Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth
– William Wordsworth, from Tintern Abbey
Some of my oldest, fondest, and most cherished memories are rooted in nature. For as long as I can remember I have always loved being in the woods, climbing trees, splashing in the creeks and river beds, and listening to the birds and animals of the forest. And my love for the wilderness lives on with me today just as much as it did when I was young, if not even more so. So it was surprising to me when my dad suggested I write a post about my connection to nature that I hadn’t though of that already. In fact my first reaction was, “Well what would I say?” And then I stopped for a moment, contemplated, and was shocked at just how many connections there really are for me with my writing, my love of literature, and my life in the wilderness. If you’ve read any of my posts here on this website you may already be aware that I love the American Transcendentalists and the English Romantics. Both of those literary movements greatly shaped me, my values, and my studies in college, and guess what they both have in common (among other things)….NATURE!
I remember sitting on the first floor of the Cathedral of Learning at the University of Pittsburgh, in one of their historically unique rooms – I think it was the Yugoslav room if I’m not mistaken. I was taking a course with one of my favorite professors – I have many favorite professors – on 19th century English literature. Arguably the apogee of humanity’s literary efforts is found in 19th century England. The course began with Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Lyrical Ballads. Immediately I was struck with everything Wordsworth had to say and the way in which he said it. I read and re-read all of his poems and his Preface to Lyrical Ballads where he explained his philosophy and approach to poetry. In case you aren’t aware Wordsworth was heavily invested in nature and the wilderness both on earth and in man’s imagination. He lived in the Lake District and wrote many poems about the area. His work and his philosophy was grounded in solitude, nature, human memory, and quiet reflection. He is a profound poet who always arrests me whenever I read or study his life and works.
Apparently Wordsworth wrote Tintern Abbey in his head while on a long walk along the river Wye. The poem is complex and has many aspects to it (I highly recommend you read the full poem here), but at it’s core is landscape. Nature is the mode by which he recalls himself as a younger man five years earlier. “The beauteous forms” of nature and landscape are also the method by which he re-members himself to his boyhood days of innocence, and as he admits in the poem, how “in lonely rooms, ‘mid the din of towns and cities, I have owed to them in hours of weariness.” Finally, in a very romantic verse, he explains to his sister, Dorothy, how her beauty and grace, her very face and countenance, are also a remembrance of this natural beauty and “wild ecstasies” so that whenever he looks upon her he is vivified and re-inspired. Not only this but he imparts to her that she herself in her own “after years…shall be a mansion of lovely forms, thy memory a dwelling place for all sweet sounds and harmonies.” In this way Wordsworth both recognizes the beauty of the natural wilds before him as well as the imprint and impression of that beauty upon his mind and upon the body and personage of his sister. He then further implores to her that she too can remember these beauties just as he does as she ages and as life changes all around her. Memory and “the mind of man” is power for Wordsworth. They overcome and rise above the “darkness and amid the many shapes of joyless daylight.” So long as this poet has experienced the beauty and serenity in the wilds he has traversed, so long as he has those he loves nearby him, and most especially so long as he can re-member all of these events and splendors, then whenever he so wishes he can (and does) overcome all the weight of the world. The combination of his experience, his memory, and his body gestate into a kind of touchstone that he can call upon and harken back to at any time, freeing him of the pain and suffering the world carries.
Tintern Abbey is a special and unique poem. It has its roots in a long tradition of pastoral, landscape poetry which dates as far back as the Ancient Greeks, finds a major height in Virgil’s The Georgics written in Ancient Rome under the Emperor Augustus, and then becomes prolific again throughout the 18th century in England and America for a whole host of fascinating reasons both political, philosophical, and poetic. But Tintern Abbey takes this form of poetry to a new height in that the poem ushers us to a land beyond the landscape itself. Rather than follow the long history of pastoral poetry and overlay the landscape with an impending empire or the flaws of the current government or the value of a certain community or people, Tintern Abbey directs us inwardly to a more personal, private, and amorphous terrain where Wordsworth discovered, “a motion and a spirit, that impels all thinking things, all objects of all thought, and rolls through all things.” The poem then not just transcends the landscape, it overrides all politics, government, and the woes of mankind. This inner landscape is uncovered by the poet through embracing and loving “the meadows and the woods and mountains.” And it is precisely this internal movement, this private and personal revelation, that characterizes English Romanticism of the early 19th century all the way through to today. It is still how each and every one of us perceives the role, function, and purpose of writing, poetry, and art today. We are all romantics even though we may not know it. Wordsworth absolutely charted new domains upon the minds of men, and revolutionized all of literature for 200 years and counting. But as this new trend in literature and poetry became to take shape, not all men found such beauty and love and tranquility as Wordsworth did when they too looked within themselves and recalled their boyhood days and the landscapes all around them. In fact it is no coincidence that during this same time period we begin to see the rise of Gothic horror literature in such famous works as Frankenstein, Hansel and Gretel, and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Not all that rests within the mind of man is flowers and rivers and lovely meadows, but perhaps we will save that conversation for another day. As you can see all of Western culture has been deeply and fundamentally influenced by the introspective and perhaps at times solipsistic tendencies of William Wordsworth.
And so as I look upon myself, my own boyhood days in the woods, and my current life now, I can clearly see deep similarities and strong parallels with my dear friend William Wordsworth. I notice how everywhere I have lived I have always discovered and gravitated to the woods and beauties of the area, wandering through them, exploring them, breathing them deeply into my lungs, blood, and bones. I see how even today I re-collect my adventures and journeys through the wilds of the great Sierras, the sacred lands of the Grand Canyon, and the precious beauty of the Tohickon where I grew up. Nature is a part of me, and I a part of Nature. Wordsworth, even before I ever read him, had his gentle hand upon me, guiding me through the woods just as the sprites and nymphs of the forest guided him some two centuries earlier. And now, in my more adult days, the blessing and treasure of my experience does not escape me either, nor the power and force that beauty, nature, and most especially my memory holds to inspire and render unto all of us liberation now and forever more.