ABSTRACT:

        Environmentalists have argued, with eloquence and courage, that the land and seas and wildlife must be protected and that the wholesale destruction of the wilderness must end. They can't persuade us more effectively that our physical survival depends on a healthy environment, that if we continue to strip our forests and arable lands, to pollute our air and oceans and water supplies, and to destroy the wildlife, we will indeed perish. But what this examination of wilderness experiences shows is that nature is just as important to our emotional survival, and that our spiritual connection to the earth is profound, innate, and unbreakable. We don't really fly to the wilderness, as some say, in hopes of "getting away from it all," but in search of intimacy. We are drawn to nature not, as many believe, merely for a love of its superficial beauty but because we have with it a deep and everlasting bond. And if we fail to recognize and cherish and preserve that bond, we not only sentence ourselves and our descendants to an eternity of spiritual poverty, we commit, in the deepest and most horrifying sense of the word, matricide.

Janet Gavin

Works Cited

Abbey, Edward. Desert Solitaire. 1968. New York: Ballantine-Random, 1971.

Berry, Wendell. A Continuous Harmony. San Diego: Harvest-Harcourt, 1970.

Beston, Henry. The Outermost House. 1928. N.p.: Doubleday; Middlesex: Penguin, 1976.

Dillard, Annie. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. 1974. New York: Bantam-Harper, 1975

Doheny, Kathleen. "Coping With Life Crisis by Leaving It All Behind." Los Angeles Times
           29 Aug. 1986, Orange County ed., sec. V: 1+.

Edel , Leon. Stuff of Sleep and Dreams. New York: Avon, 1982.

Eiseley, Loren. The Immense Journey. 1946. New York: Vintage-Random, 1957.

Graves, John. Goodbye to a River. Austin: Texas Monthly, 1959.

Hamilton, Edith. Mythology. 1940. Boston : Little; New York : Mentor-NAL, 1969

Jung, Carl Gustav. The Portable Jung. 1971. New York: Penguin-Viking, 1981.

Koehn, Hank E. "My Passage Through AIDS." Los Angeles Times 14 Aug. 1987, Orange
           County ed., sec. V: 1+.

Krier, Beth Ann. "The Quest for Self-Esteem." Los Angeles Times 14 June 1987, Orange
           County ed., sec. VI: 1+.

Krutch, Joseph Wood. The Voice of the Desert. New York: Morrow Quill, 1954.

Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac. 1949. N.p.: Oxford; New York: Ballantine-Random, 1966.

Matthiessen, Peter. The Snow Leopard. 1978. New York: Viking; New York: Bantam
           Windstone, 1981.

Teale, Edwin Way. Autumn Across America. 1950. Edwin Way Teale; New York: Dodd, 1981.

Thoreau, Henry David. Walden and Other Writings. Ed. Joseph Wood Krutch. New York:
           Bantam, 1962.

Viorst, Judith. Necessary Losses. 1986. New York: Ballantine-Random; New York:
           Fawcett-Ballantine, 1987.

Top of Page


Website Designed by Janet Using
Dreamweaver
and
Adobe Illustrator
and
Adobe Photoshop