Tony Hillerman describing the Southwest.

Navajo ceremonies, such as the Blessing Way, and the concept of hózhó (harmony) are central, tying people to the land and its spirits. The landscape itself feels alive, imbued with stories and meaning.

the arid terrain with its dramatic red rock formations, endless skies, and harsh, unforgiving climate—blazing heat by day and cold nights. His writing evokes the region's isolation and timelessness, where the land shapes both lifestyle and worldview

a naturalist's account of occurrences in the plant and animal worlds over the space of a year on Chestnut Ridge, a sandstone outcropping in east central Ohio.

The Pequod is now deep in the Japanese cruising grounds, which are living up to their name. The crew are spending almost all of their time hunting whales, only able to rest in those brief interludes when a whale dives into the depths of the ocean, and they must wait on the surface until it returns. During these brief interludes, the almost supernatural calm of the Pacific Ocean seems almost to be the same as a peaceful meadow. Even Ahab is in affected by these intense moments of peace and reflection. We get a glimpse into the thoughts of Starbuck and Stubb in their murmured asides. Starbuck looks deep within and finds that his faith is his last bastion, and for Stubb, it is his jolly nature.

My 13 year old daughter has been recently taking cucumbers out of the refrigerator and into her bedroom, and then returning them to the fridge later on, and the oddest thing is that they are all wrinkled and squished after they are returned. I asked her once what she was doing and she said that she was going to eat it and then decided she didn't want it anymore and when I asked why it was squished she said she didn't know. The next day I made my famous cucumber salad and my husband said it tasted different this time, personally I thought it tasted like chemicals or lotion or something but I didn’t think my daughter did anything more then maybe squeezing it har…. I’m not sure whats going on but has this ever happened to anyone else? I don’t know how to address this any further but I may start keeping the cucumbers in my car since its cold out. ????‍???? Help

They rode on into the mountains and their way took them through high pine forests, wind in the trees, lonely bird calls. The shoeless mules slaloming through the dry grass and pine needles. In the blue coulees on the north slopes narrow tailings of old snow. They rode up switchbacks through a lonely aspen wood where the fallen leaves lay like golden disclets in the damp black trail. The leaves shifted in a million spangles down the pale corridors and Glanton took one and turned it like a tiny fan by its stem and held it and let it fall and its perfection was not lost on him. They rode through a narrow draw where the leaves were shingled up in ice and they crossed a high saddle at sunset where wild doves were rocketing down the wind and passing through the gap a few feet off the ground, veering wildly among the ponies and dropping off down into the blue gulf below.

It’s turned cold: cold so that saucers of ice lie in the mud, blank and crazed as antique porcelain. Cold so the hedges are alive with Baltic blackbirds; so cold that each breath hangs like parcelled seafog in the air. The blue sky rings with it, and the bell on Mabel’s tail is dimmed with condensation. Cold, cold, cold. My feet crack the ice in the mud as I trudge uphill. And because the squeaks and grinding harmonics of fracturing ice sound to Mabel like a wounded animal, every step I take is met with a convulsive clench of her toes. Where the world isn’t white with frost, it’s striped green and brown in strong sunlight, so the land is particoloured and snapping backwards to dawn and forwards to dusk. The days, now, are a bare six hours long

ON THE NORTHWEST COAST, there is no graceful interval between the ocean and the trees; the forest simply takes over where the tide wrack ends, erupting full-blown from the shallow, bouldered earth. The boundary between the two is unstable, and the sea will heave stones, logs, and even itself into the woods at every opportunity. In return, the roots of shore pine and spruce grope for a purchase on rocks better suited to limpets and barnacles while densely needled boughs cast shadows over colonies of starfish and sea anemones. The air is at once rank and loamy with the competing smells of rotting seaweed and decaying wood. From the beach you can see as far as height and horizon will allow, but turn inland and you will find yourself blinking in a darkened room, pupils dilating to fill the claustrophobic void. The trail of a person, or the thread of a story, is easily lost in such a place. Even the trees, swaddled in moss and draped in ferns, appear disguised.

The hillside is dotted with with white plum-trees like puffs of smoke, each of them filmy and dapples as a round cloud. At half-past five in the morning, under the dew and the slanting rays of sunrise, the young wheat is incontestably blue, the earth rust-red and the white plum-trees coppery pink. It is only for a moment, a magic delusion of light that fades with the first hour of day. Everything grows with miraculous speed. Even the tiniest plant thrusts upwards with all its strength.” - My Mother’s House