I spend a lot of my time up there, hiking, taking a book way out in the woods. What I’m getting out of it is a kind of child-like wonder, a kind of Wordsworthian recollection of what it is like to be just an animal alone in the woods, where you don’t really worry about what the names of the plants are or global warming or the bark beetles killing the trees. And I can go to the same place, the same waterfall, but every day it’s different. People who don’t know about this, who have only lived in a city environment, I think, are missing something essential to the soul of our species. You know, we’re animals.

[At the close of the interview, Boyle mentioned an incident from a couple of years ago, hiking near the New York-Vermont border, when he was attacked by, in his words, “a wild animal.” The author’s unprovoked attacker on that day was a deer tick, and he soon had the bull’s-eye rash to prove it. Thankfully, the human victim in this assault is okay, and from the sound of it, this encounter with one of nature’s most ferocious parasites could prove to be the inspiration for his next project].