cheered). His daughters also sold slivers of wood from the trees their
father had cut down as souvenirs to raise money for charity.
But above all, Gladstone’s arboreal activity was a way to rest a
mind that was often wearied by politics and the stresses of life.
During his final three terms as prime minister, from 1880 to the
early 1890s, Gladstone was out in the woods inspecting or chopping
more than three hundred times. Nor was an axe the only tool he used
to relax or be present. Gladstone was also said to enjoy vigorous
hikes, and mountain climbing well into old age, and the only thing
that appears in his diary more than tree felling is reading. (He
collected and read some twenty-five thousand books during his life.)
These activities were a relief from the pressures of politics, a
challenge for which effort was always rewarded and with which his
opponents could not interfere.
Without these release valves, who knows if he could have been as
good a leader? Without the lessons he learned in those woods—about
persistence, about patience, about doing your best, about the
importance of momentum and gravity—could he have fought the
long and good fight for the causes he believed in?
Nope.
When most of us hear the word “leisure,” we think of lounging
around and doing nothing. In fact, this is a perversion of a sacred
notion. In Greek, “leisure” is rendered as scholé—that is, school.
Leisure historically meant simply freedom from the work needed to
survive, freedom for intellectual or creative pursuits. It was learning
and study and the pursuit of higher things.
As society advanced and jobs became increasingly less physical,
but more exhausting mentally and spiritually, it became common for
leisure to include a diverse array of activities, from reading to
woodwork. Jesus, for instance, rested out on the water, fishing with
his disciples. Seneca wrote about how Socrates loved to play with
children, how Cato loved to relax with wine, how Scipio was
passionate about music. And we know this because Seneca’s own
leisure from politics was writing thoughtful, philosophical letters to
friends. John Cage picked up the hobby of mushroom hunting. He
observed that traipsing through the woods opened up the mind and
encouraged ideas to “fly into one’s head like birds.” Fred Rogers had
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