“husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knows Nature but only as a robber”. (180)

This quote from Walden talks about Thoreau’s frustration about the lost art of husbandry and his disappoint in farmers and those who practice husbandry for the purpose of cultivating what they grow for themselves or profit without appreciation for the act of growing it.

“There he passes his days, there he does his work. There, when he meets death, he faces it as he has faced many other evils, with quiet uncomplaining fortitude (77).

This quote is actually by Theodore Roosevelt but is mentioned by Cronin when he begins to define Wilderness in terms of the frontier. I liked this quote because, like Cronin suggests, the frontier is a last, shrinking unclaimed wilderness and freer than any modern civilization. He admires those who went out to frontier to live that admirable life. But I think at the same time those are the same people who began to make it civilized..