Prologue

My name is Jim MacArthur, and this blog is primarily for me.  But also, I hope, for my students at Tolland High School, and possibly my colleagues there and their students, and maybe even strangers from who-knows-where brought here by The Google.  [WARNING:  I am a Thoreau enthusiast, not an expert. I've read some HDT, I've read a couple of biographies.  But count what you find here as my impressions, and something less than facts.]

In April of 2011, I finally visited Walden Pond.  I had lived within two hours of Concord for most of my life, and had been an admirer of Thoreau for many years, but somehow I had never made it there.  To be honest, it's not that much of a pond.  But it's Walden.

While I was there, I bought a copy of selections from Thoreau's journals, and read it over the summer vacation.  Along the way, I underlined my favorite passages.  (I'm told you can effectively do the same thing on a Kindle, but ink on paper feels more intimate to me.)  I did that just for me, because I wanted to engage the text (and HDT) more closely.  Only later did I get the idea that I should take my notes into the classroom.

I just meant to take a few highlights, but I ended up with seven pretty tightly-packed pages.  I tried to go easy on my classes, so I asked them to read the packet -- I'm sure that some of them did -- pick and five favorite passages, and then respond to one.  What I really wanted to do was to go through each and every one of them with the class, at some length.  But if you've ever been in front of a high school classroom, you know how successful that would be.  (And if you've never been, the answer is: "not very".)

Hence, this blog.  It will give me the leisure and the luxury of saying as much as I want to, and only those who are interested -- if there will be any -- need get involved.

I begin this effort on July 4th, 2012.  It may well be two years, two months and two days before I finish.  (If I ever do.   I see that I have 66 small commentaries to write after this one.)  My intention is to expand upon Thoreau's ideas and observations in order to bring Thoreau to life for the novice reader.  Nothing would please me more than to have others join in the discussion with their own views and opinions.

Near the site of Thoreau's cabin there is a pile of stones.  Some, like the one at left, have been painted in advance, and brought some distance, to be left there, in hopes that. . . ?  I'm not sure.  But such an action sanctifies the spot.  You'll see a similar response if you visit HDT's grave in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery nearby in Concord.  Thoreau was a difficult man, and at times an unhappy man.  But there's something about him that touches people to this day.  I'm one.  Maybe you are, too.

Loneliness

March 13, 1841

            How alone must our life be lived!

More Cowbell!

April 4

            That cheap piece of tinkling brass which the farmer hangs about his cow’s neck has been more to me than the tons of metal which are swung in the belfry.

            Thoreau was of course a spiritual man.  But he was not much of a churchgoer, not a fan of institutions at all.  The bells rang on Sunday morning, and the good citizens of Concord dutifully marched to church at the appointed hour -- while HDT was apt to find worship at any one of the twenty-four hours, any day of the week.
           
            The oft-repeated example of this finds Thoreau on his deathbed,  where his aunt asks him "Henry, have you made your peace with God?"  And he replies: "I was not aware that we had quarreled."   

            And as to the sound of the cowbells, Thoreau doubtless appreciated the simple, local labors of the farmer and the ensuing dairy products.  And as to cows, let's not forget that they spend a good deal of their time out of doors, ruminating, meditating -- chewing the cud, so to speak.  That's an animal to admire.



             One more story about HDT and churchbells.  Thoreau's neighbor and mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, is set to give an address at the Concord Unitarian Meeting House to commemorate the abolition of slavery in the West Indies.  There are five or six young men at the meeting house who are reluctant to ring the bell without permission (abolition being a highly controversial topic in 1844).  So Thoreau took it upon himslef -- permission or no -- to ring the churchbell that day.

Transportation

Sept 19, 1841

            It is nice to have been to a place by the way a river went.

            It is at that.  You move along at a nice slow pace and, where Man has not intervened too much, you'll see some beautiful scenery.


            One of Thoreau's books is A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, based on a trip that he took with his beloved brother John.  (The book did not sell well initially, and HDT quipped "I now have a library of 1,000 books -- over 750 of which I wrote myself.")  The Concord River is almost completely flat as it flows through the meadows at Concord -- it drops something like two feet over several miles.  Thoreau built himself a boat -- the Musketaquid (the Indian name for the river), and used it extensively.  He would collect driftwood in it, then haul it back to heat his house.  When the river iced over, he would skate along it.


