NC Zoological Park
Poet-in-Residence
July 8 – July 14, 2012
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[click image to view full screen]
The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity, and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.
William Blake
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In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.
Aristotle
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In the end we will conserve only what we love. We love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught.
Baba Dioum, Senegalese environmentalist
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In the particular is the universal.
James Joyce
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Some persons seem to have opened more eyes than others, they see with such force and distinctness; their vision penetrates the tangle and obscurity where that of others fails. How many eyes did Thoreau open? How many did Audubon? Not outward eyes, but inward. We open another eye whenever we see beyond the first general features or outlines of things, whenever we grasp the special details and characteristic markings that this mask covers. Science confers new powers of vision. Whenever you have learned to discriminate the birds, or the plants, or the geological features of a country, it is as if new and keener eyes were added.
John Burroughs
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I understand that some people have grown up in cities and have never felt at home in the natural world, but I think that’s a deprivation. I think that’s like being unable to remember your dreams. You can say you don’t do it, and you can say it doesn’t matter, but we all know it does matter. It’s a kind of mutilation, a cultural mutilation.
W.S. Merwin
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Those who dwell among the beauties and the mysteries of the earth are never alone nor weary of life.
Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.
Rachel Carson
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When we try to pick out something by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.
John Muir
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Man is in the fullest sense a part of nature and not apart from it. He is akin, not figuratively but literally, to every living thing, be it an amoebae, a tapeworm, a flea, a seaweed, an oak tree, or a monkey. This is togetherness and brotherhood with a vengeance, beyond the wildest dreams of copy writers or theologians.
George Gaylord Simpson
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Every moment nature starts on the longest journey, and every moment she reaches her goal.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
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The silence of the forest, the peace of the early morning wind moving through the branches of the trees, the solitude and isolation of the house of God: these are good because it is in silence, and not in commotion, in solitude, and not in crowds, that God best likes to reveal himself intimately to men.
Thomas Merton
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The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands, but in seeing with new eyes.
Marcel Proust
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Treat the Earth well. It was not given to us by our parents. It was lent to us by our children.
Kenyan proverb
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The first step toward rediscovering your spiritual fountainhead is simple: go out and observe the natural world. We need simply to look very closely. In this way the earth teaches us its eternal message, quietly, in a way unlike the textbook learning about nature.
Chop Wood, Carry Water
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At last I am beginning to believe I am part of all this life and to know how I evolved from the primal dust to a creature capable of seeing beauty. This is compensation enough. No one can ever take this dream away; it will be with me until the day I have seen my last sunset, and listened for a final time to the wind whispering through the pines.
Sigurd F. Olson
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Now I see the secret of making the best persons. It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.
Walt Whitman
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Go forth under the open sky, and list to Nature’s teachings.
William Cullen Bryant
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The earth has music for those who listen.
William Shakespeare
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…what I have been preparing to say is, that in wildness is the preservation of the world. Every tree sends its fibers forth in search of the wild. The cities import it at any price. Men plow and sail for it. From the forest and wilderness come the tonics and barks which brace mankind.
Henry David Thoreau
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Among the scenes which are deeply impressed on my mind, none exceed in sublimity the primeval forests undefaced by the hand of man.
Charles Darwin
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Wilderness is two things—fact and feeling. It is a fund of knowledge and a spring of influence. It is the ultimate source of health—terrestrial and human.
Benton MacKaye, the man who planned and conceived the Appalachian Trail
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Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like falling leaves.
John Muir
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May neither drought nor rain nor blizzard
Disturb the joy-juice in your gizzard!
And may you camp where wind won’t hit you,
Where snakes won’t bite and bears won’t git you.
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Nature cares nothing for our logic, our human logic; it has its own, which we do not recognize and do not acknowledge until we are crunched under its wheel.
Ivan Turgenev
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A rainy day is the perfect time for a walk in the woods.
Rachel Carson
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Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
Helen Keller
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To venture causes anxiety, but not to venture is to lose one’s self… And to venture in the highest is precisely to be conscious of one’s self.
Soren Kierkegaard
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There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth – not going all the way, and not starting.
Buddha
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Not all those who wander are lost.
