James Redfield Quotes

The site I landed on feels much more isolated than it really is; it's almost magical. Within its limited radius, there was a whole range of the local ecology.

There the wild animals wandered and fed as though they were in a pasture that stretched much farther than a man could see, and there were no settlers. Only Indians lived there.

I thought of the wilderness we had left behind us, open to sea and sky, joyous in its plenitude and simplicity, perfect yet vulnerable, unaware of what is coming, defended by nothing, guarded by no one.

I function better in the jungle in Amazonia or Antarctica or Alaska or the Sahara desert. An artificial environment like a studio has never attracted me. I could work in a studio, but I would never really feel at home.

In our bones we need the natural curves of hills, the scent of chaparral, the whisper of pines, the possibility of wildness.

Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw.

Flyers fell a certain kinship with the sight of the earth unencrusted by humanity, they want to see it that way in one sweeping view, in reassurance that nature still exists on her own, without a chain-link fence to hold her.

We can have wilderness without freedom; we can have wilderness without human life at all, but we cannot have freedom without wilderness, we cannot have freedom without leagues of open space beyond the cities, where boys and girls, men and women, can live at least part of their lives under no control but their own desires and abilities, free from any and all direct administration by their fellow men.

There is no solitude in nature.

Where the bee sucks, there suck I In the cow-slip's bell i lie There I couch when owls do cry

Strange the faithless fuss made about taking a walk in the safest and pleasantest of all places, a wilderness.

O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell, Let it not be among the jumbled heap Of murky buildings: climb with me the steep,-- Nature's observatory--whence the dell, In flowery slopes, its river's crystal swell, May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep 'Mongst boughs pavilion'd, where the deer's swift leap Startles the wild bee from the foxglove bell.

A township where one primitive forest waves above while another primitive forest rots below,--such a town is fitted to raise not only corn and potatoes, but poets and philosophers for the coming ages. In such a soil grew Homer and Confucius and the rest, and out of such a wilderness comes the Reformer eating locusts and wild honey.

Wildness is not just the "preservation of the world," it is the world

I was born where there were no enclosures.

Going into the woods, is going home

Give me solitude, give me Nature, give me again O Nature your primal sanities!

Wilderness is the raw material out of which man has hammered the artifact called civilization. Wilderness was never a homogenous raw material. It was very diverse. The differences in the product are known as cultures. The rich diversity of the worlds cultures reflects a corresponding diversity. In the wilds that gave them birth.

Wilderness is a continuous stretch of country preserved in its natural state, open to lawful hunting and fishing, big enough to absorb a two weeks' pack trip, and kept devoid of roads, artificial trails, cottages, or other works of man.

...When this map was made, there was only empty forest in the south," Gran told Birle."Not empty," Granda corrected her. "The forest is never empty.

Twisting through the thorn-thick underbrush, scratched and exhausted, one turns suddenly to find an unexpected waterfall, not half a mile from the nearest road, a spot so hard to reach that no one comes a hiding place, a shrine for dragonflies and nesting jays, a sign that there is still one piece of property that won't be owned.

Come to the woods, for here is rest.

Going to the woods is going home, for I suppose we came from the woods originally.

A boundless continent, Dark, waste, and wild, under the frown of night Starless expos'd.

In a place where there are no humans, one must strive to be human.