To him who has once tasted the reckless independence,
the haughty self-reliance, the sense of irresponsible
freedom, which the forest life engenders, civilization
thenceforth seems flat and stale. Its pleasures are
insipid, its pursuits wearisome, its
conventionalities, duties, and mutual dependences
alike tedious and disgusting. The wilderness --
rough, harsh, inexorable -- has charms more potent in
their seductive influence than all the lures of luxury
and sloth. And often he on whom it has cast its Magic
finds no heart to dissolve the spell, and remains a
wanderer and an Ishmaelite to the hour of his death.

-- Francis Parkman