In Greenland the environment of nature dominates; and into the sparse settlements along its rim of shore, into men's thoughts and moods and lives has entered something of the eternal peacefulness of the wilderness. It had to be. Man is less entity than consequence and his being is but a derivation of a less subjective world, a synthesis of what he calls the elements. Man's very spirit is a sublimation of cosmic energy and worships it as God; and every faculty to feel, perceive and know serves only to relate him closer to what is. God is the Father, man his co-natural progeny; and thus the elements at work become for man the pattern for his conduct, the look and feel and sound of them -- sunshine and storm, peace and turmoil, lightning and thunder and the quiet interludes -- the formulae for his poor imitative moods and their expression. But in the wilderness invariably peace predominates; and seeing the quiet uneventfulness of lives lived there, their ordered lawlessness, the loveliness and grace of bearing and of look and smile that it so often breeds and fosters we may indeed "lament what man has made of man" and hold those circumstances of congestion which are called civilization to be less friendly to beauty than opposed to it.
            . . . creation is still going on...the creative forces are as great and as active today as they have ever been. . . tomorrow's morning will be as heroic as any of the world. Creation is here and now. So near is man to the creative pageant, so much a part is he of the endless and incredible experiment, that any glimpse he may have will be but the revelation of a moment, a solitary note heard in a symphony thundering through debatable existences of time. Poetry is as necessary to comprehension as science. It is as impossible to live without reverence as it is without joy.
            And what of Nature itself, you say -- that callous and cruel engine, red in tooth and fang? Well, it is not so much of an engine as you think. As for "red in tooth and fang," whenever I hear the phrase or its intellectual echoes I know that some passer-by has been getting life from books. It is true that there are grim arrangements. Beware of judging them by whatever human values are in style. As well expect Nature to answer to your human values as to come into your house and sit in a chair. The economy of nature, its checks and balances, its measurements of competing life -- all this is its great marvel and has an ethic of its own. Live in Nature, and you will soon see that for all its non-human rhythm, it is no cave of pain. As I write I think of my beloved birds of the great beach, and of their beauty and their zest of living. And if there are fears, know also that Nature has its unexpected and unappreciated mercies.

            - Henry Beston, The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod