Riverby by John Burroughs — Read

We love nature with a different love at different periods of our lives. In youth our love is sensuous. It is not so much a conscious love as it is an irresistible attraction. The senses are keen and fresh, and they crave a field for their exercise. We delight in the color of flowers, the perfume of meadows and orchards, the moist, fresh smell of the woods. We eat the pungent roots and barks, we devour the wild fruits, we slay the small deer. Then nature also offers a field of adventure; it challenges and excites our animal spirits. The woods are full of game, the waters of fish; the river invites the oar, the breeze, the sail, the mountain-top promises a wide prospect. Hence the rod, the gun, the boat, the tent, the pedestrian club. In youth we are nearer the savage state, the primitive condition of mankind, and wild nature is our proper home. The transient color of the young bird points its remote ancestry, and the taste of youth for rude nature in like manner is the survival of an earlier race instinct.

Later in life we go to nature as an escape from the tension and turmoil of business, or for rest and recreation from study, or seeking solace from grief and disappointment, or as a refuge from the frivolity and hypocrisies of society. We lie under trees, we stroll through lanes, or in meadows and pastures, or muse on the shore. Nature "salves" our worst wounds; she heals and restores us.