For better or worse, zoos are how most people come to know big or exotic animals. Few will ever see wild penguins sledding downhill to sea on their bellies, giant pandas holding bamboo lollipops in China or tree porcupines in the Canadian Rockies, balled up like giant pine cones.

The visual image is a kind of tripwire for the emotions.

Mystery causes a mental itch, which the brain tries to soothe with the balm of reasonable talk.

We would lie on coral sand, below sugary stars, watching Cassiopeia mount her throne and the Great Bear wash its paws in the South. I would say, "I have a secret to tell you." And, folding me in your arms, boyish and sly, you would answer: "Whisper it into my mouth.

When I set a glass prism on a windowsill and allow the sun to flood through it, a spectrum of colors dances on the floor. What we call "white" is a rainbow of colored rays packed into a small space. The prism sets them free. Love is the white light of emotion.

I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.

We evolved as creatures knitted into the fabric of nature, and without its intimate truths, we can find ourselves unraveling.