If you like that, you might also like Thoreau's 1854 book "Walden"[1]
It is over 100,000 words about ignoring the silly distractions in town and making close observations of nature that help one to "discover oneself".
For example, he writes about how he closely watches ant colonies fighting and compares them to the armies in The Iliad, etc, etc.
But I do understand that ~1700 words in a magazine article is more digestible than 100k words from a 160 year old book if the themes are unfamiliar to the reader.