“Along with rising and falling water, winter is the province of wind. When the sea-breath and mountain-roar bend the hemlocks of these hills, the birds hang on as best they can.”

“still other winters average their rain months into a long, cold season of relentless sog and little color. At such times, looking out through the spattered glass, I feel, deep in some spongy, unignorable organ, that we will have floods, and damage, and losses; we will have gray till the cows come home, and there will be no more cows--they'll all just rot, drown, or simply wash away. We will have rain until the very hills dissolve. And when the dirty cotton swaddling of fog finally falls away, we will all be desperate for vital signs.”

“The river has indeed become an inefficient conduit, but the same plaque that plugs this artery used to hold back the flow when it was soil in the hills. Now the land just bleeds when it rains.”

“when that small Siberian bird fell out of the sky over Gray's River, not once but twice, he brought with him the sweetness of chance in any place, the certainty of wonder in all places. And if that's not grace, I don't know what it.”

“That kind of walk is nice when it happens, but I'll take four minutes now and then over being butt-stapled to a chair all day long.”

“the crushed carcasses of slugs and frogs mixing with the Cretaceous carbons of tar give the road an organic glaze.”

“It is the gift of stories that most repays life among settled people.”