Such Affection

Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours,
Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children,
as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned
from her breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man.

~Henry David Thoreau, quoted in Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv.

Picture found here.