But I could see right away that this lost him points in the white men's book. Tenderness was not a quality of strength to them. It was unmanly, an ac… - Linda Hogan

Each morning when I step outside my door I walk into the Garden of Eden. "O Great Spirit, thank you for this beautiful day." There has not been one day in the past 20 years that I have not started my day this way and really meant it. When you are truly connected to Mother Earth and Spirit, you see as much beauty in a cold, gray, sleety, December morning as a warm, sunny day in June.

I feel the air as if I could move through it with my ancestors' wings. (p 202)

From my many grandmothers, I learned how I came from a circle of courageous women and strong men who had walls pulled down straight in front of them until the circle closed, the way rabbits are hunted in a narrowing circle, but some lived, some survived this narrowing circle of life. (chapter seven, p107)