Michele Sons

“Existential loneliness and a sense that one’s life is inconsequential, both of which are hallmarks of modern civilizations, seem to me to derive in part from our abandoning a belief in the therapeutic dimensions of a relationship with place. A continually refreshed sense of the endless complexity of patterns in the natural world, patterns that are ever present and discernible, and which incorporate the observer, undermines the feeling that one is alone in the world, or meaningless in it. The effort to know a place deeply is, ultimately, an expression of the human desire to belong, to fit somewhere.”
― Barry Lopez, Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World

“To explore is to travel without a hypothesis.”
― Barry Lopez

“Perhaps I'm in a minority, feeling that the instability of my own country is partly the result of its support of an adolescent's ideal -- that people should be free to do whatever they want -- and its obsession with personal gratiication, whatever the cost. Lives without restraint are eventually ruinous, to those individuals and to the social and physical world around them.”
― Barry Lopez

“When we enter the landscape to learn something, we are obligated, I think, to pay attention rather than constantly to pose questions.”
― Barry Lopez, The Rediscovery of North America