As they walked the grounds, Fr Anthony introduced Heat Moon to the monks. "They were friendly in a plain and open manner," Moon says, "unsanctimonious, and not outwardly pious. They did not, as Whitman says, 'make me sick discussing their duty to God.' There was a life, a spirit in the old who moved slowly. I realized I was trying to catch in their faces something I wouldn't see outside the walls --- something hidden, transcendental, even mystical. But I noticed only a quietude, and I felt that more than saw it."