Dirt, Glorious Dirt

No childhood or camping trip could be complete without it.

"When the world is mud-luscious...
When the world is puddle-wonderful..."
—e.e. cummings

"Mud is the most poetical thing in the world."
—R. H. Blyth

"The love of dirt is among the earliest of passions, as it is the latest. Mud-pies gratify one of our first and best instincts. So long as we are dirty, we are pure."
—Charles Dudley Warner

"Nature wants children to be children before men... Childhood has its own seeing, thinking and feeling."
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"Perhaps dirt is the necessary condition of beauty. "
—Aldous Huxley

"What I like about camping is you can get really dirty. Either you're all by yourself, so no one else sees you, or everyone you're with is just as dirty as you are, so nobody cares."
—Anonymous Boy Scout

"What will I do when I can no longer dig?"
—Knut Hamsun

"Dirt is good: it's an important part of a child's development."
—Anonymous

"The less there is between you and the environment, the more you appreciate the environment."
—Colin Fletcher

"In Nature there is no dirt, everything is in the right condition; the swamp and the worm, as well as the grass and the bird,—all is there for itself."
—Berthold Auerbach

"In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt."
—Margaret Atwood

"To get dirt under your fingernails, you have to touch the world."
—Christine Byl