"Yes, intimate knowing, a kind of inquiring reciprocity. When I was
walking across the campus this morning I found a beetle. Its life had
expired. It was on its back on the sidewalk. I squatted down to examine
it and in my mind I asked, 'Who were you?' and 'What was the cause of
this?' I tried to enter into a state in which the beetle was not an
object. To initiate some kind of relationship with what was left of the
beetle is, for me, a kind of practice, an effort to stay in touch with
the world. To stay intimate."
Barry Lopez, in William Tydeman, Conversations with Barry Lopez.
