Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 April 1884 — T. W. Higginson on Outdoor Life. [ARTICLE]

T. W. Higginson on Outdoor Life.

It is very certain that all the physical universe takes the sido of health and activity, wooing us forth unto nature, imploring us hourly, and in unsuspected ways, to receive her blessed breath into body and soul, and share in her youth. For this are summer and winter, seed-time and harvest given; for this do violet and bloodroot come, and gentian and witch-hazel go; for this do changing sunsets make yon path between the pines a gateway into heaven; for this does day shut us down within the loneliness of its dome of light, and night, lifting it, make us free of the vast fellowship of stars; for this do pale meteors wander nightly, soft as wind-blown blossoms, down the air; for this do silent snows transform the wintery woods to feathery things that seem tod light to linger, and yet too vast to take their flight; for this does all the fair creation answer to every dream or mood of man, so that we receive but what we give. All is offered to us to call us from our books and our trade, and summon us into nature’s health and joy. To study, with the artist, the least of her beauties; to explore, with the man of science, the smallest of her wonders; or even simply to wander among her exhaustless resources, like a child, needing no interest unborrowed from the eye—this feeds body, and brain, and heart, and soul together.