One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.

Land is not merely soil, it is a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants and animals.

All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts.

The elemental simplicities of wilderness travel were thrills. They represented complete freedom to make mistakes. The wilderness gave those rewards and penalties, for wise and foolish acts against which civilization has built a thousand buffers.

Tell me of what plant-birthday a man takes notice, and I shall tell you a good deal about his vocation, his hobbies, his hay fever, and the general level of his ecological education.

Recreational development is a job not of building roads into lovely country, but of building receptivity into the still unlovely human mind.

For us in the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television.