Its surprising how much you can't see when you are looking.

The works of Muir and of Thoreau remind me of a vivid event that I experienced as a child.  I was walking with my parents and brother on a ramble through Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest, and as my brother was raising a huge fuss over something, I was hanging back behind the group. I loved being alone in the woods, there's so much to see and I loved the silence of the woods on a summer afternoon, broken only by distant cars, rustling leaves, and bird calls.

I was perturbed by the fit my brother was throwing because I was SURE I wasn't going to see any animals with that tantrum up ahead of me going on. So far all we'd seen were small birds, a hawk far far overhead, turkey vultures, and maybe some rabbits or squirrels. All of those a noble and essential in their own right, but that's not what 10 year old me wanted to see. Coyotes, owls, foxes, deer- to me, that was where it was at.

However, nature did not let me down. I can only guess it was my brother's racket that stirred it out of hiding, but all of the sudden in a brown flash much like the picture below, a deer came busting out of the woods, crossed the trail RIGHT in front of me, knocking me down. I was so scared but so excited and happy.

This isn't entirely an aesthetic experience of a landscape, but the piece on "Walking" into nature and escaping the everyday by Thoreau and the experiences Muir had when he escaped the artists who only wanted a brief, familiar experience of nature make me think of this story.  I wanted to see a certain picture of nature, and I was letting my experience be shaped by disappointment.  It took a surprise near run-in with a deer to help me realize that nature will reveal itself to you when you aren't limited by what you expect or want to see.