To live by your principles, you may have to change some of your plans.

From Alfred’s journal

Switch had the whole winter mapped out by October: the hollow in the dead maple, four caches along the fence line, and a route between them that avoided the orange cat. Then the men came with a truck and took the maple down in an afternoon, and he sat on the gate post watching the stump the way you watch a closed door. What struck me was that he did not mourn the plan. He mourned the maple, which is a different thing, and by evening he was digging somewhere else. I used to think a man of principle was a man who never changed course, and I said so for years, and I was wrong; to live by your principles, you may have to change some of your plans. The stump is still there and he still sits on it sometimes, which I do not yet know what to make of.