““In a world in which everything bears the indelible impress of Man, it is refreshing to escape from time to time from this wall-to-wall humanisation. Hence the American enthusiasm for national parks and outdoor activities. It is seductive to see the world as though we were not there to see it. We can always dream of perceiving things as they are in themselves, without the buzz and distortion of human meaning. We can take a vacation now and then from the intolerable burden of sense-making, rather as we do when we treat human flesh as something to be mindlessly indulged. We can shuck off language and confront reality in the raw, as we imagine an innocent child might do.””
![“There's an elegiac quality in watching [American wilderness] go, because…” quote by Peter Matthiessen](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/86b/peter-matthiessen-5795_deep-sorrow_there-s-an-elegiac-quality-in-watching-a_1276424.jpg)
