My Outdoor Life Quotes

“Australian Aboriginal people is that they see the world in a multi-dimensional way – that’s the only way I can describe it. Time is a more fluid concept for Aborigines than it is for us. Maybe they’re string theorists, but I think that modern physical theory regarding the concept of time certainly has some resonance with an Aboriginal perspective. When”
― Ray Mears, My Outdoor Life

“There’s no ambient noise, none of the background aural wallpaper that defines life in an urban environment or even in the English countryside. This is the sort of quiet that you only get in truly remote places.”
― Ray Mears, My Outdoor Life

“Under the communist regime, a helicopter would fly in once a week and the Evenki could send pelts and furs to sell in the local town, buying tools and summer clothes with the money they made. Back then, the helicopters were free but with the introduction of Siberia’s market economy, they now need to pay – and the flights are hugely expensive. The good thing is, though, because they’ve retained the skills to live in the forest, the Evenki will survive whatever happens in Russia.”
― Ray Mears, My Outdoor Life

“To my mind, if you don’t know anything about the lives of the people you meet then they will be inclined to treat you like a child, but if you can hunt, if you can make fire, if you can make shelter and you know how to take care of yourself, they see this; they know the time it takes to acquire those skills and they will treat you as an adult. From that, they might involve you in conversations that you would not otherwise have. That is what I wanted to try to tap into. I”
― Ray Mears, My Outdoor Life

“when you enter one of the world’s great forests, you go in one side and you come out somewhere different. Sometimes, you go in and come out and you’re different.”
― Ray Mears, My Outdoor Life

“I also seem to recall that whatever my job was, I wasn’t very good at it. I felt like I was staring down the barrel of a gun and I didn’t like what I saw at the end of it: a loan for a car, a mortgage for a flat, weekly shopping, trips to the cinema and living for the weekends. They were all metaphors for a set of handcuffs, chaining me to the monotony of a job I hated,”
― Ray Mears, My Outdoor Life

“If you are able to devote all of your time to focusing on tuning in to nature, you develop a sense, a feeling for when things aren’t right on any given day. It’s very hard to explain; sometimes you just develop an instinct – some people call it a sixth sense – but you can develop it to an extraordinary degree. Part of my education has been to learn to recognise the signs, to attune myself to the flow of nature so that I better understand what’s going on. It can mean the difference between life and death. Sometimes”
― Ray Mears, My Outdoor Life

“I learned by going out and putting them into practice. There’s no substitute for doing things, ever – practice beats theory every time. I”
― Ray Mears, My Outdoor Life

“It’s so important to step outside your comfort zone because that’s usually when you learn best. I think it’s really important that you do things like that for yourself – no adult with you, just you and your own self-belief. Sadly, I think many parents would be too afraid to let their children make a journey like that these days. Having”
― Ray Mears, My Outdoor Life