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1 " To those who have struggled with them, the mountains reveal beauties that they will not disclose to those who make no effort. That is the reward the mountains give to effort. And it is because they have so much to give and give it so lavishly to those who will wrestle with them that men love the mountains and go back to them again and again. The mountains reserve their choice gifts for those who stand upon their summits.—Sir Francis Younghusband "
― Porter Fox , DEEP: The Story of Skiing and the Future of Snow
2 " Politicians, federal agents, pundits, and most Americans focus on the line with Mexico, even though its northern cousin is more than twice its length and many times more porous. The only known terrorists to cross overland into the US came from the north. Fifty-six billion dollars in smuggled drugs and ten thousand illegal aliens cross the US-Canada border every year. Two thousand agents watch the line. Nine times that number patrol the southern boundary. According to a 2010 Congressional Research Service report, US Customs and Border Protection maintains “operational control” over just sixty-nine miles of the northern border. "
― Porter Fox , Northland: A 4,000-Mile Journey Along America's Forgotten Border
3 " More than most sports, skiing is handed down through the generations. It doesn’t always stick, but when it does, it often sticks for life. "
4 " Ninety percent of Canadians live within a hundred miles of their southern border. Twelve percent of Americans live in the northland, and most of them in cities like Seattle, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Cleveland. "
5 " Ninety percent of Canadians live within a hundred miles of their southern border. Twelve percent of Americans live in the northland, and most of them in cities like Seattle, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, and "
6 " Most people don't travel anymore. They arrive. Unless you're riding the slow boat. Then you see every mile. "
7 " Nothing is impossible. You are only limited by fear and even that you can overcome. —Seth Morrison "
8 " Big Sky Country averages seven people, one pronghorn antelope, one elk, and three deer per square mile. Eighty percent of the counties are still classified as “frontier,” meaning they are occupied by six or fewer people per square mile. "
9 " NO ONE KNOWS WHERE AMERICA’S NORTHERN BORDER BEGINS. It is somewhere near Machias Seal Island, twenty-five miles off Jonesport, Maine. "
10 " This is the native home of hope,” Wallace Stegner wrote of the American West. "
11 " They don’t understand, we are addictive people. There’s eighty percent unemployment here. A hundred miles away it’s at three percent. But you can’t tell people to stop doing something they don’t want to stop doing. "
12 " Halfway there, the forest opened up, and a twenty-foot clear-cut running along the forty-ninth parallel met the road. "
13 " A mariner’s rule I learned growing up is that you have a 50 percent chance of swimming 50 yards in 50-degree water. "
14 " The skiing cosmos is difficult to explain to anyone not immersed in it. The act of skiing differs from traditional sports in that unlike basketball, biking or football, it requires specific orographic and meteorological phenomena. Because skiers depend on planetary forces much larger than themselves—and, like surfers, must work in harmony with them—a kind of otherworldly euphoria overtakes them when they do it well. "
15 " The forty-ninth parallel caps the state for three hundred miles. Stretching from Minnesota to the Pacific, the forty-ninth is the longest straight border in the world. "
16 " North Dakota is one of the only states in the country that casts its highways in concrete so they never fall apart. "
17 " The true skier does not follow where others lead. He is not confined to a piste. He is an artist who creates a pattern of lovely lines from virgin and uncorrupted snow. What marble is to the sculptor, so are the latent harmonies of ridge and hollow, powder, and sun-softened crust to the true skier. "
