One Of The Great Dreams

Everything Is Held Together With Stories. That Is All That Is Holding Us Together, Stories And Compassion.

Watching The Animals Come And Go, And Feeling The Land Swell Up To Meet Them And Then Feeling It Grow Still At Their Departure, I Came To Think Of The Migrations As Breath, As The Land Breathing. In Spring A Great Inhalation Of Light And Animals. The Long-bated Breath Of Summer. And An Exhalation That Propelled Them All South In The Fall.

If Stories Come To You, Care For Them. And Learn To Give Them Away Where They Are Needed. Sometimes A Person Needs A Story More Than Food To Stay Alive.

We Keep Each Other Alive With Our Stories. We Need To Share Them, As Much As We Need To Share Food. We Also Require For Our Health The Presence Of Good Companions. One Of The Most Extraordinary Things About The Land Is That It Knows This—and It Compels Language From Some Of Us So That As A Community We May Converse About This Or That Place, And Speak Of The Need.

Because You Have Seen Something Doesn't Mean You Can Explain It. Differing Interpretations Will Always Abound, Even When Good Minds Come To Bear. The Kernel Of Indisputable Information Is A Dot In Space; Interpretations Grow Out Of The Desire To Make This Point A Line, To Give It Direction. The Directions In Which It Can Be Sent, The Uses To Which It Can Be Put By A Culturally, Professionally, And Geographically Diverse Society Are Almost Without Limit. The Possibilities Make Good Scientists Chary.