Wilderness to the people of America is a spiritual necessity, an antidote to the high pressure of modern life, a means of regaining serenity and equilibrium.
Interpretation
Wilderness offers a vital escape from the stresses of modern life.
In this quote, Sigurd F. Olson emphasizes the importance of wilderness to the American spirit, suggesting it serves as a necessary refuge for the soul amidst the chaos and pressures of contemporary society. By engaging with nature, people can find peace, restore their mental balance, and reconnect with their inner selves.
In practice
During a motivational speech on mental health, one might convey the importance of nature by quoting Olson.
While we are born with curiosity and wonder and our early years full of the adventure they bring, I know such inherent joys are often lost. I also know that, being deep within us, their latent glow can be fanned to flame again by awareness and an open mind.
When a man is part of his canoe, he is part of all that canoes have ever known.
Beauty is composed of many things and never stands alone. It is part of horizons, blue in the distance, great primeval silences, knowledge of all things of the earth. It embodies the hopes and dreams of those who have gone before, including the spirit world; it is so fragile it can be destroyed by a sound or thought. It may be infinitesimally small or encompass the universe itself. It comes in a swift conception wherever nature has not been disturbed.
Simplicity in all things is the secret of the wilderness and one of its most valuable lessons
The way of a canoe is the way of the wilderness, and of a freedom almost forgotten.
One cannot run from a challenge without losing. To flee is signing a death warrant to dignity and character, and, having run, there is no return; one is a weakling forever. Meeting a challenge, though one may be defeated, gives strength, character, and a certain assurance that regardless of outcome, one will survive or go down fighting.
I've travelled all around the world to see the rivers and the mountains, and I've spent a lot of money. I have gone to great lengths, I have seen everything, but I forgot to see just outside my house a dewdrop on a little blade of grass, a dewdrop which reflects in its convexity the whole universe around you.
It is a beautiful and delightful sight to behold the body of the Moon.
Collective human actions are transforming, even ravaging, the biosphere - perhaps irreversibly - through global warming and loss of biodiversity.
Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.
If we recognise that every ecosystem can also be viewed as a food web, we can think of it as a circular, interlacing nexus of plant animal relationships (rather than a stratified pyramid with man at the apex)β¦ Each species, be it a form of bacteria or deer, is knitted together in a network of interdependence, however indirect the links may be.
Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.
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