In every outthrust headland, in every curving beach, in every grain of sand there is the story of the earth.

Unless we have courage to recognize cruelty for what it is - whether its victim is human or animal - we cannot expect things to be much better in the world.

Have we fallen into a mesmerized state that makes us accept as inevitable that which is inferior or detrimental, as though having lost the will or the vision to demand that which is good?

The procedure has a strange Alice-in-Wonderland quality. The reservoir was created as a public water supply, yet the community, probably unconsulted about the sportsmen's project, is forced either to drink water containing poisonous residues or to pay our tax money for treatment of the water to remove the poisons - treatments that are by no means foolproof.

The shore is an ancient world, for as long as there has been an earth and sea there has been this place of the meeting of land and water.

There is one quality that characterizes all of us who deal with the sciences of the earth and its life - we are never bored.

The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized.