Is It Change or the Wild That Counts? Or Both?

Today I ran across a book of poetry and quotes about wilderness that I made in response to a canoe trek I took in Minnesota's Boundary Waters back in 1970.  Nearly 50 years ago--hard to believe so much time has passed in my life since then.  It was a very formative time in my life, influencing much of what I have become.  As I was reading the quotes I chose from Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, Theodore Roosevelt, and others, I was surprised to find one unsigned poem.  I have a feeling I wrote it--otherwise it would be identified with the author's name. It was a long time ago, 1970, but as I re-read it, I could tell the words had originally come from within me. And I was surprised to find that my 18-year-old mind had thought such deep things.  But then, maybe not so surprising, for I was a very philosophical person back then.  Maybe still am.  So here it is.

It's original title was "Is It Man That Counts?"

'How can you be so no-caring?' a boy demanded,
Staring into the old man's eyes;
'Do you want all our life to die
And leave nothing to show our lives ranged?'

'Every animal dies,' the old chief would say
And gaze with deep-seeing silent eyes
About the village around them.
'Timeless is not changeless,' he would repeat.

But a boy's heart-strength is different
And his restless feet thus wandered,
Searching over forest-depth and countryside,
His mind straining with searches just as deep.

He drank in the wildness 'round him,
Knowing in his animal-part
It had no time, no beginning,
And no end?  Their village

Already was shrinking, the forest depths
Pricked by hard, cold disruption,
A steeling chill so unlike winter--
More senseless--as rape or pillage.

And as the Wild spread its winter
Blanket, with its natural death,
He prayed that this might be
The end--to die as wild things died.

Then as the cold and steel creeping in
On them increased its breath to a roar,
He knew it wasn't death that was coming--
Just as the old man had tried

To tell.  It was what the Wild was really
Made of; so though their villages--
And all men--passed; the Wild would
Sustain itself--timeless because it changed.