That is all the National Parks are about. Use, but do no harm.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of utilizing natural resources responsibly without causing damage.
Wallace Stegner's quote reflects the philosophy of conservation, highlighting the relationship between humans and nature. It urges individuals to use the resources provided by national parks but stresses the crucial responsibility of doing so without harming the ecosystem. This sentiment captures the essence of sustainable practices, reminding us that while we can benefit from nature, we must also preserve it for future generations.
In practice
During a presentation on environmental preservation, this quote can highlight the need for responsible practices.
Touch. It is touch that is the deadliest enemy of chastity, loyalty, monogamy, gentility with its codes and conventions and restraints. By touch we are betrayed and betray others ... an accidental brushing of shoulders or touching of hands ... hands laid on shoulders in a gesture of comfort that lies like a thief, that takes, not gives, that wants, not offers, that awakes, not pacifies. When one flesh is waiting, there is electricity in the merest contact.
Hope was always out ahead of fact, possibility obscured the outlines of reality.
Young writers should be encouraged to write, and discouraged from thinking they are writers.
I was shaped by the west and have lived most of my life in it, and nothing would gratify me more than to see it in all its subregions and subcultures both prosperous and environmentally healthy, with a civilization to match its scenery.
Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.
No place is a place until things that have happened in it are remembered in history, ballads, yarns, legends, or monuments. Fictions serve as well as facts.
Nothing is more beautiful than the loveliness of the woods before sunrise.
It's very important that we keep these special, wild places. It defines the United States. Imagine our country without our national parks and our monuments. Here in California, imagine if you didn't have in Southern Cal the Channel Islands or the great Highway 1, Big Sur up to Point Reyes up to the Redwood country.
What have they done to the earth? What have they done to our fair sister? Ravaged and plundered and ripped her and bit her Stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn And tied her with fences and dragged her down
It is the same life that emerges in joy through the dust of the earth into numberless waves of flower.
Nothing is more consonant with Nature than that she puts into operation in the smallest detail that which she intends as a whole.
To stand at the edge of the sea, to sense the ebb and flow of the tides, to feel the breath of a mist moving over a great salt marsh, to watch the flight of shore birds that have swept up and down the surf lines of the continents for untold thousands of years, to see the running of the old eels and the young shad to the sea, is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be.
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