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.

It's incongruous that the older we get, the more likely we are to turn in the direction of religion. Less vivid and intense ourselves, closer to the grave, we begin to conceive of ourselves as immortal.

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.

No birdcall is the musical equal of a clarinet blown with panache.

Poetry is engendered in solitude, so what better meter for it than the clip of a buckskin horse?

True solitude is a din of birdsong, seething leaves, whirling colors, or a clamor of tracks in the snow.

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.