“I'm now done with this glorious continent [South America] …. I've seen all I sought for and far, far, far more. … wandered most joyfully … through millions of acres of the ancient tree I was so anxious to find, Araucaria braziliensis. Just think of the glow of my joy in these noble aboriginal forests — the face of every tree marked with the inherited experiences of millions of years. … Crossed the Andes… Then straight to snowline and found a glorious forest of Araucaria imbricata, the strangest of the strange genus.”

—  John Muir

letter to Mrs. J.D. Hooker http://www.westadamsheritage.org/katharine-putnam-hooker (6 December 1911); published in The Life and Letters of John Muir http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/life/life_and_letters/default.aspx (1924), chapter 17, II; and in John Muir's Last Journey, edited by Michael P. Branch (Island Press, 2001), page 125 <!-- Terry Gifford, LLO, page 357 -->
1910s

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John Muir photo
John Muir 183
Scottish-born American naturalist and author 1838–1914

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“South America had been an island continent, far bigger and far more diverse than Australia, for tens of millions of years before the Isthmus of Panama rose just a couple of million years ago. The resulting flood of North American mammals across the new land bridge corresponds in time with the decimation of the native South American fauna. In fact, most large mammals generally considered distinctly South American… are all recent migrants from North America.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

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Rush Limbaugh photo

“There are more acres of forest land in America today than when Columbus discovered the continent in 1492.”

Rush Limbaugh (1951) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, author, and television personality

See, I Told You So
Atria
1993-11-01
chapter 14
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Later version of his claim: Do you know we have more acreage of forest land in the United States today than we did at the time the Constitution was written?
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John Muir photo

“I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do. They go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

July 1890, page 313
(From Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, Second Series (1844) "Essay VI: Nature": "the trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment, rooted in the ground.")
John of the Mountains, 1938
Context: It has been said that trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment rooted in the ground. But they never seem so to me. I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do. They go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!

Stephen Vincent Benét photo

“These I see,
Blazing through all eternity,
A fire-winged sign, a glorious tree!”

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist

Young Adventure (1918), The Quality of Courage
Context: It is not given me to trace
The lovely laughter of that face,
Like a clear brook most full of light,
Or olives swaying on a height,
So silver they have wings, almost;
Like a great word once known and lost
And meaning all things. Nor her voice
A happy sound where larks rejoice,
Her body, that great loveliness,
The tender fashion of her dress,
I may not paint them.
These I see,
Blazing through all eternity,
A fire-winged sign, a glorious tree!

Saul Williams photo

“I surrendered my beliefs
and found myself at the tree of life
injecting my story into the veins of leaves
only to find that stories like forests
are subject to seasons”

Saul Williams (1972) American singer, musician, poet, writer, and actor

Source: , said the shotgun to the head.

Väinö Linna photo

“As we all know, the Lord is almighty – he knows all and sees far. And so, one day, he let forest fire burn a good swath of state land, laying waste to acres of the dry, pine forest around the town of Joensuu. The people did everything in their power to put a stop to his work, as they always did, but he burned the forest undeterred, just as far as it suited him. He had his own plans.”

Väinö Linna book The Unknown Soldier

Opening words, p. 1.
The Unknown Soldier

Adam Mickiewicz photo

“Herod, God! - all young Poland 's given into Herod's hands. What do I see? Long white roads like stations of the cross, long roads unseen through ancient forests, through the snow, all roads leading North. There, there, to the far country, they float like rivers.”

Adam Mickiewicz book Dziady

Herod - Panie cała Polska młoda wydana w ręce Heroda. Co widzę? Długie białe dróg krzyżowych biegi, Drogi długie - nie dojrzeć - przez puszcze - przez śniegi, Wszystkie na północ! Tam, tam, w kraj daleki, płyną jak rzeki
Part three, scene 5.
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“For no reason I can think of, I've wandered far astray. And that is how I got to where I find myself today.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist
John Muir photo

“I've had a great time in South America and South Africa. Indeed it now seems that on this pair of wild hot continents I've enjoyed the most fruitful year of my life.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

letter to William Colby (4 February 1912); published in " John Muir — President of the Sierra Club http://archive.org/stream/sierraclubbullet1019sier#page/n17/mode/2up", by William E. Colby, Sierra Club Bulletin, volume 10, number 1 (John Muir Memorial Issue, January 1916) pages 2-7 (at page 6); and in John Muir's Last Journey, edited by Michael P. Branch (Island Press, 2001), page 160
1910s

George Horne photo

“Young trees in a thick forest are found to incline themselves towards that part through which the light penetrates, as plants are observed to do in I darkened chamber towards a stream of light let in through an orifice, and as the ears of corn do towards the south.”

George Horne (1730–1792) English churchman, writer and university administrator

Source: The Works of the Right Reverend George Horne, 1809, p. 310

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