I think that I owe a great deal of my present strength and ability to work to my love of...

Booker T. Washington credited his love of outdoor life with much of his strength and ability to work. On the Burroughs plantation, where he was enslaved, he had the opportunity to learn nature and to love the soil, while enslaved people often escaped into the woods to forage for food and avoid the watchful eyes of their masters. As an adult, he continued to find peace in nature, and time spent relaxing with his family in the woods reinvigorated him for his life's work of promoting education for African Americans and soliciting funds for Tuskegee Institute. He felt that nature gave him strength for the many duties and hard places that awaited him, and he and his family were known to go into the woods to live for a while near the heart of nature, surrounded by pure air, trees, shrubbery, and flowers.

Westlake Corner, Virginia · United States