In the final analysis there was no one you could trust to drink with you to the bottom of the bowl. - Malcolm Lowry

There was something in the wild strength of this landscape, once a battlefield, that seemed to be shouting at him, a presence born of that strength whose cry his whole being recognized as familiar, caught and threw back into the wind, some youthful passage of courage and pride — the passionate, yet so nearly always hypocritical, affirmation of one’s soul perhaps, he thought, of the desire to be, to do, good, what was right.

For a time they confronted each other like two mute unspeaking forts.

And how could he know whether it was a good omen or not without another drink?