LIKE A TREE 



"Blessed is the man who . . . is likt a fr(>e.''[ 



|O wrote a man who liv^df 'in' Jiideav 

 whose experience of nature we should 

 say was a limited experience and who 

 I knew of trees only in the stunted forms 

 that are found in Palestine. But every poet, 

 every prophetic soul has had much the same vis- 

 ion, used the same figure of speech, and, in vari- 

 ous ways all have said this same thing, "A 

 man is like a tree." 



There was a man, born a hundred years ago, 

 who in his maturity went out into the woods and 

 the fields and wrote a volume which became a 

 classic, "A Week on the Concord and Merrimac 

 Rivers." He found a little epitome of the world. 

 He studied nature while out in the woods, sur- 

 rounding a little New England town, wrote 

 "Walden" and became famous. One wonders 

 what Henry David Thoreau would have written 

 if he could have spent a week in the Yosemite; 

 what a volume he would have put forth if he 

 could have spent some weeks in the Big Basin or 

 among the Great Trees of our California forests. 

 Or, again, what would David have done if, in- 



