That dark laboratory we call the soil.

. . . perhaps our grandsons, having never seen a wild river, will never miss the chance to set a canoe in singing waters . . . glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in.

All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. . . The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land.

How like fish we are: ready, nay eager, to seize upon whatever new thing some wind of circumstance shakes down upon the river of time! And how we rue our haste, finding the gilded morsel to contain a hook!

Keeping records enhances the pleasure of the search and the chance of finding order and meaning in these events.

One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.

To build a road is so much simpler than to think of what the country really needs.