Not only has wilderness been a force in molding our character as a people, but its influence continues, and will, if we are wise enough to preserve it on this continent, be a stabilizing power as well as a spiritual reserve for the future.

Summer means promises fulfilled, objectives gained, hopes realized. The surge of doing and achieving, of watching and enjoying is finally replaced by a sense of quiet and floating and a certain fullness and repletion, as though one cannot absorb any more.

At times on quiet waters one does not speak aloud but only in whispers, for then all noise is sacrilege.

Without love of the land, conservation lacks meaning or purpose, for only in a deep and inherent feeling for the land can there be dedication in preserving it.

As long as there are young men with the light of adventure in their eyes and a touch of wildness in their souls, rapids will be run.

In wilderness people can find the silence and the solitude and the noncivilized surroundings that can connect them once again to their evolutionary heritage, and through an experience of the eternal mystery, can give them a sense of the sacredness of all creation.

The way of a canoe is the way of the wilderness, and of a freedom almost forgotten.