A follower of both Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, Burroughs more clearly defined the nature essay as a literary form. His writings provided vivid descriptions of outdoor life and gained popularity among a diverse audience.

Burroughs spent his boyhood exploring the lush countryside surrounding his family's dairy farm in the valleys of the Catskill Mountains, near Roxbury, New York. He left school at age sixteen and taught grammar school in the area until 1863, when he left for Washington, D.C., for a position as a clerk in the U. S. Treasury Department. While in Washington, Burroughs met poet Walt Whitman, through whom he began to develop and refine his writing style. His early essays were featured in the Atlantic Monthly. These works, including "With the Birds" and "In the Hemlocks," detailed Borroughs's boyhood recollections...