Mountain Goats Quotes

I’d be happier on a horse,” Makin said. “I’d be happier on a giant mountain goat,” I said. “One that shat diamonds. Until we find some, we’re walking.

That was the thing to remember about all monsters, Dad said: They love to frighten people, but the minute you stare them down, they turn tail and run. “All you have to do, Mountain Goat, is show old Demon that you’re not afraid.

Good things never last, bad things never die.

You might think that climbing a mountain is half the battle, only to find out that the mountain goats who live at the top are vicious, and heavily armed.

It's not easy to kill a mountain goat. He thinks with his spine.

The Shepherd laughed too. “I love doing preposterous things,” he replied. “Why, I don’t know anything more exhilarating and delightful than turning weakness into strength, and fear into faith, and that which has been marred into perfection. If there is one thing more than mother which I should enjoy doing at this moment it is turning a jellyfish into a mountain goat. That is my special work,” he added with the light of a great joy in his face. “Transforming things —to take Much-Afraid, for instance, and to transform her into—“ He broke off and then went on laughingly. “Well, we shall see later on what she finds herself transformed into.

I am not in charge of this House, and never will be. I have no say about who is in and who is out. I do not get to make the rules. Like Job, I was nowhere when God laid the foundations of the earth. I cannot bind the chains of the Pleiades or loose the cords of Orion. I do not even know when the mountain goats give birth, much less the ordinances of the heavens. I am a guest here, charged with serving other guests—even those who present themselves as my enemies. I am allowed to resist them, but as long as I trust in one God who made us all, I cannot act as if they are no kin to me. There is only one House. Human beings will either learn to live in it together or we will not survive to hear its sigh of relief when our numbered days are done.

People say friends don’t destroy one another What do they know about friends? —“Game Shows Touch our Lives,” The Mountain Goats

I was born free, and that I might live in freedom I chose the solitude of the fields; in the trees of the mountains I find society, the clear waters of the brooks are my mirrors, and to the trees and waters I make known my thoughts and charms. I am a fire afar off, a sword laid aside. Those whom I have inspired with love by letting them see me, I have by words undeceived, and if their longings live on hope—and I have given none to Chrysostom or to any other—it cannot justly be said that the death of any is my doing, for it was rather his own obstinacy than my cruelty that killed him; and if it be made a charge against me that his wishes were honourable, and that therefore I was bound to yield to them, I answer that when on this very spot where now his grave is made he declared to me his purity of purpose, I told him that mine was to live in perpetual solitude, and that the earth alone should enjoy the fruits of my retirement and the spoils of my beauty; and if, after this open avowal, he chose to persist against hope and steer against the wind, what wonder is it that he should sink in the depths of his infatuation? If I had encouraged him, I should be false; if I had gratified him, I should have acted against my own better resolution and purpose. He was persistent in spite of warning, he despaired without being hated. Bethink you now if it be reasonable that his suffering should be laid to my charge. Let him who has been deceived complain, let him give way to despair whose encouraged hopes have proved vain, let him flatter himself whom I shall entice, let him boast whom I shall receive; but let not him call me cruel or homicide to whom I make no promise, upon whom I practise no deception, whom I neither entice nor receive. It has not been so far the will of Heaven that I should love by fate, and to expect me to love by choice is idle. Let this general declaration serve for each of my suitors on his own account, and let it be understood from this time forth that if anyone dies for me it is not of jealousy or misery he dies, for she who loves no one can give no cause for jealousy to any, and candour is not to be confounded with scorn. Let him who calls me wild beast and basilisk, leave me alone as something noxious and evil; let him who calls me ungrateful, withhold his service; who calls me wayward, seek not my acquaintance; who calls me cruel, pursue me not; for this wild beast, this basilisk, this ungrateful, cruel, wayward being has no kind of desire to seek, serve, know, or follow them. If Chrysostom's impatience and violent passion killed him, why should my modest behaviour and circumspection be blamed? If I preserve my purity in the society of the trees, why should he who would have me preserve it among men, seek to rob me of it? I have, as you know, wealth of my own, and I covet not that of others; my taste is for freedom, and I have no relish for constraint; I neither love nor hate anyone; I do not deceive this one or court that, or trifle with one or play with another. The modest converse of the shepherd girls of these hamlets and the care of my goats are my recreations; my desires are bounded by these mountains, and if they ever wander hence it is to contemplate the beauty of the heavens, steps by which the soul travels to its primeval abode.

My gran used to say I had the stomach of a mountain goat and that I could probably eat tin cans and be perfectly fine. However, after seeing the video of Jessica’s grand tour-de-cock all over the Internet, my stomach rolled. In

Cultures of honor tend to take root in highlands and other marginally fertile areas, such as Sicily or the mountainous Basque regions of Spain. If you live on some rocky mountainside, the explanation goes, you can't farm. You probably raise goats or sheep, and the kind of culture that grows up around being a herdsman is very different from the culture that grows up around growing crops. The survival of a farmer depends on the cooperation of others in the community. But a herdsman is off by himself. Farmers also don't have to worry that their livelihood will be stolen in the night, because crops can't easily be stolen unless, of course, a thief wants to go to the trouble of harvesting an entire field on his own. But a herdsman does have to worry. He's under constant threat of ruin through the loss of his animals. So he has to be aggressive: he has to make it clear, through his words and deeds, that he is not weak.

Who knows more of gods than I? Horse gods and fire gods, gods made of gold with gemstone eyes, gods carved of cedar wood, gods chiseled into mountains, gods of empty air... I know them all. I have seen their peoples garland them with flowers, and shed the blood of goats and bulls and children in their names. And I have heard the prayers, in half a hundred tongues. Cure my withered leg, make the maiden love me, grant me a healthy son. Save me, succor me, make me wealthy... protect me! Protect me from mine enemies, protect me from the darkness, protect me from the crabs inside my belly, from the horselords, from the slavers, from the sellswords at my door. Protect me from the Silence." He laughed. "Godless? Why, Aeron, I am the godliest man ever to raise sail! You serve one god, Damphair, but I have served ten thousand. From Ib to Asshai, when men see my sails, they pray.

He falls asleep quickly. I lie awake and listen to lights being switched off all over the town. Whispered goodnights. The drowsy creak of bedsprings. I find Adam’s hand and hold it tight. I’m glad that night porters and nurses and long-distance lorry drivers exist. It comforts me to know that in other countries with different time zones, women are washing clothes in rivers and children are filing to school. Somewhere in the world right now, a boy is listening to the merry chink of a goat’s bell as he walks up a mountain. I’m very glad about that.

I often feel like a camel in the mountains, and a goat in the desert. Ah, but that’s life, no?

My parents, and librarians along the way, taught me about the space between words; about the margins, where so many juicy moments of life and spirit and friendship could be found. In a library, you could find miracles and truth and you might find something that would make you laugh so hard that you get shushed, in the friendliest way. There was sanctuary in a library, there is sanctuary now, from the war, from the storms of our family and our own anxious minds. Libraries are like the mountain, or the meadows behind the goat lady’s house: sacred space." [Good Friday world, Salon.com, March 28, 2003]

Many people often ask God for a sign, believing that the sign will be smooth sailing, perfect windspeed, moderate temperatures... so when the winds dance and the waves sing and the temperatures confuse, they think that God's not there anymore. They believe that God is saying, "Watch out! Don't go there!" But the thing is, when something is good, it's not smooth sailing and perfect windspeed and moderate temperatures that are the signs to look out for! When something is good, it has mountain ranges, precipices, cliffs, eagles, tombstones covered in ivy and lily of the valley, mountain goats and a wind so close to the mouth of God that it shakes your flesh to its very core! So when they begin to hop on the precipices and hear the eagles' call— they think God isn't there! They think God is saying "Watch out!" They too often fail to traverse the ivy-encrusted tombstones, to tremble and quiver in beauty under God's breath. Don't run away.

