Hold your hands out over the earth as over a flame. To all who love
her, who open to her the doors of their veins, she gives of her
strength, sustaining them with her own measureless tremor of
dark life. Touch the earth, love the earth, honor the earth, her
plains, her valleys, her hills, and her seas; rest your spirit in her
solitary places. For the gifts of life are the earth's and they are
given to all, and they are the songs of birds at daybreak, Orion
and the Bear, and dawn seen over ocean from the beach.

- Henry Beston (1888-1968)