Emerson and Thoreau as Prophets of Eco-Wisdom The major premise of transcendental eco-wisdom is that connection with nature is essential for a person's intellectual, aesthetic and moral health and growth. One must intimately see and experience nature, whether defined as “not-self” or as landscape, to participate in the unity of Spirit that underlies its visible processes. This connectivity is the basis of autonomy that determines how a person lives with integrity in nature and in society. Certainly, the concept of self-reliance seemingly devalues ​​social concerns, including the global engagement and cooperation needed to bring about the kind of changes that would reverse the climate greenhouse effect, for example. Indeed, Emerson's ideas have been unfairly appropriated to justify the excesses of capitalist exploitation and insensitivity to the social problems and long-term consequences that lie at the root of many of our environmental problems. However, we cannot blame Emerson and Thoreau for not imagining our current dependence on technology, the complexity of a largely urban economy, or the bonds of a global community. Yet even the notion of a self-sustaining Concord or Walden Pond, which may seem naive and outdated, is reflected in current ideas about ecoregionalism. By explaining what they could not know about our current condition, we can still find fruitful ways to understand where humans, individually and as a species, should fit into nature. Emerson's greatest gift was teaching him to see in and through nature and to extract symbols from it. meaning, yet his own intimate encounters with the nature around him were relatively rare and indirect, with few concrete traces in his writings except in the form of occasional metaphors. He wanted his revelations about nature to be abstract and surprising, as did the famous mystical encounter at the beginning of his book Nature: “Crossing bare common ground, in puddles of snow, at dusk, under a cloudy sky, without having in me Thinking of every event of good fortune, I have enjoyed perfect exaltation, I am happy on the verge of fear. In such an experience, even the self is absorbed by a greater power: “I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see everything; the currents of Universal Being flow through me. The metaphor may be unfortunate, but not his belief that a single person can perceive indescribable meanings by experiencing nature, even if only indirectly. Such possibilities impelled Thoreau and countless others since to explore the details and processes of nature that Emerson had generalized, to seek integrated revelations and to share the "ecstasy" of nature..