In the solitude and stillness of Nature, I receive the equivalent of what others get by churchgoing and prayer.

"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 unspeakably mean [mundane].  No amount of gold or respectability would in the least redeem it . . . But alone in distant woods or fields, . . . I come to myself.  I once more feel myself grandly related, and that 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 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, plants, snow, . . . and it is as if I had come to an open window . . . I am not satisfied with ordinary windows.  I must have a true skylight.  My true skylight is on the outside of the village . . . This stillness, solitude, wildness of nature . . . This 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."

Henry David Thoreau

Photo: Marsh-marigold meadow, Flat Tops Wilderness, CO; June 9, 2012