I have purposely presented the land ethic as a product of social evolution because nothing so important as an ethic is ever 'written'… It evolves in the minds of a thinking community.

Wildflower corners are easy to maintain, but once gone, they are hard to rebuild.

A river or stream is a cycle of energy from sun to plants to insects to fish. It is a continuum broken only by humans.

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

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

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

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.