"Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated 

 fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking 

 swamps. When, formerly, I have analyzed my partiality for some 

 farm which I had contemplated purchasing, I have frequently 

 found that I was attracted solely by a few square rods of imperme- 

 able and unfathomable bog — a natural sink in one corner of it. That 

 was the jewel which dazzled me. I derive more of my subsistence 

 from the swamps which surround my native town than from the 

 cultivated gardens in the village. There are no richer parterres 

 to my eyes than the dense beds of dwarf andromeda (Cassandra 

 calyculata) which cover these tender places on the earth's surface. 

 Botany cannot go farther than tell m.e the names of the shrubs 

 which grow there — the high blueberry, panicled andromeda, lamb- 

 kill, azalea, and rhodora — all standing in the quaking sphagnum. 

 . . . Why not put my house, my parlor, behind this plot instead 

 of behind that meagre assemblage of curiosities, that poor apology 

 for Nature and Art which I call my front yard?" 



From Thoreau's "Excursions.'' 



