Today I was considering how two of my favorite literary works have very different depictions of the woods:

Midway in our life’s journey, I went astray / from the straight road and woke to find myself / alone in a dark wood. -Dante

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. -Thoreau