Every walk to the woods is a religious rite, every bath in the stream is a saving ordinance. Communion service is at all hours, and the bread and wine are from the heart and marrow of Mother Earth.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the spiritual and sacred connection one can feel with nature during simple outdoor activities.
John Burroughs suggests that every experience in nature, whether walking through the woods or bathing in a stream, holds a profound significance that can be likened to a religious ritual. He believes that these interactions with the natural world are deeply nourishing and essential for the soul, presenting the idea that the essence of spirituality can be found not only in conventional religious ceremonies but in the beauty and simplicity of nature itself.
In practice
During a speech on environmental conservation, you could highlight this quote to emphasize the spiritual importance of nature.
The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intense is his life, large-brained, large-lunged, hot, ecstatic, his frame charged with buoyancy and his heart with song.
Naturalists, like poets, are born and then made only by years of painstaking observation.
Next to the laborer in the fields, the walker holds the closest relation to the soil; and he holds a closer and more vital relation to nature because he is freer and his mind more at leisure.
Some of the animals outsee man, outsmell him, outhear him, outrun him, outswim him, because their lives depend more upon these special powers than his does; but he can outwit them all because he has the resourcefulness of reason and is at home in many different fields.
Unadulterated, unsweetened observations are what the real nature-lover craves. No man can invent incidents and traits as interesting as the reality.
Writing is reporting what we saw after the vision has left us. It is catching the fish which the tide has left far up on our shores in the low and depressed places.
Is the spring coming?" he said. "What is it like?"... "It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine.
The road was frozen. The village lay quiet under the cold sky. Komako hitched up the skirt of her kimono and tucked it into her obi. The moon shone like a blade frozen in blue ice.
That's the thing about Mother Nature, she really doesn't care what economic bracket you're in.
Far away beyond the pine-woods,' he answered, in a low dreamy voice, 'there is a little garden. There the grass grows long and deep, there are the great white stars of the hemlock flower, there the nightingale sings all night long. All night long he sings, and the cold, crystal moon looks down, and the yew-tree spreads out its giant arms over the sleepers.
We cannot remember too often that when we observe nature, and especially the ordering of nature, it is always ourselves alone we are observing.
Next time you're stunned by a large moon on the horizon, bend over and view it between your legs. The effect goes away entirely.
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