Waldeinsamkeit

That evening, I could not find my tree.

I walked back and forth through the forest with growing panic. It was only a fallen tree, but its loss made my chest feel hollow. Had it never really existed? At last, I saw it; I had only imagined that its bark was more stripped of its life than it really was.

Behind me, a squirrel scrambled up a tree; above me, a bluejay’s proud cry broke the incessant murmur of the crickets. The wind rustled the branches overhead, sending down a gentle cascade of dying leaves. One landed upon my shoulder.

For these precious minutes, I simply was, as William Wordsworth writes, “Beneath a tree, slackening my thoughts by choice / And settling into gentler happiness.”

This, I fear, is becoming an increasingly unusual experience.

When was the last time you allowed yourself to exist without music in your ears, your phone’s light in your eyes, or your assignments in the back of your mind?

Nowadays, it’s easy to turn your time into a currency, especially in a place like Georgetown where every moment of peace is a shameful indulgence. Perhaps this mode of living will help us polish our GPAs, find internships, and attain some hazy concept of success. Perhaps, someday, this success will even make us imagine we are happy. But must we burn through our youth to reach this idealized, farcical horizon?

In the face of this productivist existentialism, many have turned toward the natural world as an escape. The Japanese therapeutic method shinrin-yoku (森林浴), or “forest bathing,” entails walking slowly through a wooded environment, liberated from electronics and other urban distractions, and permitting yourself to be aware of nature. While shinrin-yoku has begun to join the mental health canon of experts and holistic health pundits alike, I am less interested in whether walking among trees lowers cortisol than I am in what happens when there is truly nothing demanding your attention.

While intentionally spending time in the woods is a virtuous pursuit, extending awareness to the inner self offers even greater awards. For this reason, I find the German word Waldeinsamkeit a more compelling tenet. Coined by poet Ludwig Tieck in his 1797 fairytale “Der blonde Eckbert,” it roughly translates to “the feeling of joyous solitude that can only be gleaned from being in the woods.”

Solitude has become uncanny. The modern world is designed so that, whether at work, leisure, or play, we are never free from the unrelenting feedback loop of constant stimuli. In the woods, there is far less to react to. Alone in the woods, there is even less. On my first evening in the woods, I was too busy casting glances over my shoulder to enjoy myself. It wasn’t some cruelly imagined monster that made the hair rise on the back of my neck, but the unnerving realization that the only human sound to be known was that of my own thoughts. There was nothing to be done but to wallow in this self-recognition.

What remains when no one is asking anything of you?

Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer argued in 1851 that “[a] man can be himself only so long as he is alone.” Waldeinsamkeit enables the kind of retrospective self-discovery that can only occur in silence and solitude, without the manufactured distractions of the digital age. To be in solitude is to free yourself from the pretenses of the social world so you may approach your genuine self. The goal is not to escape your thoughts; it is to allow nature to loosen them so you can recognize yourself on your own terms.

It is intimidating to face yourself. Confronting our thoughts is uncomfortable precisely because of how much they remind us of ourselves, creating a reverse sense of the uncanny—a sense of the over-knowing of what we would rather not know. This contributes in no small part to our desire for constant stimulation and entertainment. Yet self-discovery, or at least permitting yourself the time and space to get to know yourself, is necessary to reconcile the full self and learn what sort of person you want to become. It doesn’t necessarily entail reconciling every uncomfortable facet of your identity; rather, it entails learning to exist in harmony with your whole self. Solitude won’t make this process easy, but it will give you the space to acknowledge your consciousness while simultaneously preventing you from escaping it.

Self-discovery is not purely selfish, either. Someone who knows themself is better equipped to live as a person for others. And, because no amount of time in the woods can free you from the reality of university life, there are academic benefits too. American naturalist Henry David Thoreau, like so many artists, famously “went to the woods because [he] wished [...] to front only the essential facts of life.” When unnecessary stimuli are eliminated, the mind is forced to inhabit itself. During my time in the woods, with nothing but a book and my journal, I’ve inadvertently plotted a novella, developed article pitches, and finally made sense of Kantianism. That’s not to say we should value time in nature solely for its ability to improve productivity; rather, allowing yourself a moment of respite and reflection, without consuming or producing anything, can make space for thoughts that might otherwise be drowned out.

In a world infinitely louder and a culture infinitely more stimulating and stifling than those of Tieck, Schopenhauer, and Thoreau, these moments of solitude ought to be cherished more than they ever have been. We must learn to sit in silence without stimulation, even if it’s uncomfortable (all the better if it’s uncomfortable), even if it’s boring (all the better if it’s boring), with only our thoughts and our inner selves for company.

I’m not prescribing another commodified wellness practice to add to your to-do list—indeed, that would be contrary to the spirit of Waldeinsamkeit. I merely hope you might be inspired to take your AirPods out, power your phone down, and take a stroll through the woods. Waldeinsamkeit is far from a cure-all pill for modern man’s woes, but only through experiencing it can you reconnect with the part of yourself that is still bound to the earth.

As I laid on my tree under the setting sun and opened my book, the thought occurred to me that the tree fell just so that I could rest and read on it. It is, however, telling of the human condition that I would have thought it to be just another tree had it been alive and standing. Yet even the rotting parts of nature, on their exodus from this world to the next, stir desire in the human heart.

I brushed the dead leaf off my shoulder.

Waldeinsamkeit

Die mich erfreut,

So morgen wie heut,

In ew’ger Zeit,

O wie mich freut

Waldeinsamkeit

(Ludwig Tieck, 1789)

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Ryan is a freshman in the College from Basically Chicago, Illinois. When he’s not finding a way to make everything about the Trojan War somehow, he’s probably composing his Victorian vampire novel or debating literary theory with his emotional support snake, Apophis.