Would The Last Animal, Eating

To Allow Mystery, Which Is To Say To Yourself, 'there Could Be More...things We Don't Understand,' Is Not To Damn Knowledge....it Is To Permit Yourself An Extraordinary, Freedom: Someone Else Does Not Have To Be Wrong In Order That You Might Be Right...this Tolerance For Mystery Invigorates The Imagination; And It Is The Imagination That Gives Shape To The Universe.

The Cold View To Take Of Our Future Is That We Are Therefore Headed For Extinction In A Universe Of Impersonal Chemical, Physical, And Biological Laws. A More Productive, Certainly More Engaging View, Is That We Have The Intelligence To Grasp What Is Happening, The Composure Not To Be Intimidated By Its Complexity, And The Courage To Take Steps That May Bear No Fruit In Our Lifetimes.

When We Enter The Landscape To Learn Something, We Are Obligated, I Think, To Pay Attention Rather Than Constantly To Pose Questions. To Approach The Land As We Would A Person, By Opening An Intelligent Conversation. And To Stay In One Place, To Make Of That One, Long Observation A Fully Dilated Experience. We Will Always Be Rewarded If We Give The Land Credit For More Than We Imagine, And If We Imagine It As Being More Complex Even Than Language. In These Ways We Begin, I Think, To Find A Home, To Sense How To Fit A Place.

I Lay There Knowing Something Eerie Ties Us To The World Of Animals. Sometimes The Animals Pull You Backward Into It. You Share Hunger And Fear With Them Like Salt In Blood.

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