Possibly everyone will travel by air in another fifty years. I'm not sure I like the idea of millions of planes flying around overhead. I love the sky's unbroken solitude. I don't like to think of it cluttered up by aircraft, as roads are cluttered up by cars. I feel like the western pioneer when he saw barbed-wire fence lines encroaching on his open plains. The success of his venture brought the end of the life he loved.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a concern for the future of the sky and nature as air travel increases.
In this quote, Charles Lindbergh reflects on the potential future where air travel is ubiquitous, expressing a bittersweet sentiment about the loss of the sky's natural beauty and solitude. He likens this change to the encroachment of civilization on untouched landscapes, lamenting how advancements can lead to the loss of the unspoiled environments that bring peace and inspiration.
In practice
This quote could open a discussion at a climate change seminar about the balance between technological advancement and preserving nature.
How long can men thrive between walls of brick, walking on asphalt pavements, breathing the fumes of coal and of oil, growing, working, dying, with hardly a thought of wind, and sky, and fields of grain, seeing only machine-made beauty, the mineral-like quality of life?
In wilderness I sense the miracle of life.
Science, freedom, beauty, adventure: what more could you ask of life?
In honoring the Wright Brothers, it is customary and proper to recognize their contribution to scientific progress. But I believe it is equally important to emphasize the qualities in their pioneering life and the character in man that such a life produced. The Wright Brothers balanced sucess with modesty, science with simplicity. At Kitty Hawk their intellects and senses worked in mutual support. They represented man in balance, and from that balance came wings to lift a world.
We are in the grip of a scientific materialism, caught in a vicious cycle where our security today seems to depend on regimentation and weapons which will ruin us tomorrow.
We are in grave danger of losing forever not just millions of years of evolution on earth, but the eons of change that have produced man and his natural environment.
The Nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.
In the other gardens_x000D_ _x000D_ And all up the vale,_x000D_ _x000D_ From the autumn bonfies_x000D_ _x000D_ See the smoke trail!_x000D_ _x000D_ Pleasant summer over_x000D_ _x000D_ And all the summer flowers,_x000D_ _x000D_ The red fire blazes,_x000D_ _x000D_ the grey smoke towers._x000D_ _x000D_ Sing a song of seasons!_x000D_ _x000D_ Something bright in all,_x000D_ _x000D_ Flowers in the summer_x000D_ _x000D_ Fires in the fall!
I often visited a particular plant four or five miles distant, half a dozen times within a fortnight, that I might know exactly when it opened.
You can drive out nature with a pitch fork_x000D_ But it always comes roaring back again.
When Summer lies upon the world, and in a noon of gold, Beneath the roof of sleeping leaves the dreams of trees unfold; When woodland halls are green and cool, and wind is in the West, Come back to me! Come back to me, and say my land is best!
We are living in a science-fiction nightmare where children are gasping for breath on bad-air days because somebody gave money to a politician. And my children and the kids of millions of other Americans can no longer go fishing and eat their catch because somebody gave money to a politician.
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