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.
Many are outspoken about the climate crisis, but conveniently ignore the fact that support for fossil fuels is not just incompatible with curbing emissions but dangerously counterproductive.
We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources ... But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil and the gas are exhausted.
What is more gentle than a wind is summer?
Nature knows that people are a tide that swells and in time will ebb, and all their works dissolve ... As for us: We must uncenter our minds from ourselves. We must unhumanize our views a little and become confident as the rock and ocean that we are made from.
Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no need of change.
In a pine tree behind me, an eagle waits out the rain, hunched into himself, brooding. Crows squabble, a murder chasing a raven. Seals cruise the lines of fishing nets bobbing in the water, hoping for an easy meal, the tender bellies of salmon.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.