We took a walk along part of the Buckeye trail (a trail that if taken in its entirety circles around all of Ohio) in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park to enjoy the autumn colors and find Blue Hen Falls.

Once we found the falls, another park visitor told us to keep hiking another quarter mile to find an additional off-trail waterfall.  It was a spectacularly beautiful day that transported me away from human concerns to a place of peace and quiet observation.  I think the mood of the day fits well with an Emerson quote I found recently.  It was originally published in his work Nature  in 1836.

To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child.

The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food.

In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows. Nature says, he is my creature, and maugre all his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me.

Not the sun or the summer alone, but every hour and season yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind, from breathless noon to grimmest midnight. Nature is a setting that is equally well a comic or a mourning piece.

In good health,the air is a cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear.

In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period so ever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth.

Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith.

There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair.

Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, –all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.

The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty.  In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages.

In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.

Wow. These words become clearer and ring truer each time I read through them.

I hope you are able to see nature through your eyes and heart.

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