9 Quotes by William Cronon

The dream of an unworked natural landscape is very much the fantasy of people who have never themselves had to work the land to make a living.

Sas soon as we label something as "natural", we attach to it the powerful implication that any change from its current state would degrade and damage the way it is "supposed" to be

As soon as we label something as "natural", we attach to it the powerful implication that any change from its current state would degrade and damage the way it is "supposed" to be.

Resources, waterways, and climatic zones loom so large in their writings that one can almost forget that people have something to do with the building of cities.

By what peculiar twist of perception, I wondered, had I managed to see the plowed fields and second-growth forests of southern Wisconsin—a landscape of former prairies now long vanished—as somehow more “natural” than the streets, buildings, and parks of Chicago? All represented drastic human alterations of earlier landscapes.

[T]he people of plenty were a people of waste.

We go to sanctuaries to remember the things we hold most dear, the things we cherish and love. And then-the great challenge-we return home seeking to enact this wisdom as best we can in our daily lives.

As we gaze into the mirror it holds up for us, we too easily imagine that what we behold is Nature when in fact we see the reflection of our own unexamined longings and desires.

We need to discover a common middle ground in which all of these things, from the city to the wilderness, can somehow be encompassed in the word “home.”