Explore "A Barn-Door Outlook" by John Burroughs on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I have a barn-door outlook because I have a hay-barn study, and I chose a hay-barn study because I wanted a barn-door outlook -- a wide, near view into fields and woods and orchards where I could be on intimate terms with the wild life about me, and with free, open-air nature.
Usually there is nothing small or stingy about a barn door, and a farmer's hay-barn puts only a very thin partition between you and the outside world. Therefore, what could be a more fit place to thresh out dry philosophical subjects than a barn floor? I have a few such subjects to thresh out, and I thresh them here, turning them over as many times as we used to turn over the oat and rye sheaves in the old days when I wielded the hickory flail with my brothers on this same barn floor.