“One of the beautiful things about the US National Parks is that they created specifically for the enjoyment of all people -- in the beginning, now, and for the future.”
Source: The National Parks Journal: Plan & Record Your Trips to the US National Parks
“I just wouldn’t want to hook up with a guy unless I really, really like him, and in my
experience all boys can be classified as either assholes or bores, unless they’re both.
Maybe it’s a blessing, because the last thing I need is relationship drama to sidetrack me from my grades.”
Source: Anatomy of a Boyfriend
“What Starker Leopold was trying to teach Graber was not to master and control everything but, instead, to remember that because human hands were always unintentionally doing something to nature, they ought to do something carefully planned as well.”
Source: Engineering Eden: A Violent Death, a Federal Trial, and the Struggle to Restore Nature in Our National Parks
“At one time areas along the roadways [in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park] were carefully cut and trimmed, creating a lawnlike appearance. When a new superintendent was appointed, he ordered this practice stopped, which engendered a good deal of complain from visitors. The roadsides had been so attractive, they said, so neat, and now they had a rough and ungainly appearance. On this small but significant point the superintendent was adamant, however, and for exactly the right reason. Visitors to the park were reacting to a conventional, familiar, and deeply ingrained image of beauty - the trimmed and landscaped lawn. The goal should not be to stimulate that familiar response, but to confront the visitor with the less familiar setting of an unmanaged landscape. The mild shock of a scene to which there is no patterned response, and the engendering of an untutored personal response, is precisely what national park management should seek, even in such seemingly small details.”
Source: Mountains Without Handrails: Reflections on the National Parks
“It is impossible to provide unlimited visitation and the essential qualities of an unconventional, non-urban experience simultaneously. Here too a compromise is called for: a willingness to trade quantity for quality of experience. There is nothing undemocratic or even unusual in such a trade. The notion that commitment to democratic principles compels the assumption of scarcity is one of the familiar misconceptions of our time. We need a willingness to value a certain kind of experience highly enough that we are prepared to have fewer opportunists for access in exchange for a different sort of experience when we do get access.”
Source: Mountains Without Handrails: Reflections on the National Parks
“We show our love for our national parks by driving hundreds of miles to see them in RVs and SUVs that, at their best, travel fifteen miles per gallon gas.”
Source: American Wilderness: A New History
“In letter after letter, misfortunes great and small are blamed on the wood. "I don't know how much I buy that," Matt [Smith] said.."If you're the kinda person who would take something from a national park, maybe you just have poor judgement skills.”
Source: Leave Only Footprints: My Acadia-to-Zion Journey Through Every National Park
“Politics is national, but all politics is personal.”
“Survival is balance. Life’s ugliness is balanced by beauty. Trauma is balanced by awe. For me, being on the road has come to represent awe-seeking—what I find in the still-wild places is counterbalance to the traumas.”
Source: Drive Through the Night
“Hitting off-the-beaten-trail landmarks, trail systems, and road routes can offer a taste of the uncommon and unfamiliar while minimizing the impact at heavily trafficked locations.”
Source: The National Parks Journal: Plan & Record Your Trips to the US National Parks