Sublime

Aux États-Unis, c’est un héros national, c’est le protecteur de Yosemite, le sauveur des séquoias, le père fondateur de l’écologie politique, même s’il y a malentendu dans ce domaine. Et puis c’est un personnage fantasque et barbu, un vagabond magnifique, libre et plein d’humour, qui a laissé parmi les plus belles pages de nature writing, ce genre

gregarious.

Ordinary people were reluctant to retaliate against a predatory tiger for fear it would take offense, not to mention revenge, and so their day-to-day lives were shaped—and sometimes tyrannized—by efforts to at once avoid and propitiate these marauding gods.

Fights between animals are rarely to the death because killing a powerful adversary is dangerous and takes an enormous amount of energy. Death for its own sake is seldom an objective in nature anyway: the reason prey is killed is not to kill it per se, but to keep it still long enough to be eaten.