A more thrilling sport than killing
I have selected Nature Writing for my vocation because at this time in my life it appeals to me more than any other subject. I feel it is my duty to do what I can to make people realize that the wild creature has just as much right to live as you or I. They must learn that the wild offers a more thrilling sport than killing — that of letting live. Killing for the excitement of killing is murder. As in human life, there is tragedy, and humor, and pathos; in the life of the wild, there are facts of tremendous interest, real lives, and real happenings, to be written about, and there is little necessity for drawing on the imagination." —14-year-old Loren Eiseley , 1921, from an 8th-grade essay entitled Nature Writing . From The Lost Notebooks of Loren Eiseley . ed. Kenneth Heuer . (Little, Brown & Company, 1987). p. 14.