“This is the West. We expect things to be tough out here.”

“Where would the would-be “purists” draw the line between native and alien elements? This whole planet was altered by the hand of man.A birder who scorned the alien Sky Larks might stand on San Juan and salute the native eagles . . . but some of those eagles had been released here; and they were living on an unnaturally high population of rabbits, from another continent, introduced here. The rabbits, in turn, were probably feeding on alien plants from other lands that were naturalized here — if the San Juan roadsides were anything like all the other roadsides in North America. And we birders of European descent were introduced here also, a few generations back. Even my Native American friends of the night before could claim to be “native” in only a relative sense; their ancestors had come across the Bering land bridge from Asia. None of us is native here.”

“Haunting the library as a kid, reading poetry books when I was not reading bird books, I had been astonished at how often birds were mentioned in British poetry. Songsters like nightingales and Sky Larks appeared in literally dozens of works, going back beyond Shakespeare, back beyond Chaucer. Entire poems dedicated to such birds were written by Tennyson, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and many lesser-known poets. I had run across half a dozen British poems just about Sky Larks; Thomas Hardy had even written a poem about Shelley’s poem about the Sky Lark. The love of birds and of the English language were intermingled in British literary history.Somehow we Americans had failed to import this English love of birds along with the language, except in diluted form. But we had imported a few of the English birds themselves — along with birds from practically everywhere else.”

“ Dreams and coffee and sunrises make up the rhythms of the road. Music is a part of it, too: the popular music on the jukeboxes and radio stations. You hear it constantly, in diners and on car radios. The music has a rhythm that fits the steady drumming of tires over pavement. It seeps into your bloodstream. After a while it ceases to make any difference whether or not you like the stuff. When you’re traveling alone, a nameless rider with a succession of strangers, it can give you a comforting sense of the familiar to hear the same music over and over. At any given time, a few current hits will be overplayed to exhaustion by the rock & roll stations. In hitching across the continent, you might hear the same song fifty or sixty times. Certain songs become connected in your mind with certain trips.”

“Homework, I Love YouHomework, I love you. I think that you’re great.It’s wonderful fun when you keep me up late.I think you’re the best when I’m totally stressed,preparing and cramming all night for a test. Homework, I love you. What more can I say?I love to do hundreds of problems each day.You boggle my mind and you make me go blind,but still I’m ecstatic that you were assigned.Homework, I love you. I tell you, it’s true.There’s nothing more fun or exciting to do.You’re never a chore, for it’s you I adore.I wish that our teacher would hand you out more.Homework, I love you. You thrill me inside.I’m filled with emotions. I’m fit to be tied.I cannot complain when you frazzle my brain.Of course, that’s because I’m completely insane.”

“Resentment has the potential to consume many who appear to be otherwise blameless. Unresolved caged resentment that one day breaks free and kills all of the delicate innocence in the yard. Acidic, rancorous resentment has gears for teeth that are perfectly oiled by bitterness and possess a judgment unable to discern the corrupted from the good.”

“Secrets. Everyone has them. The light of day and truth reveal some secrets to be nagging obsessions or habits, while other secrets may be as incriminating as a literal decaying skeleton in one’s closet.”