To Squanto, as to all Native Americans, the land did not belong to the people, people belonged to the land.
Ask nature questions, and you will get answers.
Wolves are brotherly,” he said. “They love each other, and if you learn to speak to them, they will love you too.
Charlie Wind once told me we must keep the animals on Earth, for they know everything: how to keep warm, predict the storms, live in darkness or blazing sun, how to navigate the skies, to organize societies, how to make chemicals and fireproof skins. The animals know the Earth as we do not.
Fortunately, the sun has a wonderfully glorious habit of rising every morning. When the sky lightened, when the birds awoke, I knew I would never again see anything so splendid as the round red sun coming up over the earth.
Yes, you are Eskimo,” he had said. “And never forget it. We live as no other people can, for we truly understand the earth.
There the old Eskimo hunters she had known in her childhood thought the riches of life were intelligence, fearlessness, and love. A man with these gifts was rich and was a great spirit who was admired in the same way that the gussaks admired a man with money and goods.
I don’t know why, but this seemed like one of the nicest things I had learned in the woods – that earthworms, lowly, confined to the darkness of the earth, could make just a little stir in the world.
When the wolves are gone there will be too many caribou grazing the grass and the lemmings will starve. Without the lemmings the foxes and birds and weasels will die. Their passing will end smaller lives upon which even man depends, whether he knows it or not, and the top of the world will pass into silence.
The climate warmed. Wild grasses, flowers and trees took root in the land behind the huge rock. In time, their growing and dying made deep rich loam on which a magnificent forest grew. Into the forest came bear, deer, brightly colored birds, and the Pawtuxets, a tribe of the Wampanoag, The People of the Dawn.
Hunger is a funny thing. It has a kind of intelligence of it’s own.
Maybe the Europeans once thought the earth was flat, but the Eskimos always knew it was round. One only needed to look at the earth’s relatives, the sun and the moon, to know that.
I still can’t believe that animals don’t understand why delicious food is in such a ridiculous spot.
Let’s face it, Thoreau; you can’t live in America today and be quietly different. If you are going to be different, you are going to stand out, and people are going to hear about you; and in your case, if they hear about you, they will remove you to the city or move to you and you won’t be different anymore.
That turtle is fearless. She has to be. She carries the Earth on her back.
There is an old Indian legend that says the Earth rests on the back of the quiet turtle, who carries all our troubles and woes.
Won’t everything be all right if she’s free?
Scrub mussels in spring water. Dump them into boiling water with salt. Boil five minutes. Remove and cool in the juice. Take out meat. Eat by dipping in acorn paste flavored with a smudge of garlic, and green apples.
It seemed marvelous to see life pump through that strange little body of feathers, wordless noises, milk eyes – much as life pumped through me.
The lamp I am writing by is deer fat poured into a turtle shell with a strip of my old city trousers for a wick.