Thoreau believed that personal joy and spiritual perfection could be achieved by man's communion with nature. How does his own contacts with nature show the author's delight and sense of wonder in his surroundings?

Thoreau did not actually live in the middle of nowhere eating berries and killing rabbits to survive. In truth the wildness he enjoyed was the nearby swamp or forest, and he preferred "partially cultivated country." His idea of being "far in the recesses of the wilderness" of Maine was to "travel the logger's path and the Indian trail..." I suppose this doesn't make him a fake. He did appreciate nature as an antidote to the materialism and constrictions of society. Although seldom far from home his experience of the pastoral heavily influenced his writings.