Story as storage

From Scott Russell Sanders, two storytelling metaphors:

"Like a woven basket or a clay pot, a story is a container. It provides a shape for holding some character, some act or insight, some lesson we can't afford to lose. It stores the kernels of past experience like seeds harvested from earlier crops and carefully saved for future planting."

"By linking events, a story binds together a stretch of time and a portion of the world, something tidy enough to carry in the mind. It is a form of stored energy, like the sunlight captured in a chunk of coal, but unlike coal, which disappears in the burning, stories retain their heat and light as long as there are minds capable of understanding them."

These and other stories appear in "The Warehouse and the Wilderness," an essay in Sanders's new collection, A Conservationist Manifesto.