The Smoky Mountains are a rare jewel. ... Why not have a place where you can still see the stars? There is a value to keeping things primitive.

Daily with souls that cringe and plot, We Sinais climb and know it not.

Conway felt again, as he gazed up at the stupendous mountain wall, that there was a superb and exquisite peril in the scene; but for some chance-placed barrier, the whole valley would clearly have been a lake, nourished continually from the glacial heights around it. Instead of which, a few streams dribbled through to fill reservoirs and irrigate fields and plantations with a disciplined conscientiousness worthy of a sanitary engineer. The whole design was almost uncannily fortunate, so long as the structure of the frame remained unmoved by earthquake or landslide

A man climbs the mountains because he needs to climb, because that is the way he is made, Rock and ice and snow and wind and the great blue canopy of the sky are not all that he finds upon the mountain-tops.

He discovers things about his own body and mind that he had almost forgotten in the day-to-day, year-to-year routine of living. He learns what his legs are for, what his lungs are for, what the wise men of old meant by refreshment of the spirit.

The historic earnings generated by ECI have been poor and the heavy administrative burden of running a small estate such as this one has hindered performance.

Society was once surrounded by wilderness; now wilderness is surrounded by society. Once you divide that wilderness, it is no longer recoverable.