“Walk with nature, her paths are peace.”
The narrow footpath snaked between the trees, bushes and emerging ferns. On the way to the main lake the trail followed the shoreline of a shallow bay, about 10 big steps from the stagnant water, strewn with trees that had gone down and now served as sunbathing platforms for turtles.
It was a quiet afternoon in May. Quiet save for the melodies of birds, most notably the notes of the rose-breasted grosbeaks. It was so tranquil, so peaceful, that the words, “Walk with nature, her paths are peace,” kept easing through my mind.
The words graced a framed poster I had many years ago, a gift from my parents who must have seen the budding naturalist in me as I progressed from my teens to young manhood. I assumed at the time the words came from a Bible passage.
The verse was overlaid on a scene of a welcoming trail winding between large trees, with the splintered sun shooting a ray onto the path. I wish I could see that poster again, but somewhere in half a dozen moves through college and early job days, it was lost.
I tried to find if the exact verse existed, but my Biblical search only came as close as Proverbs 3:17: “Her ways are pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.” The “her,” however, in this instance refers to wisdom, not nature.
There is wisdom in nature, so perhaps the poster creator took liberty with the verse. It doesn’t matter, for my search took me down intriguing paths, one that led to naturalist John Muir’s words, “In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.”
Muir also wrote, “Nature’s peace will flow into you as the sunshine flows into trees.”
My search also found Henry David Thoreau, who penned, “An early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.”
On this afternoon, on this pathway to my fishing spot, nature was teeming but peaceful. Turtles lazed in the sun. I heard frogs. The newly-arrived songbirds’ melodies rippled through the air. The honking of two geese reverberated across the lake and then was swallowed by the calm water surface, which shared the blue hue of the sky. A great blue heron stalked fish nearby, and I could hear its wings when it lifted off.
I sat in awe on the shoreline, thinking nature doesn’t make a sound that is not peaceful, nor a path that is not peace. I thought about having never found that exact verse, but having found many times what it told me.