Ask the Hawk

This is why I go to the wilderness.  Abbey sums it up pretty well:

"This was the forty-fifth trip down the Grand for Smith, and so far as he could measure, it's pleasure was not staled by repetition.  But then no two river trips were ever quite alike.  The river, the canyon, the desert world was always changing, from moment to moment, from miracle to miracle, within the firm reality of mother earth.  River, rock, sun, blood, hunger, wings, joy--this is the real, Smith would have said, if he's wanted to.  If he felt like it.  All the rest is androgynous theosophy.  All the rest is transcendental transvestite transactional scientology or whatever the fad of the day, the vogue of the week.  As Doc would've said, if Smith had asked him.  Ask the hawk.  Ask the hungry lion lunging at the starving doe.  They know."  ~Edward Abbey, from The Monkey Wrench Gang