At the time I did not know that stories of life are often more like rivers than books.
Interpretation
Life's experiences are more fluid and interconnected than fixed narratives.
Norman Maclean's quote suggests that life is not a straightforward narrative, like a book, but rather more complex and dynamic, akin to a river that flows and changes. It implies that our experiences are interconnected and continuously evolving, highlighting the unpredictable and organic nature of human existence.
In practice
In a speech about personal growth, one might say, 'As Norman Maclean wisely noted, stories of life are often more like rivers than books.'
Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.
Ahead and to the west was our ranger station - and the mountains of Idaho, poems of geology stretching beyond any boundaries and seemingly even beyond the world.
Poets talk about "spots of time", but it is really the fishermen who experience eternity compressed into a moment. No one can tell what a spot of time is until suddenly the whole world is a fish and the fish is gone.
As I get considerably beyond the biblical allotment of three score years and ten, I feel with increasing intensity that I can express my gratitude for still being around on the oxygen-side of the earth's crust only by not standing pat on what I have hitherto known and loved. While oxygen lasts, there are still new things to love, especially if compassion is a form of love.
At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear. It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us. You can love completely without complete understanding.
One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself and watch yourself softly becoming the author of something beautiful even if it is only a floating ash.
Flying has torn apart the relationship of space and time: it uses our old clock but with new yardsticks.
Given the accelerating velocity of history, we should begin charting deliberately the next phase in its trajectory.
What is truth? A difficult question; but I have solved it for myself by saying that it is what the 'voice within' tells you.
I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions.
Just six years into the 21st century, one can say this is not shaping up to be anything like an American century. Rather, the U.S. seems much more likely to be faced with a very different kind of future: how to manage its own imperial decline.
Civilized Man says: I am Self, I am Master, all the rest is other--outside, below, underneath, subservient. I own, I use, I explore, I exploit, I control. What I do is what matters. What I want is what matter is for. I am that I am, and the rest is women & wilderness, to be used as I see fit.
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