Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty.

We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes – something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.

Education, I fear, is learning to see one thing by going blind to another.

The land-relation is still strictly economic, entailing privileges but not obligations

Health is the capacity of the land for self-renewal.

This whole effort to rebuild and stabilize a countryside is not without its disappointments and mistakes... What matter though these temporary growing pains when one can cast his eye upon the hills and see hard-boiled farmers who have spent their lives destroying land now carrying water by hand to their new plantations

To those devoid of imagination a blank place on the map is a useless waste; to others, the most valuable part.