Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882),
Nature: Addresses and Lectures (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1903), pp. 9-10:
In the woods, too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life is always a child. In the woods is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my eyes), which nature cannot repair.
Eliot Porter, Path in Woods
