I have been spending a Sunday of retirement in the woods. I came out
with a strange, deep sense of depression, and though I knew it was
myself and not the world that was sad, yet I could not put it away from
me. ... As I write, the wood seems full of voices, the little rustling
of leaves, the minute sounds of twigs chafing together, the cry of frogs
from the swamp so steady and monotonous that it scarcely arrests
attention. Of odours, a-plenty! Just behind me, so that by turning my
head I can see into their cool green depths, are a number of hemlock
trees, the breath of which is incalculably sweet. All the earth the very
earth itself has a good rich growing odour, pleasant to smell.

These things have been here a thousand years a million years and yet
they are not stale, but are ever fresh, ever serene, ever here to loosen
one's crabbed spirit and make one quietly happy. It seems to me I could
not live if it were not possible often to come thus alone to the woods.

...On later walking I discover that here and there on warm southern
slopes the dog-tooth violet is really in bloom, and worlds of hepatica,
both lavender and white, among the brown leaves. One of the notable
sights of the hillsides at this time of the year is the striped maple,
the long wands rising straight and chaste among thickets of
less-striking young birches and chestnuts, and having a bud of a
delicate pink--a marvel of minute beauty. A little trailing arbutus I
found and renewed my joy with one of the most exquisite odours of all
the spring; Solomon's seal thrusting up vivid green cornucopias from the
lifeless earth, and often near a root or stone the red partridge berries
among their bright leaves. The laurel on the hills is sharply visible,
especially when among deciduous trees, and along the old brown roads are
patches of fresh wintergreen. In a cleft of the hills near the top of