A review by leucocrystal
The Wild Birds: Six Stories of the Port William Membership by Wendell Berry

5.0

"Such a little piece of the world as he has before him now would be worth a man's long life, watching and listening. And then he could go two hundred feet and live again another life, listening and watching, and his eyes would never be satisfied with seeing, nor his ears filled with hearing. Whatever he saw could be seen only by looking away from something else equally worth seeing. For a second he feels and then loses some urging of the delight in a mind that could see and comprehend it all, all at once. 'I could stay here a long time,' he thinks. 'I could stay here a long time.'"

Everything Berry describes about living in nature, farming, being a part of the physical world, making a home and a life in a small town, manages to just be absolutely, completely beautiful, and more compelling than any other writer I've ever read to tackle those particular subjects. I don't know what more to say than that.