Out Stealing Horses: Sherri Douglas

In the novel Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson, Trond Sander has just been run off the road by an aggressive truck driver. He sits in his car, recovering:

"I saw the lynx brightly outlined only fifteen metres in front of the car. I had never seen a lynx before, but I knew what it was that I was looking at. The evening was perfectly still around us, and the lynx turned neither to right nor left. It just walked. Softly, not wasting energy, filled with itself. I can't recall when I last felt so alive .... Everything that was me lay taut and quivering just beneath my skin.

Next day at the shop I told them about the lynx. It was most likely a dog, they said. No-one believed me..., but I saw what I saw, I have the image of the big cat somewhere inside me and can call upon it whenever I like, and I hope that one day ... I shall see it again. That would be great."