"In the wilderness the boundaries between human and nonhuman, between natural and supernatural, had always seemed less certain than elsewhere... One might meet devils and run the risk of losing one's soul in such a place, but one might also meet God." -William Cronon
“Nature for the dialectitian is indifferent to any formal ideal.” -Robert Smithson
"Wilderness was a place to which one came only against one's will, and always in fear and trembling. Whatever value it might have arose solely from the possibility that it might be 'reclaimed' and turned toward human ends- planted as a garden, say, or a city upon a hill. In its raw state, it had little or nothing to offer civilized men or women.... Wilderness had once been the antithesis of all that was orderly and good- it had been the darkness, one might say, on the far side of the garden wall- and yet now [Thoreau's era-1860's] it was frequently likened to Eden itself." -William Cronon
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