Ralph Waldo Emerson on the importance of wilderness

    Of what importance is wilderness? For one thing, it is there that we return to reason and faith, so often smothered in city living. For another, egotism leaves us when we enter wilderness. As Emerson tells it:

In the woods is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel nothing can befall me in life - no disgrace, no calamity . . . which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground - my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space - all mean egotism vanishes. (Quoted from Emerson’s essay, Nature.)
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    For a brief biography of Ralph Waldo Emerson, click here.