The following spring was a time of calving. Great icebergs calved from the vast glaciers which stretched down to our fjords from distant mountains. The heifers and cows of Kaupangen gave birth to over one hundred calves that spring. Most survived. Gudrod, the master shepherd, had seventy-five new lambkins skipping after their mothers. Ten sets of lamb twins were born in the city that year. Bitches had pups suckling at their breasts. The mountain goats that stood watch over the fjord, indifferently chewing on the wild grasses between the rocks, had kids following them on their steep paths. The residents of the city, too, gave birth. Twenty-one new healthy babies were born within thirty days of the spring equinox; boys and girls with thick blonde, brown, black, or red hair; others with smooth bald heads. Olaf, my third father, my king, had a son, stillborn. Olaf wept. Kenna wept. I wept as the boy was buried inside the casket with his mother in our graveyard by the church.

That night longer than all my life before it. No scale or measure in this world can ever be held constant. We are always slipping.

We're not supposed to touch the dead. This is why we make a comfortable afterlife for them, so they will not reach out. We hope to distract them, keep them busy. Burial is a hope.

course, mountains serve as homes to mountain goats and mountain lions, who enjoy attacking helpless picnickers and eating sandwiches or children. So

Just like a mountain goat climbing very steep and dangerous land to lick salt from the rocks, man also should take high risks to get what he wants!

The Shepherd laughed too. “I love doing preposterous things,” he replied. “Why, I don’t know anything more exhilarating and delightful than turning weakness into strength, and fear into faith, and that which has been marred into perfection. If there is one thing more than mother which I should enjoy doing at this moment it is turning a jellyfish into a mountain goat.

Look carefully at the goat sitting on the edge of the cliff: Everything that shows you the peace of being fearless is a great teacher for you! That goat is a teacher for you, respect him!

WE THINK OF CAIN AS THE ONE WHO KILLED HIS BROTHER, but who else was around to kill? They were the first two born. Cain killed what was available. The story has nothing to do with brothers.

Mirabai composed many ecstatic songs which are still treasured in India; I translate one of them here: “If by bathing daily God could be realised Sooner would I be a whale in the deep; If by eating roots and fruits He could be known Gladly would I choose the form of a goat; If the counting of rosaries uncovered Him I would say my prayers on mammoth beads; If bowing before stone images unveiled Him A flinty mountain I would humbly worship; If by drinking milk the Lord could be imbibed Many calves and children would know Him; If abandoning one’s wife would summon God Would not thousands be eunuchs? Mirabai knows that to find the Divine One The only indispensable is Love.

I AM KORROK. In the mountains of Uruguay, a goat gets its hoof caught in a posthole and the bone snaps like a twig. The splinter juts from its skin, blood spraying onto white fur. It is stuck like that for three days. Finally, a wolf mother comes along, carrying her pup in her jaws. She lets the pup feed off the goat, gnawing bits of fur and skin and tearing at muscle. The goat feels it and screams and there is pain and pain and neither the goat nor the wolf nor the pup understand their place in the machine. I stand above all, and call them fags. I AM KORROK.

Low branches, dead and snapping against us. On the lookout for rattlesnakes. But the path was short enough, and soon we were on a kind of terrace. Old lawn overgrown by grass and weed, old concrete cracked in discrete chunks, vast areas overrun. An enchanted place for me, and only for me, because I was too young to remember, and so in my mind this place could become more.

As you know, I have wealth of my own and do not desire anyone else's; I am free and do not care to submit to another; I do not love or despise anyone. I do not deceive this one or solicit that one; I do not mock one or amuse myself with another. The honest conversation of the shepherdesses from these hamlets, and tending to my goats, are my entertainment. The limits of my desires are these mountains, and if they go beyond here, it is to contemplate the beauty of heaven and the steps whereby the soul travels to its first home.

She's like an island Made of rock, with one lone tree at the top Of the only mountain. She's like the sole Incongruous goat tethered to the tree, Smiling almost as you approach, scraping The ground with its horns, and then-- Lickety split--lurching hard, daring The rope to snap.

Julien took breath for a moment in the shade of these great rocks and then started to go up higher. By a narrow, unfrequented path, used only by the goat shepherds, he soon found himself upon an immense rock, where he was sure of being all alone. That physical position made him smile; it pictured to him the moral plane he was burning to reach. The pure air of those high mountains imparted serenity to his soul, even joy.

There exists yonder in the mountains," said the Bishop, "a tiny community no bigger than that, which I have not seen for three years. They are my good friends, those gentle and honest shepherds. They own one goat out of every thirty that they tend. They make very pretty woollen cords of various colors, and they play the mountain airs on little flutes with six holes. They need to be told of the good God now and then. What would they say to a bishop who was afraid? What would they say if I did not go?" "But the brigands, Monseigneur?" "Hold," said the Bishop, "I must think of that. You are right. I may meet them. They, too, need to be told of the good God." "But, Monseigneur, there is a band of them! A flock of wolves!" "Monsieur le maire, it may be that it is of this very flock of wolves that Jesus has constituted me the shepherd. Who knows the ways of Providence?" "They will rob you, Monseigneur." "I have nothing." "They will kill you." "An old goodman of a priest, who passes along mumbling his prayers? Bah! To what purpose?" "Oh, mon Dieu! what if you should meet them!" "I should beg alms of them for my poor." "Do not go, Monseigneur. In the name of Heaven! You are risking your life!" "Monsieur le maire," said the Bishop, "is that really all? I am not in the world to guard my own life, but to guard souls.

All the Chinese people Richard had ever met had been sophisticated urbanites, so he had been half expecting that he would end up carrying the girl Yuxia on his back. But it became clear almost immediately that she was half mountain goat, or whatever the Chinese equivalent of a mountain goat was.

Weeks and months are needed to accustom oneself to climbing. Otherwise, much energy is lost in clinging to the rock, maintaining too sure a hold, trying not to be too stiff, and worrying. After a while a climber warms to the mountains and can accomplish with little effort those things that once took all he had, for height gradually loses its meaning. Standing on the edge of a two-thousand-meter precipice becomes no less comfortable than sitting in a wicker chair on Capri, for it is possible to acquire some of the self-possession that enables mountain goats to stand for hours on a tiny ledge above an abyss.

She thought, sometimes, that, after all, this was the happiest time of her life—the honeymoon, as people called it. To taste the full sweetness of it, it would have been necessary doubtless to fly to those lands with sonorous names where the days after marriage are full of laziness most suave. In post chaises behind blue silken curtains to ride slowly up steep road, listening to the song of the postilion re-echoed by the mountains, along with the bells of goats and the muffled sound of a waterfall; at sunset on the shores of gulfs to breathe in the perfume of lemon trees; then in the evening on the villa-terraces above, hand in hand to look at the stars, making plans for the future. It seemed to her that certain places on earth must bring happiness, as a plant peculiar to the soil, and that cannot thrive elsewhere. Why could not she lean over balconies in Swiss chalets, or enshrine her melancholy in a Scotch cottage, with a husband dressed in a black velvet coat with long tails, and thin shoes, a pointed hat and frills? Perhaps she would have liked to confide all these things to someone. But how tell an undefinable uneasiness, variable as the clouds, unstable as the winds? Words failed her—the opportunity, the courage.

The Goatherd and the Wild Goats A GOATHERD, driving his flock from their pasture at eventide, found some Wild Goats mingled among them, and shut them up together with his own for the night. The next day it snowed very hard, so that he could not take the herd to their usual feeding places, but was obliged to keep them in the fold. He gave his own goats just sufficient food to keep them alive, but fed the strangers more abundantly in the hope of enticing them to stay with him and of making them his own. When the thaw set in, he led them all out to feed, and the Wild Goats scampered away as fast as they could to the mountains. The Goatherd scolded them for their ingratitude in leaving him, when during the storm he had taken more care of them than of his own herd. One of them, turning about, said to him: “That is the very reason why we are so cautious; for if you yesterday treated us better than the Goats you have had so long, it is plain also that if others came after us, you would in the same manner prefer them to ourselves.” Old friends cannot with impunity be sacrificed for new ones.

