The first law of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts

There are two things that interest me: the relation of people to each other, and the relation of people to land.

A conservationist is one who is humbly aware that with each stroke [of the axe] he is writing his signature on the face of his land.

The wind that makes music in November corn is in a hurry. The stalks hum, the loose husks whisk skyward in half-playing swirls, and the wind hurries on.... A tree tries to argue, bare limbs waving, but there is no detaining the wind.

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

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.

There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot.