Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit.
The love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyond reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth, the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only paradise we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need.
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.
It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the grizz, climb the mountains. Run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious and awesome space.
When the situation is hopeless, there’s nothing to worry about.
A man on foot, on horseback or on a bicycle will see more, feel more, enjoy more in one mile than the motorized tourists can in a hundred miles.
Our culture runs on coffee and gasoline, the first often tasting like the second.
Society is like a stew. If you don’t stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top.
One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am — a reluctant enthusiast… a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space.
The love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyond reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth, the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only paradise we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need, if only we had the eyes to see.
The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders.
May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.
There are some good things to be said about walking. Not many, but some. Walking takes longer, for example, than any other known form of locomotion except crawling. Thus it stretches time and prolongs life. Life is already too short to waste on speed. I have a friend who’s always in a hurry; he never gets anywhere. Walking makes the world much bigger and thus more interesting. You have time to observe the details. The utopian technologists foresee a future for us in which distance is annihilated. … To be everywhere at once is to be nowhere forever, if you ask me.
You can’t see anything from a car; you’ve got to get out of the goddamn contraption and walk, better yet crawl, on hands and knees, over the sandstone and through the thornbush and cactus. When traces of blood begin to mark your trail, you’ll see something, maybe. Probably not.
The idea of wilderness needs no defense. It only needs defenders.
This planet is for people who wake in the night feeling hungry. This planet is for people who eat breakfast at midday.
Grown men may learn from very little children, for the hearts of little children are pure, and, therefore, the Great Spirit may show to them many things which older people miss.
There are some remedies worse than the disease.
Wilderness comes in diverse guises and range from man-made deserts of the heart to lucky glimpses of animal habitat in nine million acres of roadless national forest.
The most common form of terrorism in the U.S.A. is that carried on by bulldozers and chain saws.
Wilderness is not a luxury, but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread.
When the situation is desperate, it is too late to be serious. Be playful.
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.
Our culture runs on coffee and gasoline; the first often tasting like the second.
What kind of creatures are we who walk on the the earth, unaware of the sky above us? We live in cities we never see, filled with people we never watch, deftly masked by the anonymity of the crowd.
Water, water, water….There is no shortage of water in the desert but exactly the right amount , a perfect ratio of water to rock, water to sand, insuring that wide free open, generous spacing among plants and animals, homes and towns and cities, which makes the arid West so different from any other part of the nation. There is no lack of water here unless you try to establish a city where no city should be.
There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California.
One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain’t nothin’ can beat teamwork.
The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting each other — instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.
Water, water, water. There is no shortage of water in the desert but exactly the right amount. Unless you try to establish a city where no city should be.
In our danced profile the stunned bison stumbled and died — or dropped, as the stillness became too much for him.
The only ultimate disaster that can befall us is to feel ourselves to be home on earth.
What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well.
The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting each other — instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.
Our ‘neoconservatives’ are neither new nor conservative, but old as Babylon and evil as Hell.
This planet is for people who wake in the night feeling hungry. This planet is for people who eat breakfast at midday.
A man could be a lover and defender of the wilderness without ever in his lifetime leaving the boundaries of asphalt, powerlines, and right-angled surfaces. We need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot in it. We need a refuge even though we may never need to go there. I may never, in my life, get to Alaska, for example. But I am grateful that it’s there. We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope.
The sorrowful torrent leaps and tumbles to the canyon soil, where the spurge bunchgrass takes short root, and fills the air with false, nectarous splendors.
Our culture runs on coffee and gasoline, the first often tasting like the second.
Rewild the soul. Rewild the world.
One final paragraph of advice: Do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am – a reluctant enthusiast… a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic.
Who needs a holiday? Every day is a holiday for me. They’re all so goddamn long.
When a man must be afraid to drink freely from his country’s rivers and streams, that country is no longer fit to live in.
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