" During these trips Jim released his soul to the wilderness, two became one. And so it happened shortly after he turned twelve that the Spirit- voice of the wild crept into him, and his life changed forever. He was no longer the lonely, fatherless boy with the terrible ache in his heart, for he discovered when he answered the Spirit-voice and would venture into the Everglades, that he stopped aching. Was it his father's voice? He didn't have the answer,he just knew he had FOUND his father! And he was everywhere. He found him in the sparkling eyes of the Island Glass lizard, the perpetual smile of the little Cuban treefrog, the eternal strength of the Eastern Diamondback rattlesnake, the enduring patience of the loggerhead turtle, and in the elegant majesty of the master of the air, the bald eagle. "