Fire and Knowledge

In the top inch of forest soil, biologists found “an average of 1,35 living creatures present in each square foot, including 865 mites, 265 springtails, 22 millipedes, 19 adult beetles and various numbers of 12 other forms…. Had an estimate also been made of the microscopic population, it might have ranged up to two billion bacteria and many millions of fungi, protozoa, and algae—in a mere teaspoonful of soil.”

–Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974), p. 94

Nature will try anything once. This is what the sign of the insects say. No form is too gruesome, no behavior too grotesque.

–Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974), p. 65

When the first pilgrims came to America there were an estimated nine billion passenger pigeons—more than twice the number of all birds found in America today.

–Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods (1998), p. 204

In American, alas, beauty has become something you drive to, and nature an either/or proposition…

–Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods (1998), p. 200

Fish gotta swim and bird gotta fly; insects, it seems, gotta do one horrible thing after another.

–Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974), pp. 63

Fabre says that, at least in captivity, the female [praying mantis] will mate with and devour up to seven males, whether she has laid her egg cases or not. The mating rites of mantises are well known: a chemical produced in the head of he male insect says, in effect, “No, don’t go near her, you fool, she’ll eat you alive.” At the same time a chemical in his abdomen says, “Yes, by all means, now and forever yes.”

While the male is making up what passes for his mind, the female tips the balance in her favor by eating his head. He mounts her. Fabre describes the mating, which sometimes lasts for six hours, as follows: “The male, absorbed in the performance of his vital functions, holds the female in a tight embrace. But the wretch has no head; he has no neck; he has hardly a body. The other, with her muzzle turned over her shoulder continues very placidly to gnaw what remains of the gentle swain. And, all the time, that masculine stump, holding on firmly, goes on with the business! … I have seen it done with my own eyes and have not yet recovered from my astonishment.”

–Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974), pp. 57-58

The difference between the two ways of seeing is the difference between walking with and without a camera. When I walk with a camera I walk from shot to shot, reading the light on a calibrated meter. When I walk without a camera, my own shutter opens, and the moment’s light prints on my own silver gut. When I see this second way I am above all an unscrupulous observer.

–Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974), p. 31

For years [Gatlinburg] has prospered on the confident understanding that when Americans load up their cars and drive enormous distances to a setting of rare natural splendor what most of them want when they get there is to play a little miniature golf and eat dribbly food. Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most popular national park in America, but Gatlinburg—this is so unbelievable—is more popular than the park.

–Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods (1998), pp. 102