Public wilderness

 Thoreau thought each place should have a public wilderness: 

I think that each town should have a park, or rather a primitive forest, of five hundred or a thousand acres, either in one body or several, where a stick should never be cut for fuel, nor for the navy, nor to make wagons, but stand and decay for higher uses — a common possession forever, for instruction and recreation.

 

He asked why we would fund public education and destroy the best school.

• Source: Henry David Thoreau, Wild Fruits, edited by Bradley P. Dean; New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000, p. 238.