#berry lopez

[forallyourlittlewords]

In a parallel universe, I have always been afraid of, you know, somebody who's traveling to remote parts of the earth all the time.

- Fresh Air: "In 'Sliver Of Sky,' Berry Lopez Confronts Childhood Sexual Abuse 

[rhodawave]

Farther on in western Nebraska I pick up the small bodies of mice and birds. While I wait to retrieve these creatures I do not meet the eyes of passing drivers. Whoever they are, I feel anger toward them, in spite of the sparrow and the gull I myself have killed. We treat the attrition of lives on the road like the attrition of lives in war: horrifying, unavoidable, justified. Accepting the slaughter leaves people momentarily fractious, embarrassed. South of Broken Bow, at dawn, I cannot avoid an immature barn swallow. It hangs by its head, motionless in the slats of the grille. I stop for a rabbit on Nebraska 806 and find, only a few feet away, a garter snake. What else have I missed, too small, too narrow? What has gone under or past me while I stared at mountains, hay meadows, fencerows, the beryl surface of rivers? In Wyoming I could not help but see pronghorn antelope swollen big as barrels by the side of the road, their legs splayed rigidly aloft. For animals so large, people will stop. But how many have this habit of clearing the road of smaller creatures, people who would remove the ones I miss? I do not imagine I am alone. As much sorrow as the man's hand conveyed in Nebraska, it meant gratitude too for burying the dead.

Berry Lopez, "Apologia"

from About This Life: Journeys on the Threshold of Memory

[shadowblossoms]

the virtue of reverence

Reverence is rooted in the understanding

that there is a world beyond human control,

human invention, and human understanding, 

and no matter how sophisticated our

technologies for probing reality become,

the Great Mystery will be there forever.

It's not ours to solve.

When you come upon something incomprehensible,

some dimension of this Great Mystery,

reverence brings you to your knees.

You can open up to it and come out of your

own little small tiny place in the world and

realize what it is to be fully alive,

a part of all life evolving.

-Paul Woodruff (philosopher)-