July 20, 2001
Welsford, New Brunswick, Canada

7pm.

You canot stay on the summit forever.
You have to come down again.
So why bother in the first place?
Just this -
What is above knows what is below -
But what is below does not know what is above.
One climbs,
One sees,
One descends,
One sees no longer.
But, one has seen.
There is an art of conducting oneself
in the lower regions by the memory
of what one saw higher up.
When one can no longer see,
One can still at least know.

(Recited April 1985 by Astronaut Jefferey Hoffman prior to re-entery of the Space Shuttle Discovery.)