Pack Light Quotes

“Don't let white men steal your joy. Do not let these motherfuckers win.”
― Shilletha Curtis, Pack Light: A Journey to Find Myself

“I couldn't help but wonder if those spirits were rightfully angry about what had been stripped away from them through the massacres of colonialism, their mountains renamed after white men who referred to them as "savages.”
― Shilletha Curtis, Pack Light: A Journey to Find Myself

“That's what the Christian church loved to do: take, take, and take some more.”
― Shilletha Curtis, Pack Light: A Journey to Find Myself

“Every mountain has a soul, an energy that lingers like the morning mist on its crown, but only a few shared a connection with me.”
― Shilletha Curtis, Pack Light: A Journey to Find Myself

“Elephants join together and form a circle around their calves to protect them from danger. But gazelles continue to run away even if a predator catches their fawn, unable to protect their young. Did I live among elephants or gazelles?”
― Shilletha Curtis, Pack Light: A Journey to Find Myself

“Inside me, there was a little girl who begged to be free and face her fears. She had faced monsters her whole life. Many doubted her and didn't think she would amount to anything, but here she was now. That little Shilletha just needed to be loved, appreciated, and heard. That little girl needed me now, and we were going to summit this together. Each step represented a milestone in our lives-- going to Disney World, surviving sexual abuse, enduring grief at the loss of my aunt, graduating from high school and college, being homeless in Texas, and now hiking the Appalachian Trail. Together, we could conquer anything. We'd been climbing mountains for twenty-eight years. We didn't know it then, but we knew it now.”
― Shilletha Curtis, Pack Light: A Journey to Find Myself

“[My aunt] had always believed that I could stand on mountains. She was right, but I didn't want to just stand on mountains; I wanted to make them quiver in their bones.”
― Shilletha Curtis, Pack Light: A Journey to Find Myself