Morning Migration
What has kept me in the woods all these years is the love of beauty. If I was watching a beaver it was not the beaver and its habits as much as it was the light on the pool, the symmetry of the dam. If I was trailing a deer, it was not so much the habits of the deer as it was the vistas I gained along the ridges and through the trees. If it was ducks, it was more than anything else the view of a flock against the sunset or dawn in the rice rather than the birds themselves. In other words it was the scene as a whole which drew me and that I mistook for a keen interest in natural history for lack of a better explanation.
- Sigurd Olson as quoted in David Backes biography, Wilderness Within, The Life of Sigurd F. Olson
Two pages from the book Meditations on Gratitude, Beauty and Mystery. The book is sold out but will shortly be available as an insert in the new Journal Meditations binder. The binder will be available for pre-order tomorrow or Sunday — I’ll send a Substack announcing it, and will ship in about a week.
More on the binder here.