Liberty Hyde Bailey sailing with his daughter Ethel

"The backgrounds are important.  The life of every one of us is relative.  We miss our destiny when we miss or forget our backgrounds.  We lose ourselves. . . The backgrounds are the great unoccupied spaces.  They are the large environments in which we live but which we do not make.  The backgrounds are the sky with its limitless reaches; the silences of the sea; the tundra in pallid arctic nights; the deserts with their prismatic colors; the shores that gird the planet; the vast mountains that are beyond reach; the winds, which are the universal voice in nature; the sacredness of night; the elemental simplicity of the open fields; and the solitude of the forest.  These are the facts and situations that stand at our backs, to which we adjust our civilization, and by which we measure ourselves. . . I hope that we may always say "The forest primeval."  I hope that some reaches of the sea may never be sailed, that some swamps may never be drained, that some mountain peaks may never be scaled, that some forests may never be harvested.  I hope that some knowledge may never be revealed." 
--Liberty Hyde Bailey (The Holy Earth, 1943)