mountainsmadeher-blog

[mountainsmadeher-blog]

The end.

This will be my last post on this blog. I realize this is no longer a safe or positive space for me and my thoughts, and I don’t feel comfortable posting here any more. More importantly, it came to my attention this weekend that it may have negative effects on others in my life. Right now I’m questioning my own character. I’m sad and confused. I’ll be fine, I just need time to process things.

I might make a new, less personal blog some time in the future. We’ll see. I’m not deleting this one right now because there’s just so much of my life documented here over the past 3 years. For now I’ve made most of my 2015 posts private and I just won’t be active.

I’ve loved following along with everyone’s lives, getting to know you all, and being a part of this community. Thank you for all the beauty and positivity you’ve brought into my life through this strange little space on the internet.

Till next time. xx

[mountainsmadeher-blog]

What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age.

Plath, Sylvia. The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath. (via wordsnquotes)

[mountainsmadeher-blog]

“Put your best self out there with as much transparency and sincerity and humor as possible. Both online and in person. With strangers and among your circle of friends. Inhabit the beauty that lives in your beastly body and strive to see the beauty in all the other beasts. Walk without a stick into the darkest woods. Believe that the fairy tale is true.”

- CHERYL STRAYED

[mountainsmadeher-blog]

Outdoors, you might get caught in a downpour or stumble over a few rocks, but there’s nothing wrong with falling down. It’s okay to get hurt sometimes, McDougall reminds us. Our culture seems to fear knee scrapes and bruises, but we do even more harm sheltering ourselves from them. This is about more than fitness. Athletics are meant to make us stronger, more resilient human beings who can adapt to the unexpected challenges of everyday living. In the woods—as in life—there’s unpredictability that the sanitized gym can never prepare you for. And the deepest and most lasting rewards are not in calories burned, but in the moments of sublime beauty which can’t be experienced behind glass.

Will Harlan

go get some scrapes on your body this weekend. (via desert-child)

[mountainsmadeher-blog]

"And as with age, you choose your own way                                                               among the many faces of a busy world                                                                         may you always remember the path that leads back back to the important places."

[mountainsmadeher-blog]

Adventure challenges us physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It forces us to confront our greatest fears, it teaches us to draw upon our greatest strengths. It makes us suffer, it makes us doubt. It holds up a mirror that shows us our truest selves. And if we stay with adventure, if we set ourselves on a course of life is that is refreshed throughout our years with the joys of uncertainty and risk, these wonderful hallmarks of true adventure, then we become stronger, better, more flexible and more able.

finding value in the useless, steve casimiro (via desert-child)

Yes. So much yes.

[mountainsmadeher-blog]

“I thought of you, and where you’d gone, and the world spins madly on”

The Weepies- World Spins Madly On

[mountainsmadeher-blog]

Oh, can you do it baby? Can you love me all the way? Will you tie me tight in little strings of paradise? Will you walk with me, before the morning fades? I'm waiting on the day.

John Mayer- Waitin’ On The Day

[mountainsmadeher-blog]

We are not the pinnacle of evolution. We are not the determined product of billions of years of evolutionary plotting and planning. We are one outcome of a continuing adaptational process. We are residents of one small planet in a corner of the Milky Way galaxy. And Homo sapiens are one small leaf on a very extensive Tree of Life, which is densely populated by organisms that have been honed for survival over millions of years. We misuse language, and talk about the “ascent” of man. We understand the scientific basis for the interrelatedness of life but our ego hasn’t caught up yet. So this “ascent” of man, pinnacle of evolution, has got to go. It’s a sense of privilege that the natural universe doesn’t share.

Jill Tarter, American astronomer

Watch her Ted Talk here

(via whats-out-there)

[mountainsmadeher-blog]

I adore backpacking trips. You’re forced to lose yourself in each other. Bathe in waterfalls, skinny dip, climb rocks, take in the views, sleep under the stars and see the sunrise together. It’s very easy to fall in love when everything is so simple.

-on falling in love in the forest, 2014 (via 132am)

[mountainsmadeher-blog]

I want a peaceful home in the thick mountain forest where I can watch the snow fall thick and heavy, hear the rain on the wooden roof, let the summer sun in through the windows. I want somewhere quiet where I can enjoy all the things I feel so deeply. There will be dogs.

[mountainsmadeher-blog]

“But we all lift each other up Learn to shake the demons off Conquer all this world throws at us Cause love is strong enough”

MisterWives “Queens” Saving the best for last on this album, huh MisterWives? :) 

[mountainsmadeher-blog]

Single people want relationships, settled people wonder if they’re missing out on something, traveling types miss stability, stable ones are restless, old friends want new friends, new friends miss old friends, and basically almost everyone my age has some dangling worry trailing around after them everywhere that they’re somehow not doing everything, that what they’re doing is not altogether the right thing, that they are missing out. … Do not be ashamed. The doubt is natural, and everyone you know – yes, even that person – carries it sometimes too. Allow yourself to be peaceful. Allow yourself satisfaction in what you have. If you really don’t like it, allow yourself permission to make changes.

Lillian Schneider (via mortalhusk)

[mountainsmadeher-blog]

This is so important. 

america’s most endangered rivers of 2015 ″leave it as it is. you cannot improve upon it.”

[mountainsmadeher-blog]

“The more you know about a place, the more you want to protect it.“

Warning: Contains expletives. Patagonia presents a Duct Tape Then Beer film. Force is the collected footage from 10 years of Mikey Schaefer’s climbs, summits and misadventures in Patagonia woven together into a story of success, fear, joy and growth. Previously shown at Patagonia retail stores and film festivals, we’re happy to share the full film with you online.

[mountainsmadeher-blog]

The new study, led by Nick Haddad, a professor at North Carolina State University, and co-authored by Laurance and others, found that fragmented habitats lose an average of half of their plant and animal species within twenty years, and that some continue to lose species for thirty years or more. In all of the cases examined, the worst losses occurred in the smallest habitat patches and closest to a habitat edge. The study also demonstrates, using a high-resolution map of global tree cover, that more than seventy per cent of the world’s forest now lies within one kilometre of such an edge. “There are really only two big patches of intact forest left on Earth—the Amazon and the Congo—and they shine out like eyes from the center of the map,” Haddad said.

What Roads Have Wrought - The New Yorker (via dendroica)

[mountainsmadeher-blog]

I can’t emphasize enough the importance of solo adventures. Everything from eating lunch by yourself to strolling in the park alone all help to shape your sense of independence. If you’re never by yourself how will you ever know yourself.

(via thatkindofwoman)