_Sunday, Aug. 27_.--Another day quite free from mark'd prostration
and pain. It seems indeed as if peace and nutriment from heaven subtly
filter into me as I slowly hobble down these country lanes and across
fields, in the good air--as I sit here in solitude with Nature--open,
voiceless, mystic, far removed, yet palpable, eloquent Nature. I
merge myself in the scene, in the perfect day. Hovering over the clear
brook-water, I am sooth'd by its soft gurgle in one place, and
the hoarser murmurs of its three-foot fall in another. Come, ye
disconsolate, in whom any latent eligibility is left--come get the sure
virtues of creek-shore, and wood and field. Two months (July and August,
'77,) have I absorb'd them, and they begin to make a new man of me.
Every day, seclusion--every day at least two or three hours of freedom,
bathing, no talk, no bonds, no dress, no books, no _manners_.
Shall I tell you, reader, to what I attribute my already much-restored
health? That I have been almost two years, off and on, without drugs and
medicines, and daily in the open air. Last summer I found a particularly
secluded little dell off one side by my creek, originally a large
dug-out marl-pit, now abandon'd, fill'd, with bushes, trees, grass, a
group of willows, a straggling bank, and a spring of delicious water
running right through the middle of it, with two or three little
cascades. Here I retreated every hot day, and follow it up this summer.
Here I realize the meaning of that old fellow who said he was seldom
less alone than when alone. Never before did I get so close to Nature;
never before did she come so close to me. By old habit, I pencill'd down
from time to time, almost automatically, moods, sights, hours, tints and
outlines, on the spot. Let me specially record the satisfaction of
this current forenoon, so serene and primitive, so conventionally
exceptional, natural.
An hour or so after breakfast I wended my way down to the recesses of
the aforesaid dell, which I and certain thrushes, cat-birds, &c.,
had all to ourselves. A light south-west wind was blowing through the
tree-tops. It was just the place and time for my Adamic air-bath and
flesh-brushing from head to foot. So hanging clothes on a rail near by,
keeping old broadbrim straw on head and easy shoes on feet, havn't I had
a good time the last two hours! First with the stiff-elastic bristles
rasping arms, breast, sides, till they turn'd scarlet--then partially
bathing in the clear waters of the running brook--taking everything very
leisurely, with many rests and pauses--stepping about barefooted every
few minutes now and then in some neighboring black ooze, for unctuous
mud-bath to my feet--a brief second and third rinsing in the crystal
running waters--rubbing with the fragrant towel--slow negligent
promenades on the turf up and down in the sun, varied with occasional
rests, and further frictions of the bristle-brush--sometimes carrying
my portable chair with me from place to place, as my range is quite
extensive here, nearly a hundred rods, feeling quite secure from
intrusion, (and that indeed I am not at all nervous about, if it
accidentally happens.)
As I walk'd slowly over the grass, the sun shone out enough to show the
shadow moving with me. Somehow I seem'd to get identity with each and
every thing around me, in its condition. Nature was naked, and I was
also. It was too lazy, soothing, and joyous-equable to speculate
about. Yet I might have thought somehow in this vein: Perhaps the inner
never-lost rapport we hold with earth, light, air, trees, &c., is not to
be realized through eyes and mind only, but through the whole corporeal
body, which I will not have blinded or bandaged any more than the eyes.
Sweet, sane, still Nakedness in Nature!--ah if poor, sick, prurient
humanity in cities might really know you once more! Is not nakedness
then indecent? No, not inherently. It is your thought, your
sophistication, your tear, your respectability, that is indecent. There
come moods when these clothes of ours are not only too irksome to wear,
but are themselves indecent. Perhaps indeed he or she to whom the free
exhilarating extasy of nakedness in Nature has never been eligible (and
how many thousands there are!) has not really known what purity is--nor
what faith or art or health really is. (Probably the whole curriculum
of first-class philosophy, beauty, heroism, form, illustrated by the
old Hellenic race--the highest height and deepest depth known to
civilization in those departments--came from their natural and religious
idea of Nakedness.)
Many such hours, from time to time, the last two summers--I attribute my
partial rehabilitation largely to them. Some good people may think it a
feeble or half-crack'd way of spending one's time and thinking. May-be
it is.