On a whim, I decided to visit Jeremy in Derry, New Hampshire for a couple days. I was getting restless at home. Luckily, for the two days I was there, the weather was unseasonably warm and essentially ideal for a little hike.
I took the bus to North Londonderry from South Station in Boston. As much as I don't think I could ever live in the woods any time soon, the atmosphere is something a city surely cannot beat. There is a gravitational element to nature, a call back of sorts, that has a way of latching on when one least expects it. Despite my love for cities, I felt a sense of comfort, a maternal coddling, emanating from the trees and the branches and the fallen leaves. I felt close to Thoreau, a writer a brilliant professor of mine assigned us to read. In his class, I recall him saying that every semester, he could single out students that he knew would benefit from reading the works of Enlightenment writers, though he would never actually tell them.
Maybe this was what he was alluding to.