Thoreau: Foreshadowed The Consequences Of Detaching Ourselves From The Natural World 150 Years Ago

Frye and Armstrong are clear on the consequences of our departure from secular scriptures and myth, and roughly one hundred and fifty years ago, nature writer Henry David Thoreau foreshadowed the consequences of detaching ourselves from the natural world.  He believed that man was influenced by the grandeur of nature, that the uncontrolled wild reveals to man the infinite possibilities available in the human experience and that by being present in nature we can internalize these qualities and grow more alive ourselves.  He said, “Nature is a personality so vast and universal that we have never seen one of her features.”  Thoreau thought the limitlessness contained in the wild set our spirits free from the structure and control of the civilized world, and that if we “wean” ourselves from the natural world we will become “a civilization destined to have a speedy limit” (Thoreau Walking).  But all is not lost, as Zimmer states, “the hero discovers then that he is bound (as all mankind is bound) to the maternal principle of Mother Earth, Mother Life, bound to the ever-revolving wheel of life-through-death” (Zimmer 84).  We have to remember that we are still learning and that we are proactive participants in the development of our world.