Always have beauty and joy waited upon my goings and comings.

If you want to see birds, you must have birds in your heart.
     - John Burroughs

I am in love with this world. I have nestled lovingly in it. I have climbed its mountains, roamed its forests, sailed its waters, crossed its deserts, felt the sting of its frosts, the oppression of its heats, the drench of its rains, the fury of its winds, and always have beauty and joy waited upon my goings and comings.
- John Burroughs 

John Burroughs was a popular author of natural history and philosophy of the late 1800s and early 1900s. His work was more widely read and appreciated than that of Thoreau, though as the years have evolved, Thoreau has achieved greater recognition.

Burroughs’ primary message was that a simple life surrounded by the beauty of wild nature is the best life. I first became aware of Burroughs when I saw a photograph of him studying a wildflower with a magnifying glass, obviously totally absorbed and fascinated by what he was seeing. I have not since come across that photograph but have collected and read many of his books.

Among his close friendships during his life were a diverse list of people either prominent in his time or who later became prominent: Walt Whitman, President Theodore Rosevelt, Henry Ford (who gave him an automobile, one of the first in the Hudson Valley), John Muir, Harvey Firestone and Thomas Edison. In 1857, he married Ursula North. According to Wikipedia:

 In 1901, Burroughs met an admirer, Clara Barrus (1864–1931). She was a physician with the state psychiatric hospital in Middletown, N.Y. Clara was 37 and nearly half his age. She was the great love of his life[12] and ultimately his literary executrix. She moved into his house after Ursula died in 1917. She published Whitman and Burroughs: Comrades in 1931, relying on firsthand accounts and letters to documents Burroughs' friendship with poet Walt Whitman.

John Burroughs’ Catskills Cabin In The Woods

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