The Island Within
“I’ve often thought of the forest as a living cathedral, but this might diminish what it truly is. If I have understood Koyukon teachings, the forest is not merely an expression or representation of sacredness, nor a place to invoke the sacred; the forest is sacredness itself.”
“[I breathe in the] air that has passed continually through life on earth…pass it on, share it in equal measure with billions of other living things, endlessly, infinitely.”
In essays spanning the course of a hunter’s year, Nelson, an anthropologist who studies indigenous cultures of Alaska, describes his attempt to live off the land on an island off of the coast of southeast Alaska and forge a deeper relationship to both its minute parts—puffins, otters, whales—and its dazzling, sacred whole. He writes beautifully about “[claiming]” and “being claimed by” the island, a “place that wholly engages the heart and mind.”