”I come more and more to the conclusion that wilderness, in America or anywhere else, is the only thing left that is worth saving.” –Edward Abbey
“Wilderness is the raw material out of which man has hammered the artifact called civilization.” –Aldo Leopold
“If future generations are to remember us with gratitude rather than contempt, we must leave them something more than the miracles of technology. We must leave them a glimpse of the world as it was in the beginning, not just after we got through with it.”
- President Lyndon B. Johnson, on the signing of the Wilderness Act of 1964
“There is just one hope for repulsing the tyrannical ambition of civilization to conquer every niche of the whole earth. That hope is the organization of spirited people who will fight for the freedom of the wilderness.”
- Robert Marshall (co-founder, Wilderness Society)
“If you know wilderness in the way that you know love, you would be unwilling to let it go…. This is the story of our past and it will be the story of our future.”
- Terry Tempest Williams, Testimony
Excellent quotations, Malcolm!
Now it’s up to all of us to preserve and protect it. I’ve had a strong feeling for a long time now, and it has grown exponentially the last few years, that once the wilderness has vanished, mankind will soon vanish as well. Daily I see new evidence to support that feeling.
I like the quotations, too, Malcom. For a while I’ve had a book that sounds as though it might appeal to you and your visitors. It’s “Sky Time in Gray’s River: Living for Keeps in a Forgotten Place” (Houghtom Mifflin, 2007), by the ecologist Robert Michael Pyle. It’s about his life in a village on the Columbia River that, the dust jacket says, is “only tenuously connected to the world of the 21st century.”
The publisher compares “Sky Time in Gray’s River” to Donald Hall’s “Seasons at Eagle Pond” (which I admire greatly). And Pyle includes this quote from Hall’s book: “These afternoons I stare a lot, imbecilic with pleasure.” I love that phrase “imbecilic with pleasure,” which we’ve probably all had at some point when in a rapturously beautiful natural setting.
Jan
Hi Jan,
I’ll definitely take a look at Pyle’s book. Looking back, I’ve been a fan of Abbey and Leopold, but probably “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek” impacted me the most in terms of poetic writing and close observation of nature. “Klamath Knot” and “The Immenser Journey” are also favorites. Thanks for the suggestion.
It might do all of us good to be imbecilic with pleasure more often.
Malcolm
I think you’re right Montucky, we’re closely tied to the wilderness. I guess I see that in sort of a spiritual way in addition to the obvious healthy planet vs. unhealthy planet connotations.
Malcolm