Indeed, if "biology is chemistry with history," as somebody has said, then nature writing is biology with love.

Animals are stylized characters in a kind of old saga - stylized because even the most acute of them have little leeway as they play out their parts.

Sophistication" is another word for that inventive mix of tolerance, resilience, and resourcefulness city people develop.

If a walker is indeed an individualist there is nowhere he can't go at dawn and not many places he can't go at noon. But just as it demeans life to live alongside a great river you can no longer swim in or drink from, to be crowded into safer areas and hours takes much of the gloss off walking - one sport you shouldn't have to reserve a time and a court for.

Country people tend to consider that they have a corner on righteousness and to distrust most manifestations of cleverness, while people in the city are leery of righteousness but ascribe to themselves all manner of cleverness.

A writer's work is to witness things.

It would be hard to define chaos better than as a world where children decide they don't want to live.