I tried to find something I already knew about life that might help me reach out and touch my brother and get him to look at me and himself. - Norman Maclean

She was one of the most beautiful dancers I've ever seen. She made her partner feel as if he were about to be left behind, or already had been. It is a strange and wonderful and somewhat embarrassing feeling to hold someone in your arms who is trying to detach you from the earth and you aren't good enough to follow her.

But, as Bill said, we were a pretty good crew and we did what we had to do and loved the woods without thinking we owned them, and each of us liked to do at least one thing especially well — liked to swing a jackhammer and feel the earth overpowered by dynamite, liked to fight, liked to heal the injuries of horses, liked to handle groceries and tools and tie knots. And nearly all of us liked to work. When you think about it, that’s a lot to say about a bunch of men.

But years ago I had known the river when it flowed through this now dry channel, so I could enliven its stony remains with the waters of memory.