These details of nature provided a formative background for Kant’s interest in natural philosophy, and the child grew up in an encouraging environment for early explorations. Königsberg enjoys a cool and gentle climate; typical of high latitudes, the flat Baltic terrain has not much biological diversity, and its biomes—meadows, moors, deciduous and conifer forests—are not hostile. At Kant’s time, bears and wolves were common along with other local fauna, but these posed no serious threat to Kant’s earliest encounters with nature. Walks, as the ones he enjoyed at the edge of town, were fun and perfectly safe. For Prussians at the time, excursions into nature also had a spiritual subtext. Like Japanese Shinto, German tradition invests natural places with meaning. The late and superficial conversion of the Baltic lands to Christianity, after the fourteenth century, coupled with the fact that persecution drove pagan faiths temporarily underground instead of eliminating them altogether, allowed the ancient nature-worship to prevail in forms inoffensive to the clergy, as in the guise of outdoor walks. Thus people used to attend Sunday service—before heading out for their Sonntagsspaziergang.