paths which the mind travels

.

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there.  

Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, 

and could not spare any more time for that one.  

It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, 

and make a beaten track for ourselves.  I had not lived there a week

 before my feet wore a path from my door to the pondside; 

and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct... 

 

The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; 

and so with the paths which the mind travels.  How worn and dusty, 

then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts 

of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage,

 but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, 

for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. 

 I do not wish to go below now.

~ Henry David Thoreau

from the last chapter of Walden

art by van gogh