Ben turned around and offered me his fist. I punched it softly, even though I hated that greeting. “Q!” he shouted over the music. “How good does this feel?” And I knew exactly what Ben meant: he meant listening to the Mountain Goats with your friends in a car that runs on a Wednesday morning in May on the way to Margo and whatever Margotastic prize came with finding her. “It beats calculus,

The weeks up there were almost the most beautiful in my life. I breathed the pure, clear air, drank the icy water from streams and watched the herds of goats grazing on the steep slopes, guarded by dark-haired, musing goatherds. At times I heard storms resound through the valley and saw mists and clouds at unusually close quarters. In the clefts of rocks I observed the small, delicate, bright coloured flowers and the many wonderful mosses, and on clear days I used to like to walk uphill for an hour until I could see the clearly outlined distant peaks of high mountains, their blue silhouettes, and white, sparkling snow fields across the other side of the hill.

Bullshit is everywhere.” (...) Then there’s the more pernicious bullshit… It comes in three flavors: Making bad things sound good… “Patriot Act.” Because “Are You Scared Enough to Let Me Look at All Your Phone Records Act” doesn’t sell… Number two: hiding bad things under mountains of bullshit. “Hey, a handful of billionaires can’t buy our elections, right?” “Of course not. They can only pour unlimited, anonymous cash into a 501( c)( 4) if 50 percent is devoted to ‘issue education’”… And finally, my favorite: the bullshit of infinite possibility… “We cannot take action on climate change until everyone in the world agrees gay marriage vaccines won’t cause our children to marry goats who are coming for our guns. Until then, I say we teach the controversy.” So I say to you, friends: The best defense against bullshit is vigilance. So if you smell something, say something. ~Jon Stewart

From fruit flies to house cats to mountain goats, from sunfish to bushbaby primates to Eurasian tit birds, scientists have discovered that approximately 20 percent of the members of many species are “slow to warm up,” while the other 80 percent are “fast” types who venture forth boldly without noticing much of what’s going on around them. (Intriguingly, the percentage of infants in Kagan’s lab who were born high-reactive was also, you’ll recall, about twenty.)

I feel like it's a very indiscriminate 'hey.' I feel like these guys go through and 'hey' at eight hundred women, and they see who will 'hey' back. like they're blowing a horn at the top of a mountain and waiting for goats to come running.

The Pyrenean ibex, an extinct form of wild mountain goat, was brought back to life in 2009 through cloning of dna taken from skin samples. This was followed in June of 2010 by researchers at Jeju National University in Korea cloning a bull that had been dead for two years. Cloning methods are also being studied for use in bringing back Tasmanian tigers, woolly mammoths, and other extinct creatures, and in the March/April 2010 edition of the respected Archaeology magazine, a feature article by Zah Zorich (“Should We Clone Neanderthals?”) called for the resurrection via cloning of what some consider to be man’s closest extinct relative, the Neanderthals. National Geographic confirmed this possibility in its May 2009 special report, “Recipe for a Resurrection,” quoting Hendrik Poinar of McMaster University, an authority on ancient dna who served as a scientific consultant for the movie Jurassic Park, saying: “I laughed when Steven Spielberg said that cloning extinct animals was inevitable. But I’m not laughing anymore.… This is going to happen.

As long as there are beginning-English students and a lake and I can see a mountain, I will be perfectly happy,” she said, reminding me of how my grandfather used to say he was a simple man with simple tastes: “All I need is a little milk from a goat that has been fed for a month on wild green pears.

Stepping out of the gate and turning onto a narrow footpath, he was immediately treated to the sight of the legendary Gu Yun, who was “up to his ears in military affairs,” sitting in a little garden. A profusion of mint plants grew in Magistrate Guo’s gardens. Gu Yun was sitting alone in a small pavilion, absent-mindedly picking leaves off the mint. He held each leaf in his mouth for a while, then chewed them up and swallowed them down. How long he sat there, who could say, but the mint plant beside him was picked nearly bald, looking for all the world like a shrub that had been ravaged by a mountain goat.

Haska—a dim legendary figure of a generation ago, who went back up the mountain and cleared six acres of brush in the tiny valley that took his name. He broke the soil, reared stone walls and a house, and planted apple trees. And already the site of the house is undiscoverable, the location of the stone walls may be deduced from the configuration of the landscape, and I am renewing the battle, putting in angora goats to browse away the brush that has overrun Haska's clearing and choked Haska's apple trees to death. So I, too, scratch the land with my brief endeavour and flash my name across a page of legal script ere I pass and the page grows musty.

my taste is for freedom, and I have no relish for constraint; I neither love nor hate anyone; I do not deceive this one or court that, or trifle with one or play with another. The modest converse of the shepherd girls of these hamlets and the care of my goats are my recreations; my desires are bounded by these mountains, and if they ever wander hence it is to contemplate the beauty of the heavens, steps by which the soul travels to its primeval abode.

Somehow, irresistibly, the prime thing was: nothing mattered. Life in the end seemed a prank of such size you could only stand off at this end of the corridor to note its meaningless length and its quite unnecessary height, a mountain built to such ridiculous immensities you were dwarfed in its shadow and mocking of its pomp. So with death this near he thought numbly but purely upon a billion vanities, arrivals, departures, idiot excursions of boy, boy-man, man and old-man goat.

It seems jolly on the page. But imagine poverty, violence, natural disasters, or political fear driving you away from everything you know. Imagine how bad things get to make you leave behind your family, your friends, your lovers; your home, as humble as it might be; your church, say. Let's take it further - you've said good-bye to the graveyard, the dog, the goat, the mountains where you hunted, your grade school, your state, your favorite spot on the river where you fished and took time to think.

Later, as the sisters grew, Esther hyperfocused on their differences, but as a little kid she'd been far more hypnotised by their sameness. They both loved chewing lemon peels and watermelon rinds, loved pictures of goats but not actual goats, loved putting sand in their hair so they could scratch it out later, loved watching their parents slow-dance in the living room to Motown records. They loved the sound of the wind, the sound of breaking ice, the sound of coyotes calling on the mountain. They disliked zippers, ham, the word 'milk', flute music, the gurgling sound of the refrigerator, Cecily's long weekends away, Abe's insistence on regular chess matches, and days with no clouds. They disliked the boxes of books that came to their door daily or were lugged home by their father, disliked their dusty lonesome smell and how they consumed Abe's attention. They disliked when their parents closed the bedroom door and fought in whispers. They hated the phrase 'half sister.' There had been no half about it.

If I was a flower, I would sell perfume. If I was a plant, I would sell herbs. If I was a seed, I would sell wood. If I was a tree, I would sell forests. If I was a garden, I would sell beauty. If I was a plant, I would sell medicine. If I was a fish, I would sell oceans. If I was a bee, I would sell honey. If I was a spider, I would sell silk. If I was a firebug, I would sell light. If I was a sheep, I would sell wool. If I was a rabbit, I would sell carrots. If I was a cow, I would sell leather. If I was a hen, I would sell eggs. If I was a stream, I would sell lakes. If I was a river, I would sell seas. If I was a bird, I would sell skies. If I was a monkey, I would sell trees. If I was a dog, I would sell plains. If I was a bear, I would sell caves. If I was a goat, I would sell mountains. If I was a fox, I would sell wit. If I was a dove, I would sell peace. If I was a bear, I would sell valor. If I was a camel, I would sell grit. If I was an owl, I would sell wisdom. If I was a lion, I would sell strength. If I was an elephant, I would sell might.

10- We went walking along the footpaths that snaked through vineyards and barley fields, looking down at our own shadows each preoccupied with our own thoughts. Mostly we wandered. There wasn’t much in the way of a tourist industry on Tinos in those days. It was a farming Island, really people living off their cows and goats and olive trees and wheat.We would end up bored, eating lunch somewhere, quietly, in the shade of a tree or a windmill, looking between bites at the ravines, the fields of thorny bushes, the mountains the sea.

