We usually recognize a beginning. Endings are more difficult to detect. Most often, they are realized only after reflection. Silence. We are seldom conscious when silence begins—it is only afterward that we realize what we have been a part of. In the night journeys of Canada geese, it is the silence that propels them. Thomas Merton writes, “Silence is the strength of our interior life.… If we fill our lives with silence, then we will live in hope.

Greed says there is never enough. Abundance says there is more than enough. Greed closes the door behind itself. Abundance opens the door for others.

I think we are living a life without specificity, and then our lives become abstractions.

If a man knew what a woman never forgets, he would love her differently.

To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from.

I remember a phone call from a friend of mine who lives along the MacKenzie River. She said, "This is the first year in twenty that the chinook salmon have not returned." This woman knows the names of things. This woman is committed to a place. And she sounded the alarm.

The choices and decisions we make in terms of how we use the land ultimately affect our very DNA. Environmental issues are life issues.