            HDT eventually sold the Musketaquid to Nathaniel Hawthorne (whom you'll recognize as the author of The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables as well as numerous short stories.)   Although Hawthorne's opinion of Thoreau was decidedly mixed -- he recognized his genius but thought his behavior boorish -- he was is awe of HDT's skill as a boatsman.

Gone Fishin'

June 7, 1851

            One of those gentle, straight-down rainy days, when the rain begins by spotting the cultivated fields as if shaken from a pepperbox; a fishing day, when I see one neighbor after another, having doned his oil-cloth suit, walking or riding past with a fish-pole, having struck work, -- a day and an employment to make philosophers of them all.

            First of all, I love the imagery.  Those first few drops, speckling the sidewalks and driveways (sorry, Henry, that's my world).  And I love the fact that the pace of life is slow enough, and driven enough by the environment, that the farmers can drop their regular work to do a little fishing.  (Still trying to be productive, I suppose, but...).  


             Because whatever it is, a pile of work or a pile of snow, we pride ourselves on our ability to just plow through it.


            Wouldn't you like to be able to call an audible in your day like that?


[Thanks to Old Onliner, who shares this photo of the Rock River in Beloit, Wisconsin, with us through his Flickr feed.]

Do You Remember?

July 16, 1851

            In youth, before I lost any of my senses, I can remember well that I was all alive, and inhabited my body with inexpressible satisfaction; both its weariness and its refreshment were sweet to me.

            It's a sad fact of life.  As we get older, we get more blasé about life.  It's probably necessary, so that as an adult, you can better tolerate the ups and downs of life.  Look at how upset a young child gets over a broken toy, or the loss of a pet.  Imagine if we carried those volatile emotions throughout life.  How could we live with all the tragedy and suffering in the world?

            But the downside is our joys are lessened, too.  Even our best days aren't what they used to be.



            Below is a selection from William Wordsworth's poem "Intimations of Immortality".  Wordsworth is one of the English Romantic Poets, a group that preceded the Transcendentalists and shared a lot of their philosophy.

        V

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But He beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

Observancy

Aug. 5, 1851

            The question is not what you look at, but what you see.

            Some people think that Thoreau never left Concord.  But that's not true.  He traveled extensively in New England and wrote about it: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Cape Cod, Maine Woods.  He visited Canada, New York City, and near the end of his life the Midwest.  But it is true that his main focus was the fields and woods of Concord.  And of his locality, you could say, he made a thorough study.  (Sorry.  Couldn't resist.)

            A local farmer would tell the story, in a deprecating manner, of seeing HDT in the morning standing by a mud pool by the river.  At noon he was still there, and he was still there after dinner.  Finally the farmer ask him, in exasperation

"Da-a-vid Henry [Thoreau's given name], what air you doing?"  And he didn't turn his head and he didn't look at me.  He kept on lookin' at that pond, and he said, as if he was thinking about the stars in the heavens, "Mr. Murray, I'm a-studying -- the habits -- of the bullfrog!"  And there that darned fool had been standin' -- the livelong day -- a-studyin' -- the habits -- of the bull-frog!"

In an era where scientists tended to study animals by shooting them, Thoreau wanted to seem them live, as part of their larger environment.  And he did that by watching carefully and closely things that other people entirely disregarded as unimportant.


            There's always enough time.  It's just a matter of setting your priorities in the right order.  That's the hard part.

Little Big Man

Sept. 14, 1851

            It appeared that we weighed, -- Tolman I think about 160, Conant 155, Keyes about 140, Kelsey 130, myself 127.

            That's Thoreau on the right -- on a pedestal -- and I've still got a few inches on him.  Not to mention a few pounds.  (In the background is a replica of his cabin at Walden Pond.  HDT sold the original to a friend when he left the pond, who used it as a lean-to to house his animals.)


            So physically HDT was a small man, even as his influence has been titanic.


            Now for Thoreau and his freinds to weigh themselves was a rare thing.  Your average American was not constantly haunted by bathroom scales back in the day.  (And what with better food and more physical labor, being underweight was much more of an issue than being overweight.)  Thoreau was primarily a vegetarian, though he also apparently enjoyed his mother's homemade pies.  Who doesn't?


[By the way, if you've never seen it rent/download sometime the movie Little Big Man, starring Dustin Hoffman.]

