The Trees in My Forest
A Forest Ramble
I have lately been surveying the Walden woods so extensively and minutety that I now see it mapped in my mind's eye--as indeed, on paper-as so many men's wood-lots . . . I fear this particular dry knowledge may affect my imagination and fancy, that it will not be easy to see so much wildness and native vigor there as formerly. No thicket will seem unexplored now that I know that a stake and stones may be found in it.
-- Henry David Thoreau
I'm not much of a hiker of paths, either in a park or elsewhere. Being encumbered like a beast of burden by carrying a pack of goods and tools, and being confined along a trail that leads to some predetermined destination, makes me dig in my heels. I like exploring. I like not knowing when and where I'll end up. That way I get easily diverted and find the new, the unexpected. To learn to know something is less to gaze upon it from known paths and vistas than to walk around it and see it obliquely.
I ramble in my home woods at different times and circumstances. I've struck out in the middle of a blizzard. Onc ... read full excerpt from Trees in My Forest, The ebook
