No More Learning

Not yet
subdued to man, its presence refreshes him. One who pressed forward
incessantly and never rested from his labors, who grew fast and made
infinite demands on life, would always find himself in a new country
or wilderness, and surrounded by the raw material of life. He would be
climbing over the prostrate stems of primitive forest-trees.

Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not
in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps. When,
formerly, I have analyzed my partiality for some farm which I had
contemplated purchasing, I have frequently found that I was attracted
solely by a few square rods of impermeable and unfathomable bog,--a
natural sink in one corner of it. That was the jewel which dazzled me.
I derive more of my subsistence from the swamps which surround my
native town than from the cultivated gardens in the village. There are
no richer parterres to my eyes than the dense beds of dwarf andromeda
(_Cassandra calyculata_) which cover these tender places on the
earth's surface. Botany cannot go farther than tell me the names of
the shrubs which grow there,--the high blueberry, panicled andromeda,
lambkill, azalea, and rhodora,--all standing in the quaking sphagnum.
I often think that I should like to have my house front on this mass
of dull red bushes, omitting other flower plots and borders,
transplanted spruce and trim box, even graveled walks,--to have this
fertile spot under my windows, not a few imported barrowfuls of soil
only to cover the sand which was thrown out in digging the cellar. Why
not put my house, my parlor, behind this plot, instead of behind that
meagre assemblage of curiosities, that poor apology for a Nature and
Art, which I call my front yard? It is an effort to clear up and make
a decent appearance when the carpenter and mason have departed, though
done as much for the passer-by as the dweller within. The most
tasteful front-yard fence was never an agreeable object of study to
me; the most elaborate ornaments, acorn tops, or what not, soon
wearied and disgusted me. Bring your sills up to the very edge of the
swamp, then (though it may not be the best place for a dry cellar), so
that there be no access on that side to citizens. Front yards are not
made to walk in, but, at most, through, and you could go in the back
way.
Yes, though you may think me perverse, if it were proposed to me to
dwell in the neighborhood of the most beautiful garden that ever human
art contrived, or else of a Dismal Swamp, I should certainly decide
for the swamp. How vain, then, have been all your labors, citizens,
for me!

My spirits infallibly rise in proportion to the outward dreariness.
Give me the ocean, the desert, or the wilderness! In the desert, pure
air and solitude compensate for want of moisture and fertility. The
traveler Burton says of it: "Your _morale_ improves; you become frank
and cordial, hospitable and single-minded. . . . In the desert,
spirituous liquors excite only disgust. There is a keen enjoyment in a
mere animal existence. " They who have been traveling long on the
steppes of Tartary say, "On reentering cultivated lands, the
agitation, perplexity, and turmoil of civilization oppressed and
suffocated us; the air seemed to fail us, and we felt every moment as
if about to die of asphyxia. " When I would recreate myself, I seek the
darkest wood, the thickest and most interminable and, to the citizen,
most dismal, swamp. I enter a swamp as a sacred place, a _sanctum
sanctorum_. There is the strength, the marrow, of Nature. The wildwood
covers the virgin mould, and the same soil is good for men and for
trees.