19th Century Women

Nov. 14, 1851

            Some of my friends make singular blunders.  They go out of their way to talk with certain young women of whom they think, or have heard, that they are pretty, and take pains to introduce me to them.  That may be a reason why they should look at them, but it is not a reason why they should talk with them.  I confess that I am lacking a sense, perchance, in this respect, and I derive no pleasure from talking with a young woman half an hour simply because she has regular features.  The society of young women is the most unprofitable I ever tried.  They are so light and flighty that you can never be sure whether they are there or not there.

            Now at first glance this quotation does not seem likely to endear HDT to some readers -- particularly female, especially of the feminist persuasion.  (You go, girls!)  But let's consider the occasion.  Here's a quotation from Etiquette for Ladies: With Hints on the Preservation, Improvement, and Display of Female Beauty, published by Lea and Blanchard, Philadelphia. 1838-1840.  [Thanks to this blog for doing the legwork.]

            Men frequently look with a jealous eye on a learned woman, and are apt to denominate her a blue; be cautious, therefore, in a mixed company of showing yourself too much beyond those around you. To a mind well formed there is more real pleasure derived from the silent consciousness of superiority, than in the ostentatious display of it . It is possible to be silent, and yet not dull,—the silent eyes are often a more powerful conqueror than the noisy tongue; but be not, therefore, apparently careless to the conversation of others,— es the eyes can tell whether you are absent or not, although the mouth gives no audible token of presence.

So let me suggest that what Thoreau has disdain for is the 1850 version of American womanhood -- not especially well-educated and restricted by both fashion and manners -- and that this quotation actually reveals an underlying respect for women.


            One last anecdote, from a Caroline Dall, "author, journalist, lecturer and champion of women's rights, was a Unitarian community service worker, minister's wife and lay preacher (June 22, 1822-December 17, 1912)".   Thoreau initially refused an invitation to hear Ms. Dall lecture, since, according to Emerson "he says women never have anything to say".  But HDT not only ended up attending the lecture, he invited Dall to spend the next day at his home, with himself, his mother and his sister -- a day "filled to the brim with charming talk", according to Ms. Dall.

Gotta Be Me

Dec. 21, 1851

            But let me say frankly that at the same time I feel, maybe with too little regret, that I am under an awful necessity to be what I am.




            I normally never would associate Thoreau with the entertainer Sammy Davis, Jr., but here we are.  The song was originally called "I've Got to Be Me".  It was from an original Broadway musical called Golden Rainbow, and was written and composed by Walter Marks.  (This was back in the 1960's, when they still made original musicals not based on cartoons or second-rate Hollywood movies -- yes, I'm looking at you, Bring It On: The Musical.)  But when Sammy recorded it, he hadda change the lyrics, just a little.


            But here's a pertinent verse:
                                   I'll go it alone, that's how it must be
                                  I can't be right for somebody else
                                  If I'm not right for me
                                 I gotta be free, I've gotta be free
                                Daring to try, to do it or die
                                I've gotta be me.



We already know that it was tough being HDT (see March 13, 1841).  His manners and his philosophy alienated a lot of people, including friends.  But in order to be authentic, to be true to himself, there was no other road he could go.

The Great Man

Jan 31, 1852

            Emerson is too grand for me.  He belongs to the nobility and wears their cloak and manners. . . I am a commoner.  To me there is something devilish in manners.  The best manners is nakedness of manners.

          When Thoreau returned to Concord after graduating from Harvard, he began to spend a lot of time with Ralph Waldo Emerson.  Emerson was already a renowned essayist, the nominal father of the Transcendental Movement.
           At first the general impression of HDT was that he was Emerson's "Mini-Me" (if you'll pardon the expression).  Not only did he espouse the same philosophy as Emerson, but apparently he adopted some of Emerson's mannerisms, as well.  But to Emerson, Thoreau was always the real deal.


At the beginning of the relationship, Emerson noted in his journal that "my young friend. . . seems to have as free and erect mind as any I have ever met."  In July 1852, Emerson more or less cops to the charge that Thoreau makes above.

          Thoreau gives me, in flesh and blood and pertinacious Saxon belief, my own ethics.  He is far more real, and daily practically obeying them, than I; and fortifies my memory at all times with an affirmative experience which refuses to be set aside.

