Quotes from "The Search"
A continuation of the story of the Tracker.
When I walk through the woods, like an Indian, my walk is a prayer.
Look at the conditions all around us. It is because we have lost touch with our roots.
Our young people have little to believe in. They look around them, and everything is polluted and ditry. There's crime in the streets. There's embezzlement. People are constantly trying to rip each other off. The government is so big it can't be trusted. They're looking for something more.
If you ever get lost, just stick it out long enough, and I guarantee they'll put a skyscraper up right next to you.
When a man steps, the ripple of his steps can be felt across the earth. Everything man touches is affected. If we walk through nature as a prayer, if we respect everything we have left and stop going after money and profit and ripping apart our landscapes, we can stop this destruction and possibly save what we have left. We can do that by being aware of what is really going on. When we have found out, we have to get others involved.
To me, the real wildernes of our country is our inner cities. There's more that can hurt you there than in the woods.
William Owen: "How can you sit for hours and look at one piece of earth?" Tom: "Everything that I see is "real" and alive. The question I ask is how can anyone sit in front of a machine for hours on end, viewing an unreal world, and not get bored?"
What I mean by survival is prospering.
The only way you can experience is to watch.
He [Mike] couldn't let himself go enough to imagine himself with the eagle in flight, searching the earth for food, and therefore he would never understand the eagle.
Is it strange to talk to nature? It is natural to me. (liz: amen!)
Humans want to be on top of the world. Animals just want to be a part of it.
Ricky had reaffirmed my faith in my basic belief that my questions were not going to be answered by me but by nature. My part was not a waste, my ideas not insane, my ways not empty, my reality valid.
There have been times when I have knelt and wept tears of joy and gratitude because I have realized the beauty of the spirit of nature. When I first began to understand the essence of this "spirit", the things of the "wild" ceased being "wild" because I realized that my spirit was one with theirs. Our life force was the same.
Stalking Wolf: Sometimes you must go back in order to discover what happens beyond the end of a trail.
That summer passed quickly because we were always on our bellies crawling. Our parents thought we had given up clealiness. When asked if we crawled around in the mud all day and the answer was "yes", we'd get queer looks.
Man, the greatest predator, has lost his ability to be invisible or silent.
It is during pensive moments...that I feel a deep sense of shame at being a human. Yet, I have learned not to be discouraged by such feelings, but rather to be strengthened in my resolve to change man's nature and bring it back in communion with the earth.
I don't shrug off feelings as silly or unfounded. I trust them.
I was incensed that anyone would think so little of life that they would sacrifice it.
Forget the pain, just follow the track.
I wanted to hide from societal reality and sink into nature's womd and hibernate till man destroyed himself and the animals took over again.
I will try to change this land and her people. I will teach what I have learned and trust that someday we might all be "swingers of birches..."
I knew instinctively that I belonged in the woods, but I didn't know what that meant.
Most of the stimuli I was receiving from the people around me was negative. They thought it was silly, immature, or just plain irresponsible to spend so much time wandering through the woods. I should have a job and contribute to society. I figured that if I ate wild roots that would not be eaten by anyone else and leave more civilized food for some starving soul, that was a contribution.
There are two ways to look at the world-through the eyes of man and through the eyes of the Great Spirit. I have chosen the latter and have made my peace with myself and with my Mother, the Earth.
Some might say I wandered aimlesly, but they do not understand the art of wandering. Some might say I was lost because I have nowhere to go, but they do not understand that, when someone belongs everywhere, he is never lost.
The white man builds a shelter, and it becomes his prison.
I learned that the elements were not my adversaries. They were my brothers.
Summer was giving way to fall. Another season. Another vision.
My possessions were these: a pebble from the bank of a stream that had fed me happily for a week, an acorn from an especially magnificent oak thathad kept me company through a summer storm, a feather of a scarlet tanager, and a snapping turtle's egg. Such was my treasure. And I was happy.
I wanted to observe and experience winter in all its natural fierceness and learn from it. I did not want to be bothered with survival.
I felt as though I was relating to the forest as man should relate. I did not only take. I gave.
...the Indians' ways were correct. They lived life as it ought to be lived. The white man lived a lie.
Come winter. Come dreams.
My daily devotions had become through the months more necessary to me than food. How I long now for those silent mornings beside the lake!
I spoke little during those months and discovered a spiritual balance of body, mind, and spirit. I became like the snow-covered forest about me. Silent. To the Indian, silence is the cornerstone of character.
I must face the storms of life in the same manner [as the trees]. I learned from the hardwood that there was a time when I should stand and not yield, and be pruned by experience. There was also a time to bend and yield to inevitable pressures so that I might spring back to face another day. I was the hardwood; I was the softwood. I was all of creation, and it was all of me.
I worshipped the Great Spirit that was able to create such beauty and fill it with silence.
I was born and reborn through the seasons. I had died a dozen deaths to old values and fears proved false by the truth of nature. I had learned to think with my heart again.
I was awakened from a sleep caused by thousands of years of separation from the earth.
I had become again a child of the land. Now, to become a man. It was time for me to leave the womb and face the world with my ideas.
In me, "the call" was my desire to experience what Stalking Wolf called "at one with the earth". I didn't know what it meant, and yet I wanted it, even needed it.
I was here to learn the great truth my teacher had discovered.
We are so locked into order. Everything must have its place, and we fail to see the natural order of things. Leaves are untidy and must be raked. Their presence on our lawns broadcasts neglect and laziness. Their absence reflects order and control and pride...
Man in his desire to make the earth better for his survival has managed to scar, to deface it to the point where it now threatens him with extinction. Why, he even encloses himself in metal and concrete when he is placed in the earth to rest. "Ashes to ashes," should read "Ashes to concrete."
I felt very close to that hare and was thankful that he could understand me. He sensed that I meant him no harm, and he trusted me. It was something I had experienced with very few people, and I wondered why people had lost this ability that animals have of sensing danger and safety?
The owl and the hare. The hunter and the hunted living so close, and yet there was little fear and no hatred.
I have often been alone, but the only time I have ever felt lonely is in high school.
Man had grown out of the earth. Somehow he had strayed from his beginnings. I longed to return to those beginnings. To understand. To find where I fit. "It's not ghosts I look for!"
Seek the wilderness, for there is peace.
More quotes:
from The Tracker
from The Vision
from The Quest
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