Demand light

Some days you have to turn off the news
and listen to the bird or truck
or the neighbor screaming out her life.
You have to close all the books and open
all the windows so that whatever swirls
inside can leave and whatever flutters
against the glass can enter. Some days
you have to unplug the phone and step
out to the porch and rock all afternoon
and allow the sun to tell you what to do.
The whole day has to lie ahead of you
like railroad tracks that drift off into gravel.
Some days you have to walk down the wooden
staircase through the evening fog to the river,
where the peach roses are closing,
sit on the grassy bank and wait for the two geese.

~Philip Terman

In between the folds

Mardy Murie reading the preface to her book Two in the Far North to Terry Tempest Williams::

 

There may be people who feel no need for nature. They are fortunate, perhaps. 

But, for those of us who feel otherwise, who feel something is missing unless we can hike across the land disturbed only by our footsteps or see creatures roaming freely as they have always done, we are sure there should be wilderness. 

Species other than man have rights, too.

Having finished all the requisites of our proud, materialistic civilization, our neon-lit society, does nature, which is the basis for our existence, have the right to live on?

Do we have enough reverence for life to concede to wilderness this right?

Our eyes met.

"Do you think we have it in us?" she asked.