Silence is exhilarating at first – as noise is – but there is a sweetness to silence outlasting exhilaration, akin to the sweetness of listening and the velvet of sleep.
It’s incongruous that the older we get, the more likely we are to turn in the direction of religion. Less vivid and intense ourselves, closer to the grave, we begin to conceive of ourselves as immortal.
If a walker is indeed an individualist there is nowhere he can’t go at dawn and not many places he can’t go at noon. But just as it demeans life to live alongside a great river you can no longer swim in or drink from, to be crowded into safer areas and hours takes much of the gloss off walking – one sport you shouldn’t have to reserve a time and a court for.
Men often compete with one another until the day they die. Comradeship consists of rubbing shoulders jocularly with a competitor.
To relive the relationship between owner and slave we can consider how we treat our cars and dogs – a dog exercising a somewhat similar leverage on our mercies and an automobile being comparable in value to a slave in those days
Men greet each other with a sock on the arm, women with a hug, and the hug wears better in the long run.
Land of opportunity, land for the huddled masses where would the opportunity have been without the genocide of those Old Guard, bristling Indian tribes?
We New Yorkers see more death and violence than most soldiers do, grow a thick chitin on our backs, grimace like a rat and learn to do a disappearing act. Long ago we outgrew the need to be blowhards about our masculinity; we leave that to the Alaskans and Texans, who have more time for it.
If two people are in love they can sleep on the blade of a knife.
If a person sings quietly to himself on the street people smile with approval; but if he talks it’s not alright; they think he’s crazy. The singer is presumed to be happy and the talker unhappy.
True solitude is a din of birdsong, seething leaves, whirling colors, or a clamor of tracks in the snow.
Black bears, though, are not fearsome. I encountered one on the road to my house in Vermont, alone at night. I picked up two stones just in case, but I wasn’t afraid of him. I felt a hunter’s exhilaration and a brotherly feeling.
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