A Quote by Edwin Way Teale

To the lost man, to the pioneer penetrating a new country, to the naturalist who wishes to see the wild land at its wildest, the advice is always the same - follow a river. The river is the original forest highway. It is nature's own Wilderness Road.
In the beginning there was a river. The river became a road and the road branched out to the whole world. And because the road was once a river it was always hungry.
With us, when you speak of ‘the river,’ though there be many, you mean always the same one, the great river, the shifting, unappeasable god of the country, feared and loved the Mississippi.
Only to the white man was nature a "wilderness" and only to him was the land "infested" with "wild" animals and "savage" people. To us it was tame. Earth was bountiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery. Not until the hairy man from the east came and with brutal frenzy heaped injustices upon us and the families that we loved was it "wild" for us. When the very animals of the forest began fleeing from his approach, then it was that for us the "Wild West" began.
They say you can never step in the same river twice. New water flows in, replacing the old and continually renewing the river. The Senate is the same.
My love and I are inventing a country, which we can already see taking shape, as if wheels were passing through yellow mud. But there is a problem: if we put a river in the country, it will thaw and begin flooding. If we put the river on the border, there will be trouble. If we forget about the river, there will be now way out. There is already a sky over that country, waiting for clouds or smoke. Birds have flown into it, too. Each evening more trees fill with their eyes, and what they see we can never erase.
No same man could walk through the same river twice, as the man and the river have since changed.
While there may be no "right" way to value a forest or a river, there is a wrong way, which is to give it no value at all. How do we decide the value of a 700-year-old tree? We need only to ask how much it would cost to make a new one, or a new river, or even a new atmosphere.
At the window he sits and looks out, musing on the river, a little brown hen duck paddling upstream among the windwaves close to the far bank. What he has understood lies behind him like a road in the woods. He is a wilderness looking out at the wild.
Life consists with Wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him. One who pressed forward incessantly and never rested from his labors, who grew fast and made infinite demands on life, would always find himself in a new country or wilderness, and surrounded by the raw material of life. He would be climbing over the prostrate stems of primitive forest trees.
To sustain an environment suitable for man, we must fight on a thousand battlegrounds. Despite all of our wealth and knowledge, we cannot create a redwood forest, a wild river, or a gleaming seashore.
We can none of us step into the same river twice, but the river flows on and the other river we step into is cool and refreshing, too
The river of my title is a river of DNA, a river of information, not a river of bones and tissues
But I shall follow the endless, winding way, — the flowing river in the cave of man; careless whither I be led, reckless where I land.
This is not our fight', the old man said. 'British or American, that is not the choice. You must choose your own side, find your road through the valley of darkness that will lead you to the river Jordan. . . Look hard for your river Jordan, my child. You'll find it.
No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.
Cities make people sick; they create living dead! Get away from the cities in every possible occasion! River does no harm to you; forest does no harm to you; wild flowers do no harm to you! When you are in nature, you are amongst the friends! Be clever, be in the nature!
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