Therefore," said the Bishop, "I intend to go without escort." "You do not really mean that, Monseigneur!" exclaimed the mayor. "I do mean it so thoroughly that I absolutely refuse any gendarmes, and shall set out in an hour." "Set out?" "Set out." "Alone?" "Alone." "Monseigneur, you will not do that!" "There exists yonder in the mountains," said the Bishop, "a tiny community no bigger than that, which I have not seen for three years. They are my good friends, those gentle and honest shepherds. They own one goat out of every thirty that they tend. They make very pretty woollen cords of various colors, and they play the mountain airs on little flutes with six holes. They need to be told of the good God now and then. What would they say to a bishop who was afraid? What would they say if I did not go?" "But the brigands, Monseigneur?" "Hold," said the Bishop, "I must think of that. You are right. I may meet them. They, too, need to be told of the good God." "But, Monseigneur, there is a band of them! A flock of wolves!" "Monsieur le maire, it may be that it is of this very flock of wolves that Jesus has constituted me the shepherd. Who knows the ways of Providence?" "They will rob you, Monseigneur." "I have nothing." "They will kill you." "An old goodman of a priest, who passes along mumbling his prayers? Bah! To what purpose?" "Oh, mon Dieu! what if you should meet them!" "I should beg alms of them for my poor." "Do not go, Monseigneur. In the name of Heaven! You are risking your life!" "Monsieur le maire," said the Bishop, "is that really all? I am not in the world to guard my own life, but to guard souls.

We feel the life and motion about us, and the universal beauty: the tides marching back and forth with weariless industry, laving the beautiful shores, and swaying the purple dulse of the broad meadows of the sea where the fishes are fed, the wild streams in rows white with waterfalls, ever in bloom and ever in song, spreading their branches over a thousand mountains; the vast forests feeding on the drenching sunbeams, every cell in a whirl of enjoyment; misty flocks of insects stirring all the air, the wild sheep and goats on the grassy ridges above the woods, bears in the berry-tangles, mink and beaver and otter far back on many a river and lake; Indians and adventurers pursuing their lonely ways; birds tending to their young—everywhere, everywhere, beauty and life, and glad, rejoicing action. In this moment, he was experiencing what the Stoics would call sympatheia—a connectedness with the cosmos. The French philosopher Pierre Hadot has referred to it as the “oceanic feeling.” A sense of belonging to something larger, of realizing that “human things are an infinitesimal point in the immensity.

Harriet turned round, and we both saw a girl walking towards us. She was dark-skinned and thin, not veiled but dressed in a sitara, a brightly coloured robe of greens and pinks, and she wore a headscarf of a deep rose colour. In that barren place the vividness of her dress was all the more striking. On her head she balanced a pitcher and in her hand she carried something. As we watched her approach, I saw that she had come from a small house, not much more than a cave, which had been built into the side of the mountain wall that formed the far boundary of the gravel plateau we were standing on. I now saw that the side of the mountain had been terraced in places and that there were a few rows of crops growing on the terraces. Small black and brown goats stepped up and down amongst the rocks with acrobatic grace, chewing the tops of the thorn bushes. As the girl approached she gave a shy smile and said, ‘Salaam alaikum, ’ and we replied, ‘Wa alaikum as salaam, ’ as the sheikh had taught us. She took the pitcher from where it was balanced on her head, kneeled on the ground, and gestured to us to sit. She poured water from the pitcher into two small tin cups, and handed them to us. Then she reached into her robe and drew out a flat package of greaseproof paper from which she withdrew a thin, round piece of bread, almost like a large flat biscuit. She broke off two pieces, and handed one to each of us, and gestured to us to eat and drink. The water and the bread were both delicious. We smiled and mimed our thanks until I remembered the Arabic word, ‘Shukran.’ So we sat together for a while, strangers who could speak no word of each other’s languages, and I marvelled at her simple act. She had seen two people walking in the heat, and so she laid down whatever she had been doing and came to render us a service. Because it was the custom, because her faith told her it was right to do so, because her action was as natural to her as the water that she poured for us. When we declined any further refreshment after a second cup of water she rose to her feet, murmured some word of farewell, and turned and went back to the house she had come from. Harriet and I looked at each other as the girl walked back to her house. ‘That was so…biblical,’ said Harriet. ‘Can you imagine that ever happening at home?’ I asked. She shook her head. ‘That was charity. Giving water to strangers in the desert, where water is so scarce. That was true charity, the charity of poor people giving to the rich.’ In Britain a stranger offering a drink to a thirsty man in a lonely place would be regarded with suspicion. If someone had approached us like that at home, we would probably have assumed they were a little touched or we were going to be asked for money. We might have protected ourselves by being stiff and unfriendly, evasive or even rude.

The symbol for that portion of the zodiac in which the sun re-enters the yearly cycle at the time of the winter solstice is Capricorn, originally known as the “Goat-Fish” (aíγóχερωs, ‘goat-horned’): the sun mounts like a goat to the tops of the highest mountains, and then plunges into the depths of the sea like a fish. The fish in dreams occasionally signifies the unborn child,47 because the child before its birth lives in the water like a fish; similarly, when the sun sinks into the sea, it becomes child and fish at once. The fish is therefore a symbol of renewal and rebirth.

From Vergil's Tenth Eclogue Verses 1-26. Published by Rossetti, "Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.", 1870, from the Boscombe manuscripts now in the Bodleian. Mr. Locock ("Examination", etc., 1903, pages 47-50), as the result of his collation of the same manuscripts, gives a revised and expanded version which we print below. Melodious Arethusa, o'er my verse Shed thou once more the spirit of thy stream: Who denies verse to Gallus? So, when thou Glidest beneath the green and purple gleam Of Syracusan waters, mayst thou flow Unmingled with the bitter Doric dew! Begin, and, whilst the goats are browsing now The soft leaves, in our way let us pursue The melancholy loves of Gallus. List! We sing not to the dead: the wild woods knew His sufferings, and their echoes... Young Naiads,...in what far woodlands wild Wandered ye when unworthy love possessed Your Gallus? Not where Pindus is up-piled, Nor where Parnassus' sacred mount, nor where Aonian Aganippe expands... The laurels and the myrtle-copses dim. The pine-encircled mountain, Maenalus, The cold crags of Lycaeus, weep for him; And Sylvan, crowned with rustic coronals, Came shaking in his speed the budding wands And heavy lilies which he bore: we knew Pan the Arcadian. ... 'What madness is this, Gallus? Thy heart's care With willing steps pursues another there

How is it that a mountain goat can find such steady footing on these vertiginous slopes? What map does it read that shows it the way home? Maybe the wilderness seems as forbidding as it does just because we don't have the muscle memory to navigate or the skills to climb and sense. What does a western hemlock, the grand conifer that can live more than half a millennium, think when a youngster like me comes along? Chanterelle mushrooms got to know this tree, finding ample places to grow at its feet. Native Americans got to know this tree too. They understood that its bark was edible and a good base for cakes, and that its young needles could be brewed into a tea rich in vitamin C. The Coastal Salish peoples of what is now Canada built shelters for menstruating women using western hemlock branches, and this species was said to have particularly feminine energy. What if the "problem" with the wilderness isn't a problem with the wilderness at all but rather with us, with our lack of knowledge, and with our truncated imagination? The wilderness reminds us that things aren't usually as simple or one-dimensional as they seem. Our stereotypes of such spaces imagine them as places of exile, spaces of lifelessness. That would be a surprise to the creatures that call it home. Perhaps the real struggle is ours. We don't like knowing. Indeed, we fear it.

