My whole life has been built around the adventures in books. When we are young we don't have the ability to travel to far lands, but we have the imagination--wild and verdant--to fly there in our minds. Giving a child the give of reading and a love of books means you give them the opportunity to soak in cultures they don't have access to and understand the world in a different way.
Over the years I have made a game out of reading books...what country do I want to go to? Judging a book by its cover. Reading full collections. Trying to complete all the Pulitzer winners for fiction. These were joyful, adventurous times. I learned a lot. Several years ago when everyone started dying in my family, I lost that imagination. I lost that love of reading. In all seriousness, I was lucky if I could concentrate for more than 10 minutes. My brain was a continual three ring circus I couldn't stop from spinning out of control.
On my side table, I have about 7 books that were started over the last few years and left to sit collecting dust instead of having their words devoured. This year I take my imagination back. I take the books back. I become that explorer I remember being.
The first book finished for 2018 is "Walking" by Henry David Thoreau. I found this book recently at the Library Book Sale and though I had promised myself I wasn't going to indulge on too many books since my attic was full of ones unread, I decided to get this little gem. 60 small pages. What could it hurt?
I have always been interested in Thoreau and Emerson. Both so outspoken for the things of their heart no matter what anyone thought in return. When you don't live your life like that or have the understanding how, people who do become these unicorns of society. I have always been drawn to a few periods in American History and the 1860-1910 is one that continues to find its way into my heart. The country in Civil War, people standing up for what they believe in, and the great migration West. How I love the look and sound of the Victorian age, but also the rugged, strong faces of pioneers.
Thoreau's "Walking" starts out as a tome about getting outside and seeing the surroundings...about pushing the comfortable boundaries of the time. As this small book ends, it is more about seeking to stay wild at heart, to find adventure, to feel the sun on your face, to look at what nature has given us. This book was written shortly before Thoreau died and knowing this makes the book feel like a deathbed lesson; a pleading to the generations to come to get it right.
"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."
These places we have paved over and put up buildings for people to trade stocks in, to consume home goods and frivolities. I am guilty of using these places. We go there seeking some sort of soul reparation that we don't seem to find when we'd be better walking into the woods, hiking in the desert, swimming in the ocean. That is where we will find the peace we are looking for. How easy it is to forget these things in the bustle of life.
"In short, all good things are wild and free."
Thanks for reading.
Aleathia
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