Photograph by Thomas Merton, taken on May 13, 1968 on the Pacific Shore

“People who watch birds and animals are already wise in their way. I want not only to observe but know living things, and this implies a dimension of primordial familiarity which is simple and primitive and religious and poor. This is the reality I need, the vestige of God in His creatures. And the light of God in my own soul.”–Thomas Merton

From A Search for Solitude: The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 3