When I write about nature directly, or refer to it, here are some things I don’t mean, and a few I do. I don’t mean nature as ornamental, however scalloped and glowing it may be. I don’t mean nature as useful to man if that possibility of utility takes from an object its own inherent value. Or, even, diminishes it. I don’t mean nature as calamity, as vista, as vacation or recreation. I don’t mean landscapes in which we find rest and pleasure—although we do—so much as I mean landscapes in which we are reinforced in our sense of the world as a mystery, a mystery that entails other privileges
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