Quotes from "The Tracker"
The true story of Tom Brown, Jr.
When somebody moves something in your house, you notice it. When somebody moves something in the woods, I notice it.
Your tracks are shaded with nuances that show always how much more you have become than what you were.
Grandfather taught me how to teach myself.
School taught me how to read. Stalking Wolf taught me how to learn.
I do not believe I am in any danger of running out of discoveries.
The place where you lose the trail is not necessarily the place where it ends.
Some callings cannot be ignored.
We could not afford the luxury of being afraid to sound foolish. We burned for answers...
These words are my tracks, this book is my trail; I am at the end of it somewhere, looking for other tracks and the meaning beyond them.
The only language for some things is experience.
I hated the dogs at that moment in a way that I could not understand then, though I have come now to realize that hate is just fear worn inside out, and it was my fear, and not my hatred, that drove me.
Hiding from the storm is the craziest form of self-denial.
There were many times when I did not know where I was in relation to where I started, but I was never lost. If I was lost, I seemed better off than a lot of the people who weren't. I was always at home, wherever I was. Only when I came out of the forest did I find out how easy it was to get lost.
We learned two things from testing our limits: the limits of our power and the limits of our will. We always knew how long before we would have to think in survival terms.
It was a reflex that said, "When you're trapped and there's no other way out - attack!" Like the rabbit who goes berserk between the paws of the fox and escapes because the fox has no response for a rabbit that bites back.
We practiced every technique, but it was not until we learned to blend mentally with the woods that we became as good as invisible.
I had become animal in some important and irreversible ways.
If I had fallen then, I would have died happy with what I had seen. I was crazy to have climbed both places, but the best seats always entailed the greatest risks, and I was always ready to pay the price.
It seemed completely crazy to me. But then, most of what I saw outside the woods seemed insane, so I believed it was true.
I had done what I thought was right. If there were punishments for that, I was ready to take them.
I prayed that he was still alive, because I loved anybody who could go from the dragging feet of despair to skipping less than 50 feet later.
I cried with him, because he was there and alive and if my life ended in the next instant, all the years I had spent learning to track had been justified. I was where I should be. And I was happy and thankful to be there.
More quotes:
from The Search
from The Vision
from The Quest
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