Any new beginning in one’s life involves a dissatisfaction with the past and a call to something new. It can be as unsettling as exciting. The Desert Christians learned that wilderness had a way of abruptly putting them in their place. It awakened them to a mystery that had no regard for their self-importance, yet welcomed them with an astounding love. Their entry into a life shaped by the desert required a stout readiness to commit, a weathering of disappointment, and a birth of irresistible desire.”

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“Part of the grandeur of wilderness is that it cares so little about the things that absorb us so much. We find glorious, disarming indifference in its grand vistas and hidden niches.  It shares its gifts with a prodigal extravagance, even as it ignores our imagined self importance. … Accepting what is—for what it is—is the place to start.” — From Backpacking with the Saints, Belden Lane