Why Visit the Hoosier Wilderness?

     “Given the means and sufficient leisure, a large portion of the populace backpacks, hunts, fishes, birdwatches, and gardens.  In the United States and Canada more people visit zoos and aquariums than attend all professional athletic events combined.  They crowd the national parks to view the landscapes, looking from the tops of prominences out across rugged terrain for a glimpse of tumbling water and animals living free.  They travel long distances to stroll along the seashore, for reasons they cannot put into words.

     These are examples of what I have called biophilia, the connections that human beings subconsciously seek with the rest of life.  To biophilia can be added the idea of wilderness, all the land and communities of plants and animals still unsullied by human occupation.  Into wilderness people travel in search of new life and wonder, and from wilderness they return to the parts of the earth that have been humanized and made physically secure.  Wilderness settles peace on the soul because it needs no help; it is beyond human contrivance.  Wilderness is a metaphor of unlimited opportunity, rising from the tribal memory of a time when humanity spread across the world, valley to valley, island to island, godstruck, firm in the belief that virgin land went on forever past the horizon.”   

 --Edward O. Wilson, The Diversity of Life