"We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of wild animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creatures through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken a form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and the travail of the earth."
- Henry Beston, The Outermost House
I think that thought stands on it's own . . . I photographed the eagle in the tree directly outside my living room window a couple days ago.
10 comments:
I loved "The Outermost House" - it was the summer reading book I took with me for our visit to the cape last year, and I read it as I sat on White Crest Beach, not too far from where the Outermost House sat. It was so pleasurable to read Beston's descriptions of the wildlife around him, which took on a different importance when there were no people to interact with during the severe winter.
Brown feathers indicate a young eagle, do they not?
BZ
You have a TREE in your yard? Lucky! ;-)
...and added to reading list.
yeah Im gonna add that one. Thanks Steve! love the pic.
K Im currently reading the outermost house. So far so good.
Lauri, I have TWO trees outside my window, and boy do I know how lucky I am! :O)
BZ, brown feathers are immature eagles - which ironically appear larger than adult eagles due to having more feather mass (it gives them more help flying until they gain proficiency).
Although I didn't resolve to read 100 books this year, this sounds like a must read. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.
Enjoyed this post very much this morning (I confess, I had to read it twice - just don't think I was in the right frame of mind yesterday when I first read it)and so my thoughts will ponder this through the weekend, as I observe all the wildlife here. Thanks Steve - enjoy the weekend.
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