Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Ann Zwinger

Quote by Ann Zwinger

Work

Downcanyon: A Naturalist Explores the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Ann Zwinger
Ann Zwinger

Ann Zwinger was an American author known for her profound insights into the natural world and her unique literary style. Her works often revolve around themes of nature, exploring the relationship between humans and the natural world. Born on March 12, 1925, and passing away in 2014, Ann Zwinger's career spanned various genres, including nature writing, science writing, and children's literature. more

You May Also Like

“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…”

TimeNatureWonderBeautyPhilosophy Of LifeAweGrand CanyonHoly PlacesSacred PlacesCanyonColorado RiverRiver Rapids
Book:Crossing Open Ground
Create image

“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.”

ArtBeautyPaintingPoemColorsGrand CanyonCanyon
Author:Daniel William(s)
Create image

“Sunrise, Grand Canyon We stand on the edge, the fall Into depth, the ascent Of light revelatory, the canyon walls moving Up out of Shadow, lit Colors of the layers cutting Down through darkness, sunrise as it Passes a Precipitate of the river, its burnt tangerine Flare brief, jagged Bleeding above the far rim for a split Second I have imagined You here with me, watching day’s onslaught Standing in your bones-they seem Implied in the record almost By chance- fossil remains held In abundance in the walls, exposed By freeze and thaw, beautiful like a theory stating Who we are is Carried forward by the x Chromosome down the matrilineal line Recessive and riverine, you like Me aberrant and bittersweet... Riding the high Colorado Plateau as the opposing Continental plates force it over A mile upward without buckling, smooth Tensed, muscular fundament, your bones Yet to be wrapped around mine- This will come later, when I return To your place and time... The geologic cross section Of the canyon Dropping From where I stand, hundreds millions of shades of terra cotta, of copper Manganese and rust, the many varieties of stone- Silt, sand, and slate, even “green River rock...”my body voicing its immense Genetic imperatives, human geology falling away Into a Depth i am still unprepared for The canyon cutting down to The great unconformity, a layer So named by the lack Of any fossil evidence to hypothesize About and date such A remote time by, at last no possible Retrospective certainties... John Barton”

PoetryTimePoemAweGeologyGrand CanyonCanyon
Book:Going Down Grand: Poems from the Canyon
Create image