Ahead and to the west was our ranger station - and the mountains of Idaho, poems of geology stretching beyond any boundaries and seemingly even beyond the world.

One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself and watch yourself softly becoming the author of something beautiful even if it is only a floating ash.

All good things come by grace, and grace comes by art, and art does not come easy.

...life every now and then becomes literature...as if life had been made and not happened.

If our father had had his way, nobody who did not know how to fish would be allowed to disgrace a fish by catching him.

I had as yet no notion that life every now and then becomes literature—not for long, of course, but long enough to be what we best remember, and often enough so that what we eventually come to mean by life are those moments when life, instead of going sideways, backwards, forward, or nowhere at all, lines out straight, tense and inevitable, with a complication, climax, and, given some luck, a purgation, as if life had been made and not happened.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.