Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Martha Reben





"All at once the silence and the solitude were touched by wild music, thin as air, the faraway gabbling of geese flying at night. Presently I caught sight of them as they streamed across the face of the moon, the high, excited clamor of their voices tingling through the night, and suddenly I saw, in one of those rare moments of insight, what it means to be wild and free."

-- Martha Reben, A Sharing of Joy

1 comment:

corina said...

so great to see someone quoting martha reben, whose life and writing changed my life. so i hope you don't mind if i quote the rest of that passage:

" As they went over me, I was there with them, passing over the moonlit countryside, glorying with them in their strong-hearted journeying, exulting in its joy and splendor.

The haunted voices grew fainter and faded in distance, but I sat on, stirred by a memory of something beautiful and ancient and now lost - a forgotten freedom we must all once have shared with other wild things, which only they and the wilderness can still recall to us, so that life becomes again, for a time, the wonderful, sometimes frightening, but fiercely joyous treasure it was intended to be."

perhaps it is too late, but let's keep trying to keep the wildness and wilderness alive, somehow...