Lillsa

“The full-grown animals started up at the first report and looked round, and at the second shot the whole herd began to go into the water. The mothers, however, would not leave their dead young ones. One sniffed at its young one, and pushed it, evidently unable to make out what was the matter; it only saw the blood spurting from its head. It cried and wailed like a human being. At last, when the herd began to plunge in, the mother pushed her young one before her towards the water. I now feared that I should lose my booty, and ran forward to save it; but she was too quick for me. She took the young one by one fore-leg, and disappeared with it like lightning into the depths. The other mother did the same...I then went towards another herd, where there were also young ones, and shot one of them; but, made wiser by experience, I shot the mother too. It was a touching sight to see her bend over her dead young one before she was shot, and even in death she lay holding it with one fore-leg. So now we had meat and blubber enough to last a long time, and meat, too, that was delicious, for the side of young walrus tastes like loin of mutton.”
― Fridtjof Nansen

“Although, I thought I knew almost everything about camping out in odd places, I still have much to learn about the art of relaxing.”
― Theodora C. Stanwell-Fletcher, Driftwood Valley: A Woman Naturalist in the Northern Wilderness (Northwest Reprints

“They stand under the circle of camouflaged Platanus, that most resigned of eastern trees, on the spot where the island was sold, by people who listened to trees, to people who cleared them.”
― Richard Powers, The Overstory

“High up, beyond his sight, rocky outcrops crawl with manzanita, shedding their curling, crimson barks. Bay laurels rim the logger-made meadows. Canyons thicken with orange madrone peeling to creamy, clammy green. Coast live oaks like the one that crippled him gather on the crags. And down in cool riparian corridors smelling of silt and decaying needles, redwoods work a plan that will take a thousand years to realize.”
― Richard Powers, The Overstory