… And God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our own likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every other living thing that moves upon the earth. … And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.

I rode through the “Schroon Country” with a man who has probably done as much as anyone to desolate this whole region … As league after league of utter desolation unrolled before and around us, we became more and more silent. At last my companion exclaimed: “This whole country's gone to the devil, hasn't it?” I asked what was, more than anything else, the reason or cause of it. After long thought he replied: “It all comes to this – it was because there was nobody to think about it, or to do anything about it. […]