Giving Good Weight Quotes

“Physical labor as a bringer of sleep doesn’t seem to do much for me. But the woods do, where thoughts of weather, of food, and of the day’s journey so dominate the mind that everything else subsides. The rise and fall of temperature and of wind, the beginning and the end of rain matter here in a way that is irrelevant elsewhere. With the right gear, it is a pleasure to live with the weather, to wait for sun and feel the cool of rain, to watch the sky with absorption and speculation, to guess at the meaning of succeeding events.”
― John McPhee, Giving Good Weight

“LAST NIGHT, I slept nine hours, rain thunking on the tent. Each night out here has been much the same. At home, I am lucky if I get five. Preoccupations there chase each other around and around, the strong ones fighting for the lead; and at three-thirty or four I get up and read, preferring the single track in the book to the whirling dozens in the brain. It’s a chronic—or, at least, consistent—annoyance, and nights almost without exception are the same for me until I come to the woods, stretch out on the ground, and sleep nine hours.”
― John McPhee, Giving Good Weight