Craig Childs Quotes

#1. There are so many of us now that we threaten to devour the world with our touching, starting with the things we adore most. At the same time, we obviously yearn for contact, and I fear what would happen if we were cut off from a distinctive, on-the-ground relationship with the past.

Craig Childs

#2. The moon is the better storyteller for this event. Our ancient craters are smoothed over by erosion and tectonic motion. With no erosion, no wind, and no liquid water on the moon, craters can remain perfectly visible for billions of years, an orbiting catalog of impacts.

Craig Childs

#3. Most animals show themselves sparingly. The grizzly bear is six to eight hundred pounds of smugness. It has no need to hide. If it were a person, it would laugh loudly in quiet restaurants, boastfully wear the wrong clothes for special occasions, and probably play hockey.

Craig Childs

#4. In the desert, the two primary elements are stone and water. Stone comes in abundance, exposed by weathering and a lack of vegetation. It is a canvas. Water crosses this stone with such rarity and ferocity that it tells all of its secrets in the shapes left behind.

Craig Childs

#5. The land is not old. It only changes, becoming one thing and the next. We are the ones who ascribe age, the brevity of our lives demanding a beginning, middle and end.

Craig Childs

#6. It is as true as breath. It is as important as the words of children.

Craig Childs

#7. Like any stage of the hydrologic process, we have our own peculiarities, our organs making us nothing more than water pools or springs of bizarre shape, filled with pulsing tubes and chambers.

Craig Childs

#8. There is a drop of blood in the snow before me ... The coyote ... is in estrus ... spurred to let out a bit of herself, sending a message, telling everyone she was now ready, that the clock of her winter was ticking toward spring.

Craig Childs

#9. This far north the sun was still up, although very low, riding through the mountains as if looking for something it lost on the ground.

Craig Childs

#10. There are two easy ways to die in the desert - thirst and drowning.

Craig Childs

#11. This is not wilderness for designation or for a park. Not a scenic wilderness and not one good for fishing or the viewing of wildlife. It is wilderness that gets into your nostrils, that runs with your sweat. It is the core of everything living, wilderness like molten iron.

Craig Childs