The Solace Of Solitude

Northern Advocate, 16 March 1939, Page 12

The Solace Of Solitude

NATURE AND MAN

One of my friends in Wellington was much astonished when I confessed that I had not read H. D. Thoreau's “Walden." So he hastened to lend me his copy of the book, which quickly helped to widen my outlook on the world.

Thoreau, who was born In Concord. Massachusetts, in 1817, and died in 1862. is described .as a “scholargipsy. poet, naturalist, moralist and. above all, transcendentalist” by Will Dircks in the preface of the book. Here are some passages.—

Solace of Solitude. “I have never felt lonesome, or in the least oppressed by a sense of solitude, but once, and that was a few weeks after I came to .the woods, when, for an hour, I doubted if the near neighbourhood of man was not essential to a serene and healthy life. To be alone was something unpleasant. But I was at the same time conscious of a slight insanity in my mood, and seemed to foresee my recovery. In the midst of a gentle rain, while these thoughts prevailed, I was suddenly sensible of such s\Veet and beneficent society in Nature, in the very pattering of the drops, and in every sound and sight around my house, an infinite and unaccountable friendliness all at once like an atmosphere sustaining me, as made the fancied advantages of human neighbourhood insignificant, and I have never thought of them since. Every little pine needle expanded and swelled with sympathy, and befriended me. I was so distinctly made aware of the presence of something kindred to me, even in scenes which we .are accustomed to call wild and dreary, and also that the nearest blood to me and humanest was not a person nor a villager, that I thought no place could ever be strange to me again.”

* The Nature Cure. ‘The indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature, of sun, and wind, and rain, of summer and winter, such health, such cheer, they afford forever! ,and such sympathy have they ever with our race, that all Nature would be affected, and the sun’s brightness fade, and the winds would sigh humanely, and the clouds rain tears, and the woods shed their leaves and put on mourning in midsummer, if any man should ever for a just cause grieve. Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself?

“What is the pill which will keep us well, serene, contented? Not my or thy,, great-grandfather’s, but our great-grandmother Nature’s universal, vegetable, botanic medicines, by which she has kept herself young always, outlived so many old Parrs in her day, and fed her health with their decaying fatness. For my panacea, instead of one of those quack vials of a mixture dipped Acheron and the Dead Sea, which come out of there- long shallow black-schooner-looklng waggons which we sometimes see made to carry bottles, let we have a draught of undiluted morning air. Morning air! If men will not drink of this at the fountain-head of the day, why, then, we must even bottle up some and sell it in the shops, for the benefit of those who have lost their subscription ticket to morning time in this world. But remember, it will not keep quite till noonday even I in the coolest cellar, but drive out the stopples long ’ere that and follow i westward the steps of Aurora.” I

“The young man goes to the forest at first a hunter and fisher, until at last, if he has the seeds of a better life in him, he distinguishes his proper objects, as a poet or naturalist it may j be, and leaves the gun and fish-pole behind. The mass of men are still and always young in this respect. In some countries a hunting parson is no uncommon sight. Such a one might make a good shepherd’s dog. but is far from being the Good Shepherd." Real Conservation. Previous "Nature—and Man” articles have indicated that New Zealand has much to learn from the Rooseveltian conservation policy •in the United States of America. More evidence in support of that statement is given by Robert Fechner. Director of the Civilian Consexwation Corps, in "American Forests." “For five and a half years, a Legion of Youth, the Civilian Conservation Corps, has been charting a new conservation course for Uncle Sam, a course that provides for the gradual up-building of our natural resources of timber and soil." he writes. “As | a result, the nation is moving toward j an admittedly distant goal of a b.al- j anced natural resources budget. j “Under the competent supervision of I trained foresters and technicians of j federal and state departments and | agencies dealing with conservation; matters, some two million young men. i together with a sprinkling of war j veterans and Indians, have been labouring since the spring of 1933 on .a i wide variety of conservation projects. I They have planted new forests on un- I productive lands, strengthened forest j and park protection systems to re- i duce forest devastation by forest j fires, insects and disease, built new i

recreational facilities to improve the civic usefulness of our parks and forests and initiated and advanced a huge scale programme for demonstrating practical erosion control measures to farmers.

“Altogether, some 4,500 CCC camps of 200 men each have been established in national, state and private forests, on the public domain and on wildlife refuges in various parts of the country. At fhe present time more than 1500 camps, including those on Indian reservations and in Alaska, Puerto Hico, the Virgin Islands and Hawaii, are in operation. Out of these camps each day go some 300,000 enrollees to plant trees, build truck trails, erect fire detection towers,, lay telephone lines, improve grazing conditions in national forests and on the public domain, rehabilitate reclamation projects in the west and drainage ditches on farm lands, build check dams and plant quick growing trees and vegetation to protect private farm lands from soil wastage, to conserve water and prevent floods, to conduct campaigns against the white pine blister rust, the gypsy moth, bark beetles and rodents, to improve living conditions for wildlife and to do j a host of other jobs related in a ! greater or lesser degree to the national task of conserving and rebuilding America’s natural resources wealth.” 1