"There is nothing so sanative, so poetic, as a walk in the woods and fields . . . Nothing so inspires me and excites such serene and profitable thought. The objects are elevating. In the street and in society, I am almost invariably cheap and dissipated, my life is unspeakable mean . . . But alone in distant woods and fields, . . . I come to myself. I once more feel myself grandly related, and that [the] cold and solitude are friends of mine. I suppose that this value, in my case, is equivalent to what others get by churchgoing and prayer. I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home. I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful . . . I come out to these solitudes, where the problem of existence is simplified. I get away a mile or two from the town into the stillness and solitude of nature, with rocks, trees, weeds . . . It is as if I had come to an open window. I see out and around myself. Our skylights are thus far away from the ordinary resorts of men. I am not satisfied with ordinary windows. I must have a true skylight, [where] . . . I am expanded, recreated, enlightened . . . It chances that the sociable, the town and county, or the farmers' club does not prove a skylight to me . . . They bore me. The man I meet with is not often so instructive as the silence he breaks. This stillness, solitude, wildness of nature . . . is what I go out to seek. It is as if I always met in those places some grand, serene, immortal, infinitely encouraging, though invisible, companion, and walked with him. There at last my nerves are steadied."
Henry David Thoreau
Photo: Golden Banner blooms, a vast sky, and Arthur's Rock, Lory State Park, May 1, 2012
No comments:
Post a Comment