[pct-l] Why?

[bodhisattvavow at hotmail.com (Matt Bradley)]

I was reading Ed Abbey the other day and I came across a passage that I thought was appropriate to this group.

    As we descended toward the river, the country opened up, wide and wild, with nowhere any sign of man but the dirt trail road before us.  We liked that.  Why? (Why is always a good question.)  Why not? (Always a good answer.)  But why?  One must attempt to answer the question -- someone always raises it, accusing us of 'disliking people.'"
    Well then, it's not from simple misanthropy.  Speaking generally, for myself, I like people.  Speaking particularly, I like some people, dislike others.  Like everyone else who hasn't been reduced to moronism by our commercial Boy Scout ethic, I like my friends, dislike my enemies and regard strangers with a tolerant indifference.  But why, the questioner insists, why do people like you pretend to love uninhabited country so much?  Why this cult of wildrness?  Why the surly hatred of progress and development, the churlish resistance to all popular improvements?"
    Very well, a fair question, but it's been asked and answered a thousand times already; enough books to drive a man stark naked mad have dealt with the question.  There are many answers, all good, each sufficient.  Peace is often mentioned; beauty; spiritual refreshment, whatever that means; re-creation for the soul, whatever that is; escape; novelty, the delight of something different; truth and understanding and wisdom--commendable virtues in any man, anytime; ecology and all that, meaning the salvation of variety, diversity, possibility and potentiality, the preservation of the genetic reservoir, the answersto questions that we have not yet even learned to ask, a connection to the originthings, an opening into the future, a source of sanity for the present--all true, all wonderful, all more than enough to answer such a dumb dead degrading question as 'Why wilderness?'"
    To which, nevertheless, I shall append one further answer anyway: because we like the taste of freedom; because we like the smell of danger."

I could comment futher but I'd rather led Ed speak for himself.  Quite a run-on sentence though.
Peace and Love,
Matt