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William Kittredge

William Kittredge Books

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“Sometimes there is no choice but to walk into your own house. Far away, you think, and you do not want to see. You come home and you say do not tell me. You say, I have hunted the elk all over the snowfields of the Selway, and I do not want to know what happened here. And then there is a morning you walk in and take a look in your own house, like any traveler.”

HomePastChangeSnowWilliam Kittredge
Book:We Are Not in This Together: Stories
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“The ecology of the valley was complex beyond our understanding, and it began to die as we went on manipulating it in ever more frantic ways. As it went dead and empty of the old life it became a place where no one wanted to live. In our right minds we want to seek out places that reek of complexity. Our drive to industrialize soured and undercut the intimacies that drew most people to country life in the first place.”

PeopleWayWantMindFirstsCountryWantedDiesUnderstandingLandEmptyComplexesIntimacyComplexityValleysEcologyFranticCountry LifeOld LifeUndercut
Author:William Kittredge
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“I want to think I deserve what I get. I don't want to consider how vastly I am overly rewarded. I don't want to consider the injustices around me. I don't want any encounters with the disenfranchised. I want to say it's not my fault. But it is, it's yours and mine, and ours. We'd better figure out ways to spread some equity around if we want to go on living in a society that is at least semi-functional. It's a fundamental responsibility, to ourselves.”

IfsThinkingWayWantResponsibilityFiguresMinesGoes OnDeserveFundamentalsFaultsEnvironmentalInjusticeSpreadEncountersSustainabilityEquityDisenfranchised
Author:William Kittredge
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“Places come to exist in our imaginations because of stories, and so do we. When we reach for a "sense of place," we posit an intimate relationship to a set of stories connected to a particular location, such as Hong Kong or the Grand Canyon or the bed where we were born, thinking of histories and the evolution of personalities in a local context. Having "a sense of self" means possessing a set of stories about who we are and with whom and why.”

ThinkingMeanSelfStoriesBornImaginationParticularPersonalityEvolutionBedConnectedLocalsIntimateWho We AreLocationSense Of SelfPossessingCanyonsHong KongIntimate RelationshipsGrand CanyonSense Of Place
Book:The Nature of Generosity
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“Up there on Huckleberry Mountain, I couldn't sleep ... As the sky broke light over the peaks of Glacier, I found myself deeply moved by the view from our elevation - off west the lights of Montana, Hungry Horse, and Columbia Falls, and farmsteads along the northern edge of Flathead Lake, and back in the direction of sunrise the soft and misted valleys of the parklands, not an electric light showing: little enough to preserve for the wanderings of a great and sacred animal who can teach us, if nothing else, by his power and his dilemma, a little common humility.”

IfsLittlesEnoughLightFallFoundSleepAnimalViewsCommonTeachSkyHumilityMountainHorseSacredMovedWestEdgesHungryWanderBrokePreservesLakesValleysElectricSunriseDilemmaMontanaElevationColumbiaGlaciersElectric LightHuckleberry
Author:William Kittredge
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“It is a skill we learn early, the art of inventing stories to explain away the fearful scared strangeness of the world. Storytelling and make-believe, like war and agriculture, are among the arts of self-defense, and all of them are ways of enclosing otherness and claiming ownership.”

WorldWayBelieveArtWarSelfStoriesSkillsScaredDefenseStorytellingFearfulOwnershipAgricultureInventingSelf DefenseMake BelieveStrangenessOthernessInventing Stories
Book:Owning It All: Essays
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“I wonder what my father saw in his most secret sight of the right life. It's my guess he wanted to live out his life surrounded by friends and children and fertile fields of his own designing. I tihnk he wanted to die believing he had been in one the creation of a good sweet place. Those old pilgrims believed stories in which the West was a promise, a far away place where decent people could escape the wreckage of the old world and start over. Come to me, the dream whispers, and you can have one more chance.”

PeopleWorldBelieveChildrenStoriesDreamWantedDiesFatherChanceSecretWonderSawsDesignCreationFieldsSweetPromiseSightWestDecentFar AwayStarting OverPilgrimFertileOld WorldWreckageWanted To DieSurrounded By Friends
Author:William Kittredge
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