In search of a Savannah in the Pine Lands

I was in search of a Savanna, also spelled Savannah, vegetation type that grows under hot, seasonally dry climatic conditions and is characterized by an open tree canopy (i.e., scattered trees) above a continuous tall grass under story (the vegetation layer between the forest canopy and the ground). I never was able to get to the Savanna, I was blocked by numerous streams which If I had waders I would have been able to cross.

Rejuvenative Pleasures of Sauntering for a Savannah

“I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks — who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering, which word is beautifully derived ‘from idle people who roved about the country,’ in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going a la Sainte Terre, to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, ‘There goes a Sainte-Terrer,’ a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea.”

– Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862)
Walking

Pinelands

I live the Pine Barrens

Piney Lou Photograph

Another day in the woods

Looking for Peace