Wetland Quotes
From Wetland Research
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[edit] Edward Maltby
Civilization began around wetlands; today's civilization has every reason to leave them wet and wild.[1]
[edit] Robert Frost
Swamps appear throughout Robert Frosts' poetry and life. Destitute and far from his home in New England, he wandered the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia questioning his life's direction and choices. [2] A frozen swamp also appears in is poem "The Wood Pile" about a man stumbling upon an abandoned woodpile during a winter walk in a swamp, and questioning [3]
[edit] Henry David Thoreau
In contrast to Robert Frosts' depiction of swamps, Thoreau's description of them is contrary to the popular belief at the time, that wetlands are wastelands and should be drained or destroyed.
Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps. [4]
he also considered them to be
"the wildest and richest gardens that we have" [5]
and a place of rejuvenation:
When I would recreate myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most impenetrable and to the citizen, most dismal, swamp. I enter a swamp as a sacred place, a sanctum sanctorum. [6]
[edit] Paul L. Errington
"Greater familiarity with marshes on the part of more people could give man a truer and more wholesome view of himself in relation to Nature. In marshes, Life's
undercurrents and unknowns and evolutionary changes are exemplified with a high degree of independence from human dominance as long as the marshes remain in marshy condition. Marshes comprise their own form of wilderness.
They have their own life-rich genuineness and reflect forces that are much older, much more permanent, and much mightier than man." [7]
[edit] Alexander Ramsey
Alexander Ramsey, Governor of Minnesota in the mid 1800's stated: "From their nature and situation they [wetlands] are capable of easy reclamation. In a climate so dry as ours, we may naturally expect that lands of this class will eventually be the most valuable in the state." in an 1861 speech to the Minnesota legislature, an attitude that was prevalent throughout the 1800's and much of the 1900's. [8]
[edit] References
- ↑ Edward Maltby, Waterlogged Wealth, 1986. ISBN 1849710139
- ↑ Robert Frost In The Dismal SwampRetrieved July 7, 2009.
- ↑ The Wood-pileFrost, Robert (1874–1963). North of Boston. 1915.
- ↑ Thoreau, Henry David. Walking. 1862.
- ↑ Thoreau, Henry David. Journal, IV, p. 281.
- ↑ Thoreau, Henry David. Walking. 1862 p. 613.
- ↑ OF MEN AND MARSHES, Paul L. Errington. The Iowa State University Press, Ames; 1957; 150 p. ISBN 0813829291
- ↑ Background of Minnesota Wetland/ Water Regulation and ConservationRetrieved October 9, 2008
[edit] External Links
Henry Thoreau: A "Patron Saint" of Swamps
