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

We realize the indivisibility of the earth - its soil, mountains, rivers, forests, climate, plants, and animals - and respect it collectively not only as a useful servant but as a living being, vastly less alive than ourselves in degree, but vastly greater than ourselves in time and space - a being that was old when the morning stars sang together, and when the last of us has been gathered unto his fathers, will still be young.

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.

If we lose our wilderness, we have nothing left worth fighting for.

There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television, and the chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech.

Land health is the capacity for self-renewal in the soils, waters, plants, and animals that collectively comprise the land.

To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.