Bring it into your cabin and nurse it back to health.

It's a wild animal.

So are you. Transcend your humanity?

I'll write about its death from the coyote's point of view.

If you save the coyote's life, you'll be saving your own soul.

I'd rather allow wildlife the chance to follow a natural course without too much human interference.

Not as dramatic, but I get that.

You need a stick?

For what?

Club it. Men have a responsibility to not let that animal suffer.

So... you walk through nature clubbing all animals that are hurt?

Oh, Henry, always the bleeding heart. You don't have much of the manly stewardship required to survive in wild places, do you?

I lived for two years…

In someone's backyard, within walking distance of a general store—I know.

Easy ,Teddy.

Be a man, Aldo: manage that wildlife with courage and a white man's enlightened rationality. Club the thing, and get it over with.

I think I'll let nature take its course and write about the process from the animal's perspective.

I like that.

The stick offer stands. When you man up, give me a call.

Well water?

Yup.

Fertilizer run-off.

From that new fertilizer they delivered last week?

Think like a petroleum-based fertilizer, Aldo. You'll find it has a nasty disposition.

I might do that.

Actually, that won't work. You've got to get tough. Write like a poisoned person, and then maybe someone will listen.

Some of these fertilizer scientists and manufacturers are colleagues.

Stick?

Teddy, no stick!

I love the "green fire" thing, and the thinking like a mountain and all, but writing about nature gets ugly when you consider what humans are doing to it.

I just can't see that quite yet.

I know—I'll take care of that. You keep writing about mountains and wolves and getting that stick out of Teddy's hand.

The actual face of God?

Sublime metaphor. No snark please.

What's the deer count there this week?

You know I don't know those things.

Too busy staring at the face of God.

The people around me are religious. How else do I reach them?

I get that. You know I love you.

I can't think like a mountain yet. I write because God and his creations inspire me.

Seen any wolves?

You're changing the subject.

Have you tried my listening exercise?

No. It sounds silly.

Think of Half Dome writing you a love letter.

Ridiculous.

A marriage proposal.

God's Grand Cathedral doesn't think. It's created so that man can revel in divine creation. The end.

Fine. Gotta go.

Sorry to be so anthropocentric, but I can't help it.

I'm late for a date with this sexy sandstone hoodoo I met last week.

So strange.

She's a looker, let me tell ya!