Conservation is not merely a thing to be enshrined in outdoor museums, but a way of living on land. - Aldo Leopold

On a fair morning the mountain invited you to get down and roll in its new grass and flowers (your less inhibited horse did just this if you failed to keep a tight rein). Every living thing sang, chirped, and burgeoned. Massive pines and firs, storm-tossed these many months, soaked up the sun in towering dignity. Tassel-eared squirrels, poker-faced but exuding emotion with voice and tail, told you insistently what your already knew full well: that never had there been so rare a day, or so rich a solitude to spend it in.

Recreational development is a job not of building roads into lovely country, but of building receptivity into the still unlovely human mind.

Many of the attributes most distinctive of America and Americans are the impress of the wilderness. … Shall we now exterminate this thing that made us Americans?