Do you sometimes feel the earth hunger?

 

Paul Gauguin The Queen’s Mill, 1881

I am an open air man—winged,
I am also an open water man—aquatic,
I want to get out, fly, swim.

How vast, how eligible, how joyful, how real, is a human being, himself or herself,
As boundless, joyous, and vital as nature itself—
These immense meadows, these interminable rivers, you are immense and interminable as they.
Do you sometimes feel the earth hunger? the desire for the dirt?
To get outdoors, into the woods, on the roads?
To roll in the grass, to cry out, to play tom fool with yourself in the free fields?
Nature, gently, by her living laws, would stimulate the mind to ever-fresh discoveries, and fresh inventions, which bring serene delight.

(...)

What is this separate nature so unnatural?

Long have we been absent,

As of the far-back days the poets tell, the Paradiso,

The straying thence, the separation long—

How long we were fooled!

But now the wandering done, the journey done,

Now we return, come home,

Abandon we ourselves to nature’s primal mode again.

Now delicious, transmuted, we swiftly escape, as nature escapes,

We are nature

      - WALT WHITMAN