idionkisson:

“But just as paying attention to another person fosters intimacy and makes us feel less alone, perhaps scientific observation allows us to enter into a similar relationship across species. By listening, by returning to the grove time and again, by tuning our ears to the sounds of beings unlike ourselves, we begin to reenter what Thomas Berry, the Catholic eco-theologian, calls “the great conversation” between humans and other forms of life. This too can have a grounding effect, can help stave off a different, larger, and more gaping loneliness. If anything is sacred, it is this, I think. And by this I mean all of it: the salmonberries beginning to ripen in the bramble; the scratchy, scolding caw of the Steller’s jay that will nibble there; the long, straight trunks of the Pacific red cedars that rise into the sky’s blue cathedral. The web of life that too often capitalism seems dead set on dismantling.”

— Elizabeth Rush, Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore
 (via atreides)