Benton MacKaye Quotes

The problem of living is at bottom an economic one. And this alone is bad enough, even in a period of so-called "normalcy." But living has been considerably complicated of late in various ways - by war, by questions of personal liberty, and by "menaces" of one kind or another.

Wilderness is two things-fact and feeling. It is a fund of knowledge and a spring of influence. It is the ultimate source of health-terrestrial and human.

A period recourse into the wilds is not a retreat into secret silent sanctums to escape a wicked world, it is to take breath amid effort to forge a better world.

For we need this thing wilderness far more than it needs us. Civilizations (like glaciers) come and go, but the mountain and its forest continue the course of creation's destiny. And in this we mere humans can take part-by fitting our civilization to the mountain.

One function, at least, of true wilderness is to provide a refuge from the crassitudes of civilization-whether visible, intangible, audible-whether of billboard, of pavement, of auto horn-all of these are urban essences; all are negations of wilderness.

There are three things: to walk, to see, and to see what you see.