No More Learning

I am singularly refreshed in winter when I hear of service-berries,
poke-weed, juniper. Is not heaven made up of these cheap summer
glories? There is a singular health in those words, Labrador and East
Main, which no desponding creed recognizes. How much more than Federal
are these States! If there were no other vicissitudes than the
seasons, our interest would never tire. Much more is adoing than
Congress wots of. What journal do the persimmon and the buckeye keep,
and the sharp-shinned hawk? What is transpiring from summer to winter
in the Carolinas, and the Great Pine Forest, and the Valley of the
Mohawk? The merely political aspect of the land is never very
cheering; men are degraded when considered as the members of a
political organization. On this side all lands present only the
symptoms of decay. I see but Bunker Hill and Sing-Sing, the District
of Columbia and Sullivan's Island, with a few avenues connecting them.
But paltry are they all beside one blast of the east or the south wind
which blows over them.

In society you will not find health, but in nature. Unless our feet at
least stood in the midst of nature, all our faces would be pale and
livid. Society is always diseased, and the best is the most so.
There
is no scent in it so wholesome as that of the pines, nor any fragrance
so penetrating and restorative as the life-everlasting in high
pastures. I would keep some book of natural history always by me as a
sort of elixir, the reading of which should restore the tone of the
system. To the sick, indeed, nature is sick, but to the well, a
fountain of health. To him who contemplates a trait of natural beauty
no harm nor disappointment can come. The doctrines of despair, of
spiritual or political tyranny or servitude, were never taught by such
as shared the serenity of nature. Surely good courage will not flag
here on the Atlantic border, as long as we are flanked by the Fur
Countries. There is enough in that sound to cheer one under any
circumstances. The spruce, the hemlock, and the pine will not
countenance despair. Methinks some creeds in vestries and churches do
forget the hunter wrapped in furs by the Great Slave Lake, and that
the Esquimaux sledges are drawn by dogs, and in the twilight of the
northern night the hunter does not give over to follow the seal and
walrus on the ice. They are of sick and diseased imaginations who
would toll the world's knell so soon. Cannot these sedentary sects do
better than prepare the shrouds and write the epitaphs of those other
busy living men? The practical faith of all men belies the preacher's
consolation. What is any man's discourse to me, if I am not sensible
of something in it as steady and cheery as the creak of crickets? In
it the woods must be relieved against the sky. Men tire me when I am
not constantly greeted and refreshed as by the flux of sparkling
streams. Surely joy is the condition of life.