          Thoreau's cabin at Walden was built on Emerson's land.  HDT tutored RWE's son, and his brother's son, and once stayed with Emerson's family as RWE went on a lecture tour to England.  Late in his life, as his brilliant mind was slipping away, he would ask his wife

                   "What was the name of my best friend?"
                   "Henry Thoreau," she would answer.
                   "Oh, yes. Henry Thoreau."

Too Much Knowledge?

May 7, 1852

            I fear that the dream of toads will not sound so musical now that I know whence it proceeds.  But I will not fear to know.


           It's an old truism that "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing".  Can the same be said of a lot of knowledge?  Can you know too much?  I'm reminded of the poem "An Introduction to Poetry" by Billy Collins.  When he asks his students to respond to a poem, "all they want to do/ is tie the poem to a chair with rope/ and torture a confession out of it".  Where did they get such an idea?  From Dick Cheney?  No, from their probably well-meaning English teachers.
            So, is knowledge the enemy of beauty?  Of spontaneity and whimsy?  When we look to deeply into things the magic is revealed -- as pedestrian and ordinary, even as vile and repulsive.  
            But that's the type of magic as practiced by magicians: which is really deception and misdirection.  To look closely at true beauty is to reveal even more and more beauty.  To look closely and meter and diction -- to understand why "a host" of golden daffodils is the perfect choice for Wordsworth, to realize the "hours" of work that "seem a moment's thought"* -- only enhances the wonder and appreciation of readers.  And Thoreau's world -- the world of nature -- is replete with deep and hidden wonders.


             Knowledge may destroy mystery.  But it increases reverence.




* -- see W.B. Yeats/ "Adam's Curse"

Natural Man

June 12, 1852

            What a singular fact for an angel visitant to this earth to carry back in his notebook, that men were forbidden to expose their bodies under the severest penalties.

            I don't think of HDT as a licentious man.  When it came to clothes, manners, and behavior he was fairly restrained and conservative.  But no doubt he must have felt about Nature the way that Walt Whitman did.

            The atmosphere is not a perfume.... it has no taste
            of the distillation.... it is odorless,
            It is for my mouth forever.... I am in love with it,
            I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
            I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

But as much as Thoreau was an individual, and as much as he was more inclined to follow the ways of animals rather than the ways of man, I can't imagine him going out in public without being adequately clothed.  (Now, bathing at Walden Pond, I'm sure, was an entirely different story.

Business

June 29, 1852

            In my experience nothing is so opposed to poetry – not crime – as business.  It is a negation of life.

            Now there's a provocative statement.  It sounds anti-capitalist.  And by extension,  even anti-American?  (You certainly couldn't get elected President saying things like that.)  So, what can we make of this.

            Say that you business is making chairs.  What is your goal?  What is your ambition?  To make the best chair possible?  At the most reasonable price possible?  Or is it to make as much money as possible?  Do you use the best materials?  The materials that offer the best value-to-price ratio?  Or the cheapest materials possible?  How do you treat your employees?  Hire the best craftsmen possible, and promising young carpenters?  Or hire the cheapest labor available?  Maybe outsource to a third world factory?  Who are you serving?  Your customers, or yourself?  In Thoreau's view, business was mostly about making money.

            Thoreau's family had a pencil business, and HDT worked for it at times.  He was instrumental in finding better graphite, to make a better pencil.  Even so, it was never more than a business to him.  And he no doubt felt his time could be much better spent doing other things -- his daily explorations of the world around him.

            Here's a poem by Buddhist-American poet Gary Snyder that I've enjoyed teaching for years that you may find relevant:

           

            THE TRADE

I found myself in a massive concrete shell
     lit by glass tubes, with air pumped in, with
     levels joined by moving stairs.

It was full of those things that were bought and made
      in the twentieth century. Layed out in trays
     or shelves

The throngs of people of that century, in their style,
     clinging garb made on machines,

Were trading all their precious time
     for things.

Approaching Rain

July 30, 1852

            Caught in a thunder shower, when south of Flint’s pond.  Stood under thick trees.  I care not how hard it rains, if it does not rain more than fifteen minutes.  I can shelter myself effectually in the woods.  It is a grand sound, that of rain on the leaves of the forest a quarter mile distant, approaching.

            I live on an east-facing downslope.  And most of the summer storms in our area come in from the west, so I never get a chance to see them coming.  (If Montana in "Big Sky" country, here in New England we are "Small Sky" country.)  But sometimes you can hear it -- the thunder, of course, then the winds picking up.  Then, the rain, but usually all in a rush.  
            I'm captivated by the image here -- from a quarter mile away, the sound of the approaching rain.  One part of Thoreau's genius is that he hears and sees the things that we're too busy to notice.

