Without wilderness, we will eventually lose the capacity to understand America. Our drive, our ruggedness, our unquenchable optimism and zeal and elan go back to the challenges of the untrammeled wilderness.

Man has created some lovely dwellings, some soul-stirring literature. He has done much to alleviate physical pain. But he has not ... created a substitute for a sunset, a grove of pines, the music of the winds, the dank smell of the deep forest, or the shy beauty of a wildflower.

Without wilderness, we will eventually lose the capacity to understand America.

These are islands in time - with nothing to date them on the calendar of mankind. In these areas it is as though a person were looking backward into the ages and forward untold years. Here are bits of eternity, which have a preciousness beyond all accounting.

And thus flowed the current of life. The seeds of the silverbell were converted into squirrel and squirrels were converted into foxes. Everything edible, from mice and chipmunks to roots and berries and apples was converted into bear. And bear and his tracks are converted into wonder and adventure for man.

If we lose wilderness, we lose forever the knowledge of what the world was.