I quote Aldo Leopold.  Throughout his life he was on the front wave of the conservation movement.  I personally believe he was the father of wildlife conservation in America.  He was an advisor to the U.N. on conservation matters.  He died in 1948 (born in 1887) while helping his neighbors fight a grass fire.   A sane man is a sacred man.

When people act as if they’re insane, it’s clear they lack all evidence of spirituality.  A spiritual person is not a materialistic person.  A spiritual person doesn’t long for things.  Things aren’t even on their radar.  Einstein often forgot to put on socks.  He wore whatever clothes were available.  Leopold, like so many conservationists, lived modestly by design.  So did Muir.  They realized that everything they had took a toll on nature.  Something had to be cut down, removed, burned out, rerooted, rerouted, manufactured, transported, stocked, handled, sold, for them to possess it.  By living the least materialistic life possible, less would be demanded of nature’s finite capacity.

“The government tells us we need flood control and comes to straighten the creek in our pasture.  The engineer on the job tells us the creek is now able to carry off more flood water, but in the process we lost our old willows where the cows switched flies in the noon shade, and where the owl hooted on a winter night.  We lost the little marshy spot where our fringed gentians bloomed.

“Some engineers are beginning to have a feeling in their bones that the meanderings of a creek not only improve the landscape but are a necessary part of the hydrologic functioning.  The ecologist sees clearly that for similar reasons we can get along with less channel improvement on Round River.

“Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets, but humbler folk may circumvent this restriction if they know how.  To plant a pine, for example, one need be neither god nor poet; one need only own a good shovel.  By virtue of this curious loophole in the rules, any clodhopper may say: Let there be a tree—and there will be one.

“If his back be strong and his shovel sharp, there may eventually be ten thousand.  And in the seventh year he may lean upon his shovel, and look upon his trees, and find them good.

“God passed on his handiwork as early as the seventh day, but I notice He has since been rather noncommittal about its merits.  I gather either that He spoke too soon, or that trees stand more looking upon than do fig leaves and firmaments.

“The Highway Department says that 100,000 cars pass yearly over this route during the three summer months when the Silphium is in bloom.  In them must ride at least 100,000 people who have 'taken' what is called history, and perhaps 25,000 who have 'taken' what is called botany.  Yet I doubt whether a dozen have seen the Silphium, and of these hardly one will notice its demise.  If I were to tell a preacher of the adjoining church that the road crew has been burning history books in his cemetery, under the guise of mowing weeds, he would be amazed and uncomprehending. How could a weed be a book?

“This is one little episode in the funeral of the native flora, which in turn is one episode in the funeral of the floras of the world.  Mechanized man, oblivious of floras, is proud of his progress in cleaning up the landscape on which, willy-nilly, he must live out his days.  It might be wise to prohibit at once all teaching of real botany and real history, lest some future citizen suffer qualms about the floristic price of his good life.”

Freud’s metapsychology of man says that he has two primary instincts: Eros and Thanatos (the life or sex instinct and the death instinct).  And that Eros and Thanatos are in a constant state of war.  For centuries the sex instinct was buried so deep people had to sneak around in the dark (or down to the slave quarters) to propagate the specie.  “Civilization is the repression of the sex instinct,” says Freud.  ‘Civilization’ must repress the “pleasure principle” to maintain order.  ‘Civilization’ is about 5,000 years old (3000 BCE is the time Egypt became a single national state or ‘civilization’) and is the history of aggression between men.  Wars are the actual benchmarks of history.  

“History is the story of the madness of man,” writes Thoreau.  It’s the story of one religion trying to dominate another.  It's not the history of the sane, sacred, man.  And here in 2008 the madness continues and spills over into the remaining wild places.  As war-like people desparate for relief from their destructive tendencies enter and use the wild places as if they were garbage dumps.  

Our appeal is the same appeal that has echoed throughout history from the few fully sane men and women who have lived here: wake up before it’s too late.  Recognize the OTHER life forms as if they were as important as you are.  Take responsibility for your own body wastes while using these sacred places.  A sane man is a sacred man.