“She was lost now, she d been silenced- another dead branch on Cordova s warped tree.”
“Sweet is the lore which nature brings; Our meddling intellect Misshapes the beauteous forms of things— We murder to dissect.”
“Two weeks earlier than scheduled, she flew into Vancouver and signed on with Greenpeace. The work was neither taxing nor truly exciting but the people she met more than compensated and she forged many new friendships. The high points were the trips they made by sea kayak, exploring the wild inlets farther up the coast. They watched bears scoop salmon from the shallows and paddled among pods of orcas, so close you could have reached out and touched them. At night they camped at the water s edge, listening to the blow of whales in the bay and the distant howls of wolves in the forest above.”
“He could understand that the creatures, the fish and the owls, should feed and frolic at moon-rise, at moon-down and at south-moon-over, for these were all plain marks to go by, direct and visible. He marvelled, padding on bare feet past the slat-fence of the clearing, that the moon was so strong that when it lay the other side of the earth, the creatures felt it and stirred by the hour it struck. The moon was far away, unseen, and it had power to move them.”
“If he stays inside himself, if he is contained within his nature as he is participant in the larger force, he will be able to listen, and his hearing through himself will give him secrets objects share.”
“As the soil was renewed, so one s feelings seemed to change, uniting in some inexplicable way with a distant age when the eyes and ears of men were more alert to sights, sounds, and fine distinctions.”
“Just be natural. Nature never denies a natural thing.”
“উড়ে চলি, মেলে দুটি ডানা সেথায় যেতে নেই কোন মানা শেকল ভেঙে আয় তুইও সেথা উড়ে চলি যাহা অজানা”
“We amble away from the city, away from all angst, into the heart of a fairy-tale forest that reminds me how very lucky we are to live and breathe on this great Earth flourishing with wonder.”
“The morning air carried a chill in it that Libby hadn t anticipated, but one that made her smile even as she suppressed a shiver. Sunlight, soft as a kiss, shot the mist through with gold, encircling the island with a promise of another beautiful day.”
“Gardens remind us to be patient and humble because that’s what they are. They have no delusions of grandeur or plotting schemes. They trust implicitly that they will be cared for as part of the cycle of nature. They give so much, yet they are unaware of their gift. They have no perception of themselves. They treat all of their inhabitants, of every type and form, as sacred and worthy. They surrender themselves to the moment with flawless confidence and, when it is called for, with the unmarred hope of renewal.”
“What turned me on far more than the flickery silhouette of a bunting or a shrike was a general feeling of well-being: lofty tree-crowns blurred and waving in fresh gusts; the edge of a meadow darkened into mystery by a straggly blackthorn hedge; the intimacy of a single cornflower that no one else would ever notice; the scuffles of secret little beasts through dead leaves or grass, untainted by the absurdity of human institutions.”
“I was, I suppose, a child of Wordsworth, not so keen on getting and spending .”
“When we were new, we used to worry that because we often couldn’t see the Sun from mid-store,we’d grow weaker and weaker.”
“People often have a romantic ideal of the forest, but if you sit under a tree, every insect within a ten-metre radius will make a beeline for you. It’s not romantic. It is, however, transformative. To feel its pulse, its rhythm, its life. To learn its ways, its regenerative power, its creative prowess. When we look at trees, we think of them as trucks, branches, and leaves. We forget that under the ground there is a vast and complex system of intertwined roots that is as large and fascinating as the system above the soil. It is through this underground system that the trees talk to each other, warn each other of danger, help the sick trees, support the elderly ones, and generally have an elaborate and purposeful way of communicating with the whole ecological community.”
“Constantine Levin did not like talking or hearing about the beauty of nature. Words seemed to detract from the beauty of what he was looking at.”
“The point is that this is all gardening. The garden runs through our lives like a river through a field, like air in our lungs. The garden does not end in space any more than it does in time. The flowers grow as much in our minds as in the soil. There are very few nights when I do not lie in the dark, everyone else sleeping inside this creaking, bony house, and go through the garden, seeing it with the clarity of a dreamer, taking it to pieces and putting it together again, mending everything in my head.”