As I walked home, elated yet sorrowful, I thought how curious that people who love animals most are often they that hunt them. There are maddening theorists in the world who will not admit to such a paradox. Yet who knows more of the ways of the birds and the beasts than the gamekeeper? Who could write so sympathetically of fish as Izaak Walton, the keenest of fishermen? And no one who has not followed the spoor of some particular animal for a whole day can quite appreciate how intimately you can come in touch with the mind and personality of that animal. He has left his thoughts traced upon the sand like an open book for you to read. Here he trotted, here he galloped in fresh alarm; here he paused to look back, or walked, fed, drank or lay down. And as the hours go by, and again and again from those footprints you visualize the whole beast before you, you are so much of one mind with him that you think yourself into his character.
We hunt what we love because we want to possess it. It may not be humane, but at least it is human. And none who did not primarily love animals would spend his life studying them, thinking about them, following them. That particular kind of theorist who loves animals so much that he leaves them entirely alone, has never felt the unquenchable craving to get near his subject.
Originally posted by DavidAk: I think Vivienne de Watteville, in Out In The Blue...but maybe Speak To The Earth.
Thanks David, the name did it. I can't find which book the passage is in, but it was written by Vivienne de Watteville, according to a link on Fiona Capstick's site. Thanks Gayne and Naki etc for your efforts, been bugging me for a while, just one of those things you have to know, you know? I'll have to get hold of her books, appears from the little I've read online that she was a remarkable woman.
She does seem to have been a remarkable person and I have seen a few different interesting and moving quotes from her about Africa. Quite the adventures she had.
Posts: 314 | Location: Alaska | Registered: 27 December 2002
