Nature was my first and, most days, my only companion. Its beauties seemed even more alluring than when I was young and sought refuge in it. Living for so long in cities, I’d come to think that mixing with the human race, in all its varieties, forced us to examine and lose our prejudices—that it was a culture of science, history, philosophy, and art that led to judgment and taste. But I remembered now that it was the countryside that gave birth to my imagination, to sentiments that were the true source of taste, and inquiries that expanded my soul. The horrors I’d witnessed in France had cast a gloom over everything, but they began to dissipate, and in their stead came the healing embrace of the natural world.

One day I climbed to the vestiges of a fort battered by the Swedes long ago. The only human about, I reclined on the mossy down, lulled to sleep by the prattling sea. A balmy gale woke me; I turned my head to follow white sails as they turned the cliffs. Fishermen cast their nets, seagulls hovered over the deep. Everything harmonized into tranquility, even the bitterns called in cadence with the cows’ tinkling bells. It was the finest summer I’d ever known, with magic everywhere.

I began to write again, with a freedom I’d never felt. It was the book I’d told Johnson I wanted to write, though not the one I imagined. It seemed at first like a nosegay of unconnected remarks, observations, and musings—my own travelogue—lightly bound by letters to an unnamed lover. But as I abstracted Imlay, the outlines of my own self became sharper. How often had I written under a man’s name, or as high-minded philosopher who spoke of things that “one” believed. This was different on the page, surging up from uncharted depths. The “I” who wrote was not a passive woman in pain, but the thinking, feeling hero of each little tale.

While Nature was recalibrating my senses to the sublime, I found I was finely tuned to my emotions—the whole awful wonderful gamut of them—and that they in turn interacted with place, culture, history. The Norwegians seemed the most naturally free people I’d seen, no feudalism, no firstborn sons inheriting everything, instead, farmers tilling their own small plots of land, a free press, religious tolerance. Perhaps knowledge hadn’t yet enlarged the grand virtues—extended their humanity to the whole human race—but among the peasants I saw such simplicity, so much overflowing of heart and fellow feeling. I could see that all their exertions were for the good of their families. It was hard not to be touched by it, hard not to feel my embitterment diminishing, and my own battered ideals revived. If only power-seeking, money-grubbing men tended to the hearth at home, the world would be a gentler place for all.