J.R.R. Tolkien
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The purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experiences.
Eleanor Roosevelt
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Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.
Henry David Thoreau
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Don’t ask what the world needs. Rather ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
Howard Thurman
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Any one thing in the creation is sufficient to demonstrate a Providence to a humble and grateful mind.
Epictetus
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Ask the beasts, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you; or the plants of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind.
Job 12:7-10
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There is meaning in every journey that goes beyond the understanding of the traveler.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
T.S. Eliot
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There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature: the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.
Rachel Carson
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We cannot live without the earth or apart from it, and something is shriveled in a man’s heart when he turns away from it and concerns himself only with the affairs of men.
Marjory Kinnan Rawlings
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Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I am a slow walker, but I never walk backwards.
Abraham Lincoln
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We travel together, passengers on a little space ship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil; all committed for our safety to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work, and, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft.
Adlai Stevenson
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It is impossible to care for each other more or differently than we care for the earth…there is an uncanny resemblance between our behavior toward each other and our behavior toward the earth.
Wendell Berry
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Day One — Apple and Tree
Day Two — Clouded Leopards
Day Three — To Teach the Heart
Day Four — A Songbird Will Come
Day Five — Augury
Day Six — Time
Day Seven — A Story to Tell
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Many thanks to my friend and hiking partner Mike Barnett, who compiled these quotations from a thousand sources. Thanks, Mike, for taking me into the woods and making sure I paid attention.
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Teach us love, compassion and honor, that we may heal the earth and heal each other.
Ojibwa prayer
Bill – these are beautiful! I am thankful I was able to share this journey.
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I am drawn to the photo themselves–stunningly beautiful (right here in our own state!),–but combined with words from our great writers and thinkers, they take on a significance that’s essential for us today. Great work, Bill. Thank you.
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Thanks, Barbara, I truly value your impressions.
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Hey, Bill. I’ve got time for a few of these. The stink bug just above the chimpanzee I believe is the immature larva of a Southern Green Stink Bug (Nezara viridula). At least that’s the closest I could come after consulting most of my insect guides. The National Wildlife Federation’s guide showed a mature larva and it was fairly close. The owl looks like a Barred Owl (Strix varia); the hawk looks like the Broad-winged Hawk (Buteo platypterus) in Sibley’s guide, and I see a Green Heron (Butorides virescens) in the reeds (but I’m sure you know all of these already). Hard to tell what the watersnake is from the glare on the water, but if it’s a native, it looks like either a Northern Watersnake (Nerodia sipedon) or a Midland Watersnake (Nerodia sipedon pleuralis) which is a redder subspecies, and your snake looks reddish in the photo. The aquatic turtle looks like a soft-shelled turtle if it’s native but can’t make out what kind without seeing more of it. The tortoise looks like it could be a native Gopher Tortoise (Gopherus polyphemus) if it’s not an exotic (a lot of those look similar). I’m guessing that’s a Northern River Otter (Lontra canadensis) 6 photos below it. The small feline looks like a Bobcat (Lynx rufus). Third from the top, those look like Chilean Flamingos (Phoenicopterus chilensis) with their pale pink feathers, gray legs and pink knee joints (again, according to Sibley). The spent flowers just above the old chimpanzee look like Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea).
I won’t attempt to tackle all the scientific names for the exotics like the lions, African Elephants, Gorillas (Gorilla gorilla), Giraffes (Giraffa camelopardalis), baboons, etc. But one did stand out for me: the Ring-tailed Lemur (Lemur catta) of Madagascar (6th from the top and closer-up elsewhere). I also won’t attempt to name all the flowers or the pink water lily which all look exotic, unless the pink lily is really Nelumbo nucifera, which is an old world lotus that has become naturalized here (found this one in Rickett’s Wild Flowers of the U.S., pg. 161, top right).
That’s my stab at it. Perhaps some others can help me out :).
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These photos and words are a treasure to be kept forever. I think that in them there is a healing the world badly needs.
Dave Manning
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Dave, I treasure sharing with you. It has been a rare and soul-filling experience to spend hours and days in our Zoo.
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Thanks for sharing with us.
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