APPRECIATION #3: GOOD SENTENCES

Check this out:

I am a guy who wanders around looking for nothing in particular, which is to say everything; in this frame of mind I have seen many things, in many venues urban and suburban and rural, and while ambling in the woods I have seen marten kits and three-legged elk and secret beds of watercress and the subtle dens of foxes. I have found thickets of wild grapevines, and secret jungles of salmonberries, and stands of huckleberries so remote and so delicious that it is a moral dilemma for me as to whether or not I should leave a map behind for my children when the time comes for me to add to the compost of the world.

– Brian Doyle in his essay “Fishering” in Children and Other Wild Animals.

Wow. Me too. Or. On my last excursion into the semi-wilderness I saw 18 turkeys, a squirrel and purple panties. I also recently saw a cracked eagle egg on a gravel road that wasn’t a cracked eagle egg, but was really a discarded Taco Bell quesadilla.

And this:

I’m not sure what I meant, but I wanted to use the lingo, and it was seductive to make these pronouncements. Through the years, I have learned there is no harm in charging oneself up with delusions between moments of valid inspiration.

-Steve Martin in Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life

Amen?