It was the first time I received that command: Eat orange, chocolate, milk. I was a young woman. With long hair. A car of my own. I had graduated from Berkeley. Was working somewhere. I lived in a few rooms in an apartment, with my canoe tied up out back, in the little waterway that meandered through that neighborhood. My life, on the outside, at least, was most ordinary. Inside, it was a different story. For a few years, I studied a woman who led a church that followed the philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Transcendentalism, it was called. Nothing outrageous. Nothing strikingly heretical. Just a general softening of the gospels. It was a system of thought that I was well aware of. Even though I was living in California, Emerson was a New England man. And much beloved. Right up there with Henry David Thoreau. They and their little group were like monuments in every New England town’s square. Although, I imagine, very few people knew why. I’ll admit that I carried a quiet smile in my heart for Thoreau, for him and his belief in the language of trees. He was, in a way, our very own Saint [...]
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