Though American scenery is destitute of many of those circumstances that give value to the European, still it has features, and glorious ones, unknown to Europe...the most distinctive, and perhaps the most impressive, characteristic of American scenery is its wildness

...landscape is a work of the mind. Its scenery is built up as much from strata of memory as from layers of rock.

so wondrous wild, the whole might seem
the scenery of a fairy dream

None know how often the hand of God is seen in a wilderness but them that rove it for a man's life.

There's not a liberal America and a conservative America - there's the United States of America.

Maybe freedom really is nothing left to lose. You had it once in childhood, when it was okay to climb a tree, to paint a crazy picture and wipe out on your bike, to get hurt. The spirit of risk gradually takes its leave. It follows the wild cries of joy and pain down the wind, through the hedgerow, growing ever fainter. What was that sound? A dog barking far off? That was our life calling to us, the one that was vigorous and undefended and curious.