What does the Love of Wilderness mean? thoughts by Edward Abbey

​The love of Wilderness    Edward Abbey
Why such allure in the very word itself… “wilderness.”  What does it really mean?
 
The love of wilderness is an expression of loyalty to the earth
The earth which bore us and sustains us
The only home we shall ever know.
The only paradise we ever need--
If only we had the eyes to see it.
 
Original sin is the blind destruction for the sake of
Greed of this natural paradise
Which lies all around us—if only we were worthy of it.
 
Wilderness invokes nostalgia for the
Lost America which our forefathers knew.
The word suggests the past and the unknown
The womb of the earth
From which all emerged,
Something lost and something still present,
Something remote and at the same time intimate,
Something buried in our blood and nerves,
Something beyond us and without limit.