The Phantom of Delight

Aug 8.

            No man ever makes a discovery, even an observation of the least importance, but he is advertised of the fact by a joy that surprises him.

            As a teacher, I try to supplement my required assignments with opportunity to explore.  For my vocabulary lessons, I require students to find their own words, and then to find (for some, not all) real world examples from Google News.  "Don't just find a sentence with the word in context," I tell them.  "Take a little time.  Find an interesting article or two; read the whole thing."
            Only a few of them do.  We all start out in this world with innate curiosity.  What happens to it, I wonder?  (Yes, I know that school takes some of the blame.  But there must be plenty of other reasons, too.)

Paying the Price

Sept 18, 1852

            3.30 p.m. – A-barberrying to Flint’s pond. . .  I get my hands full of thorns, but my basket full of berries.

             I grew up in a small New England town, in the 1960's.  In many ways I enjoyed a Rockwellian childhood.  (Not to be confused with an Orwellian childhood.  Which is what a lot of children are getting today.)
             Early in the summer, I would walk out to a raspberry patch on our acre and pick fresh berries for my cereal.  In August, my sisters and I would pick blackberries and my mom would bake up some pies.  It was hot work.  You got bitten my mosquitoes and scratched by thorns, but the berries were plump, sweet, and juicy.  And the pies. . . well, blackberry pie, still warm from the oven, or cold for breakfast?  What more need I say?

The Forgotten Sense

March 18, 1853

            Today I first smelled the earth.

            I have the good fortune to live just up the hill from a floodplain of the Farmington River.  Even though it's valuable real estate, due to the threat of flooding (thirteen people died here in the flood of '55) it's now town-owned land leased each year to farmers (including individuals who each get to cultivate a small plot).
            When I'm driving home late in the day during the summer, I like to turn off the AC and roll down the windows -- to smell the dirt, to smell the corn.  Actually, it turns out that that beautiful dirt, growing smell comes from bacterial spores.  Well, whatever.  It smells good.  Better than good.  In some way it's deeply comforting and sustaining.

            Thoreau and I live in New England, where we have winter.  If you don't have winter where you live -- it's cold, and it's dark, and it lasts too long.  But the good side of winter is Spring.  There's one day when you first go outside in the morning -- to get your paper, or start your car to drive to work -- when you take a deep lungful of the morning, and there it is.  "Spring is coming."  It's not even here yet, but for the first time, you know it's coming.  It's an olfactory annunciation.
           

Exploring the Dark Side

March 29, 1853

            The very sod is replete with mechanism far finer than a watch, and yet it is cast under our feet to be trampled on.  The process that goes on in the sod and the dark, about the minutes fibres of the grass, -- the chemistry and the mechanics, -- before a single green blade can appear above the withered herbage, if it could be adequately described, would supplant all other revelations.  We are acquainted with but one side of the sod.


           It's hard enough to see the obvious.  Eyewitness accounts are notoriously inaccurate.  HDT was not only a patient and gifted observer, but he was aware of what wasn't there, as well.
           I very much enjoyed reading this past spring The Forest Unseen, by David Haskell.  Haskell, a biology professor at the University of the South, focuses on one square meter of forest floor through the course of the seasons.  What he finds there, what goes on there, from the cellular level on up, is fascinating.
           Of course, this quotation can be read in a more metaphorical way, as well.

Simple Things

July 25, 1853

            I have for years had a great deal of trouble with my shoestrings, because they get untied continually. . .  Some days I could hardly go twenty rods before I was obliged to stop and stoop and tie my shoes. . .  At last the other day it occurred to me that I would try an experiment, and, instead of tying two simple knots one over the other the same way, putting the end which fell to the right over each time, that I would reverse the process, and put it under the other.  Greatly to my satisfaction.  The experiment was perfectly successful, and from that time my shoestrings have given me no trouble, except sometimes in untying them at night.

            On telling this to others I learned that I had been all the while tying what is called a granny’s knot, for I had never been taught to tie any other, as sailor’s children are; but now I had blundered into a square knot, I think they called it, or two running slip-nooses.  Should not all children be taught this accomplishment, and an hour, perchance, of their childhood be devoted in instruction in tying knots?

