QuoteProject
I climb, I backtrack. I float. I ramble my way home.
Mary Oliver
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote expresses a journey of exploration and self-discovery through nature.

Mary Oliver's quote encapsulates the idea of a personal journey that is not always straightforward or direct. It suggests that one can meander and explore different paths while also experiencing setbacks, ultimately leading to a sense of belonging and understanding of one's place in the world. This journey, represented by climbing and backtracking, results in a deep connection with nature and the self.

Themes

JourneyExplorationNatureHomeSelf-Discovery

In practice

Example use cases

This quote could be shared at a nature retreat to inspire reflection on personal journeys.

More from Mary Oliver

I try to be good but sometimes a person just has to break out and act like the wild and springy thing one used to be. It's impossible not to remember wild an want it back.
Mary OliverRead
At the time I was growing up, literature was involved with the so-called confessional poets. And I was not interested in that. I did not think that specific and personal perspective functioned well for the reader at all.
Mary OliverRead
I know the sag of the unfinished poem. And I know the release of the poem that is finished.
Mary OliverRead
For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.
Mary OliverRead
If I have any lasting worth, it will be because I have tried to make people remember what the Earth is meant to look like.
Mary OliverRead
Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light.
Mary OliverRead

Similar quotes

I know there is pain when sawmills close and people lose jobs, but we have to make a choice. We need water and we need these forests.
Wangari MaathaiRead
On the mainland, a rain was falling. The famous Seattle rain. The thin, gray rain that toadstools love. The persistent rain that knows every hidden entrance into collar and shopping bag. The quiet rain that can rust a tin roof without the tin roof making a sound in protest. The shamanic rain that feeds the imagination. The rain that seems actually a secret language, whispering, like the ecstasy of primitives, of the essence of things.
Tom RobbinsRead
There is scarcely any writer who has not celebrated the happiness of rural privacy, and delighted himself and his reader with the melody of birds, the whisper of groves, and the murmur of rivulets.
Samuel JohnsonRead
The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.
Galileo GalileiRead
Harry looked down and saw deep green mountains and lakes, coppery in the sunset.
J. K. RowlingRead
The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship
Ralph Waldo EmersonRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.