Mirabai composed many ecstatic songs, which are still treasured in India. I translate one of them here: If by bathing daily God could be realized Sooner would I be a whale in the deep; If by eating roots and fruits He could be known Gladly would I choose the form of a goat; If the counting of rosaries uncovered Him I would say my prayers on mammoth beads; If bowing before stone images unveiled Him A flinty mountain I would humbly worship; If by drinking milk the Lord could be imbibed Many calves and children would know Him; If abandoning one’s wife could summon God Would not thousands be eunuchs? Mirabai knows that to find the Divine One The only indispensable is Love. Several

The Same (As revised by Mr. C.D. Locock.) Melodious Arethusa, o'er my verse Shed thou once more the spirit of thy stream: (Two lines missing.) Who denies verse to Gallus? So, when thou Glidest beneath the green and purple gleam Of Syracusan waters, mayest thou flow Unmingled with the bitter Dorian dew! Begin, and whilst the goats are browsing now The soft leaves, in our song let us pursue The melancholy loves of Gallus. List! We sing not to the deaf: the wild woods knew His sufferings, and their echoes answer... Young Naiades, in what far woodlands wild Wandered ye, when unworthy love possessed Our Gallus? Nor where Pindus is up-piled, Nor where Parnassus' sacred mount, nor where Aonian Aganippe spreads its... (Three lines missing.) The laurels and the myrtle-copses dim, The pine-encircled mountain, Maenalus, The cold crags of Lycaeus weep for him. (Several lines missing.) 'What madness is this, Gallus? thy heart's care, Lycoris, mid rude camps and Alpine snow, With willing step pursues another there.' (Some lines missing.) And Sylvan, crowned with rustic coronals, Came shaking in his speed the budding wands And heavy lilies which he bore: we knew Pan the Arcadian with.... ...and said, 'Wilt thou not ever cease? Love cares not. The meadows with fresh streams, the bees with thyme, The goats with the green leaves of budding spring Are saturated not—nor Love with tears.

Driving over the island, I had a feeling of far greater antiquity than I got even from looking at the Roman ruins in North Africa. Everything is very old and if only it were clean as well it would be old in a nice, gentle way. Towns sit right smack on the top of needle-point mountain peaks. They were built that way in the old days for protection. Today a motorcar can’t even get up to many of them. In the mountain towns the streets are too narrow for vehicles, the passageways are dirty, and the goat and burro are common. In the very remotest and most ancient town, we found that half the people had relatives in America, and there was always somebody popping up from behind every bush or around every corner who had lived for twelve years in Buffalo or thirty years in Chicago.

And her love for her ranch turned sometimes into a certain repulsion. The underlying rat-dirt, the everlasting bristling tussle of the wild life, with the tangle and the bones strewing: Bones of horses struck by lightning, bones of dead cattle, skulls of goats with little horns: bleached, unburied bones. Then the cruel electricity of the mountains. And then, most mysterious but worst of all, the animosity of the spirit of place: the crude, half-created spirit of place, like some serpent-bird for ever attacking man, in a hatred of man's onward struggle towards further creation. The seething cauldron of lower life, seething on the very tissue of the higher life, seething the soul away, seething at the marrow. The vast and unrelenting will of the swarming lower life, working forever against man's attempt at a higher life, a further created being.

She insisted that they focus their energies on raising a little girl who was, by nature, a tangle of mischief and motion and curiosity. Each day, Luna’s ability to break rules in new and creative ways was an astonishment to all who knew her. She tried to ride the goats, tried to roll boulders down the mountain and into the side of the barn (for decoration, she explained), tried to teach the chickens to fly, and once almost drowned in the swamp. (Glerk saved her. Thank goodness.) She gave ale to the geese to see if it made them walk funny (it did) and put peppercorns in the goat’s feed to see if it would make them jump (they didn’t jump; they just destroyed the fence). Every day she goaded Fyrian into making atrocious choices or she played tricks on the poor dragon, making him cry. She climbed, hid, built, broke, wrote on the walls, and spoiled dresses when they had only just been finished. Her hair ratted, her nose smudged, and she left handprints wherever she went.

Her new fever, her anxiety which changed itself to anger was even more of a toy to him. A part of his attention, secret until now, leaned forward to scan every pore of her Halloween face. Somehow, irresistibly, the prime thing was: nothing mattered. Life in the end seemed a prank of such size you could only stand off at this end of the corridor to note its meaningless length and its quite unnecessary height, a mountain built to such ridiculous immensities you were dwarfed in its shadow and mocking of its pomp. So with death this near he thought numbly but purely upon a billion vanities, arrivals, departures, idiot excursions of boy, boy-man, man and old-man goat. He had gathered and stacked all manner of foibles, devices, playthings of his egotism and now, between all the silly corridors of books, the toys of his life swayed. And none more grotesque than this thing named Witch Gypsy Reader-of-Dust, tickling, that’s what! just tickling the air! Fool! Didn’t she know what she was doing!

Her new fever, her anxiety which changed itself to anger was even more of a toy to him. A part of his attention, secret until now, leaned forward to scan every pore of her Halloween face. Somehow, irresistibly, the prime thing was: nothing mattered. Life in the end seemed a prank of such size you could only stand off at this end of the corridor to note its meaningless length and its quite unnecessary height, a mountain built to such ridiculous immensities you were dwarfed in its shadow and mocking of its pomp. So with death this near he thought numbly but purely upon a billion vanities, arrivals, departures, idiot excursions of boy, boy-man, man and old-man goat. He had gathered and stacked all manner of foibles, devices, playthings of his egotism and now, between all the silly corridors of books, the toys of his life swayed. And none more grotesque than this thing named Witch Gypsy Reader-of-Dust, tickling, that’s what! just tickling the air! Fool! Didn’t she know what she was doing!

From the hills behind, came the solitary voice of a girl. She must have been bringing down the goats, and she was singing wildly. At the limit of her uninhibited voice, without any recognizable melody in Turkish Muslim intervals. It sounded disembodied, of place, not person. I remembered having heard a similar voice, perhaps this same girl's, singing one day on the hill behind the school. It had drifted down the hill into the classroom, and the boys had begun to giggle. But now, it seemed intensely mysterious, welling out of a solitude and suffering that made mine trivial and absurd. It held me under a spell. I sat with the gun across my knees, unable to move while the sound floated down through the evening air. I don't know how long she sang for, but the sky darkened, the sea paled to anachronous grey. Over the mountains, there were pinkish bars of high cloud and still strong light from the set sun. All the land and the sea held light, as if light was warmth, and did not fade as soon as the source was removed. But the voice dwindled towards the village, then died into silence.

The smartest person to ever walk this Earth in all probability lived and died herding goats on a mountain somewhere, with no way to disseminate their work globally even if they had realised they were super smart and had the means to do something with their abilities. I am not keen on 'who are the smartest' lists and websites because, as Scott Barry Kaufman points out, the concept of genius privileges the few who had the opportunity to see through and promote their life’s work, while excluding others who may have had equal or greater raw potential but lacked the practical and financial support, and the communication platform that famous names clearly had. This is why I am keen to develop, through my research work, a definition of genius from a cognitive neuroscience and psychometric point of view, so that whatever we decide that is and how it should be measured, only focuses on clearly measurable factors within the individual’s mind, regardless of their external achievements, eminence, popularity, wealth, public platform etc. In my view this would be both more equitable and more scientific.

