Un copo de nieve. Tú atrapas un copo de nieve pero cuando te miras la mano ya no está. Puede que veas este dechado. Pero antes de que puedas verlo ha desaparecidog. Si quieres verlo tienes que verlo en tu propio terreno. Si lo atrapas lo pierdes. Y a donde va no hay camino de vuelta." Le quattro parti in cui è suddiviso il libro sono una più bella dell'altra. La prima, quella che descrive il rapporto tra il protagonista e la lupa, credo comprenda le pagine più belle mai scritte sulla relazione che si può instaurare tra un essere umano e la natura. Le altre tre parti parlano d'altro, e non ho intenzione di accennarvi nemmeno una parola a riguardo. The process involved using base maps of Sonora and Chihuahua, Mexico from 1922 as well as a Texaco Road Map of Arizona and New Mexico from 1935. The road map was surprisingly inclusive of geological features. These maps, especially the Mexican maps, were supplemented with detailed searches of Google Maps for villages of the mentioned names. I was surprised to see that the Mexican Maps mentioned places such as El Tigre in Sonora, Mexico and San Diego in Chihuahua, Mexico. Because an adventure without mapping it is not worth the journey, I attempted to plot Billy’s path through his three journeys into Mexico and the large-area search he performed while in Mexico. y la loba se sentaron juntos a oscuras y vieron como las sombras emergían en el prado y trotaban y se desvanecían y volvían a emerger. La loba miraba con las orejas apuntando hacia delante y olisqueaba el aire, primero en una dirección, luego en otra, como si quisiera instigar la vida del mundo. Él se sentó arrebujado con la manta y contempló las sombras en movimiento mientras la luna se elevaba sobre las montañas que se erguían a su espalda, y a lo lejos, a orillas del Bavispe, las luces parpadearon una a una hasta extinguirse por completo.”

Agli uomini sottrae parole, li racconta in maniera silenziosa, sia perché sono sempre umani laconici, sia perché risparmia descrizioni: eppure, lasciando il lettore a intuire, approfondisce più che con l’uso delle parole.Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives. The novel mentions other locations in the US where Billy visits. However, these locations were primarily used to establish a sense of time between his second and Third Mexican journeys. Other places in the US are also mentioned during the end of the book, but again, these mentions are more to set the mood rather than serve as an actual part of the plot. As such, these extraneous locations are not shown on the map. What role do animals play in this book? Why, for example, does Billy endure such great danger and hardship for the sake of a wolf? Do any of the characters he meets in Mexico share his feelings about animals? This spiritual aspect to the novel creates a sense of depth. The instinctive behaviors of wolves, the unexplainable cruelty of man, and the peaceful nature of people unencumbered by modernity are periodically explored. It’s this exploration, however, that is drawn out a bit more than necessary at various points throughout the novel.

I gatti si muovevano, il fuoco scoppiettava nella stufa. Fuori, nel villaggio abbandonato, il silenzio più profondo. What they find instead, is an extraordinary panoply of fiestas and circuses, dogs, horses and hawks, pilgrims and revolutionaries, grand haciendas and forlorn cantinas, bandits, gypsies and roving tribes, a young girl alone on the road, a mystery in the mountain wilds, and a myth in the making. There are some rough scenes in this book: man’s cruelty to man, man’s cruelty to animals, and man’s cruelty to himself. Those are themes that run through this novel, but in the people’s stories and in their actions there are also many acts of kindness, of compassion, and of caring. He watched the play with interest but could make little of it ... in the end the man in buffoon's motley slew the woman and slew another man perhaps his rival with a daggerDiscuss the meaning of the observation: "The world was new each day for God so made it daily. Yet it contained within it all the evils as before" [p. 278]. How are these words applicable to the novel’s action? The Crossing is a novel that succeeds in giving meaning to an existence that typically goes unnoticed as we move through our scheduled lives. We may, on occasion, sense this way of life as we force our presence on the physical world. It’s life as it always was but humanity has pushed it aside into a part of the world that now only exists between our beliefs and our actions. It is within this part of the world that life exists, for the sake of life itself. This is where we began, during the time that preceded our understanding of things, before things had names.