Wendell Berry's essay titled "An Entrance to the Woods" shows a man that has decided to leave his city life and come to the woods for a few days. Although the stay is short, the man has a sense of feeling renewed and being in tune with nature and the past. Sitting on rocks, he can feel the generations that has passed before him, that have sat on that exact spot. The same goes for walking down unmarked and untrod paths. He can only wonder as to who and what stepped in the same places that he is. Berry also remarks on how fast the world is moving. That it is moving so quickly not because we have sped up a clock but because machines, like cars, have brought us to those places. Our minds were built for a slow, methodical pace, Berry states, and machines hurry us along. In the woods, our minds are able to slow back down.
This piece had a familiar tone to it; it was almost as if I was reading a short work by Thoreau. They both decided to go to the woods just to get away from the world. Berry's piece wasn't exactly like Thoreau's for Berry wasn't trying to make some huge political statement but it was methodical, paced, and quite descriptive. I felt as though I was in those woods with him, walking along the same paths. I understand why he went to the woods, to get away from the hustle of the world for a bit and that is something that I think everyone needs to do. There are days that we all get caught up in the world and the fast movements, we forget to slow down; that our brains aren't always with us. But we can't necessarily stay there, and Berry points that out as he ends his essay. The next day will most likely be better than the one before but we have to return to the world of machines. It's what we are meant to do.
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