People are so soon gone; let us catch them. That man there, by the cabinet; he lives, you say, surrounded by china pots. Break one and you shatter a thousand pounds. And he loved a girl in Rome and she left him. Hence the pots, old junk found in lodging-houses or dug from the desert sands. And since beauty must be broken daily to remain beautiful, and he is static, his life stagnates in a china sea. It is strange though; for once, as a young man, he sat on damp ground and drank rum with soldiers. One must be quick and add facts deftly, like toys to a tree, fixing them with a twist of the fingers. He stoops, how he stoops, even over an azalea. He stoops over the old woman even, because she wears diamonds in her ears, and, bundling about her estate in a pony carriage, directs who is to be helped, what tree felled, and who turned out tomorrow. (I have lived my life, I must tell you, all these years, and I am now past thirty, perilously, like a mountain goat, leaping from crag to crag; I do not settle long anywhere; I do not attach myself to one person in particular; but you will find that if I raise my arm, some figure at once breaks off and will come.) And that man is a judge; and that man is a millionaire, and that man, with the eyeglass, shot his governess “through the heart with an arrow when he was ten years old. Afterwards he rode through deserts with despatches, took part in revolutions and now collects materials for a history of his mother’s family, long settled in Norfolk. That little man with a blue chin has a right hand that is withered. But why? We do not know. That woman, you whisper discreetly, with the pearl pagodas hanging from her ears, was the pure flame who lit the life of one of our statesmen; now since his death she sees ghosts, tells fortunes, and has adopted a coffee-coloured youth whom she calls the Messiah.* That man with the drooping moustache, like a cavalry officer, lived a life of the utmost debauchery (it is all in some memoir) until one day he met a stranger in a train who converted him between Edinburgh and Carlisle by reading the Bible. Thus, in a few seconds, deftly, adroitly, we decipher the hieroglyphs written on other people’s faces. Here, in this room, are the abraded and battered shells cast on the shore.

She leaned over the basket again, taking in the mouthwatering aromas wafting out of it. "Fried chicken? Oh, I'm thinking buttermilk fried chicken?" Dylan was once again amused. "How do you do that?" "I like food." "You don't say." "And I love Southern fried chicken." She tried to open the basket, and he tapped her hand jokingly. "Sit," he said. And she did, crossing her legs and plopping down on the blanket. Opening the basket and playing waiter, Dylan began removing flatware and plates and red-checkered napkins, and then wrapped food. "For lunch today in Chez Orchard de Pomme, we have some lovely cheese, made from the milk of my buddy Mike's goat Shelia." He removed the plastic wrap, which covered a small log of fresh white cheese on a small plate, and handed it to her. Grace put her nose to the cheese. It was heavenly. "Oh, Shelia is my new best friend." "It's good stuff. And we have some fresh chili corn bread. The corn, I think, is from Peter Lindsey's new crop, just cut out from the maze, which is right down this hill." He motioned with his head toward the field, and then he handed her a big loaf of the fresh corn bread wrapped loosely in wax paper. "It's still warm!" Delighted, she held it to her cheek. Then he pulled out a large oval Tupperware container. "And, yes, we have Dolly's buttermilk fried chicken." Grace peeled open the top and smelled. "Fabulous." "It is!" He also pulled out a mason jar of sourwood honey, a sack of pecans, and a couple of very cold bottles of a local mountain-brewed beer.

You make springs gush forth in the valleys;         they flow between the hills;     11 they give drink to every beast of the field;         the wild donkeys quench their thirst.     12 Beside them the birds of the heavens dwell;         they sing among the branches.     13 From your lofty abode you water the mountains;         the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work.     14 You cause the grass to grow for the livestock         and plants for man to cultivate,     that he may bring forth food from the earth         15 and wine to gladden the heart of man,     oil to make his face shine         and bread to strengthen man's heart.     16 The trees of the LORD are watered abundantly,         the cedars of Lebanon that he planted.     17 In them the birds build their nests;         the stork has her home in the fir trees.     18 The high mountains are for the wild goats;         the rocks are a refuge for the rock badgers.     19 He made the moon to mark the seasons; [1]         the sun knows its time for setting.     20 You make darkness, and it is night,         when all the beasts of the forest creep about.     21 The young lions roar for their prey,         seeking their food from God.     22 When the sun rises, they steal away         and lie down in their dens.     23 Man goes out to his work         and to his labor until the evening.     24 O LORD, how manifold are your works!         In wisdom have you made them all;         the earth is full of your creatures.     25 Here is the sea, great and wide,         which teems with creatures innumerable,         living things both small and great.     26 There go the ships,         and Leviathan, which you formed to play in it. [2]     27 These all look to you,         to give them their food in due season.     28 When you give it to them, they gather it up;         when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.     29 When you hide your face, they are dismayed;         when you take away their breath, they die         and return to their dust.     30 When you send forth your Spirit, [3] they are created,         and you renew the face of the ground.     31 May the glory of the LORD endure forever;

Christopher Cerf has been composing songs for Sesame Street for twenty-five years. His large Manhattan townhouse is full of Sesame Street memorabilia – photographs of Christopher with his arm around Big Bird, etc. ‘Well, it’s certainly not what I expected when I wrote them,’ Christopher said. ‘I have to admit, my first reaction was, “Oh my gosh, is my music really that terrible?” ’ I laughed. ‘I once wrote a song for Bert and Ernie called “Put Down The Ducky”,’ he said, ‘which might be useful for interrogating members of the Ba’ath Party.’ ‘That’s very good,’ I said. ‘This interview,’ Christopher said, ‘has been brought to you by the letters W, M and D.’ ‘That’s very good,’ I said. We both laughed. I paused. ‘And do you think that the Iraqi prisoners, as well as giving away vital information, are learning new letters and numbers?’ I said. ‘Well, wouldn’t that be an incredible double win?’ said Christopher. Christopher took me upstairs to his studio to play me one of his Sesame Street compositions, called ‘Ya! Ya! Das Is a Mountain!’ ‘The way we do Sesame Street,’ he explained, ‘is that we have educational researchers who test whether these songs are working, whether the kids are learning. And one year they asked me to write a song to explain what a mountain is, and I wrote a silly yodelling song about what a mountain was.’ Christopher sang me a little of the song: Oompah-pah! Oompah-pah! Ya! Ya! Das is a mountain! Part of zee ground zat sticks way up high! ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘forty per cent of the kids had known what a mountain was before they heard the song, and after they heard the song, only about twenty-six per cent knew what a mountain was. That’s all they needed. You don’t know what a mountain is now, right? It’s gone! So I figure if I have the power to suck information out of people’s brains by writing these songs, maybe that’s something that could be useful to the CIA for brainwashing techniques.’ Just then, Christopher’s phone rang. It was a lawyer from his music publishers, BMI. I listened into Christopher’s side of the conversation: ‘Oh really?’ he said. ‘I see . . . Well, theoretically they have to log that and I should be getting a few cents for every prisoner, right? Okay. Bye, bye . . .’ ‘What was that about?’ I asked Christopher. ‘Whether I’m due some money for the performance royalties,’ he explained. ‘Why not? It’s an American thing to do. If I have the knack of writing songs that can drive people crazy sooner and more effectively than others, why shouldn’t I profit from that?’ This is why, later that day, Christopher asked Danny Epstein – who has been the music supervisor of Sesame Street since the very first programme was broadcast in July 1969 – to come to his house. It would be Danny’s responsibility to collect the royalties from the military if they proved negligent in filing a music-cue sheet.

In 2014, however, Chinese scientists were believed to have a 75% success rates cloning pigs. In the future, the procedure might be used to preserve endangered species or even revive extinct species. First experiments with DNA from a wild mountain goat, officially declared extinct in 1999, proved successful.

