Why don't we wonder?

"Amazingly, we take for granted that instinct for survival, fear of death, must separate us from the happiness of pure and uninterpreted experience, in which body, mind and nature are the same. And this debasement of our vision, the retreat from wonder, the backing away like lobsters from free-swimming life into safe crannies, the desperate instinct that our life passes unlived, is reflected in proliferation without joy, corrosive money rot, the gross befouling of the earth and air and water from which we came."

- Peter Matthiessen in The Snow Leopard

Technological terror

"And then, almost everywhere, a clear and subtle illumination that lent magnificence of life and peace to death was overwhelmed in the hard glare of technology. Yet that light is always present, like the starts of noon. Man must perceive it if he is to transcend his meaninglessness, for no amount of "progress" can take its place. We have outsmarted ourselves, like greedy monkeys and now we are full of dread."

- Peter Matthiessen in The Snow Leopard

Perfect picture

"So often, in the places that have moved me…the sun has been obscured, or rain has made photography impossible, as if the mystery of these places was better preserved in one's mind and heart than on the flat face of celluloid."

- Peter Matthiessen in The Cloud Forest

Prelude to the plunge

"Fear is very much like pain, in the sense that, in the intervals that one is free of it, one forgets how very disagreeable it is…its worst agony comes well beforehand, in the period of suspense; by the time the crucial moment arrives, a certain detachment – a fatalistic longing to finish the suspense, and finally a dull resignation – has replaced the quaking."

- Peter Matthiessen in The Cloud Forest

Barrier between beauty and the beholder

"…I dislike carrying the camera: it seems to me that one misses a great deal of seeing and feeling through thinking of one's experience in terms of light and angle."

- Peter Matthiessen in The Cloud Forest

The Third World "System"

"One becomes stolid and resigned as any dray horse, aware that an infusion of logic, honesty, and efficiency into this world would create a chaos impossible to imagine."

- Peter Matthiessen in The Cloud Forest

Boring bigness

"…large cities,…despite the homage paid to them by travel companies,… are probably the least interesting"
- Peter Matthiessen in The Cloud Forest

The Andean high-way

"The mountain roads of these countries are famous…for the breathtaking views which lie just beneath the unfenced, unbanked shoulders; both roads and vehicles are always in poor repair, and to the helms of the vehicles cling driven men, innocent of fear and commonsense."

- Peter Matthiessen in The Cloud Forest

Team quirk

"…why is it, of recent years, that Americans are always said to operate in "teams," as if an individual American, without his insipid "togetherness," would be helpless?"
- Peter Matthiessen in The Cloud Forest

Rainforest reverberations

"And it is true that the jungle seems strangely silent, even when the air is full of sound; the sounds are like sounds from another sphere of consciousness, from a dream, and then suddenly they burst singly on the ear"
- Peter Matthiessen in The Cloud Forest

Descend slowly from a high

"…how careful one must be not one must be not to talk too much, or move abruptly, and also the precarious coming down from highs…: it is crucial to emerge gradually from such a chrysalis, drying new wings in the sun's quiet, like a butterfly, to avoid a sudden tearing of the spirit."
- Peter Matthiessen in The Snow Leopard

Tru(dg)e path

"Someone once said that God offers man the choice between repose and truth: he cannot have both."

- Peter Matthiessen in The Snow Leopard

Why worry?

"In worrying about the future, I despoil my present; in my escape, I leave a true freedom behind."

- Peter Matthiessen in The Snow Leopard

Accept whatever comes

"That happy-go-lucky spirit, that acceptance which is not fatalism but a deep trust in life…"

- Peter Matthiessen in The Snow Leopard

Precocial paradise

"Childhood is full of mystery and promise, and perhaps the life fear comes when all the mysteries are laid open, when what we thought we wanted is attained. It is just at the moment of seeming fulfilment that we sense irrevocable betrayal…surely this is the paradise of children, that they are at rest in the present…"

- Peter Matthiessen in The Snow Leopard

Clear air, clear thought

"In the clearness of this Himalayan air…my head has cleared in these weeks free of intrusions – mail, telephones, people and their needs – and I respond to things spontaneously, without defensive or self-conscious screens."

- Peter Matthiessen in The Snow Leopard

High Ways

"In this land, the subsistence economies have always depended upon travel and in its decades – centuries, perhaps – as a trade route for all the hill peoples, broad steps have been worn into the mountain path."

- Peter Matthiessen in The Snow Leopard

High up, where you can hear

"In the clean air and absence of all sound, of even the simplest machinery…in the warmth and harmony and seeming plenty, come whispers of a paradisal age."

- Peter Matthiessen in The Snow Leopard

Walking the dark rainforest

"Memory supplies some ecological detail, and imagination adds a few beasts of its own."

- David Quammen in Song of the Dodo

The rewards of optimism

"But the unsatisfactory thing about despair, in my view, is that besides being fruitless it's far less exciting than hope, however slim."

- David Quammen in Song of the Dodo

Found in translation

"The mental solitude that comes with my total incomprehension of table talk compensates some for the lack of physical solitude."
- David Quammen in Song of the Dodo

Lost, and profound

"As we extinguish a large portion of the planet's biological diversity, we will lose also a large portion of out world's beauty, complexity, intellectual interest, spiritual depth, and ecological health."

- David Quammen in Song of the Dodo

Crunch those numbers...but with caution

"Modeling is fun, sometimes it produces elegant structures, but there is a tendency to reify models. To take them as nature, when really all they are is proposed abstractions of nature. I'm concerned when a literature begins to develop on the models themselves, rather than on nature."

- Dan Simberloff, quoted in David Quammen's Song of the Dodo

Do take note...

"Memory knows things that notes could never remember."

- David Quammen in Song of the Dodo

The 'stamp' of civilization

"All over the planet, humanity is at war against other species, against the wildness of wild landscape, against the redness of nature's tooth and claw. Humanity will win. The only point at issue is the final severity of the peace."

- David Quammen in Song of the Dodo

No-return of the native

"Dreamy invocation of conciliatory measures was popular among the British colonists. "Conciliation" would become the standard euphemism covering a multitude of oppressions. What it meant was, We take your land, we give you out religion and our language and our diseases, and then you and your culture melt away like snow on a griddle."

- David Quammen in Song of the Dodo

Shadows of limelight

"For every neat legend told and retold, a bit of messy but significant reality is ignored…Furthermore, while some legends have their uses, they all have their costs."

- David Quammen in Song of the Dodo

Havoc of exotic invasives

"Biologists would have to destroy a place in order to save it and that didn't even work in Vietnam."

- David Quammen in Song of the Dodo

Conviction vs proof

"Faith comforts, but data persuade."

- David Quammen in Song of the Dodo

Swing mood

"Like good resolutions, frustrations and despair soon fade, at least in a certain kind of person."

- David Quammen in Song of the Dodo

Animals are 'people' too

"We all recognize that Homo sapiens encompasses variation among individuals, but it is easy to forget that…other species routinely encompass variation too."

- David Quammen in Song of the Dodo

The National Geographic effect

"Anyone who has ever stepped into a rainforest, head full of images from glossy nature photography, has had…disappointment, which derives from confusing diversity with abundance."
- David Quammen in Song of the Dodo