Taylor Dahl

Ap Lit 

Transcendentalist Essay 

Very first rough draft 

Mornings are joyful, filled with fresh air, frost on the tips of all the plants, well said by Thoreau. “The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour. Then there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night... All memorable events, I should say, transpire in morning time and in a morning atmosphere. The Vedas say, “All intelligences awake with the morning.” I have not yet seen a morning for the past month, why is that, well because of this place called school. Mornings are supposed to be the awakening hour, the most lively, exciting part of the day but many people like myself can not enjoy them. Most people tend to stay up extremely late, which causes their liveliness to go away. 

Most people who can’t wake up in the morning are usually up late doing homework, which brings me to my topic. Homework, if Thoreau were to come back to life and spend a day with a Telluride High School student, he would find things so odd. The world today has tried to become simplified, but by doing so they have created so much chaos. Like the amount of homework most students receive an unbearable amount. Every student spends most of their life on the computer, on a phone, writing essays or doing math problems, yet no student gets to spend time in nature which is what Thoreau believed in strongly. Most people see nature as a place to relax, let out anger, just breath the fresh air that is provided for us. All transcendentalist would be ashamed by how nature is used for students, it might seem like nature doesn’t exist to many students. 

“The animal merely makes a bed, which he warms with his body in a sheltered place; but man, having discovered fire, boxes up some air in a spacious apartment, and warms that, instead of robbing himself, makes that his bed, in which he can move about divested of more cumbrous clothing, maintain a kind of summer in the midst of winter, and by means of windows even admit the light and with a lamp lengthen out the day,”  said Henry David Thoreau. This quote shows how we no longer live in the world of nature and how we have modernized. But just because we live in a modern world doesn’t mean we would no longer want nature. If every student was offered time to go out and enjoy nature and not be on a schedule for once, they would all enjoy it. Most people have just forgotten how we should be spending our mornings and how we need nature. 

If we were to just go back and redo things so we lived in nature and nothing was modernized, how different would things be? I think that most people would be happier, and more relaxed. Thoreau would be pleased with the world we would have created. If we all lived in nature, woke up to bliss and peacefulness, just imagine how different everything would be. We wouldn’t have alarm clocks to wake us up, we would just wake up when our bodies felt it was time. Instead of coming home after school and checking Facebook or starting homework, we could take a walk and just enjoy everything nature has provided us, and just enjoy what we have. As we go through the day without going in nature we miss so much. People are lacking many things because of everything that has changed in the world today. 

Thoreau was successful in life, without everything we have today, so why must we have all the things we want. Just imagine being able to wake up and just be alive and be lively, imagine how everything would feel around you. So peaceful and relaxing, but once we have a bad morning our entire day just goes down hill. Everything revolves around the first step of your day. If Thoreau were to come back to life, the first thing that he would change would be how everyone spends their mornings and the amount of time they spend in nature, but yet many people wouldn’t be able to make such a change. Many people couldn’t make this change because people spend time doing work, activities, and non-nature related things.