Human history accumulates in layers. Every generation inherits the interpretations of those before it, centuries of philosophy, theology, ideology, and culture piled atop one another until the weight of inherited meaning becomes so great that direct contact with reality feels nearly impossible. To peel those layers back one at a time would take more lifetimes than any of us have. So instead, we go into the woods.
Nature is the one domain that has not been interpreted into abstraction. It simply is. The tree does not know what Aristotle said about it. The river does not carry the freight of human argument. For the original Transcendentalists, Emerson, Thoreau, this was understood as a kind of religious encounter: to stand in nature was to stand in the presence of something unmediated, something true. Going to nature meant going back to the source.
Gonzo-Transcendentalism begins there and takes one step further.
