Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) founded the 19th-century American philosophy of Transcendentalism. Nature, written when Emerson was only thirty-three, was the first time he coalesced his thinking into a treatise. His writing, more than 200 years old, was highly original and, at the same time, familiar. That is the gift of Emerson.

Emerson believed humans were connected to nature (by "nature," he meant that which exists but isn't human), and we should look to this greater connection, this unity of all beings. In doing so, we "transcend" our otherwise finite and lonely experience and touch what Mary Oliver, a disciple of Emerson, called "the eternal."

All the world is taken in through the eye, to reach the soul, where it becomes more, representative of a realm deeper than appearances: a realm ideal and sublime, the deep stillness that is, whose whole proclamation is the silence and the lack of material instance in which, patiently and radiantly, the universe exists. [...] This is the crux of Emerson, who does not advance straight ahead but wanders to all sides of an issue; who delivers suggestions with a kindly gesture - who opens doors and tells us to look at things for ourselves.
From Mary Oliver's "Emerson: An Introduction."

"If a man would be alone, let him look at the stars," wrote Emerson. Read more about our deep connection to the stars. Photograph by photographer and conservationist Joshua Burch.

Surprisingly, Nature contains more disjoined notes rather than a tract of beliefs, much like Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, a work that also proposed the distinction between solitude and loneliness.

Emerson begins with these lines:

To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! ... But every night come out these envoys of beauty and light the universe with their admonishing smile. The stars awaken a certain reverence because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression when the mind is open to their influence.

 The ambling nature of Emerson's writing owes much to his vocation, at least for the early part of his life, as an itinerant preacher, used to the crest and trough of pervasive soliloquy. His idea of animals and nature bearing witness and providing us acknowledgment is echoed in the science of why we keep pets and conservation arguments about why we must protect endangered species and appreciate all animals, even livestock. The connection between humans and nature is deeply embedded and beautifully entwined.

Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good or 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 soever of life, is always a child.

These lines, "I am glad to the brink of fear," is wildly precise and quite expansive. Understanding what Emerson meant, and feeling the same, is one of life's richest rewards. A deep fear comes at us from nature; it could be many things: its precariousness and our immateriality. It is nature's supreme indifference to us as individuals or species. Humans are not accustomed to such irreverence. "Nature is not always tricked in holiday attire," Emerson reminds us softly.

"White Anne" Fittonia from RHS Gardens Wisley. Photograph by Ellen Vrana.

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 a 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.

What is the mind of a child as it registers the world? Unbridled, untethered, and wholly susceptible to nature's smallest tricks and turns. And in this delight, Emerson instructs, we find our greatest depth of feeling and connectedness.

The greatest delight that the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to them. The waving of boughs in the storm is new to me and old. It takes me by surprise and yet is not unknown. Its effect is like that of a higher thought or a better emotion coming over me when I deemed I was thinking justly or doing right.

"I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. I can imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside which also have a beauty." wrote physicist Richard Feynman. Photograph by Ellen Vrana.

Emerson was many things, an expression of our wishes and fears and a mentor to Walt Whitman, Oliver, and countless others. Whitman's Leaves of Grass which Emerson called "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed." With Emerson's support, Whitman's work was recognized and hailed as an exceptional work of poetry.

The older I become, the more Emerson's writing increases in clarity. The closer I meet him where he stands rather than wrangling his wisdom to suit my fledgling mental structure.

Emerson would not turn from the world, which was domestic, and social, and collective, and required action. Neither would he swerve from that unperturbable inner radiance, mystical, forming no rational word but drenched with passionate and untranslatable song. A man should want to be domestic, steady, moral, politic, reasonable. He should want also to be subsumed, whirled, to know himself as dust in the fingers of the wind. This was his supple, unbreakable faith.
From Mary Oliver's "Emerson: An Introduction."

Pair this elegant, heartening writing with Emerson's lesser-known but deeply felt poetry, Henry David Thoreau's more disciplined journal of thoughts while sailing up the Merrimack River, John Clare's poetry of walking and wandering among the descript fields, or my tour of the pleasures of flowers as close companions.