Quotes from Michael Punke

The notion of burial had always struck him as stifling and cold. He liked the Indian way better, setting the bodies up high, as if passing them to the heavens.

As for agility, a biologist at the National Bison Range in Montana once observed a 2,000-pound bull leap up a six-foot embankment from a standing start!13

Il pouvait monter là-haut s'il le voulait. Monter et toucher l'horizon, sauter par-dessus et découvrir l'horizon suivant

Cause he got everything to lose.

He raised his eyes to a horizon carved from snowy mountain peaks, virgin white against the frigid blue sky. He could climb up there if he wanted. Climb up there and touch the horizon, jump across and find the next.

If luck wouldn't find him, he would do his best to make his own.

Still, he thought, there was no luck at all in standing still. The next morning he would crawl forward again. If luck wouldn't find him, he would do his best to make his own.

He stood there on the high rampart for a long time that night, listening to the Missouri and staring at the stars. He wondered at the source of the waters, of the mighty Big Horns whose tops he had seen but never touched. He wondered at the stars and the heavens, comforted by their vastness against his own small place in the world. Finally he climbed down from the ramparts and went inside, quickly finding the sleep that had eluded him before.

He came to see it as a part of his soul, a missing piece that could only be made whole on some far-off mountain or plain.

It was the right thing to do, but it could not be sustained. Not here. The

plews." Glass paid the captain his full attention. Every citizen of St. Louis knew some version of Drouillard's story, but Glass had never heard a first-person account. "He did that twice, went out and came back with a pack of plews. Last thing he said before he left the third time was,

Why did you come to the frontier? [...] To track down a common thief? To revel in a moment's revenge? I thought there was more to you than that." Still Glass said nothing. Finally Kiowa said, "If you want to die in the guardhouse, that's for you to decide.

Though no law was written, there was a crude rule of law, adherence to a covenant that transcended their selfish interests. It was biblical in its depth, and its importance grew with each step into wilderness. When the need arose, a man extended a helping hand to his friends, to his partners, to strangers. In so doing, each knew that his own survival might one day depend upon the reaching grasp of another. The

Misfortune seemed to hang on him like day-before smoke.

Le géant poussa un dernier soupir et mourut à la clarté des étoiles de la plaine.

If luck wouldn't find him, we would do his best to make his own.

Glass had come to view the sea, which he once embraced as synonymous with freedom, as no more than the confining parameters of small ships. He resolved to turn a new direction.

Glass spotted another dog by the creek, and this one he did not spare. Soon he had a fire burning in the center of the hut. Part of the dog he roasted on a spit over the fire and part he boiled in the kettle. He threw corn into the pot with the dog meat and continued his search through the village.

Missing entirely from Henry's description had been any hint of the devout strength that flowed into Glass at the sight of the massive peaks.

Glass' wife: As long as you can still grab a breath, you fight. You breathe. Keep breathing. When there is a storm. And you stand in front of a tree. If you look at its branches, you swear it will fall. But if you watch the trunk, you will see its stability.

His awe of the mountains grew in the days that followed, as the Yellowstone River led him nearer and nearer. Their great mass was a marker, a benchmark fixed against time itself. Others might feel disquiet at the notion of something so much larger than themselves. But for Glass, there was a sense of sacrament that flowed from the mountains like a font, an immortality that made his quotidian pains seem inconsequential

Of course it's not simple. Who said it was simple? But you know what? Lots of loose ends don't ever get tied up. Play the hand you're dealt. Move on." Kiowa

It means there are none so deaf as those that will not hear.

His decision to go west was not rash or forced, but as fully deliberate as any choice in his life. At the same time, he could not explain or articulate his reasons. It was something that he felt more than understood.