Mark Andrew Poe

“Summer on the high plateau can be delectable as honey; it can also be a roaring scourge. To those who love the place, both are good, since both are part of its essential nature. And it is to know its essential nature that I am seeking here. To know, that is, with the knowledge that is a process of living. This is not done easily nor in an hour. It is a tale too slow for the impatience of our age, not of immediate enough import for its desperate problems. Yet it has its own rare value. It is, for one thing, a corrective of glib assessment: one never quite knows the mountain, nor oneself in relation to it. However often I walk on them, these hills hold astonishment for me. There is no getting accustomed to them.”
― Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain

“What he values is a task that, demanding of him all he has and is, absorbs and so releases him entirely.”
― Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain

“It’s a grand thing, to get leave to live”
― Nan Shepherd

“To know, that is, with the knowledge that is a process of living.”
― Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain: A Celebration of the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland