"What noble emotions dilate the mortal as he enters into the counsels of the creation, and feels by knowledge the privilege to BE!"
This selection from Emerson and his whole Nature is a lot to grasp at times. To be so in tune and ecstatic about nature is something we all feel from time to time but usually not on an everyday basis. When one goes to some exotic island or to a lush park, the feelings of awe and true privilege are there, but not in our general surroundings. This is especially true if one lives in the city, like I have my whole life.
Yesterday while walking home from school(normal walking, not my walking tour), I tried to look at the little nature around and my ideas on it were. While walking from Loyola to Tulane and then one Broadway, there wasn't much besides fairly small tress and nicely trimmed grass. This allows us to have slight glances at nature and remember what it looks like. I understood this, thinking there had to be roads and house is this neighborhood and it was lucky enough that some of the trees were kept since so many are cut down in building. I thought about how young they looked though; not that tall or with a thick trunk. I did notice though that many had exposed roots. When looking at these roots, I remembered my times on my grandpa's property in the hill country of Texas playing around those think roots, hiding behind them and trying not to trip. Roots of trees are the visual origin of the tree for us and of truly so much more. These roots grow trees for us to play on, look at, allow for our breathing and those this is completely sacrilegious to say in a "green" world, they allow for paper making to write these beautiful and life changing novels and poems we read.
When thinking of this, I realized even the smallest parts of nature can bring us back to moments in our lives that truly touched us and then really let us feel a connection to nature. Maybe when we are not in Hawaii or Alaska or other breath taking places, we must find the small pieces of nature we see and relate it to ourselves and our experiences to find connections. Though this sounds self-centered, it is in this connection that we realize how amazing this nature is and the incredible entity it is.
As a Catholic, I found myself feeling such gratitude to the God I believe in. Like Emerson said, whatever your "counsels of creation" happen to be, you relate it back to that; whether a God or simply the great creator nature itself.
It is through this knowledge of my connection to my "counsel of creation" and nature that did make me feel privileged to be. Privileged to be alive.
I am very much interested in how many times "nature" is invoked through childhood memory... as if after childhood nature takes on a different meaning, loses place in one' life, etc. Moreover, that it is only in childhood that "nature" inspires seems to suggest a kind of weakening of either ourselves or the natural world. Which is it, I wonder? And is it important to try to reconnect w/ the natural world "as if" we were children?
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