West With Giraffes

by Lynda Rutledge

“Animals are complete all on their own, living by voices we don’t get to hear, having a knowing far beyond our paltry ken.

This world of misery is in dire need of some natural wonder to learn secrets to life from.”

“People look at you peculiar if you talk about the feeling you got for animals, saying animals have no souls, no sense of good or bad, no value up next to humans,” he said. “I don’t know about that. Sometimes I think animals are the ones who should be saying such things about us.”

In a long life, there is a singular moment when you know you’ve made more memories than any new ones you’ll ever make. That’s the moment your truest stories—the ones that made you the you that you became—are ever more in the front of your mind, as you begin to reach back for the you that you deemed best.