The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

November 17Natural Wonderment

As the leaf is to the tree, so is the individual to society. Tear away a single leaf from the towering crest, and the trunk does not seem to suffer: nevertheless, one small thread withers, one channel dries up, one source of beauty and use fails; and, from that moment, a certain sidewise tendency marks the growth.

Caroline Healey Dall—The College, the Market, and the Court (1867)

Trees turn up often in all forms of literature used as strong metaphors for things not fully understood.

Authors of the era, such as Thoreau, Bryant, Cooper, and Emerson, wrote frequently about the sacredness of nature. None claimed to understand the source of their spiritual experience, but Thoreau, in particular, believed that trees held the secret.

Throughout his over two million words in journals, he repeatedly noted the knowledge possessed by trees.

Author Richard Higgins used Thoreau's journals to write a book dedicated to Thoreau's fascination with trees. In Thoreau and the Language of Trees, he notes the following:

The trees, he wrote, knew things that he did not and would never know. “You are so far in them as they are far before you,” he wrote on January 30, 1841. “Their secret is where you are not and where your feet can never carry you.”

Throughout this book we've touched on the importance of using our outer experiences to help us forge better inner experiences. Perhaps a sense of wonder about the nature of trees holds the ultimate potential for such an ...