SHADOW COUNTRY

The Transcendentalists were right about one thing: Nature, as we commonly think of it, does not exist outside the human realm, but within us. "It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves," Thoreau wrote in his journal, sounding, as ever, like he were talking himself out of leaving home. "It is the bog in our brains and bowels... that inspires that dream. I shall never find in the wilds of Labrador any greater wildness than in some recess of Concord, i.e. than I import to it."