A River Or Stream Is A Cycle

How Like Fish We Are: Ready, Nay Eager, To Seize Upon Whatever New Thing Some Wind Of Circumstance Shakes Down Upon The River Of Time! And How We Rue Our Haste, Finding The Gilded Morsel To Contain A Hook!

The Elemental Simplicities Of Wilderness Travel Were Thrills. They Represented Complete Freedom To Make Mistakes. The Wilderness Gave Those Rewards And Penalties, For Wise And Foolish Acts Against Which Civilization Has Built A Thousand Buffers.

It Is Inconceivable To Me That An Ethical Relation To Land Can Exist Without Love, Respect, And Admiration For Land, And A High Regard For Its Value. By Value, I Of Course Mean Something Far Broader Than Mere Economic Value; I Mean Value In The Philosophical Sense.

There Is Yet No Ethic Dealing With Man's Relation To Land And To The Animals And Plants Which Grow Upon It. Land, Like Odysseus' Slave-girls, Is Still Property. The Land-relation Is Still Strictly Economic, Entailing Privileges But Not Obligations.

Man Always Kills The Thing He Loves, And So We The Pioneers Have Killed Our Wilderness. Some Say We Had To. Be That As It May, I Am Glad I Shall Never Be Young Without Wild Country To Be Young In. Of What Avail Are Forty Freedoms Without A Blank Spot On The Map?