And into the woods I go, to lose my mind and find my soul. - John Muir

In God's wildness lies the hope of the world — the great fresh, unblighted, unredeemed wilderness. The galling harness of civilization drops off, and wounds heal ere we are aware.

I drifted on through the midst of this passionate music and motion, across many a glen, from ridge to ridge; often halting in the lee of a rock for shelter, or to gaze and listen. Even when the grand anthem had swelled to its highest pitch, I could distinctly hear the varying tones of individual trees [...] and even the infinitely gentle rustle of the withered grasses at my feet. Each was expressing itself in its own way, - singing its own song, and making its own peculiar gestures - manifesting a richness of variety to be found in no other forest I have yet seen.

Most people are on the world, not in it — have no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them — undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate.