Conservation is a positive exercise of skill and insight, not merely a negative exercise of abstinence and caution.

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

Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and aesthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient.

One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of March thaw, is the Spring.

The good life of any river may depend on the perception of its music; and the preservation of some music to perceive.

My dog does not care where heat comes from, but he cares that it comes, and soon. Indeed he considers my ability to make it come as something magical, for when I rise in the coal black pre-dawn and kneel by the hearth to make a fire, he pushes himself blandly between me and the kindling splits I have laid in the ashes, and I must touch a match to them by poking it between his legs. Such faith , I suppose, is the kind that moves mountains.

. . . 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.