#habitat

David had been photographing endangered species in the Hawaiian rainforest and elsewhere for years, and his collections of photographs and Suzie's tarot cards seemed somehow related. Because species disappear when their habitat does, he photographed them against the nowhere of a black backdrop (which sometimes meant propping up a black velvet cloth in the most unlikely places and discouraging climates), and so each creature, each plant, stood as though for a formal portrait alone against the darkness. The photographs looked like cards too, card from the deck of the world in which each creature describes a history, a way of being in the world, a set of possibilities, a deck from which cards are being thrown away, one after another. Plants and animals are a language, even in our reduced, domesticated English, where children grow like weeds or come out smelling like roses, the market is made up of bulls and bears, politics of hawks and doves. Like cards, flora and fauna could be read again and again, not only alone but in combination, in the endlessly shifting combinations of a nature that tells its own stories and colors ours, a nature we are losing without even knowing the extent of that loss. ↗

— Rebecca Solnit

#environment #habitat #nature #page- #nature

The successful establishment of a buffer zone around Fort Carson will provide an example for other bases around the country as we seek to protect the training mission of the U.S. military while preserving critical habitats on our ranges. ↗

— Wayne Allard

#bases #buffer #carson #country #critical

I once asked a hermit in Italy how he could venture to live alone, in a single cottage, on the top of a mountain, a mile from any habitation? He replied, that Providence was his next-door neighbor. ↗

— Laurence Sterne

#any #asked #cottage #could #habitation

Humans are an infant species, a mere 150,000 years old. But, armed with a massive brain, we've not only survived, we've used our wits to adapt to and flourish in habitats as varied as deserts, Arctic tundra, tropical rainforests, wetlands and high mountain ranges. ↗

— David Suzuki

#arctic #armed #brain #deserts #flourish

Chicago is the product of modern capitalism, and, like other great commercial centers, is unfit for human habitation. ↗

— Eugene V. Debs

#centers #chicago #commercial #great #habitation

I think she cared more for that bloody dog than for me, for us. And maybe that's not so stupid, looking back... maybe it is easier living on your own looking after some stupid mutt than sharing your life with other actual human beings. ↗

— Mark Haddon

#dogs #relationships #life