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.
For me, personally, skiing holds everything. I used to race cars, but skiing is a step beyond that. It removes the machinery and puts you one step closer to the elements. And it's a complete physical expression of freedom.
The good life of any river may depend on the perception of its music; and the preservation of some music to perceive.
We are living as if we had three planets' worth of resources to live with rather than just one. We need to cut by about two-thirds our ecological footprint. For that we need one planet farming as well as one planet living - one planet farming which minimises the impact on the environment of food production and consumption, and which maximises its contribution to renewal of the natural environment
Don't you realize that the sea is the home of water? All water is off on a journey unless it's in the sea, and it's homesick, and bound to make its way home someday.
As I grew up I was fervently desirous of becoming acquainted with Nature.
Celebrate Earth Day every day.
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