We studied William Wordsworth outdoors, because on a warm October day he would not have had his poetry studied within four walls under artificial light. We made sense of his poetry in the open under blue sky and rustling leaves, but my mind was perversely dull and sun-blinded. I wrote down phrases restlessly, haphazardly, and squinted in the sunlight when I spoke in discussion.
Wordsworth saw society slipping into dependency on shock value, and wanted to preserve the simple pleasures.
Wordsworth found pleasure and contentment in nature.
I struggled to keep still my wind-rustled notebook pages and wriggled my slowly burning feet. Was it perverse, to find it difficult to rejoice in Wordsworth while wearing poorly chosen black combat boots?
And what would Wordsworth think of the earbuds in my ears, as I walked into the woods on this warm-but-pretty autumn day, music pounding for catharsis? Music to catch my restlessness and set my pace as I hiked into the woods? But I gave up my music as I reached the edge of the woods, because I could find none to match my uneasy rhythm.
I thought of Wordsworth when I faced the silence of a walk all by myself. I thought of him when I looked up to the trees that had turned golden, dripping leaves. A walk in the woods was his comfort and pleasure-- could it not be mine? But I had not wanted to meet the woods and their silence. The woods were not without sound, in the rustlings of leaves and small animals. But in these slight sounds of nature, there was room for my thoughts. It was a peculiar sort of silence, and I feared it. I longed for human voices, distracting voices, the intrusion of someone else's consciousness to quiet my own.
I ceased to think of Wordsworth when I caught sight of a tree whose autumn was near its end. Its leaves had all turned gold, half of them fallen, and its branches were bare against the sky. It was beauty, but it was more than this; it was a hint of change and fleetingness, a glimpse of the grander scheme than my thoughts and day had occupied. My thoughts were my own, but they had changed, in sweet relief from my restlessness. In the peculiar silence of the woods I was forced to meet my thoughts, and they did not end where they began.
The winding wooded path ended in a meadow bordering an old orchard. I climbed a hemlock tree amidst the apple trees and pulled out my notebook to write. And I did write-- but not very much. I mostly looked and thought and was quiet. Even on a warm day, even in my combat boots, even in a busy day that had begun without me. Especially in silence, the silence of the woods that Wordsworth would have wanted.
