“Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children’s children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance.” ― Theodore Roosevelt
I think of Roosevelt often when I’m in the Dakotas. He loved the area and was renewed and strengthened by his time here. He understood, perhaps more than any other modern President, that our natural wonders were, in fact, sacred places, and that protecting them was not simply a matter of principal, but of purpose. That future generations not only deserved, but needed to see, these places in their wild and untarnished beauty. And that no development, or greed, or modern advances of men should ever be able to threaten their timeless beauty.
In that regard, he was my kind of guy.