Something will have
gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness
be destroyed; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned
into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; if we drive the
few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to extinction;
if we pollute the last clear air and dirty the last clean streams
and push our paved roads through the last of the silence, so
that never again will Americans be free in their own country
from noise, the exhausts, and stinks of human and automotive
waste.
WALLACE
STEGNER
