“Being in nature refreshes us by ... allowing us to surrender to involuntary attention: the effortless and often enjoyable noticing of sensory stimuli in our environment.”

“قد يبدو اكتشاف مصدر الصوت وتفسيره عملا سهلا، لكنّه عمل معقد جدا؛ فعندما نسمع شخصا ما ينادينا باسمنا ونتجه نحو الصوت، فنحن نعول على قدرة دماغنا على حساب الاتجاه من الفارق الزمني بين الأذنين؛ وهو الفرق في الزمن الذي يستغرقه الصوت للوصول إلى أذنينا.”

“That evening, as I watched the sunset’s pinwheels of apricot and mauve slowly explode into red ribbons, I thought: The sensory misers will inherit the earth, but first they will make it not worth living on. When you consider something like death, after which (there being no news flash to the contrary) we may well go out like a candle flame, then it probably doesn’t matter if we try too hard, are awkward sometimes, care for one another too deeply, are excessively curious about nature, are too open to experience, enjoy a nonstop expense of the senses in an effort to know life intimately and lovingly. It probably doesn’t matter if, while trying to be modest and eager watchers of life’s many spectacles, we sometimes look clumsy or get dirty or ask stupid questions or reveal our ignorance or say the wrong thing or light up with wonder like the children we all are. It probably doesn’t matter if a passerby sees us dipping a finger into the moist pouches of dozens of lady’s slippers to find out what bugs tend to fall into them, and thinks us a bit eccentric. Or a neighbor, fetching her mail, sees us standing in the cold with our own letters in one hand and a seismically red autumn leaf in the other its color hitting our sense like a blow from a stun gun, as we stand with a huge grin, too paralyzed by the intricately veined gaudiness of the leaf to move.”

“The sensory misers will inherit the earth, but first they will make it not worth living on. When you consider something like death, after which we may well go out like a candle flame, then it probably won’t matter if we try too hard, are awkward sometimes, care for one another too deeply, are excessively curious about nature, are too open to experience, enjoy a nonstop expense of the senses in an effort to know life intimately and lovingly.”

“Symbolic of life, hair bolts from our head[s]. Like the earth, it can be harvested, but it will rise again. We can change its color and texture when the mood strikes us, but in time it will return to its original form, just as Nature will in time turn our precisely laid-out cities into a weed-way.”

“Antonina felt convinced that people needed to connect more with their animal nature, but also that animals long for human company, reach out for human attention.”

“Our lives together, our duet, also continues to evolve, and even if we can’t go back to how it was, we’re designing a good life for us, in spite of everything.”