wilderness

But I weren't no quitter No wolf nor bear just gives up when they get beat or hungry. You ever seen a bear jump off a cliff 'cause life handed him a few rough draws? No, you haven't. The wild keeps going till it don't have strength in its muscles and bones. The wild doesn't give up; it's forever, and so was I.

Speechless is not even a good enough word to describe what I feel when I see the pictures of how we have transformed the world from the good to bad, from natural to artificial, physical appearance to daily makeup. I think I want to go with the word ENRAGED, DISGUSTED, or better yet INSULTED .

When I was a child in Scotland, I was fond of everything that was wild, and all my life I've been growing fonder and fonder of wild places and wild creatures. Fortunately, around my native town of Dunbar, by the stormy North Sea, there was no lack of wildness...

...there is something which impresses the mind with awe in the shade and silence of these vast forests. In the deep solitude, alone with nature, we converse with God.

It is not good for man to be kept perforce at all times in the presence of his species. A world from which solitude is extirpated is a very poor ideal. Solitude, in the sense of being often alone, is essential to any depth of meditation or of character; and solitude in the presence of natural beauty and grandeur, is the cradle of thoughts and aspirations which are not only good for the individual, but which society could ill do without. Nor is there much satisfaction in contemplating the world with nothing left to the spontaneous activity of nature...scarcely a place left where a wild shrub or flower could grow without being eradicated as a weed in the same of improved agriculture. If the earth must lose that great portion of its pleasantness which it owes to things that the unlimited increase of wealth and population would extirpate from it, for the mere support of a larger, but not a better or happier population, I sincerely hope, for the sake of posterity, that they will be content to be stationary...

How great are the advantages of solitude! -- How sublime is the silence of nature's ever-active energies? There is something in the very name of wilderness, which charms the ear, and soothes the spirit of man. There is religion in it.

Nature has wrought with a bolder hand in America.

What are the temples which Roman robbers have reared, - what are the towers in which feudal oppression has fortified itself...to the deep forests which the eye of God has alone pervaded, and where Nature, in her unviolated sanctuary, has for ages laid her fruits and flowers on His altar! What is the echo of roofs...or or aisles that pealed the anthems of painted pomp, to the silence that has reigned in these dim groves since the first fiat of Creation was spoken.

...is not Nature, rightly read, that of which she is commonly taken to be the symbol merely?

It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such. It is in the bog in our brains and bowels, the primitive vigour of Nature in us, that inspires that dream. I shall never find in the wilds of Labrador any greater wildness than in some recess of Concord, i.e. than I import into it.

Don__ forget that the land is always out there, making its way, doing everything it can so you can breathe fresh air; so you can eat fresh food; so you can move and see and feel and think, and it__ on your side. The world is out there doing what it__ been doing way before you came here, it__ firm and strong and it takes a lot to bring it down.so from time to time, just go outside and look at this spectacle. This pure painting right in front of your eyes. No one created it. No one owns it. It doesn__ want anything. It doesn__ need to prove anything to anyone. It simply is. So maybe, try a little tenderness. Just give it a chance to do what it can do. Just let it help you breatheand eatand moveand seeand maybe just try to live your life in a way that doesn__ kill this force of naturethat is just trying to give you a world worth living in. A clean world. A fresh world. Paths, forests, oceans, animals, oxygen, water. That__ all it takes.Just try a little tenderness towards this world we__e been lucky enough to build our homes on. If you take care of it, it will take care of you.

There__ a land__oh, it beckons and beckons, And I want to go back__and I will.

If there is something that I have learned from my time on this planet of ours, something that I can share and that I know to be true, it__ that we disconnect ourselves from nature and the wilderness too many times. Our birthplace. Our home.

If you have to ask that question, you wouldn't understand the answer.

The dusk rapidly deepened; the glades grew dark; the crackling of the fire and the wash of little waves along the rocky lake shore were the only sounds audible. The wind had dropped with the sun, and in all that vast world of branches nothing stirred. Any moment, it seemed, the woodland gods, who are to be worshipped in silence and loneliness, might stretch their mighty and terrific outlines among the trees.

The writer Richard Manning has argued that 'the most destructive force in the American West is its commanding views, because they foster the illusion that we command.

This is not wilderness for designation or for a park. Not a scenic wilderness and not one good for fishing or the viewing of wildlife. It is wilderness that gets into your nostrils, that runs with your sweat. It is the core of everything living, wilderness like molten iron.

Since well before the Kung's engine noise first penetrated the forest, a conversation of sorts has been unfolding in this lonesome hollow. It is not a language like Russian or Chinese but it is a language nonetheless, and it is older than the forest. The crows speak it; the dog speaks it; the tiger speaks it, and so do the men--some more fluently than others.