“Wilderness and motors are incompatible and the former can best be experienced, understood and enjoyed when the machines are left behind where they belong -- on the superhighways and in the parking lots, on the reservoirs and in the marinas.”
― Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness
― Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness
“A man on foot, on horseback or on a bicycle will see more, feel more, enjoy more in one mile than the motorized tourists can in a hundred miles.”
― Desert Solitaire
― Desert Solitaire
“Paradise is not a garden of bliss and changeless perfection where the lions lie down like lambs (what would they eat?) and the angels and cherubim and seraphim rotate in endless idiotic circles, like clockwork, about an equally inane and ludicrous -- however roseate -- unmoved mover. That particular painted fantasy of a realm beyond time and space which Aristotle and the church fathers tried to palm off on us has met, in modern times, only neglect and indifference passing on into oblivion it so richly deserved, while the paradise of which I write and wish to praise is with us yet, the the here and now, the actual, tangible, dogmatically real earth on which we stand.”
― Desert Solitaire
― Desert Solitaire
“Congress is always willing to appropriate money for more and bigger paved roads, anywhere -- particularly if they form loops.”
― Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness
― Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness
“Industrial tourism is a threat to the national parks. But the chief victims of the system are the motorized tourists. They are being robbed and robbing themselves. So long as they are unwilling to crawl out of their cars they will not discover the treasures of the national parks and will never escape the stress and turmoil of the urban-suburban complexes which they had hoped, presumably, to leave behind for a while.”
― Desert Solitaire
― Desert Solitaire
Michael’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Michael’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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