You shall never see elsewhere...
I'm reading The California Deserts: An Ecological Rediscovery by Bruce Pavlik. There is a chapter on the history of human interaction with California's deserts, and Mr. Pavlik has an excerpt from the writings of John Van Dyke, a professor who visited the California deserts and in 1902 wrote: The desert has gone a-begging for a word of praise these many years. It never had a sacred poet; it has in me only a lover. Is then this great expanse of sand and rock the beginning of the end? Is that the way our globe shall perish? Who can say? Nature plans the life, she plans the death; it must be that she plans aright. For death may be the culmination of all character; and life but the process of development. If so, then not in vain these wastes of sand. The harsh destiny, the life-long struggle which they have imposed upon all the plants and birds, and animals have been but as the stepping-stones of character... Not in vain these wastes of sand. And this time not because