We are made to love

February 14.

We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see. How few things can a man measure with the tape of his understanding!  How many greater things might he be seeing in the meanwhile!

One afternoon in the fall, November 21st, I saw Fair Haven Pond with its island and meadow; between the island and the shore, a strip of perfectly smooth water in the lee of the island; and two hawks sailing over it; and something more I saw which cannot easily be described, which made me say to myself that the landscape could not be improved. 

I did not see how it could be improved. Yet I do not know what these things can be; I begin to see such objects only when I leave off understanding them, and afterwards remember that I did not appreciate them before. But I get no further than this. 

How adapted these forms and colors to our eyes, a meadow and its islands! What are these things?

Yet the hawks and the ducks keep so aloof, and nature is so reserved! We are made to love the river and the meadow, as the wind to ripple the water.

We learn by the January thaw that the winter is intermittent and are reminded of other seasons. The back of the winter is broken.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 14, 1851

[See November 21, 1850; May, 1850; April 14, 1852; March 23, 1853 ("Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at Nature directly, but only with the side of his eye. He must look through and beyond her. ")