Transcendentalist Essay

Emerson and Thoreau have often been described as the revolutionaries of transcendentalism. They have been found in many books writing about the beauty of nature and that mankind always needs somewhere to go when he just wants to be alone. I decided to go on a nature walk with my class to discover what Emerson and Thoreau meant by discovering the beauty and peace of nature. What I discovered was actually quite startling; nature can be very dangerous, and is definitely beyond tinkered with by mankind.
Sweat dripped from my hair as I made my way into the mosquito infested woods next to Hanna. As I entered, I noticed blue and red ribbons flowing inside the woods immediately telling me that this place had already lost a little bit of its luster from human hands. As we moved under the damp shade of trees, I could feel the coolness of "The Woods". This feeling of peace and freedom did not last long as I soon heard the obnoxious yelling and screaming of my classmates as they discovered a rope net in the woods, and found it fun to jump onto the rope net and roll around. I tried to move away to discover the deeper peace that lies within the woods, but found this impossible because there were many broken beer bottles and cans littered throughout the underbrush. I also found out that even the actual nature part of these woods were not cracked up like it was supposed to be. Thorny vines covered the woods and scratched the mess out of me even as I tried to avoid them.
As you can see, this is not the transcendentalist way. According to Emerson, "Nature never wears a mean face." According to my experience, this is obviously not true. Nature does have a mean face, and this mean face is called thorny vines. There is no use of thorny vines; they are not edible, and cannot be used for anything. Nature also wears a mean face through the hardships mankind has put it through. We have chopped down trees, poached animals, and even polluted Mother Nature's air. As Thoreau once said, "What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary?" As I have learned from walking in the woods, there is no space in which man can separate himself from his fellows, without finding a trace of them being there. There were many broken beer bottles, proving that the woods are not used for peace, but for getting intoxicated. Also, I could still hear the hooting and hollering of my classmates no matter how far into the woods I traveled.
My experience may have been an exception, but I have discovered that Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau are not telling of the same thing that I experienced. There was absolutely no peace throughout the woods no matter where you go. Nature has proved not only to be dangerous, but also to be littered by human pollution.