           Two things here.

           1.  There were few individuals as perspicacious as HDT, and he never learned to tie his shoes?  We all of us have holes in our résumés, I suppose.

           2.  This goes to the age old complaint that I, as a teacher, hear with some regularity: "Why don't they teach us anything we need to know?"

"Occupations"

Aug. 7, 1853

            How trivial and uninteresting and wearisome and unsatisfactory are all employments for which men will pay you money!  The ways by which you may get money all lead downward.  To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle.

           The key word here, I think, is "merely".  At least I hope so.  Or else I've wasted many, many years.  Thoreau kept his overhead low, so he didn't need very much money.  (He built the cabin at Walden Pond for twenty-eight dollars and change, and lived at home a lot.)  When it comes to money, the key is that income should exceed expenses.  The actual amounts don't matter that much.

            I'm lucky enough to have a job that I fancy is important.  "I make a difference," the slogan used to go.  "I teach."

Animal Spirits

Aug. 19, 1853

            Cooler weather.  I was going to sit and write or mope all day in the house, but it seems wise to cultivate animal spirits, to embark in enterprises which employ and recreate the whole body.

Liberty

Oct 26, 1853

            What other liberty is there worth having, if we have not freedom and peace in our minds, -- if our inmost and most private man is but a sour and turbid pool?  Often we are so jarred by chagrins [“a keen feeling of mental unease”] in dealing with the world, that we cannot reflect.

            Ah! the world is too much with us, and our whole soul is stained by what it works in, like the dyer’s hand.

An Ongoing Challenge

Dec. 22, 1853

            They who do not make the highest demand on you shall rue it.  It is because they make a low demand on themselves.

Objectivity/Subjectivity

May 6, 1854

            There is no such thing as pure objective observation.  Your observation, to be interesting, i.e. to be significant, must be subjective.

The Necessity of Privacy

Aug. 2, 1854

            I feel the necessity of deepening the stream of my life; I must cultivate privacy.  It is very dissipating to be with people too much.  As C. says, it takes the edge off a man’s thoughts to have been much in society.  I cannot spare my moonlight and my mountains for the best of man I am likely to get in exchange.

A Prophet without Honor

Dec. 6, 1854

            I am disappointed to find that most that I am and value myself is lost, or worse than lost, on my audience.  I should suit them better if I suited myself less.  I feel that the public demand an average man, -- average thoughts and manners, -- not originality, nor even absolute excellence.

Entertaining Ourselves to Death

Dec. 21, 1854

            What  a groveling appetite for profitless jest and amusement our countrymen have!

Elastic Time

March 22, 1855

            Time is cheap and rather insignificant.  It matters not whether it is a river which changes from side to side in a geological period or an eel that wriggles past in an instant.

Life

Nov. 5, 1855

            The life which society proposes to me to live is so artificial and complex – bolstered up on so many weak supports, and sure to topple down at last – that no man surely can ever be inspired to live it, and only “old fogies’ praise it.

Property Rights

Nov. 9, 1855

            The highest law gives a thing to him who can use it.

Progress

Dec. 3, 1855

            Every larger tree which I knew and admired is being gradually culled out and taken in to mill.

Comparative Wealth

Jan. 20, 1856

            In my experience I have found nothing so truly impoverishing as what is called wealth, i.e. the command of greater means than you had before possessed, though comparatively few and slight, for you thus inevitably acquire a more expensive habit of living, and even the very same necessaries and comforts cost you more than they once did.

Give it a Try

Jan. 25

            If you would be convinced how differently armed the squirrel is naturally for dealing with pitch pine cones, just try to get one off with your teeth.

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Facts!

Jan. 25, 1856

            Men have been talking for a week now at the post-office about the age of the great elm, as a matter interesting but impossible to be determined. . .  I stooped and read its years to them (127 and nine and a half feet), but they heard me as the wind that once sighed through its branches.  They still surmised that it might be two hundred years old, but they never stooped to read the inscription.  Truly they love darkness rather than light.

Interconnectedness

March 16, 1856

            [Thoreau slips on the ice while walking on the river and spills a bucket of sap, which he surmises will eventually end up in the Atlantic Ocean.]  It suggests, at any rate, what various liquors, besides those containing salt, find their way to the sea, -- the sap of how many kinds of trees.

