Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter.

But I'll tell you what hermits realize. If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you'll come to understand that you're connected with everything.

When all ways are lost the way is clear.

In God's wildness lies the hope of the world — the great fresh, unblighted, unredeemed wilderness. The galling harness of civilization drops off, and wounds heal ere we are aware.

I found myself within a forest dark,

The most important insights that have come to me usually occur while walking in nature, particularly hiking in the high mountains. In the wilderness nature can enter into our consciousness and cleanse our minds of human-centered compulsions. I think that liberation is like wandering off into nature, climbing up a high mountain, and not coming back to the lowlands of human society.

The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care. The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds other life — another hunter, an angel or a demon, a delicate infant or a tottering old man, a fairy or a demigod — there’s only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them. In this forest, hell is other people.

Old age is a peace of the deep forest.

The wanting was a wilderness and I had to find my own way out of the woods.

and into the forest I go,
to lose my mind
and find my soul

Come to the woods, for here is rest, ...climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.

Beyond the fence the forest stood up spectrally in the moonlight, and through the dim stir, through the faint sounds of that lamentable courtyard, the silence of the land went home to one's very heart - its mystery, its greatness, the amazing reality of its concealed life.

The Cross of Christ is the only gateway to knowledge.

This forest silence improves anyone.