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
Y’all talked me into fryin up some of those tomaters. I didn’t batter em, I just did it quick with my eggs, and I’m glad I did.
I hate the masks and vices
Out in the halls of my inn;
I'm going back to the the meek hubbub
Of my laurel mountains.
With the poor of the earth
I want to cast my destiny:
Mountain streams are more satisfying
Than all the oceans.
Let vain men covet gold
That burns and shines in its pot:
But I, I want the eternal woods
When the sun breaks forth in them.
José Martí - Versos Sencillos, III
