in Thoreau’s Journal:

I wish to forget a considerable part of every day, all mean, narrow, trivial men….and therefore i come out to these solitudes where the problem of existence is simplified. I get a mile or two from the town, into the stillness and solitude of nature, with rocks, trees, weeds, snow about me.

I enter some glade in the woods, perchance, where a few weeds and dry leaves alone lift themselves above the surface of the snow, and it is as if I had come to an open window. I see out and around myself. Our sky-lights are thus far away from the ordinary resorts of men. I am not satisfied with ordinary windows. I must have a true sky-light….