Stacy

“I do not concern myself with my inability to feel such comfort amidst humans (other than with very few friends and family), but, rather, am simply thankful that at least dogs exist, and I’m humbly aware of how much less a person I’d be – how less a human – if they did not exist. ”
― Rick Bass, Colter: The True Story of the Best Dog I Ever Had – A Memoir of Raging Genius, Loyal Spirit, and Canine Companionship in Montana

“We try and map boundaries, and to string fence - we try to set up a border between life and death, between man and nature, and complicity versus innocence. But the truth is, there is no complicity, there is no innocence; and there is no death, there is only life.”
― Rick Bass, The Sky, The Stars, The Wilderness: Three Lyrical Short Stories of Texas, Appalachia, and the Untamed American West

“If it's wild to your own heart, protect it. Preserve it. Love it. And fight for it, and dedicate yourself to it, whether it's a mountain range, your wife, your husband, or even (god forbid) your job. It doesn't matter if it's wild to anyone else: if it's what makes your heart sing, if it's what makes your days soar like a hawk in the summertime, then focus on it. Because for sure, it's wild, and if it's wild, it'll mean you're still free. No matter where you are.”
― Rick Bass

“A dog creates, transcribes, a new landscape for you. A dog like Colter sharpens your joy of all the seasons, and for a while, sometimes a long while, such a dog seems capable, by himself alone, of holding time in place--of pinning it, and holding it taught. And then when he is gone, it is as if the world is taken away.

Dogs like that are young for what seems like a very long time....

One you have lost a dog--especially the first you trained from a pup, the one you first set sail into the world with--you can never fully give of yourself to another dog. You can never again look at a dog you love without hedging a tiny bit, if only subconsciously, against the day when that dog, too, must leave. You can never again hunt or enter the future so recklessly, so joyously, with that weight of forethought....

As I sleep restlessly, night after night, or more often, as I lie there awake, I can see him running and I feel guilty that I am not there to honor the birds he is finding... One way or the other, he is still out there running. He will never rest.... I will always want him to know a moment's rest, and peace, and he will always know in his hot heart that the only peace to be gotten is by never resting, by always pushing on.

He is my Colter.... I am still his, and he is still mine.”
― Rick Bass, Colter: The True Story of the Best Dog I Ever Had – A Memoir of Raging Genius, Loyal Spirit, and Canine Companionship in Montana