She Is Not a Man, But a Retreat From Him

I’ve been finding myself being drawn to the woods more often lately. There’s something calming about walking into dense woods with no other person around and just taking in the world around you. I feel like everyone should get outside and experience nature away from society and all the noise that comes with modern life. I think that it would make a lot of people happier and be able to find peace. All the problems in the world seem to fade away when you’re out in the woods. Sometimes, I feel like we as people create this world with all this structure, rules, and things that aren’t even a tangible thing. Nature is fluid in a way that sort of forces you to go whatever way she wants. You might follow a path through the woods and not end up going the direction you intended because the path veers off. You have to be adaptable to your surroundings in a way. Below are some photos I took recently out in the Maine Woods as well as a quote by Henry David Thoreau.

“I love Nature partly because she is not man, but a retreat from him. None of his institutions control or pervade her. There a different kind of right prevails. In her midst I can be glad with an entire gladness. if this world were all man, I could not stretch myself, I should lose all hope. He is constraint, she is freedom to me. He makes me wish for another world. She makes me content with this." — Henry David Thoreau’s journals