There's So Much To Be Afraid Of.

Over The Years, One Comes To Measure A Place, Too, Not Just For The Beauty It May Give, The Balminess Of Its Breezes, The Insouciance And Relaxation It Encourages, The Sublime Pleasures It Offers, But For What It Teaches. The Way In Which It Alters Our Perception Of The Human. It Is Not So Much That You Want To Return To Indifferent Or Difficult Places, But That You Want To Not Forget.

When We Enter The Landscape To Learn Something, We Are Obligated, I Think, To Pay Attention Rather Than Constantly To Pose Questions. To Approach The Land As We Would A Person, By Opening An Intelligent Conversation. And To Stay In One Place, To Make Of That One, Long Observation A Fully Dilated Experience. We Will Always Be Rewarded If We Give The Land Credit For More Than We Imagine, And If We Imagine It As Being More Complex Even Than Language. In These Ways We Begin, I Think, To Find A Home, To Sense How To Fit A Place.

You Can't Learn Anything From Saguaro Cactus, From Ocotillo. They Are Just Passing Through; Their Roots, Their Much Heralded Dormancy In The Dry Season, These Are Only Illusions Of Permanence. They Know Even Less Than You Do.

We Simply Do Not Understand Our Place In The Universe And Have Not The Courage To Admit It.

My Function As A Writer Is To Provide An Atmosphere In Which People Can Think Wisely About What We're Doing On This Planet.