Conversations with Birds Quotes

“A handful of times as I wandered around the cabin, a hummingbird thrummed right up to my heart or my forehead and, for a microsecond, I experienced the sensation of life fusing with life. The hummingbird is as much as an expression of life as I am. The claims animals have on the land are as compelling as our own. Yet there are precious few places left where we can be "in place," as Thoreau writes, where we can see not just the path but what lies beyond, where the electric mystery of a bobcat can thrill us rather than manufactured entertainments that often pale on second viewing.”
― Priyanka Kumar, Conversations with Birds

“The goshawk is a feral top predator; its eye has a glint of wildness. Isn't it awesome that when it's incensed by our intrusion over its territory, it thwacks us on the head? We see trees as crops, we plant tree saplings in clean rows, and we have chopped down magnificent old-growth stands, which grew exuberantly in asymmetrical groves. We are draining the last remaining wildness out of even the forests. The goshawk has every right to thwack us.”
― Priyanka Kumar, Conversations with Birds

“I will never forget the sun-soaked afternoon when we stood under the shade of a tree and talked. How quickly and astonishingly the gap between us bridged. In the end we were both concerned children of the land and it grew clear that stifling my voice in the interest of politeness would be unconscionable.”
― Priyanka Kumar, Conversations with Birds

“Just then, the snow geese, a wide band of glittering white on the cerulean water, took off. The sky sprang to life with dazzling wings tinged with black. The birds hovered above us and drifted into a cloud formation, dense and massive like Kalidasa's cloud messenger-- who carried messages of love between two separated lovers-- showering us with cosmic blessings as we left our refuge.”
― Priyanka Kumar, Conversations with Birds

“When the cranes begin their fairylike descent onto milky-blue sheets of water, you find yourself in a place where humans are far outnumbered by birds. You let the primal orchestra of cranes and geese remind you of the place your ancestors came from.”
― Priyanka Kumar, Conversations with Birds

“The absence of the tanager is but one indicator of the disruption we have inflicted and the root of this disruption is within us. We haven't been good neighbors on this planet. If we could see how our solipsism harms other animals, we might take more responsibility to remedy the harm we have done. When we heal the planet, it in turn heals us. It truly is a circle, like the glaucous Earth and the scuffed moon, like the round, round window that I was about to inherit.”
― Priyanka Kumar, Conversations with Birds

“Neither the land nor the birds yield their stories all at once. You have to come back again and again, and somehow at the right time to be able to put together a picture of the lives of birds.”
― Priyanka Kumar, Conversations with Birds

“Something cathartic happened that night. After tears rolled freely out during the dance, I felt clearer and wide-open and strangely closer to the Ortiz Mountains that loomed before me in the smoky blue air. Once again I felt like a child of the universe, dancing in the green folds of the earth.”
― Priyanka Kumar, Conversations with Birds

“Sometimes it is glorious simply to stay.”
― Priyanka Kumar, Conversations with Birds

“Contrary to the mythology about Eve, nature doesn't cast us out. Eating from the tree of knowledge, the knowledge of nature's inner working, far from being a sin, only deepens our filial love for the Earth.”
― Priyanka Kumar, Conversations with Birds