6 Quotes Tagged: national-parks

The itch for naming things is almost as bad as the itch for possessing things. Let them and leave them alone — they'll survive for a few more thousand years, more or less, without any glorification from us.

Whatever the cost, however financed, the benefits for park visitors in health and happiness — virtues unknown to statisticians — would be immeasurable.

Yes sir, yes madam, I entreat you, get out of those motorized wheelchairs, get off your foam rubber backsides, stand up straight like men! like women! like human beings! and walk-walk-WALK upon our sweet and blessed land!

How to pry the tourists out of their automobiles, out of their back-breaking upholstered mechanized wheelchairs and onto their feet, onto the strange warmth and solidity of Mother Earth again? This is the problem which the Park Service should confront directly, not evasively, and which it cannot resolve by simply submitting and conforming to the automobile habit.

For chrissake folks what is this life if full of care we have no time to stand and stare? Take off your shoes for a while, unzip your fly, piss hearty, dig your toes in the hot sand, feel that raw and rugged earth, split a couple of big toenails, draw blood! Why not?

We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope.