"...I wondered, understanding nothing."

Alex is eight, and already he has shut away the wilderness of the world. I lost it, too, in early childhood. But memories would come on wings of light--a shining bird, high pines and sun, the fire in a floating leaf, the autumn heat in weathered wood, wood smell, a child, soft lichen on a stone--a light-filled immanence, shimmering and breathing, and yet so fleeting that it left me breathless and in pain. One night in 1945, on a Navy vessel in a Pacific storm, my relief on bow watch, seasick, failed to appear, and I was alone for eight hours in a maelstrom of wind and water, noise and iron; again and again, waves crashed across the deck, until water, air, and iron became one. Overwhelmed, exhausted, all thought and emotion beaten out of me, I lost my sense of self, the heartbeat I heard was the heart of the world, I breathed with the mighty risings and declines of earth, and this evanescence seemed less frightening than exalting. Afterward, there was pain of loss--loss of what, I wondered, understanding nothing.

- Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard