“That’s it: You have to let the wild reveal itself on its own say-so. The wild animal will deign to show itself when it is ready, when it has weighed the situation, this way and that way and its way. Like the dream messages or the wind or whatever belongs to the wild, the animal comes in its own time and place. Not yours. You never have the control. The animal’s choice controls you. If you do not respect the wild, you will see nothing. Even sometimes when you do, the denizen still is not ready to show itself. That is the experience I know best: days and days and days, nothing appears. Then, without reason or rationale or one’s deserts, or God knows why, the coyote, the fox, the puma, the bobcat, will glide by for a matter of seconds, within your sight. The fatalistic, timeless, spaceless happening comes when it will: not because of you. And that is what makes it so treasured.” Jane Hollister Wheelwright and Lynda W. Schmidt The Long Shore, Typescripts, pg. 6, Chapter 20.
