Health Is The Capacity Of The Land

Time Was When Education Moved Toward Soil, Not Away From It.

I Am Asserting That Those Who Love The Wilderness Should Not Be Wholly Deprived Of It, That While The Reduction Of The Wilderness Has Been A Good Thing, Its Extermination Would Be A Very Bad One, And That The Conservation Of Wilderness Is The Most Urgent And Difficult Of All The Tasks That Confront Us, Because There Are No Economic Laws To Help And Many To Hinder Its Accomplishment.

But Wherever The Truth May Lie, This Much Is Crystal-clear: Our Bigger-and-better Society Is Now Like A Hypochondriac, So Obsessed With Its Own Economic Health As To Have Lost The Capacity To Remain Healthy. . . . Nothing Could Be More Salutary At This Stage Than A Little Healthy Contempt For A Plethora Of Material Blessings.

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.

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.