If the land mechanism as a whole is good then every part is good, whether we understand it or not.

The most important characteristic of an organism is that capacity for internal self-renewal known as health. There are two organisms whose processes of self-renewal have been subjected to human interference and control. One of these is man himself (medicine and public health). The other is land (agriculture and coservation). The effort to control the health of land has not been very successful.

Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them

I do not imply that this philosophy of land was always clear to me. It is rather the end result of a life journey.

Twenty centuries of 'progress' have brought the average citizen a vote, a national anthem, a Ford, a bank account, and a high opinion of himself, but not the capacity to live in high density without befouling and denuding his environment, nor a conviction that such capacity, rather than such density, is the true test of whether he is civilized.

We console ourselves with the comfortable fallacy that a single museum piece will do, ignoring the clear dictum of history that a species must be saved in many places if it is to be saved at all.

Once you learn to read the land, I have no fear of what you will do to it, or with it. And I know many pleasant things it will do to you.