Tocados pela natureza

John Burroughs e John Muir

"There are those who look at Nature from the standpoint of conventional and artificial life, - from parlor windows and through gilt-edged poems, - the sentimentalists. At the other extreme are those who do not look at Nature at all, but are a grown part of her, and look away from her toward the other class, -- the backwoodsman and pioneers, and all rude and simple persons. Then there are those in whom the two are united or merged, -- the great poets and artists. In them the sentimentalist is corrected and cured, and the hairy and taciturn frontiersman has had experience to some purpose. The true poet knows more about Nature than the naturalists because he carries her open secrets in his heart.

John Burroughs . "Birds and Poets"

"Let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life.. "

"God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools."

John Muir