The Swamp or “Blood of the Earth”

Yes, though you may think me perverse, if it were proposed to me to dwell in the neighborhood of the most beautiful garden that ever human art contrived, or else of a dismal swamp, I should certainly decide for the swamp…I enter a swamp as a sacred place. There is the strength, the marrow, of Nature.

The Patron Saint of Swamps: Henry David Thoreau, from ‘Walking’, May 1862.

We are not Separate

The American nature lover, philosopher, and writer Henry Thoreau believed that “A town is saved, not more by the righteous men in it than by the woods and swamps that surround it.” Out of such towns grow poets and philosophers because nature is a teacher, a mother, and a guide. We are not separate from the meadows, rivers, and trees. We are nature too. And we become better beings when we spend time in nature.

The Celtic Druids spent 20 years in solitude in the woods before they could become priests. They were the educated class. These priests were revered as wise. When people sought to make sense of their lives and the world they lived in, they turned to them.

Socrates Said

Socrates said that the ideal habitat for men was a village surrounded by fields and forests and never a big city where men could not think among the press of swarms of other minds. “In the small hamlets, thoughts grow large and steadfast and philosophy can flourish as the vine and produce the fruit that gives exhilaration to the thoughts of men.” “The bedrooms of the rural places bred men. The chambers of the cities bred sterile perversions. Athens that small city bred Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and all the sciences. But Rome produced the ambitious”.

The abiding truth is that we are bound up with the life all around us. If we are not the wind, trees, rivers, and stones now, we will someday become part of them. There is more to cherish, and more questions unanswered in the mountains, woodlands, and bogs, than in the society of people.

And swamps contain water which for Thoreau is “the most living part of nature. This is the blood of the earth.”