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“To feel as safe as possible in situations I cannot predict among company I don’t control, I have to trust my senses and read signs.“
–Dirt Work: An Education in the Woods
Feeling Safe
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Tag Archives: Christine Byl
Deep Education
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“A deep education is one of both head and hands. Over the past twenty years of my life, books have taught me some things, people have taught me many things, and tools have taught me everything else.“
–Dirt Work: An Education in the Woods
Wild Things
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“I force myself to watch without judgment, philosophy soon falls away, the meaning of the animal quashed by the actual animal, moving, through the same world as me.”
“I say it’s the animals I’m drawn toward, but these sightings usually bring me closer to humans…”
“…proximity to wild things makes me feel feral—incautious and frisky and willing to gamble on what I cannot prove. And proximity to wild things makes me feel tame—glad I don’t have to hunt for every meal, eager to hunker next to a fire on a cold night.“
–Dirt Work: An Education in the Woods
Dirt Under Nails
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“I trust dirty fingernails. I am drawn to people with that half moon, the sliver of filth that indicates kinetic expertise...I trust this small sign because it implies a tangible relationship. To get dirt under your fingernails, you have to touch the world.“
–Dirt Work: An Education in the Woods
Always Human
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“If dirt does not damn us, it doesn’t save us, either. Wherever we end up, we are human once we get there, as vulnerable to unease and envy on talus slopes as on Broadway corners.”
“I’m spurning an unwritten rule, a cherished code of laborers. Our work speaks for us. We don’t draw attention to ourselves, and most of all, we don’t draw attention to each other. I mean it as a love song, not a secret told. I hope they’ll forgive me.“
–Dirt Work: An Education in the Woods
Admiring Squirrels
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“I had not hoed a row of beans, split firewood, or learned the birds in my backyard by name. Yet I loved Thoreau from the first page. Something about what centered him made sense to me—life connected to the place where you lived, and what you did there. I liked how he was humble yet sure of himself. I liked that he admired squirrels.”
–Dirt Work: An Education in the Woods
The Way a Home Is Made
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“When I was twenty-two, the Park Service became an employer, the job a summer diversion. And then, over years, a park became home, the way any home gets made: through work. As in employment, and as in effort. Each with its own set of tools.”
–Dirt Work: An Education in the Woods