a long line of men, each with a torch, all dressed in the finery of the Highland chieftains. They were barbarous and splendid, decked in grouse feathers, the silver of swords and dirks gleaming red by the torchlight, picked out amid the folds of tartan cloth. The pipes stopped abruptly, and the first of the men strode into the clearing and stopped before the stands. He raised his torch above his head and shouted, “The Camerons are here!” Loud whoops of delight rang out from the stands, and he threw the torch into the kerosene-soaked wood, which went up with a roar, in a pillar of fire ten feet high. Against the blinding sheet of flame, another man stepped out, and called, “The MacDonalds are here!” Screams and yelps from those in the crowd that claimed kinship with clan MacDonald, and then— “The MacLachlans are here!” “The MacGillivrays are here!” She was so entranced by the spectacle that she was only dimly aware of Roger. Then another man stepped out and cried, “The MacKenzies are here!” “Tulach Ard!” bellowed Roger, making her jump. “What was that?” she asked. “That,” he said, grinning, “is the war cry of clan MacKenzie.” “Sounded like it.” “The Campbells are here!” There must have been a lot of Campbells; the response shook the bleachers. As though that was the signal he had been waiting for, Roger stood up and flung his plaid over his shoulder. “I’ll meet you afterward by the dressing rooms, all right?” She nodded, and he bent suddenly and kissed her. “Just in case,” he said. “The Frasers’ cry is Caisteal Dhuni!” She watched him go, climbing down the bleachers like a mountain goat. The smell of woodsmoke filled the night air, mixing with the smaller fragrance of tobacco from cigarettes in the crowd. “The MacKays are here!” “The MacLeods are here!” “The Farquarsons are here!” Her chest felt tight, from the smoke and from emotion. The clans had died at Culloden—or had they? Yes, they had; this was no more than memory, than the calling up of ghosts; none of the people shouting so enthusiastically owed kinship to each other, none of them lived any longer by the claims of laird and land, but … “The Frasers are here!” Sheer panic gripped her, and her hand closed tight on the clasp of her bag. No, she thought. Oh, no. I’m not. Then the moment passed, and she could breathe again, but jolts of adrenaline still thrilled through her blood. “The Grahams are here!” “The Inneses are here!” The Ogilvys, the Lindsays, the Gordons … and then finally, the echoes of the last shout died. Brianna held the bag on her lap, gripped tight, as though to keep its contents from escaping like the jinn from a lamp. How could she? she thought, and then, seeing Roger come into the light, fire on his head and his bodhran in his hand, thought again, How could she help it?

Goats. This was once thought to be an antidote for North Korea’s economic ills. The terrain in the northern portion of the peninsula is mountainous and not suitable for farming. There are no green plots of grass for grazing cows, and therefore no source of dairy products or meat. So, in 1996, the North Koreans started a campaign to breed goats. These mountain animals are a good source of milk and meat; moreover, they feed on the shrubs tucked away high in the rocky terrain. The goat-breeding campaign led to a doubling of the goat population almost overnight, and tripled it within two years. This solved a short-term problem, but it had long-term consequences that were more destructive. The goats completely denuded the areas they inhabited, chewing up every single shrub in sight. This then had the effect of removing the last line of the land’s defense against the annual massive rains. The result? Annual monsoons led to deluges of biblical proportions, which wiped out the little remaining arable land and flooded the coal mines that were a source of energy. This only worsened the chronic food and energy shortages.

The cave dwellers laid out quite a spread before Enoch’s family. Though they lived in an underground world, Adam’s troglodytes were adept at growing fruits and vegetables in secret gardens in the foothills within hiking distance of their residence. They spread a sumptuous banquet before the weary travelers. Skilled hunters, they supplemented the produce with mountain goat, gazelle, ibex. Anything with hair, they could catch and kill. Enoch chuckled at the discovery that even isolated from the rest of civilization, they still managed to make beer and wine. The drink of the gods never eluded humanity.

Nick passed a sign that read, “Report Wildlife Violations” followed by a PIDD number. Nick grinned. Now what does that mean? Am I supposed to report jaywalking mountain goats or muskrat molestations?

The trail, such as it was, brought us at last to a place where the river became a frozen waterfall cascading down from the heights. "We`re not getting the dogs up that", Griffin commented. "No," Jack agreed. He pointed to the sheer slope of the ravine cut by the waterfall. "Fortunately there`s a trail we can use." "A trail?" I exclaimed. "For what - mountain goats?

The earliest known site of goat domestication, based on archaeological evidence, was in the southern Zagros Mountains of western Iran about 10,000 years ago.28

Whoever thought it was a good idea to plop a school on the side of a mountain must have been part billy goat.

mountain of God, O many-peaked mountain of Bashan. The mount that Elohim desired for his abode.’” He looked directly at Demas and Gestas. “The phrase, ‘twice ten thousand, thousands of thousands’ refers to the heavenly host of Elohim’s divine council. They are his holy ones, Sons of God who did not rebel.” The brothers knew that “host” was a military term for a king’s army of warriors. “Sinai was Yahweh’s holy mountain in the Exodus, until Mount Zion with its temple in Jerusalem became the holy mountain.” Simon’s eyes narrowed as he spoke. “This area is known for the Seirim, the sons of hairy Esau. It is an original dwelling place of satyrs, goat demons of Azazel. Pan is the last of the satyrs and the guardian of Gaia, the Mother Earth Goddess.” It was all coming together for Gestas. He tried to finish Simon’s thought. “So Hermon is the cosmic mountain in opposition to Yahweh? And Jesus is going to strike down the ‘hairy crown’ of Pan, storm the Gates of Hades, and occupy this cosmic mountain as his own?” Simon nodded in agreement, and added, “And he will ascend on high with his train of captives, as any military conqueror would in a Triumphal Procession.” “Grandiose claims for a man without a single soldier amongst his wild-eyed fanatics,” said Demas skeptically.

The diet of mountain goats lacks an important ingredient - salt. With this in mind, goats seek out areas where it is present to lick, such as a piece of ground or particularly salty rock. However once they discovered that human urine is quite salty, they started hanging out around areas in which people were camping, waiting for a man to unbutton his flies, and would then run up to him and start drinking his pee.

The diet of mountain goats lacks an important ingredient - salt. With this in mind, goats seek out areas where it is present to lick, such as a piece of ground or particularly salty rock. However once they discovered that human urine is quite salty, they started hanging out around areas in which people were camping, waiting for a man to unbutton his flies, and would then run up to him and start drinking his pee. If a baby stork is not happy with the way it is being reared, it sometimes abandons its parents and wanders into another nearby nest to be fed by a new family! Mosquitos prefer to bite children rather than adults - and prefer blondes to brunettes! No-one knows why.

Mule deer, elk, moose, big horn sheep and mountain goats live in the mountains that surround the valley where I live. I'm not bragging (but I am showing off), but I can usually find elk, mule deer or moose with a 10 minute drive and a 20 minute hike. I watch elk most of the winter and mule deer almost everyday with a spotting scope from my bedroom window.

Labor Day. We could hear their bellow and grind from the Route 19 overpass. Below, the river gleamed like a flaw in metal. Leaving the parking lot behind, we billy-goated down the fisherman's trail, one by one, the way all mountain people do. Loud clumps of bees clustered in the fireweed and boneset, and the trail underfoot crunched with cans, condom wrappers, worm containers. A half-buried coal bucket rose from the dirt with a galvanized grin. The laurel hell wove itself into a tunnel, hazy with gnats. There, a busted railroad spike. The smell of river water filled our noses.

Crawl ‘til dawn on my hands and knees Goddamn these vampires for what they’ve done to me. ~Mountain Goats “Damn These Vampires

Say...What's a mountain goat doing way up here in a cloud bank?

By this time (in mid-2012) the country had been without a functioning government for more than twenty years, and the city was a byword for chaos, lawlessness, corruption, and violence. But this wasn’t the Mogadishu we saw. Far from it: on the surface, the city was a picture of prosperity. Many shops and houses were freshly painted, and signs on many street corners advertised auto parts, courses in business and English, banks, money changers and remittance services, cellphones, processed food, powdered milk, cigarettes, drinks, clothes, and shoes. The Bakara market in the center of town had a monetary exchange, where the Somali shilling—a currency that has survived without a state or a central bank for more than twenty years—floated freely on market rates that were set and updated twice daily. There were restaurants, hotels, and a gelato shop, and many intersections had busy produce markets. The coffee shops were crowded with men watching soccer on satellite television and good-naturedly arguing about scores and penalties. Traffic flowed freely, with occasional blue-uniformed, unarmed Somali National Police officers (male and female) controlling intersections. Besides motorcycles, scooters, and cars, there were horse-drawn carts sharing the roads with trucks loaded above the gunwales with bananas, charcoal, or firewood. Offshore, fishing boats and coastal freighters moved about the harbor, and near the docks several flocks of goats and sheep were awaiting export to cities around the Red Sea and farther afield. Power lines festooned telegraph poles along the roads, many with complex nests of telephone wires connecting them to surrounding buildings. Most Somalis on the street seemed to prefer cellphones, though, and many traders kept up a constant chatter on their mobiles. Mogadishu was a fully functioning city.

