The Stones Are Happy

A man asked me
the other night
whether such
and such persons
were not as
happy as anybody,
being conscious,
as I perceived,
of such unhappiness himself and not aspiring to much more than an
animal content.
“Why!” said I,
speaking to
his condition,
“the stones are happy. Concord River is happy, and I am happy too. When I took up a fragment of a walnut-shell this morning, I saw by its very grain and composition, the form and color, etc., that it was made for happiness. The most brutish and inanimate objects that are made suggest an everlasting and thorough satisfaction; they are the homes of content. Wood, earth, mould, etc., exist for joy. Do you think that Concord River would have continued to flow these millions of years by Clamshell Hill and round Hunt’s Island, if it had not been happy,—if it had been miserable in its channel, tired of existence, and cursing its maker and the hour that it sprang?”
--Henry David Thoreau (journal entry for January 6, 1857)

view east outside Hance Canyon (top)
Sipapu, Little Colorado River (middle)
Unkar Rapid (below)