world is not to be put in order, the world is order incarnate. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order.” (Henry Miller) “A human returning from a difficult climb is a wise and calm being, glowing from within.” (Voytek Kurtyka) “To those who have struggled with them, the mountains reveal beauties that they will not disclose to those who make no effort. That is the reward the mountains give to effort. And it is because they have so much to give and give it so lavishly to those who will wrestle with them that men love the mountains, and go back to them again and again. The mountains reserve their choice gifts for those who stand upon their summits.” (Sir Francis Younghusband) “The goal of life is living in agreement with nature.” (Zeno of Elea, Greek philosopher, 490-430 BC) “Climbing is not a battle with the elements, nor against the law of gravity; it is a battle against oneself.” (Walter Bonatti) “Each fresh peak ascended teaches something.” (Sir Martin Conway) “May our five senses be pure, and may the weather on the honorable mountain be fine.” (Japanese pilgrims’ motto) “It is precisely in climbing mountains that a man learns his limitations and becomes humble.” (Anderl Heckmaier) “The principal advantage of taking photographs on a mountain is that the mountaineer is thus enabled to stop at frequent intervals and recover his breath. That is why most elderly mountaineers carry cameras. Taking a photograph is a much more convincing excuse for a halt than a boot lace or braces that need adjusting. All those liable to be touched in the wind should take a camera.” (F.S. Smythe) “And thus these threatening ranges of dark mountains, which, in nearly all ages of the world, men have looked upon with aversion or with terror, are, in reality, sources of life and happiness far finer and more beneficent than the bright fruitfulness of the plain.” (John Ruskin) “If the going is tough and the pressure is on; if the resources of strength have been drained and the summit is still not in sight; then the quality to see in a person is neither great strength nor quickness of hand, but rather a resolute mind firmly set on its purpose that refuses to let its body slacken or rest.” (Sir Edmund Hillary) “Pretty places are good for the soul.” (Lester Zook)