Wallace Stegner

Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed ... We need wilderness preserved — as much of it as is still left, and as many kinds — because it was the challenge against which our character as a people was formed ... We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope.

Eknath Easwaran

Minimizing self-will is minimizing distractions.

(from 4/5/1980 talk)

Edward Hoagland

Country people do not behave as if they think life is short; they live
on the principle that it is long, and savor variations of the kind
best appreciated if most days are the same.