It should be expected that we will find wonder in a vast mountain landscape, but it is a more serious challenge to find wonder in a hill. It is a great achievement to find it in a molehill.

I believe until fairly recently our destructions of nature were more or less unwitting -- the by-products, so to speak, of our ignorance or weakness or depravity. It is our present principled and elaborately rationalized rape and plunder of the natural world that is a new thing under the sun.

...Nature becomes your teacher, and from her you will learn what is beautiful and who you are and what is your special quest in life and whither you should go...You live on manna vouchsafed to you daily, miraculously. You stretch out arms for hidden gifts, you year toward the moonbeams and the stars, you listen with new ears to bird's songs and the murmurs of trees and streams....From day to day you keep your log, your day-book of the soul, and you may think at first that it is a mere record of travel and of facts; but something else will be entering into it, poetry, the new poetry of your life, and it will be evident to a seeing eye that you are gradually becoming an artist in life, you are learning the gentle art of tramping, and it is giving you an artist's joy in creation.

As the natural world grows smaller, so too does its intensity and the size of the window through which it may be viewed.

Oamenii! Traiau intr-o lume in care iarba continua sa fie verde, soarele rasarea in fiecare zi si florile se transformau in fructe si pe ei ce ii impresiona? Statuile care plangeau. Si vinul facut din apa! Un simplu efect tunel cuantic care s-ar fi intamplat oricum daca ai fi fost pregatit sa astepti un catralion de ani. De parca transformarea luminii soarelui in vin, prin intermediul vitelor si a strugurilor, al timpului si al enzimelor nu era de o mie de ori mai impresionanta si se intampla tot timpul.

Stop and unplug,” say I; “look around you, at the vastness and greatness of the natural world.” Some stop. Others need binoculars to tie their shoelaces.