And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.
Every morning, arising from the death of sleep, the happy plants and all our fellow animal creatures great and small, and even the rocks, seemed to be shouting, “Awake, awake, rejoice, rejoice, come love us and join in our song. Come! Come!
Beauty beyond thought everywhere, beneath, above, made and being made forever.
But we are governed more than we know, and most when we are wildest.
Come to the woods, for here is rest,... climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.
The soft light of morning falls upon ripening forests of oak and elm, walnut and hickory, and all Nature is thoughtful and calm.
If people in general could be got into the woods, even for once, to hear the trees speak for themselves, all difficulties in the way of forest preservation would vanish.
But think of the hearts of these whales, beating warm against the sea, day and night, through dark and light, on and on for centuries; how the red blood must rush and gurgle in and out, bucketfuls, barrelfuls at a beat!
Go where we will, all the world over, we seem to have been there before.
But it is in the darkest nights, when storms are blowing and the agitated waves are phosphorescent, that the most impressive displays are made.
As if nothing that does not obviously make for the benefit of man had any right to exist; as if our ways were God’s ways.
Wherever we go in the mountains, or indeed in any of God’s wild fields, we find more than we seek.
Why should man value himself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation? And what creature of all that the Lord has taken the pains to make is not essential to the completeness of that unit – the cosmos?
As we sat by the camp-fire the brightness of the sky brought on a long talk with the Indians about the stars; and their eager childlike attention was refreshing to see as compared with the decent, deathlike apathy of weary civilized people, in whom natural curiosity has been quenched in toil and care and poor, shallow comfort.
Though it is 2500 feet high, the glacier flowed over its ground as a river flows over a boulder; and since it emerged from the icy sea as from a sepulcher it has been sorely beaten with storms; but from all those deadly, crushing, bitter experiences comes this delicate life and beauty, to teach us that what we in our faithless ignorance and fear call destruction is creation.
In our best times everything turns into religion, all the world seems a church and the mountains altars.
Several times Muir was threatened with a successful business career, but each time he escaped again into the wilderness.
Surely a better time must be drawing nigh when godlike human beings will become truly humane, and learn to put their animal fellow mortals in their hearts instead of on their backs or in their dinners. In the mean time we may just as well as not learn to live clean, innocent lives instead of slimy, bloody ones.
An eagle soaring above a sheer cliff, where I suppose its nest is, makes another striking show of life, and helps to bring to mind the other people of the so-called solitude – deer in the forest caring for their young; the strong, well-clad, well-fed bears; the lively throng of squirrels; the blessed birds, great and small, stirring and sweetening the groves; and the clouds of happy insects filling the sky with joyous hum as part and parcel of the down-pouring sunshine.
When I was a child in Scotland, I was fond of everything that was wild, and all my life I’ve been growing fonder and fonder of wild places and wild creatures. Fortunately, around my native town of Dunbar, by the stormy North Sea, there was no lack of wildness...