Learning Styles

March 21, 1857

            Had a dispute with Father about the use of my making this [maple] sugar when I knew it could be done and might have bought sugar cheaper at Holden’s.  He said it took me from my studies.  I said it made my study.  I felt as if I had been to a university.

Dollars and Scents

March 23, 1856

            Is it not a maimed and imperfect nature that I am conversant with? 

            I see that a shopkeeper advertises among his perfumes for handkerchiefs “meadow flowers” and “new-mown hay”.

America's Pastime

April 10

            Some fields are sufficiently dried for games of ball with which this season is commonly ushered in.  I associate this day, when I can remember it, with games of baseball played over the hills in russet fields toward Sleepy Hollow.

Walt Whitman

Dec. 2, 1856

            As for the sensuality in Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” I do not wish so much that it was not written, as that men and women were so pure that they could read it without harm.

Doing Without

Dec 5, 1856

            What you call bareness and poverty is to me simplicity.  God could not be unkind to me if he tried. 

            I love best to have each thing in its season only, and enjoy doing without it at all other times. 

Learning Styles II

Dec. 10, 1856

            For a few years past I have been accustomed to make a rude sketch in my journal of plants, ice, and various natural phenomena, and though the fullest accompanying description may fail to recall the experience, these rude outline drawings do not fail to carry me back to that time and scene.

Christmas Spirits

Dec 25, 1856

            Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would

keep your spirits up.  Deal with brute nature.  Be cold and hungry and weary.

Estrangement

Feb. 6, 1857

            And now another friendship is ended.  I do not know what has made my friend doubt me, but I know that in love there is no mistake, and that every estrangement is well founded. . . Each man and woman is a veritable god or goddess, but to the mass of their fellows disguised.

Neighbors

March 18, 1857

[Goodwin is a neighbor of Thoreau’s, an ordinary farmer.  Emerson is also a neighbor of Thoreau’s, one of the pre-eminent Thinkers of his day (and HDT’s mentor).]  While Emerson sits writing in his study this still, overcast, moist day, Goodwin is paddling up a still, dark river.  Emerson burns twenty-five cords of wood and fourteen tons of coal; Goodwin perhaps a cord and a half, much of which he picks out of the river.  He says he’d rather have a boat leak some for fishing.

The Girl for You

April 23, 1857

            [A neighbor of HDT’s, Kate Brady, “her father an Irishman, a worthless fellow, her mother a smart Yankee” wants to return to the house where she was born, “a lonely ruin”, where “she thinks she can ‘live free’.”]  I never heard a girl or woman express so strong a love for nature. . .  Her own sex, so tamely bred, only jeer at her for entertaining such an idea, but she has a strong head and a love for good reading, which may carry her through.

Footprints

April 26

            What right has my neighbor to burn ten cords when I burn only one?

Raiment

May 8

            [HDT describes a pair pants he has just acquired (cost $1.60 – about a fifth of what other pants cost) made out of a durable clay-colored material.]  Most of my friends are disturbed by my wearing them. . .  Others would not wear it, durable and cheap as it is, because it is worn by the Irish.  Moreover, I like the color on other accounts.  Anything but black clothes.  The birds and beast are not afraid of me now.

Visibility

July 2

            [HDT finds a particular water lily growing in Gowing’s Swamp, and then sees it in various other locations.]  Many an object is not seen, though it falls within the range of our visual ray, because it does not come within the range of our intellectual ray, i.e., we are not looking for it.  So, in the largest sense, we find only in the world what we look for.

Dispersal

Oct. 7, 1857

            It is the reign of crickets now.  You see them gliding busily about all over sunny surfaces.  They sometimes get into my shoes; but oftener I have to empty out the seeds of various shrubs and weeds which I have been compelled to transport. 

Curios and Oddities

Oct. 20, 1857

            [While out on a walk HDT encounters Brooks Clark, an eighty year-old man, walking barefoot (because his shoes are full of wild apples he picked in the woods).]  It pleased me to see this cheery old man, with such a feeble hold on life, bent almost double, thus enjoying the evening of his days.  Far be it from me to call it avarice [greed] or penury [poverty], this childlike delight in finding something in the woods or fields and carrying it home in the October evening.  Oh, no; he was happy to be Nature’s pensioner still, and birdlike to pick up his living.

SWM ISO. . .

