If I should be fated to walk no more with Nature, be compelled to leave all I most devoutly love in the wilderness, return to civilization and be twisted into the characterless cable of society, then these sweet, free, cumberless rovings will be as chinks and slits on life's horizon, through which I may obtain glimpses of the treasures that lie in God's wilds beyond my reach.

John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir (ed. Univ of Wisconsin Press, 1979) - ISBN: 9780299078843