But after a time, having whole days to mull over what he had learned (when hunting, trapping and working did not require his full attention), he began to speak and question at a level which surprised her. Not only would she have believed him incapable of such subtle thought and inquiry, but she had always assumed that he would consider such pursuits frivolous, and beside the immediate point of survival. Such was not the case. His mind and spirit hungered, just as the body did, to be nourished and fulfilled. And in some ways this spiritual hunger was more acute, since it had been so long denied.
His two favorite writer/philosophers, to judge by the number of times he asked her to read them, were Ernest Hemingway and Lao Tsu. And this apparent contradiction puzzled her. She could not imagine two more directly opposed outlooks, or approaches to life. But when she asked him about this, he answered more simply and clearly than she would have believed possible. It was a cold night, but warm beside the fire, somewhere near the apex of winter. Even the tiger remained indoors, sleeping in its accustomed place just inside the barrier. The cub rested quietly beside the man-child, while he gently stroked her chest and side. Life was all around him, and he felt it deeply.
'I think that the two ways, if I can call them that, are just the two sides of a man's life: like day and night, summer and winter. They both spring from the fountainhead of Life, both are necessary; they only seem different, as Lao Tsu said. He understood the need to yield to Nature, and Hemingway the need to fight back. They make me think of Skither and Barabbas. There are times when one is right, and times when the other---'
'To everything there is a season,' she broke in suddenly, understanding and taken back by the apparent ease with which he had arrived at one of man's profoundest insights. 'And a time to every purpose under Heaven.'
Upon hearing this he became so animated, and insisted so fervently that she read to him the entire passage from which this was taken, that despite misgivings she brought out a tattered Gideon's Bible and read to him the verses from Ecclesiastes.
'To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: