That's Better

Man, it sure is better out in the real world, away from the clamor. (Though needless to say, it's nice to have things like electricity and so forth waiting for you upon your return...) In the woods we return to reason and faith, and all that. Make fun of Emerson and his nature mysticism or whatever it is all you want--and I guess he is a little over the top in Nature--but he gets something right. It's too bad it's so hard to think about these things clearly now. I come back and there's the Pope all over the TV, and I think: man, I just got more religion on in the woods than you can get in a thousand years from all this highly contrived pomp and whatsis. Without the defenders of religion yammering their foolishness--revenge fantasies about Hell and so forth--in my ear since youth, I might have ended up religious. Who knows? (There' s my Oppositional Defiance Disorder flaring up again. Cripes. When are they gonna come up with a pill for that?)

Or maybe I just really like trees. Whatever.