Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Light and Shade I

July 5.

There is a handsome wood-path on the east side of White Pond. The shadows of the pine stems and branches fall across the path, which is perfectly red with pine-needles. 

Here is a small road running north and south along the edge of the wood, which would be a good place to walk by moonlight.


H. D. Thoreau,  Journal, July 5, 1851

A handsome wood-path perfectly red with pine-needles .See June 11, 1851 ("The woodland paths are never seen to such advantage as in a moonlight night, opening before me almost against expectation as I walk, as if it were not a path, but an open, winding passage through the bushes, which my feet find");.
July 1, 1852 ("The path by the wood-side is red with the effete staminiferous flowers of the white pine")August 23, 1852 ("How dark the shadows of the pines and oaks fall across the woodland path! . . . It is pleasant walking in these forest paths, with heavy darkness on one side and a silvery moonlight on the oak leaves on the other, and again, when the trees meet overhead, to tread the checkered floor of finely divided light and shade.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The White Pines

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