To long for love, to have experienced passion's deep pleasure, even once, is to understand the mercilessness of having a human body whose memory rides desire's back unanchored from season to season. Gretel Ehrlich More Quotes by Gretel Ehrlich More Quotes From Gretel Ehrlich Everything in nature invites us constantly to be what we are. Gretel Ehrlich invitesnature Love life first, then march through the gates of each season; go inside nature and develop the discipline to stop destructive behavior; learn tenderness toward experience, then make decisions based on creating biological wealth that includes all people, animals, cultures, currencies, languages, and the living things as yet undiscovered; listen to the truth the land will tell you; act accordingly. Gretel Ehrlich love-lifelandanimal I like to think of the landscape not as a fixed place but as a path that is unwinding before my eyes, under my feet. To see and know a place is a contemplative act. It means emptying our minds and letting what is there, in all its mulitplicity and endless variety, come in. Gretel Ehrlich eyemeanthinking To trace the history of a river or a raindrop is also to trace the history of the soul, the history of the mind descending and arising in the body. In both, we constantly seek and stumble upon divinity, which like feeding the lake, and the spring becoming a waterfall, feeds, spills, falls, and feeds itself all over again. Gretel Ehrlich springriversfall A tree is a thought, an obstruction stopping the flow of wind and light, trapping water, housing insects, birds, and animals, and breathing in and out. How treelike the human, how human the tree. Gretel Ehrlich lightanimalwind I like big, open, spare landscapes. There's lots of room. Nobody bothers you... I feel as if I can think there. Gretel Ehrlich landscaperoomsthinking How odd it is that sewing is thought to be 'women's work' when surgeons, sailors, and cowboys sew too. Yet how many female thoracic surgeons are there? And if precision motor activities are thought to be performed better by women, why wouldn't they make better surgeons too? Gretel Ehrlich cowboyfemalesailor Everything in nature invites us constantly to be what we are. We are often like rivers: careless and forceful, timid and dangerous, lucid and muddied, eddying, gleaming, still. Gretel Ehrlich carelessdangerousrivers Leaves are verbs that conjugate the seasons. Gretel Ehrlich seasonsverbs I thought: to be tough is to be fragile; to be tender is to be truly fierce. Gretel Ehrlich fragiletoughfierce Honesty is stronger medicine than sympathy, which may console but often conceals. Gretel Ehrlich medicinehonestyhumble Finally, the lessons of impermanence taught me this: loss constitutes an odd kind of fullness; despair empties out into an unquenchable appetite for life. Gretel Ehrlich appetite-for-lifedespairloss If anything is endemic to Wyoming it is wind. This big room of space is swept out daily, leaving a bone yard of fossils, agates, and carcasses in every stage of decay. Though it was water that initially shaped the state, wind is the meticulous gardener, raising dust and pruning the sage. Gretel Ehrlich wyomingdustwind To rise above treeline is to go above thought, and after, the descent back into bird song, bog orchids, willows, and firs is to sink into the preliterate parts of ourselves. Gretel Ehrlich orchidsnaturesong There was not one cause for our internment, but many - a deep-seated racial prejudice working on top of fear, distrust, and greed. So how is one to say exactly where history begins or ends? It is all slow oscillations, curves, and waves which take so long to reveal themselves ... like watching a tree grow. Gretel Ehrlich curvesracismlong All through autumn we hear a double voice: one says everything is ripe; the other says everything is dying. The paradox is exquisite. We feel what the Japanese call "aware"--an almost untranslatable word meaning something like "beauty tinged with sadness. Gretel Ehrlich meaning-somethingautumnsadness Walking is also an ambulation of mind. Gretel Ehrlich hikingjourneymind We are often like rivers: careless and forceful, timid and dangerous, lucid and muddied, eddying, gleaming, still. Lovers, farmers, and artists have one thing in common, at least - a fear of 'dry spells,' dormant periods in which we do no blooming, internal droughts only the waters of imagination and psychic release can civilize. Gretel Ehrlich psychicsartistrivers Survival is as much a matter of grace as fight. The expression, 'grace under pressure' implies the attainment of equanimity and equilibrium. The fundamental durability of the human body surprises us because the pain can be so intense - yet pain is often transient and hides the tremendous effforts the body is engaged in to heal itself. Gretel Ehrlich painfightingexpression I understood why war zones are called 'theaters' because they frame a kind of play acting or, worse, deceit, that can stain a human life forever: the deceit of hate on hearsay - hating an enemy one doesn't know. Gretel Ehrlich hateplaywar
