In wildness is the preservation of the world… Life consists of wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him… When I would recreate myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most interminable and, to the citizen, most dismal swamp. I enter as a sacred place, a ‘sanctum sanctorum’. There is the strength, the marrow, of Nature. In short, all good things are wild and free.
It is not enough to weep for our lost landscapes; we have to put our hands in the earth to make ourselves whole again. Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.
Robin Wall Kimmerer