He ought to imagine the creatures there and all the faintest motions of the wind. They cannot take any place seriously because they must be ready at any moment by the terms of power and wealth in the modern world, to destroy any place. I like to think of landscape not as a fixed place but as a path that is unwinding before my eyes, under my feed. To see and know a place is a contemplative act. It means emptying our minds and letting what is there, in all its multiplicity and endless variety, come in.
County lines do make separate kinds of community life, each a little different from the other.
It is the nature of the soil to be highly complex and variable, to conform very inexactly to human conclusions and rules. It is impossible to contemplate the life of the soil for very long without seeing it as analogous to the life of the spirit. I'd like to see thick description make a comeback. Apart from sheer sensuous pleasure, it gives you the comforting feeling that you're not altogether adrift, that at least you have an actual context to enter into and real things to grapple with. The protectors of the environment are a powerful group in the United State.