“Twain, with a characteristically charming lack of gravity. was satirizing an attitude towards nature which has since come to predominate: we expect nature to do our bidding, to fall into step with us. Or we override it with technology, and render its rhythms superfluous. Our need for speed has led us to esteem the streamlined, the dynamic in all things, and that estimation has accelerated us out of sync with the natural world.”
~ Robert Macfarlane in “Mountains of the Mind”