Some good people may think
it a feeble or half-crack'd way of spending one's time and thinking.
May-be it is.
THE OAKS AND I
_Sept. 5, '77._--I write this, 11 A.M., shelter'd under a dense oak by
the bank, where I have taken refuge from a sudden rain. I came down
here, (we had sulky drizzles all the morning, but an hour ago a lull,)
for the before-mention'd daily and simple exercise I am fond of--to
pull on that young hickory sapling out there--to sway and yield to its
tough-limber upright stem--haply to get into my old sinews some of
its elastic fibre and clear sap. I stand on the turf and take these
health-pulls moderately and at intervals for nearly an hour, inhaling
great draughts of fresh air. Wandering by the creek, I have three or
four naturally favorable spots where I rest--besides a chair I
lug with me and use for more deliberate occasions. At other spots
convenient I have selected, besides the hickory just named, strong and
limber boughs of beech or holly, in easy-reaching distance, for my
natural gymnasia, for arms, chest, trunk-muscles. I can soon feel
the sap and sinew rising through me, like mercury to heat. I hold
on boughs or slender trees caressingly there in the sun and shade,
wrestle with their innocent stalwartness--and _know_ the virtue
thereof passes from them into me. (Or may-be we interchange--may-be
the trees are more aware of it all than I ever thought.)
But now pleasantly imprison'd here under the big oak--the rain
dripping, and the sky cover'd with leaden clouds--nothing but the pond
on one side, and the other a spread of grass, spotted with the milky
blossoms of the wild carrot--the sound of an axe wielded at some
distant wood-pile--yet in this dull scene, (as most folks would
call it,) why am I so (almost) happy here and alone? Why would any
intrusion, even from people I like, spoil the charm? But am I alone?
Doubtless there comes a time--perhaps it has come to me--when one
feels through his whole being, and pronouncedly the emotional part,
that identity between himself subjectively and Nature objectively
which Schelling and Fichte are so fond of pressing.
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