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TASIILAQ, GREENLAND NESTING SEASON
Mam used to tell me to look for the clues. “The clues to what?” I asked the first time. “To life. They’re hidden everywhere.” I’ve been looking for them ever since, and they have led me here, to the boat I will spend the rest of my life aboard. Because one way or another, when I reach Antarctica and my migration is finished, I have decided to die.
An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.”
“The only true threat to birds that has ever existed is us.
humans are the true threat to birds .
“Back to where?” “Galway. Your life. Isn’t that where it is?” I don’t know the answer to that. I had thought my life was just here, with me.
it’s a fool who tries to protect a creature from its own instincts.
We’re the only planet that has oceans. In all the known universe, we’re the only one sitting in the perfect spot for them, not too hot and not too cold, and it’s the only reason we’re alive, because it’s the ocean that creates the oxygen we need to breathe.
the tracking light for my tern has blinked out, snuffed away by the storm, dragged into the deep below where no sun can find it. Just as she must have been.
the other side of passion is melancholy,
I can’t access what I feel about last night. It’s already gone to live elsewhere.
It has been decided by our leaders that economic growth is more important. That the extinction crisis is an acceptable trade for their greed.”
We are a plague on the world, my husband often says.
It’s impossible to control someone else’s capacity for forgiveness.
in our self-importance, in our search for meaning, we have forgotten how to share the planet that gave us life.
Saving specific animals purely on the basis of what they offer humanity may be practical, but wasn’t this attitude the problem to begin with? Our overwhelming, annihilating selfishness?
want to acknowledge the wild creatures of this earth and say that this book was written for them out of sadness and regret for those that have been wiped out and for love of those that remain.
