The wilderness and the idea
of wilderness is one of the
permanent
homes of the human spirit. Here, as many realized, had been miraculously
preserved, until the time when civilization could appreciate
it, the
richness and variety of the natural world which had disappeared
unnoticed
and little by little from Europe. America was a dream of something
long
past which had suddenly become reality. It was what Thoreau called
the great "poem" before many of its fairest pages had
been ripped out
and thrown away. The desire to experience that reality rather
than to
destroy it drew to our shores some of the best who have ever
come to them.
--JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH
