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Quote by Daniel J. Rice

“If you have not touched the rocky wall of a canyon. If you have not heard a rushing river pound over cobblestones. If you have not seen a native trout rise in a crystalline pool beneath a shattering riffle, or a golden eagle spread its wings and cover you in shadow. If you have not seen the tree line recede to the top of a bare crested mountain. If you have not looked into a pair of wild eyes and seen your own reflection. Please, for the good of your soul, travel west.”

Quote by Daniel J. Rice

Book:This Side of a Wilderness
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This Side of a Wilderness

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Daniel J. Rice

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“Occasionally we glimpse the South Rim, four or five thousand feet above. From the rims the canyon seems oceanic; at the surface of the river the feeling is intimate. To someone up there with binoculars we seem utterly remote down here. It is this know dimension if distance and time and the perplexing question posed by the canyon itself- What is consequential? (in one’s life, in the life of human beings, in the life of a planet)- that reverberate constantly, and make the human inclination to judge (another person, another kind of thought) seem so eerie… Two kinds of time pass here: sitting at the edge of a sun-warmed pool watching blue dragonflies and black tadpoles. And the rapids: down the glassy-smooth tongue into a yawing trench, climb a ten-foot wall of standing water and fall into boiling, ferocious hydraulics…”

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“Thomas Moran Paints This place gets inside you with its soft reds And tans. You can feel the lithe sweep of brushes Inside your head. Your empty hands moving From side to side involuntarily. It is like seeing An angel’s brilliancy for the first time and trying To describe it to your own soul in a language Of the eye your heart can understand The light is always different here getting darker Near the river paler near the rim. But it is The way the canyon breathes warm air rising Cool air settling that makes the colors vibrant Gives them luster. I can pile and scrape paint On a canvas forever and miss the one rare Note that hides in the throat of a canyon wren But I can dream that bird within me and capture It on silk where its song will bring this magical Secret landscape into my art on its wings.”

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