"...It had become a place of intervention, of restriction, of strife, of a contest of wills between her husband and the natural inclinations of a group of plants and animals to create for themselves a climate of nurture and co-resplendence. For by forbidding the plants to have a free will in order to banish his thoughts of the wilderness, [he] had inadvertently created a desert region that reflected the desolation of his own heart. [His] books grew dusty with neglect, for they could not cure the despondence that hung over him the way the heavy smoke from many cookstoves lingered over the town on a winter morning. (p92)"