Turlough

“No, I'd never been to this country
before. No, I didn't know where the roads
would lead me. No, I didn't intend to
turn back.”
― Mary Oliver, Evidence: Poems

“Is there a word for the moment you win tug-of-war? When the weight gives, and all that extra rope comes hurtling towards you, how even though you've won, you still end up with muddy knees and burns on your hands? Is there a word for that? I wish there was.”
― Sarah Kay, No Matter the Wreckage: Poems

“Trees, now—Slothrop’s intensely alert to trees, finally. When he comes in among trees he will spend time touching them, studying them, sitting very quietly near them and understanding that each tree is a creature, carrying on its individual life, aware of what’s happening around it, not just some hunk of wood to be cut down. Slothrop’s family actually made its money killing trees, amputating them from their roots, chopping them up, grinding them to pulp, bleaching that to paper and getting paid for this with more paper. “That’s really insane.” He shakes his head. “There’s insanity in my family.” He looks up. The trees are still. They know he’s there. They probably also know what he’s thinking. “I’m sorry,” he tells them. “I can’t do anything about those people, they’re all out of my reach. What can I do?” A medium-size pine nearby nods its top and suggests, “Next time you come across a logging operation out here, find one of their tractors that isn’t being guarded, and take its oil filter with you. That’s what you can do.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

“It was not the building of bunkers beneath private land that would allow us to survive the catastrophes we faced, but the strengthening of communities that already existed.”
― Mark O'Connell, Notes from an Apocalypse: A Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back