Adhiambo Agoro

“This stretching of self beyond stretchable boundaries, this glory of being where few have stood, of listening and seeing, of feeling the sun and the rock, somehow matters very much. The exhilaration is worth every bit of the discomfort and duress. I have pushed through discomfort to another level of being. I love being here, shot through with sunlight, incandescing it outward as I receive it inward. I feel an outer glory like an aura or a nimbus”
― Ann Zwinger, Wind in the Rock: The Canyonlands of Southeastern Utah

“For most of the time, one disciplines oneself to ignore the discomfort of being hot or tired or having sore hip bones or being hungry, thirsty. Someone once characterized backpacking as the most miserable way of getting from Point A to Point B. But when salt restores the electrolyte balance, when water cools the insides as well as the brow, when food refurbishes the body’s cells, when time has been spent off one’s feet and a heavy pack is a mile downcanyon, then there follows a tremendous rush of well-being, a physical sense of buoyancy, all out of proportion to the time and place.”
― Ann Zwinger, Wind in the Rock: The Canyonlands of Southeastern Utah

“There is a sense of sovereignty that comes from life on a mountain, a perception of privacy and isolation, even of dominion.”
― Tara Westover, Educated

“This moment of recognition reflected back at me in her face. It's not even something I can see, but something I feel. It's not my mom and my dad or my brothers. It's me. My own confusion, my own fear. She could look like a stranger to me, and I'd still feel it as plainly.”
― Emma Lord, You Have a Match