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 a 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 a 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
