Friday, February 8, 2008

Into The Woods

As I packed for my time at La Selva Biological Reserve here in Costa Rica, my thoughts, like the following writers, have been on forests, specifically rain forest. And now that I am here, there aren't words to describe it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Into the woods we return to reason and faith.
Whoso walketh in solitude,
And inhabiteth the wood,
Choosing light, wave, rock, and bird,
Before the money-loving herd,
Into that forester shall pass,
From these companions, power and grace.

…in the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in the streets or villages…in the woods we return to reason and faith.

Henry David Thoreau:
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Robert Baram:
When life's horizon is charcoal gray, I find my way into the woods where I can exchange my shopworn worldly goods for new dreams and values that have been waiting there for me to choose, somewhere in the shadows of the leaves and trees. One sees things more clearly then, and nearly understands it all: the call of the wild, the mild and tender whisper of love, the fallibility of man, the commonplace and odd, and even ... perhaps, the infallibility of God.

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