8
" It is an effort to descend down the hand-holds of memory to the plain beneath, to recall the lost future, the dusk hovering above the sunken cities, the dim western world of fallen light and broken skies. My life is here, where soon the larks will sing again, and there is a hawk above. One wishes only to go forward, deeper into the summer land, journeying from lark-song to lark-song, passing through the dark realm of the owls, the fox-holdings, the badger-shires, out into the brilliant winter dominion, the sea-bleak world of the hawks. "
― J.A. Baker , The Peregrine: The Hill of Summer & Diaries: The Complete Works of J. A. Baker
9
" Bar-tailed godwits flying with curlew, with knot, with plover; seldom alone, seldom settling; snuffling eccentrics; long-nosed, loud-calling sea-rejoicers; their call a snorting, sneezing, mewing, spitting bark. Their thin upcurved bills turn, their heads turn, their shoulders and whole bodies turn, their wings waggle. They flourish their rococo flight above the surging water. Screaming gulls corkscrewing high under cloud. Islands blazing with birds. A peregrine rising and falling. Godwits ricocheting across water, tumbling, towering. A peregrine following, swooping, clutching. Godwit and peregrine darting, dodging; stitching land and water with flickering shuttle. Godwit climbing, dwindling, tiny, gone: peregrine diving, perching, panting, beaten. "
― J.A. Baker , The Peregrine: The Hill of Summer & Diaries: The Complete Works of J. A. Baker
15
" Fear releases power. Man might be more tolerable, less fractious and smug, if he had more to fear. I do not mean fear of the intangible, the suffocation of the introvert, but physical fear, cold sweating fear for one’s life, fear of the unseen menacing beast, imminent, bristly, tusked and terrible, ravening for one’s own hot saline blood. "
― J.A. Baker , The Peregrine: The Hill of Summer & Diaries: The Complete Works of J. A. Baker
18
" The water shines. It has no dimension. I cannot tell whether it is higher or lower than the hill where I am standing. Water, air, and light, float upward together. This is the world of the sky, of the east wind, of the ancestral sea. There is a strange breathlessness in the air. The body is lifted up by the joy of arrival, by the voice of the curlew, by the soaring cries of the gulls. The sky has descended. All things are set apart, made distant. They have a different life, a remoteness they do not possess inland. The sea has risen. Its charismatic glitter towers above. "
― J.A. Baker , The Peregrine: The Hill of Summer & Diaries: The Complete Works of J. A. Baker
