abi’s Reviews > On Extinction: How We Became Estranged from Nature > Status Update

'a heron, startled by the boat's wake, stowed its slender legs and took off from the riverbank, only to settle a little further ahead. as the boat travelled downstream, the grey silhouette of the heron rose into the air again and again like an angry ghost.'

'the black-and-white cape petrels that had followed the ship had disappeared. in their absence, i saw my first snow petrel, white as a new idea.'

'fossil fuels and mineral deposits form over millions of years of the earth's spectacular and sluggardly phases. industrial might extracted these resources from the ground and oceans in a fraction of this time. this was progress inextricably linked to the natural world but which modified people's lives in such a way as to convince them of their final liberation from it.'