They’ve been selected and named. “May [our] trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view.” - E.Abbey
I've said it before and I'll say it again: the wind is the number one enemy of the woodsman.
Rain don't do that to you. You can work with rain and snow and all that. Wind, though — wind just makes everything so much more complicated. Even if you get the fire goin' real good, you can't enjoy it, 'cause the wind's takin' the heat right away.
Basically, you just got to hide out. Puts a hair in my biscuit every time.
— The Practical Woodsman
Sometimes the best thing a woodsman can do is quit walkin', plant his boots, and just look a spell.
There's a quiet that settles over the hollers when you're standin' up on a ridge like this — green layered on green, fold after fold, clean out to where the ridges go soft and blue. No hurry. No chatter. Just the land doin' what it's always done.
A man who can't sit still with a view like that ain't learned yet what he come out here for.
— The Practical Woodsman
Folks'll brush right past a vine on a tree trunk and never give it a second thought — till their hands are a-burnin' and their arms are a-swellin' up like dough left on the hearth.
Look here close: one's got leaves o' five, climbin' with them little sticky feet — that's yer Virginia creeper, harmless as a barn cat. Right beside it, leaves o' three, shiny and mean — that's poison ivy, and she'll remember you long after you've forgot her.
Learn the difference once, and you'll thank yourself every time you put a hand to a tree.
— The Practical Woodsman
