Galapagos

"Miguel's description of how tortoises die (an old tortoise may be 200) was interpreted by Ken in the Sierra Club volumes Galapagos: The Flow of Wildness: Once he gets big, a tortoise has no enemies, and if he avoids falling over a cliff or into a lava pit too steep for escape, he dies only of old age. One day he gets too weak to move, and stops. He stays in that spot for months, sometimes, his long-practiced power of enduring, his racial skill at it, serving him long after his power to move and get food has failed. Watching leaves fall, probably, and the seasons change. . . The tortoise living only in his head and eyes. . . a spark still somewhere inside, above the plastron and below the dome."

David Brower

Let the Mountains Talks, Let the Rivers Run: A Call to Save the Earth

What a world.