Welcome to the inspirational living podcast.

Today's podcast has been edited and adapted from Thoughts Are Things by Prentice Mulford, published in 1898.

You are fortunate if you love trees, especially the wild ones, growing where the great creative

force has placed them, independent of human care. For all things we call wild or natural

are near the infinite mind, and being near the infinite, they have in them the more

perfect infinite force and thought. That is why when you are in the midst of what is wild

and natural, in the forest or mountains where every trace of human works are left behind, you feel

an indescribable exhilaration and freedom that you do not feel elsewhere. You breathe the elements

ever being thrown off by the trees, the rocks, the birds, and animals, and by

every expression of the infinite mind about you.

It is healthfully exhilarating.

It is something more than air.

It is the infinite mind as expressed by all these natural things which is acting upon you.

You cannot get this force in a city, nor even in a carefully cultivated garden.

For there the plants and trees have too much of our lesser mind in them,

the human mind which believes that it can improve the universe. People are inclined to think that the infinite made this

world in the rough, and then left it all together for us to improve. Are we really doing this in destroying the native forests, as well as the

birds and animals which once dwelt in them? Are our rivers, many of them laden in the filth of

sewage and factory, and our ever-expanding cities and towns, covering miles with piles of brick and mortar,

their inhabitants crammed into the smallest living quarters, honeycombed with sewers below,

and resounding with rattle and danger above.

Are these really improvements on the divine and natural order of things you are

...