“Another day I walked out of town to do a bit of climbing in the mountains behind the airport. I scrambled up and down slopes that contained some of the oldest rocks in the world, isotope-dated at 3,800 billion years, remnants, so the geological rumor goes, of the earth's earliest terrestrial crust.”

“Belief that the Earth is only several thousands years old carries a curious implication. The physical evidence for the Earth's age emerged from the same atomic discoveries that later gave the world nuclear weaponry and power plants. The scientific understanding of uranium isotopes that produce the date 4.5 billion years ago is the same understanding of uranium isotopes that led to the production and detonation of nuclear bombs. If scientists do not understand uranium decay well enough to date the Earth, there also cannot be, and can never have been, nuclear weaponry. Certainly a world and a history absent these weapons are desirable, but they are counter-factual. ”

“There are mountainous, arduous days, up which one takes an infinite time to climb, and downward-sloping days which one can descend at full tilt, singing as one goes.”

“In my youth I loved climbing and scrambling up rocks and mountains: now I seldom intrude on the dweller of a second story, and my greatest enemy or friend may avoid me altogether on the third; so humbled is the aspiring spirit of my youth.”

“The whole world is, to me, very much "alive" - all the little growing things, even the rocks. I can't look at a swell bit of grass and earth, for instance, without feeling the essential life - the things going on - within them. The same goes for a mountain, or a bit of the ocean, or a magnificent piece of old wood.”

“Well, I started out down a dirty roadStarted out all aloneAnd the sun went down as I crossed the hillAnd the town lit up, the world got stillI'm learning to fly but I ain't got wingsComing down is the hardest thingWell, the good ol' days may not returnAnd the rocks might melt and the sea may burnI'm learning to fly but I ain't got wingsComing down is the hardest thingWell, some say life will beat you downBreak your heart, steal your crownSo I've started out for God knows whereI guess I'll know when I get thereI'm learning to fly around the cloudsBut what goes up must come down”