Melanie Grasmick

“In the national parks, all are just Americans.” Visit a park, he says, and “Perhaps for the first time, one realizes the common America—and loves it.”
― Conor Knighton, Leave Only Footprints: My Acadia-to-Zion Journey Through Every National Park

“...tell me again about how you used to watch movies in a car. It sounded so cool to me. And so, on one of the last nights of that summer, my parents decided to re-create a drive-in movie in our driveway.”
― Conor Knighton, Leave Only Footprints: My Acadia-to-Zion Journey Through Every National Park

“To love someone is like moving into a house," Sonja used to say. "At first you fall in love in everything new, you wonder every morning that this is one's own, as if they are afraid that someone will suddenly come tumbling through the door and say that there has been a serious mistake and that it simply was not meant to would live so fine. But as the years go by, the facade worn, the wood cracks here and there, and you start to love this house not so much for all the ways it is perfect in that for all the ways it is not. You become familiar with all its nooks and crannies. How to avoid that the key gets stuck in the lock if it is cold outside. Which floorboards have some give when you step on them, and exactly how to open the doors for them not to creak. That's it, all the little secrets that make it your home.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“Our ability to see a value in preserving life that extends beyond our immediate self-interest may be what makes us most human.”
― Conor Knighton, Leave Only Footprints: My Acadia-to-Zion Journey Through Every National Park