“The special power of the tree in the wilderness is to remind us of this fact. It can teach us to recognize the wildness we did not see in the tree we planted in our own backyard. By seeing the otherness in that which is most unfamiliar, we can learn to see it too in that which at first seemed merely ordinary. If wilderness can do this–if it can help us perceive and respect a nature we had forgotten to recognize as natural–then it will become part of the solution to our environmental dilemmas rather than part of the problem.” (88)

This passage hits home because it tells us that our home can be the wilderness.  Someone can seek out such places as the Grand Canyon, Muir Woods, or a hike 50 miles away but their own backyard doesn’t deserve the same attention and love as those others? Is that why we can’t protect our entire planet, because we only value the protected or famous wilderness areas?

“The curious result was that frontier nostalgia became an important vehicle for expressing a peculiarly bourgeois form of antimodernism.” (78)

The modernizing world had become too overbearing for the wealthy who had created it, so they sought out the untouched land. Their idea of wilderness mirrored those who came before them and transformed this frontier.