In November of 1997, the New Jersey–based independent radio station WFMU broadcast a live forty-seven-minute interview with Ronald Thomas Clontle, the author of an upcoming book titled Rock, Rot & Rule. The book, billed as “the ultimate argument settler,” was (theoretically) a listing of almost every musical artist of the past fifty years, with each act designated as “rocking,” “rotting,” or “ruling” (with most of the research conducted in a coffeehouse in Lawrence, Kansas). The interview was, of course, a now semi-famous hoax. The book is not real and “Ronald Thomas Clontle” was actually Jon Wurster, the drummer for indie bands like Superchunk and (later) the Mountain Goats. Rock, Rot & Rule is a signature example of what’s now awkwardly classified as “late-nineties alt comedy,” performed at the highest possible level—the tone is understated, the sensibility is committed and absurd, and the unrehearsed chemistry between Wurster and the program’s host (comedian Tom Scharpling) is otherworldly. The sketch would seem like the ideal comedic offering for the insular audience of WFMU, a self-selecting group of sophisticated music obsessives from the New York metropolitan area. Yet when one relistens to the original Rock, Rot & Rule broadcast, the most salient element is not the comedy. It’s the apoplectic phone calls from random WFMU listeners. The callers do not recognize this interview as a hoax, and they’re definitely not “ironic” or “apathetic.” They display none of the savvy characteristics now associated with nineties culture. Their anger is almost innocent.

Duration. What nature offers us is duration, the promise when we panic and are trapped and want to be anywhere else, that moment will extend and continue and grow and become only worse. The world invented for reasons that didn’t take us into account, but we forget that and so we underestimate.

by afternoon was lost in a sea of Russian idioms. Kogda rak na goryeh svistnyet = When the crawfish whistles on a mountain = When pigs fly. Sdelatz slona iz mukha = Make an elephant out of a fly = Make a mountain out of a molehill. S dokhlogo kozla i shersti klok = Even from the dead goat, even a piece of wool is worth something =

As a boy, Pasoon had time for games and practical jokes. His only chore was to take the goats up into the mountains to graze for a few hours. As a girl, Reshmina worked from the moment she woke up until she went to sleep at night. While Pasoon had been lying in wait for her, Reshmina had been hauling water up from the river. There were also clothes to be washed, rugs to be beaten and stacked, floors to be swept, animals to be fed, food to be cooked—and, every afternoon, the two-kilometer walk back and forth to school. Pasoon didn’t even do that anymore. He’d quit going to school a year ago.

Are we there yet?” Ethan asked as they trudged through the soggy swamp.  “Not yet,” Dad said.  “Are we there yet?” Elijah asked as they got out of the swamp onto the dirt path leading into the mountains.  “Not yet,” Mom said.  “Are we there yet?” Alex asked as they hiked through the mountains, their group so large that it scared away any red-eyed goats.  “Not yet,” Dad said.  “Are we there yet?” Charlotte asked as they walked through the savannah towards their sandcastle on the beach. “NOT YET!” Dad shouted.  “Are we there yet?” Layla asked, when they arrived at the ocean. “Does it look like we’re there yet?” Dad asked through gritted teeth. “Hmm.” Layla looked around. “I’m not sure. What does it look like?” “AHHHHHH!” Dad screamed. “I’m going to go crazy!

When the heart gives way, it’s like a bolt from the blue. In the morning you’re hopping around like a mountain goat and in the evening you’re in your tomb.

You can’t be seriously religious If you’re not stripped naked Like the goat or the insect Like the tree and the snake Like an erupting volcano Give birth to a mountain Justice flows down the wall You slip and fall on the law Naked wars and naked mutilations Naked muslims naked christians Naked laughs and naked cries Bare naked to the day you die.

I watched as he opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red, and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. The heavens receded like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.” — Revelation 6:12-14

Like mountain goats, Capricorns are tenacious. No matter how steep the climb, you'll do what it takes to reach the top, even if it takes a lifetime.

One early morning while jogging through the outskirts of Bahesht along the river, I had the rare privilege to witness a spectacular anthropological wonder. A huge caravan of what seemed like a thousand kuchis (nomads), at least twice that many camels toting all their worldly goods, and several thousand sheep and goats came walking through town on a singular dirt road. They were obviously heading to a new home somewhere up in the mountains, stirring up the dust in the early morning light. Their caravan stretched for well over a mile. As I ran past countless camels—laden with collapsed, black tents topped by ancient-looking women and led by men who looked as if they had stepped out of the Old Testament—I couldn’t help but marvel that these are some of the very few true nomads left on the face of the earth. The kuchis looked back at me as though I was from another planet. Abraham must have looked like these men, I thought as I continued my jog. Now there was a true nomad who walked by faith and not by sight! His citizenship was in heaven! It dawned on me that if I am to be a real follower of Jesus, I am called to be something of a nomad on this earth. I thought of a verse that I had recently read about Abraham and other spiritual nomads, Hebrews 11:16: “But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.” I smiled at the kuchi men that I jogged past. I know that I look different, but I am more like you than you may think ... I’m a nomad, too! Our guys in Bahesht were living as nomads on earth more than I was. I had a family and lived in the fair city of Iskandar in The Museum—basically a mud mansion—and here they were scraping by in one of the most remote and difficult places on the planet, trying to serve the poorest of the poor.

[...] hereby declare my unwavering friendship to Mitch Johnson. I promise to have your back in any public situation. If I believe you to be wrong, I will tell you so in private. I promise to be there when you need to talk. To say nothing when you just need my presence but not my opinion. I promise to laugh at your bad jokes at least once a month.” She folded up her speech, stuck it back in her pocket. “And I promise to help you create an edible that will make all fifty states want to legalize cannabis.” She waited for him. He said nothing. “It’s your turn.”“I know. I’m just trying to come up with the right words for how I’m feeling at this moment.” He pulled at his collar. “Then as your friend, I’ll stand here silently and wait for you to speak.” Many seconds later, he cleared his throat. “I, Mitch Johnson, clearly being of unsound mind for being a part of a friendship ceremony, do hereby declare my freely given friendship to Luna Parker. I recognize Ms. Parker’s weirdness and never-ending antics as a part of who she is, and I embrace the idea of bringing a friend like that into my life. Together, I believe we will balance each other out. I… shall strive to always have her back in any given situation. And to occasionally put aside my rules if the result brings a smile to her lips.” He stopped and glanced at the goats. “And I promise to protect her from those who would try and harm her. Oh, and eat her muffins without complaint.

This exuberant beauty was in the damp spring stars. In the many years of cold rain rippling across the screen of cypresses. In the brambles and the rose bushes. In the rabbit nibbling its way through the garden and the doves murmuring in the vines and shade. In the alpine valleys. In the bays and among the highlands. In the clouds and the eagles, the wind, and the rising sun. In the roots of the chestnut tree, in the ferns and the ghost pipe, in the spores of lion’s mane, in the sterile conk of chaga. In the rocky cliffs that rose sovereign. In the rocks over which mountain goats leaped. In the trenches of seaweed. In the crushed stones and shells from the beach. In the brush-covered resting places of deer. In the hulks and ruins of empty estates, abandoned and alone with lichen on the stucco. In the towns glistening in the heat and in the cheerful, serene sound of cathedral bells. In automobiles and pedestrians. In the children and the old people.

Shen Yi glanced at the mint bush that had been gnawed into a state of baldness by Gu the Mountain Goat before following after him.

A man like Jim Norton would want to walk cautiously around there. He might get snatched up off the side of a mountain after being mistaken for a baby goat. Watching his flailing legs as he’s carted off to become lunch for a family of eagles would probably be visually hilarious, but it’s pretty horrible when you think about it.

Overcoming adversity is one of our great desires and one of our significant sources of pride