Madison

“Gratitude and reciprocity are the currency of a gift economy, and they have the remarkable property of multiplying with every exchange, their energy concentrating as they pass from hand to hand, a truly renewable resource. Can we imagine a human economy with a currency which emulates the flow from Mother Earth? A currency of gifts? When I speak about reciprocity as a relationship, let me be clear. I don’t mean a bilateral exchange in which an obligation is incurred, and can then be discharged with a reciprocal “payment.” I mean keeping the gift in motion in a way that is open and diffuse, so that the gift does not accumulate and stagnate, but keeps moving, like the gift of berries through an ecosystem. We ecologists think about the currency of ecosystems in terms of biogeochemistry—the cycling of life’s materials, between the living and the not.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World

“Recognizing this duality, I realize more strongly than ever that the only way to handle this ambivalence is to fight the dark side--whatever it is--with short, sharp, intelligent skirmishes. Then you retreat, rest, and restore yourself and quiet, beautiful places. Thus you can gain strength and inspiration for the next battle. Perhaps that's why thorough wrote: "In Wildness is the preservation of the World.”
― Anne LaBastille, Woodswoman II: Beyond Black Bear Lake

“Each trip it got a little more difficult to convince myself that the important things lay ahead and the things that remained behind would still be there when we returned. It was getting harder to dispel those second thoughts.”
― Linda Greenlaw, The Hungry Ocean

“The light was different, like after a rainstorm, when the air seems sharper, gold or blue. A force that usually lay beneath life was closer to the surface, temporarily. It was letting them in on something, barely. It was letting them get some spooky, lucky sense before sinking away again.”
― Grace Flahive, Palm Meridian: A Novel