Henry David Thoreau once wrote: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
The best life is that spent in solitude with true beauty. The beauty of raying sunlight filtering warmly through a leafy ceiling, the beauty of birdsong greeting an ear, the beauty of leaves shifting gracefully underfoot, the beauty of a breeze scented with pungent sweetgum. It’s the world our world forgot, and it’s where I go to escape our world.
The real world is nearby geographically, but oddly far away too, like something rarely brought to mind. I needed to go and visit the world of true beauty that I was long a friend of.
Over the rusted metal gate, and on toward the freedom of a gentler life I moved. Jumping a fence was an unusual experience for me, and one I would begrudgingly repeat when, all too soon, it came time once again for me to leave the beauty here and go back to the life of responsibility. But for a while I was free to blaze a trail, as everyone should, in search of the elusive true beauty found only in the creation that usually God alone touches.
The leaves and sticks that had once formed a canopy overhead now wrestled at the floor, making a sort of ballad out of each footstep. The cycle would soon start again, I knew, as I could see the tiniest buds appearing at the end of dead-looking tree limbs. Here every twig and brittle, fallen leaf could sing a song with as much might as an opera; sound perception changes in the woods, and even delicate sounds seem strong and deliberate.
Life is truer here. The daily grind feels less real than this life of trees and squirrels, branches and sparrows. The truth of these woods would set anyone free, and true life is inevitable in this place. It is nearly Eden — beautiful, perfect, paradise. The ordinary, busy life I had recently left behind seemed long ago and far off, yet it was too easily remembered. The real, true life of the woods I could not be a part of forever. It was a dream, glorious and vivid while it lasted, but still a dream. Sometimes life is like that, with dreams more lifelike than reality, and reality more dream-like.
Reaching the creek, adding a new strain to the symphony around me, I knew I had reached the end of this beautiful dream. Dutifully, though a bit sulkily, I turned back to retrace the now familiar steps to real life, or the dream that most people call real life. Still, there was no need for concern.
I had perspective now.
I knew where the real world was, in its dream-like beauty and grace. I had found the truth of this world: The real things are the ones society regards as wastes of time, the things that are felt even more strongly than they are seen, and the fake things are the ones we attend to daily. I would not forget the truth because, in the end, true beauty had succeeded in its quest: It had set me free.
