A public good

 Henry David Thoreau said: 

Each town should have a park, or rather a primitive forest of five hundred or a thousand acres, where a stick should not be cut for fuel, a common possession forever, for instruction and recreation. We have cow-common and ministerial lots, but we want men-commons and lay lots, inalienable forever.

 

I wish the country would act on Thoreau’s advice. One of the joys of living in Stone Mountain is the forest to the south of the mountain. The forest is protected in a state park. But there’s a foot trail leading into the park that begins almost at the village square.

I’ve heard people say that the practice of spending an hour in the gym or out running three times a week changed their life. I always wonder how they’d feel if they got out into the woods. 

• Source: The note is from Thoreau’s Journal, Oct. 15, 1859. I have it in the delightful The Quotable Thoreau, edited by Jeffrey S. Cramer; Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011, p. 52.