America the Beautiful? Quotes

“It would entail eleven hours of driving all told, roughly equivalent to the amount of time I spend conscious in one day when I am feeling seasonally depressed. But I could do it, and I was energized by the realization that I would not have to drive through Nebraska.”
― Blythe Roberson, America the Beautiful?: One Woman in a Borrowed Prius on the Road Most Traveled

“But then it struck me how messed up it is that so much land was stolen, then privatized, and that a few people amassed so much capital that they could afford to buy land and "give" it back.”
― Blythe Roberson, America the Beautiful?: One Woman in a Borrowed Prius on the Road Most Traveled

“National Parks exist to preserve natural wonders but also to teach visitors about our nation's history.”
― Blythe Roberson, America the Beautiful?: One Woman in a Borrowed Prius on the Road Most Traveled

“Before I set out on my road trip, I already knew this: the reason we have any national park is the same reason we have any land in America at all. White settlers and the United States government violently dispossessed Indigenous people of the land they had lived on for thousands of years, which they knew deeply and to which they had spiritual connection.”
― Blythe Roberson, America the Beautiful?: One Woman in a Borrowed Prius on the Road Most Traveled

“As much as magazines have spent decades asking if women could have it all, it's obvious that they can't because so many things appear to me to be direct opposites, "freedom" and "companionship" chief among them.”
― Blythe Roberson, America the Beautiful?: One Woman in a Borrowed Prius on the Road Most Traveled

“And on top of it all, I couldn't believe I was here - that I really had a life now where I could drive on a lark to finally see a place that had felt to me more like a rumor than a location. It was a Monday, and back in New York my friends were in an office building looking at Google Docs. Meanwhile, I was in the most random part of Minnesota, where I changed from pants to shorts in the middle of the parking lot and then waded across a stream, just because I was curious and wanted to. I felt like I had lived more in the past thirty minutes than I did in some full weeks back home.”
― Blythe Roberson , America the Beautiful?: One Woman in a Borrowed Prius on the Road Most Traveled

“Maybe being outside is life itself, and everything else we do—working our jobs and living in the cities where those jobs are—is a sacrifice of the time we could be actually living, a sacrifice we make to pay our way in society. Karl Marx divided time into the realm of necessity and the realm of freedom, and nature is squarely in the second category. What makes our lives meaningful is that we eventually die; maybe what makes our time in nature meaningful is that eventually we have to go back to the office.”
― Blythe Roberson, America the Beautiful?: One Woman in a Borrowed Prius on the Road Most Traveled

“I was doing my absolute favorite thing, and since it was cold enough to wear a jaunty red beanie, I even got to look like a hot Steve Zissou while doing it. I hauled ass down the trail, completing my Junior Ranger activities along the way, listening to the sounds of nature and looking at plants and writing about my experience.”
― Blythe Roberson, America the Beautiful?: One Woman in a Borrowed Prius on the Road Most Traveled

“But once we decide to treat earth and nature as if they matter, and as if they exist for all of us and not just for a few white male billionaires with personality disorders, there’s so much we can do.”
― Blythe Roberson, America the Beautiful?: One Woman in a Borrowed Prius on the Road Most Traveled

“I was fed up with spending so many hours driving, an activity that is both very high stakes and also so boring.”
― Blythe Roberson, America the Beautiful?: One Woman in a Borrowed Prius on the Road Most Traveled

“fourth-degree burns are what you get when you burn in hell for all eternity because you once dropped your house keys on your friends’ chihuahua.)”
― Blythe Roberson, America the Beautiful?: One Woman in a Borrowed Prius on the Road Most Traveled

“Just as every billionaire is a policy failure, I see every person of any gender identity on top of a truly dangerous mountain as a failure of toxic masculinity.”
― Blythe Roberson, America the Beautiful?: One Woman in a Borrowed Prius on the Road Most Traveled

“It sometimes feels like men feel the need to assert their dominance over nature. Rich white men, who have no problems, climb mountains to see what having problems feels like.”
― Blythe Roberson, America the Beautiful?: One Woman in a Borrowed Prius on the Road Most Traveled