Wilderness Trails

“For the only real wealth is in the experience, the appreciation of real beauty."

Below are a few quotes from – Trails of a Wilderness Wanderer by -Andy Russel.  A contemporary frontiersman’s, cowboy, broncbuster, trapper,guide and outfitter, rancher, and wildlife photographer.

Its a great book!

“In 1919, the provincial government of British Columbia launched a campaign against the imaginary ravages of the cougar on big game, domestic livestock, and human beings, and enlarged the stupidity by declaring a bounty of forty dollars per cat scalp turned in by its citizens of that province.”    -Andy Russel

“He who has not walked alone and fished for trout
on a wild river midst peaks
beneath a sky adrift with clouds
has not really had a look at his beginning
or come to fully understand himself.

For it is in such unscarred country beyond the marks of of wheels
that a man really finds himself – knowing the warm feeling in his soul
that only fear is the enemy and that true values are not measured in bank accounts
cached away in artificial edifices of stone,
but in the depth of serenity and peace
where air is clean and water flows cold and pure.” -Andy Russel

“For the only real wealth is in the experience, the appreciation of real beauty, and the friends we gather along the way. It is knowing that a tree is something besides a stack of two-by-fours piled on end waiting to be cut, something more than just an obstruction to a right of way to be bulldozed flat and burned. It is a feeling for a mountain going far beyond the minerals and the water power it may contain. It is knowing that a clean river is something of vastly greater value than a place to dump sewage or a possible location for a dam. It is the deep appreciation of a day in summer when the wild call of an eagle comes down from where it swoops and circles against the white breast of a cloud far above the peaks.” -Andy Russel