"How strange and wonderful is our home, our earth, with its
swirling vaporous atmosphere, its flowing and frozen liquids,
its trembling plants, its creeping, crawling, climbing creatures,
the croaking things with wings that hang on rocks and soar 
through fog, the furry grass, the scaly seas.  To see our world
as a space traveler might see it, for the first time, through
Venusian eyes or Martian antennae, how utterly rich and wild it
would seem, how far beyond the power of the craziest.... imagination,
even a god's....
Yet some among us have the nerve, the insolence, the brass, the gall
to whine about the limitations of our earthbound fate and yearn for
some more perfect world beyond the sky.  We are none of us good
enough for the sweet earth we have..."


-- Appalachian Wilderness, by Edward Abbey w. Eliot Porter, 1970