No culture has yet solved the dilemma each has faced with the growth of a conscious mind: how to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in all life, when one finds darkness not only in one’s own culture but within oneself. If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of a leaning into the light.
-Barry Lopez

How can I learn to write out of my own experience, out of my deep love for wild country, while still maintaining a language that opens minds rather than closes them? How to write again and again from every conceivable angle to stay the hand of development? How to write as clearly as one can from the heart and still be credible?
-Terry Tempest Williams