“Nearly everyone I talked to had some gruesome story involving a guileless acquaintance who had gone off hiking the trail with high hopes and new boots and come stumbling back two days later with a bobcat attached to his head …” p3
“… he had been let go from jobs at Harvard and the National Forest Service and eventually, for want of a better place to stick him, given a desk at the U.S. Labor Department with a vague assignment to come up with ideas to improve efficiency and morale.” p27
This notion of finding a job for a man, as if it’s a duty, or responsibility, and regardless of qualifications—imagine if that tradition had applied to women as far back as 1921.
Truly enraging.
“On average the total walking of an American these days—that’s walking of all types: from car to office, from office to car, around the supermarket and shopping malls—adds up to 1.4 miles a week …” p135
Unfuckingbelievable. (No wonder the American from whom I rented a house for a couple winters a while ago was amazed that I walked to the campground and back every day, a round trip of 3.8 miles. Amazed.) (In addition to paddling my kayak out and around the islands for about three hours.)
“I know a man who dives 600 yards to work. I know a woman who gets in her car to go a quarter of a mile to a college gymnasium to walk on a treadmill, then complains passionately about the difficulty of finding a parking space.” p136
Wonder no more who to blame when you lose your home to the fires. (The fossil-fuel-emission-fuelled fires.) (For the science-challenged.) (That is, the Americans.)
“[A moose] is wondrously ungainly: it runs as if its legs have never been introduced to each other.” p255
