Outside it's easy to abandon every convention and prejudice and get
down to the messy business of being an animal, alive. When you're
rooting around in the water or the woods, miles from the nearest strip
mall and office complex, nobody is likely to judge you by your clothing
or your skin color or your political orientation, and if they do you
don't give a damn anyway. Fishing -- or hunting or photographing birds
or cutting firewood -- frees you of such nonsense. If you want society,
convention, comfort, and safety, stay home. If you want your life to be
a joyous romp, get outside.
(From "Eight Days of Hendricksons")
BDrifting downstream that afternoon, I realized that there's a big
difference between hearing and listening. Hearing is passive; listening
is active. We hear traffic and airport noise and the shouting
loudspeakers in a department store. We listen to laughing children and
hooting doves, to leaves rustling in wind-stirred aspens, to trout
sipping mayflies in a river. In these noisy times the thousand subtle
voices of a river can throw a calm over our lives. I swear it's music
to our ears.
I don't believe that every encounter with nature automatically transports
us back to some mystical sense of well-being stolen away by modern
life. No doubt people have been inattentive and distracted as long as
we've had the brains to string thoughts together. But I know that we're
equipped to see and hear more than we usually do and that sometimes,
when conditions are right, we can open ourselves to a world so rich with
sensations that it makes the booming progress of civilization dim to
insignifance.
~Jerry Dennis
(From -- from "The Music Out There")
For more about The River Home check out this weeks
Book Review.
Lighter Side, Part 1 |
Lighter Side, Part 2
|