When I was born, my parents and my mother's parents planted a dogwood tree in the side yard of the large white house in which we lived throughout my boyhood. This tree I learned quite early, was exactly my age - was, in a sense, me.

When you drink in nature through your senses, you deepen your awareness of the great silent intelligence flowing through all things. You nourish your mind, body, and spirit as you connect to the divine love of Being.

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd, I stand and look at them long and long.

To hike out alone in the desert; to sleep on the valley floor on a night with no moon, in the pitch black, just listening to the boom of silence: you can't imagine what that's like.

Recognizing that sustainable development, democracy and peace are indivisible is an idea whose time has come... Today we are faced with a challenge that calls for a shift in our thinking, so that humanity stops threatening its life-support system. We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own - indeed, to embrace the whole of creation in all its diversity, beauty and wonder.

The Indians' botanical knowledge is disappearing even faster than the plants themselves.