At first blush I am tempted to conclude that a satisfactory hobby must be in large degree useless, inefficient, laborious, or irrelevant.

The oldest task in human history: to live on a piece of land without spoiling it.

Wilderness, then, assumes unexpected importance as a laboratory for the study of land - health.

I now suspect that just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer. And perhaps with better cause, for while a buck pulled down by wolves can be replaced in two or three years, a range pulled down by too many deer may fail of replacement in as many decades.

Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left. That is to say, you cannot love game and hate predators; you cannot conserve the waters and waste the ranges; you cannot build the forest and mine the farm. The land is one organism.

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

Wilderness is the raw material out of which man has hammered the artifact called civilization.