Ben

“the wilderness “builds receptivity” to the idea that we owe moral obligations to other beings.”
― Jason Mark, Satellites in the High Country: Searching for the Wild in the Age of Man

“It turns out that prayer is one more way through which we can create changes in the land. By setting aside some places as sacred, we engage in an interaction with wild nature in which we do not take our sustenance from the earth, but instead make an offering to it. To construct “a portal to another world” through ceremony or ritual or private meditation is to create another type of working landscape—one that is at work by being a sanctuary and a site of communion with the wonders of Earth. Prayer, too, is a use of the landscape. It’s how we can give back to wild nature, by doing what humans do best: investing a place with meaning and with myth.”
― Jason Mark, Satellites in the High Country: Searching for the Wild in the Age of Man

“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.”
― John Lubbock, The Use Of Life

“We’ve discovered that any species that exempts itself from the rules of competition ends up destroying the community in order to support its own expansion.”
― Daniel Quinn, Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit