the nearness of now

January.

It is something to know when you are addressed by Divinity and not by a common traveller. I went down cellar just now to get an armful of wood and, passing the brick piers with my wood and candle, I heard, methought, a commonplace suggestion, but when, as it were by accident, I reverently attended to the hint, I found that it was the voice of a god who had followed me down cellar to speak to me. How many communications may we not lose through inattention! 

I would fain keep a journal of those thoughts and impressions I am most liable to forget; that have in one sense the greatest remoteness, in another, the greatest nearness to me.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January, 1851

See January 1, 1852 ("I wish to be translated to the future to observe what portions of my work have crumbled."); July 13, 1852 (A journal, a book that shall contain a record of all your joy, your ecstasy.); October 26, 1853 ("You only need to make a faithful record of an average summer day's experience and summer mood, and read it in the winter, and it will carry you back to more than that summer day alone could show.”) See also Do not tread on the heels your experience.

It is something to know when I am addressed by Divinity, a god who follows me down cellar to speak to me.

January 10.


I went down cellar 

just now 

to get an armful of wood

and, passing the brick piers 

with my 

wood and candle, 

I heard,

methought,

a commonplace suggestion,

but when, 

as it were by accident,

I reverently attended to the hint,

 

I found that it was the voice of a god.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January, 1851

It is something to know when you are addressed by Divinity and not by a common traveller. I went down cellar just now to get an armful of wood and, passing the brick piers with my wood and candle, I heard, methought, a commonplace suggestion, but when, as it were by accident, I reverently attended to the hint, I found that it was the voice of a god who had followed me down cellar to speak to me. How many communications may we not lose through inattention!

January 10. 

See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 10

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2022

Sauntering

January 10.

Who can foretell the sunset,- what it will be?

The near and bare hills covered with snow look like mountains, but the mountains in the horizon do not look higher than hills. I frequently see a hole in the snow where a partridge has squatted, the mark or form of her tail very distinct.

I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of taking walks daily, — not  exercise the legs or body merely, nor barely to recruit the spirits, but positively to exercise both body and spirit, and to succeed to the highest and worthiest ends by the abandonment of all specific ends, — who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering. 

And this word " saunter," by the way, is happily derived " from idle people who roved about the country [in the Middle Ages] and asked charity under pretence of going a la Sainte Terre," to the Holy Land, till, perchance, the children exclaimed, "There goes a Sainte-Terrer," a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  January 10, 1851

Who can foretell the sunset,- what it will be? See January 7, 1852 ("We never tire of the drama of sunset. I go forth each afternoon and look into the west a quarter of an hour before sunset, with fresh curiosity, to see what new picture will be painted there, what new panorama exhibited, what new dissolving views. Can Washington Street or Broadway show anything as good ? Every day a new picture is painted and framed, held up for half an hour, in such lights as the Great Artist chooses, and then withdrawn, and the curtain falls."); December 29, 1851 ("How admirable it is that we can never foresee the day, - that it is always novel! Yesterday nobody dreamed of to-day; nobody dreams of to-morrow. This day, yesterday, was as incredible as any other miracle."); January 26, 1860 ("Though you walk every day, you do not foresee the kind of walking you will have the next day.")

The art of taking walks daily. Compare Walking ("I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks, — who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering, . . .Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywheré For this is the secret of successful sauntering."); see also November 12, 1858 ("It is much the coldest day yet, and the ground is a little frozen and resounds under my tread. All people move the brisker for the cold, yet are braced and a little elated by it. . . . Now for a brisk and energetic walk, with a will and a purpose. Have done with sauntering, in the idle sense. You must rush to the assault of winter."); June 14, 1853 ("This seems the true hour to be abroad sauntering far from home. Your thoughts being already turned toward home, your walk in one sense ended, you are in that favorable frame of mind . . . open to great impressions, and you see those rare sights with the unconscious side of the eye, which you could not see by a direct gaze before. Then . . . home is farther away than ever. Here is home"); See note to June 13, 1854 ("When I have stayed out thus late many miles from home . . . I have felt that I was not far from home after all.")

January 10. 

See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 10

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2022

Light of the setting sun falling on the snow-banks.

January 8.

The light of the setting sun falling on the snow-banks to-day made them glow almost yellow.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 8, 1851

Compare January 4, 1858 ("It will be enough to say of something warmly and sunnily bright that it glowed like lit stubble. ")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 8

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season, 

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2023

The life, the joy, that is in blue sky after a storm!

January 7. 

The snow is sixteen inches deep at least, but it is a mild and genial afternoon. I feel my spirits rise when I get off the road into the open fields. The sky has a new appearance. I step along more buoyantly.

There is a warm sunset, a yellowish tinge on the pines. Reddish dun-colored clouds like dusky flames stand over the wooded valleys. And now streaks of blue sky are seen here and there.

The life, the joy, that is in blue sky after a storm!

There is no account of the blue sky in history. I must live above all in the present.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  January 7, 1851

Reddish dun-colored clouds like dusky flames. See January 7, 1852 ("In the western horizon . . .a bright coppery-yellow fair-weather cloud."); January 7, 1856 ("just before sunset, the few little patches of ice look green as I go from the sun (which is in clouds).)

The life, the joy, that is in blue sky after a storm! See May 30, 1857 (“The blue sky is never more celestial to our eyes than when it is first seen here and there between the clouds at the end of a storm”);June 18, 1859 (“Then, when it clears up, the surface of the water gradually becomes more placid and bright . . . and the water is lit up with a joy which is in sympathy with our own.”); February 20, 1860 ("What a revelation the blue and the bright tints in the west again, after the storm and darkness! It is the opening of the windows of heaven after the flood!")

The snow is sixteen inches deep at least, but [it] is a mild and genial afternoon, as if it were the beginning of a January thaw.  Take away the snow and it would not be winter but like many days in the fall. The birds acknowledge the difference in the air; the jays are more noisy, and the chickadees are oftener heard. Many herbs are not crushed by the snow . I do not remember to have seen fleas except when the weather was mild and the snow damp . I must live above all in the present . 

Science does not embody all that men know , only what is for men of science . The woodman tells me how he caught trout in a box trap , how he made his trough for maple sap of pine logs , and the spouts of sumach or white ash , which have a large pith . He can relate his facts to human life . The knowledge of an unlearned man is living and luxuriant like a forest , but covered with mosses and lichens and for the most part inaccessible and going to waste ; the knowledge of the man of science is like timber collected in yards for public works , which still supports a green sprout here and there , but even this is liable to dry rot . 

I felt my spirits rise when I had got off the road into the open fields , and the sky had a new appearance . I stepped along more buoyantly . There was a warm sunset over the wooded valleys , a yellowish tinge on the pines . Reddish dun - colored clouds like dusky flames stood over it . And then streaks of blue sky were seen here and there . The life , the joy , that is in blue sky after a storm ! There is no account of the blue sky in history . Before I walked in the ruts of travel ; now I adventured . This evening a fog comes up from the south . 

If I have any conversation with a scamp in my walk , my afternoon is wont to be spoiled . 

The squirrels and apparently the rabbits have got all the frozen apples in the hollow behind Miles's . The rabbits appear to have devoured what the squirrels dropped and left . I see the tracks of both leading from the woods on all sides to the apple trees . 

January 7. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 7

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2024

Winter catkins.

January 5.

The catkins of the alders are now frozen stiff ! !

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  January 5, 1851

See January 10, 1858 ("If you are sick and despairing, go forth in winter and see the red alder catkins dangling at the extremities of the twigs, all in the wintry air, like long, hard mulberries, promising a new spring and the fulfillment of all our hopes. . . . the sight of a mulberry-like red catkin which I know has a dormant life in it, seemingly greater than my own.”)