“There was a time when he'd envied anyone who left Acker's Gap, when he watched them go and felt a kind of wild yearning--but something was shifting inside him. There was a certain solace to knowing a world this well. You knew its flaws, its shortcomings, just as you knew its beauties. And you learned to love it all. You loved the abundance of it, the sweep and immensity of the land, and you loved the sadness and the lack, too.To walk each day on ground that had given rise to you: that was a privilege. Not a curse.”