Oct 26, 1857

            I see two great fish hawks beating slowly northeast against the storm, by what a curious tie circling ever near each other and in the same direction.  Damon and Pythias they must be. . .  Where is my mate, beating against the storm with me?

Childhood Games

Nov. 2, 1857

            How contagious are boys’ games!  A short time ago they were spinning tops, as I saw and heard, all over the country.  Now every boy has a stick curved at the end, a hawkie (?) in his hand, whether in yards or in distant lanes I meet them.

Serenity

Nov. 18, 1857

            Sympathy with nature is an evidence of perfect health.  You cannot perceive beauty but with a serene mind.

Mere Talent

Nov. 27, 1858

            I am disappointed by most essays and lectures.  I find that I had expected the authors would have some life, some private experience, to report, which would make it comparatively unimportant in what style they expressed themselves, but commonly they have only a talent to exhibit.

Humility

Aug. 18, 1858

            [One of HDT’s Concord neighbors has built a new house, “the showiest in the village”.  In front of it they have erected a sign: “Glory to God in the highest”.]  A simple and genuine sentiment of reverence would not emblazon these words as on a signboard in the streets.  I felt a kind of shame for it, and was inclined to pass quickly by, the ideas of indecent exposure and cant being suggested.  What is religion?  That which is never spoken.

A Certain Slant of Light

Nov. 1, 1858

            As the afternoons grow shorter, and the early evening drives us home to complete our chores, we are reminded of the shortness of life, and become more pensive, at least in this twilight of the year.

Friendship

Nov. 3, 1858

            Nothing makes me so dejected as to have met my friends, for they make me doubt if it is possible to have any friends.  I feel what a fool I am.  I cannot conceive of persons more strange to me than they actually are; not thinking, not believing, not doing as I do; interrupted by me.  My only distinction must be that I am the greatest bore they ever had. . .  But when I get far away, my thoughts return to them.  Thus I am taught that my friend is not an actual person.  When I have withdrawn and am alone, I forget the actual person and remember only my ideal.  Then I have a friend again.

Cow Haiku

Nov. 8, 1858

I never saw

but one cow looking

into the sky.

Beauty

Nov. 24, 1858          

            Here is an author who contrasts love “for the beauties of the person” with the love for “excellences of the mind,” as if these were the alternatives.  I must say that it is for neither of these that I should feel the strongest affection.  I love that one with whom I sympathize, be she “beautiful” or otherwise, of excellent mind or not.

Elements of Style

Jan. 2, 1859

            When I hear the hypercritical quarrelling about grammar and style, the position of the particles, etc., etc., stretching or contracting every speaker to certain rules of theirs, -- Mr. Webster, perhaps, not having spoken according to Mr. Kirkham’s rule, -- I see that the first requisite and rule is that expression shall be vital and natural, as much as the voice of a brute or an interjection: first of all, mother tongue; and last of all, artificial or father tongue.  Essentially your truest poetic sentence is as free and lawless as a lamb’s bleat.

Invisible Cartography

March 17, 1859

            I realize how water predominates on the surface of the globe.  I am surprised to see new and unexpected water-lines, drawn by the level edge of the flood about knolls in the meadows and in the woods – waving lines, rarely if ever recognized or thought of by the walker – which mark the boundary of a possible or probable freshet any spring. . .   Nature never forgets it for a moment, but plants grow and insects, etc., breed in conformity to it.  Many a kingdom of nature has its boundaries in parallel with this waving line.

Intuitive Understanding

March 28, 1859

            I suspect it will be found that there is really some advantage in large birds of passage flying in the wedge form and cleaving their way through the air – that they really do overcome its resistance best in this way – and perchance the direction and strength of the wind determine the comparative length of the two sides.

Trading Time for Things

Sept. 16, 1859

            Ask me for a certain numbers of dollars if you will, but do not ask me for my afternoons.

Militant Pacifist

Oct. 22, 1859

            I do not wish to kill or be killed, but I can foresee circumstances in which both these things would be by me unavoidable.

Slow Growth

Nov. 5, 1860

            I am struck by the fact that the more slowly trees grow at first, the sounder they are at the core, and I think the same is true of human beings.  We do not wish to see children precocious, making great strides in their early years like sprouts, producing a soft and perishable timber, but better if they expand slowly at first, as if contending with difficulties, and so are solidified and perfected.  Such trees continue to expand with nearly equal rapidity to an extreme old age.

Epilogue