The infinite roominess of nature

November 18.

.

A man can hardly

be said to be there if he

knows that he is there

Surveying these days the Ministerial Lot. Now at sundown I hear the hooting of an owl,-- hoo hoo hoo, hoorer, hoo. This is faintly answered in a different strain, apparently from a greater distance, almost as if it were an echo. This is my music each evening. 

I heard it last evening. It is a sound admirably suited to the swamp and to the twilight woods, suggesting a vast undeveloped nature which men have not recognized. 

I rejoice that there are owls. This sound suggests the infinite roominess of nature, that there is a world in which owls live. 

Here hawks also circle by day, and chickadees are heard, and rabbits and partridges abound. 

The chopper who works in the woods all day for many weeks or months at a time becomes intimately acquainted with them in his way. He is more open in some respects to the impressions they are fitted to make than the naturalist who goes to see them. He really forgets himself, forgets to observe, and at night he dreams of the swamp, its phenomena and events. Not so the naturalist; enough of his unconscious life does not pass there. 

A man can hardly be said to be there if he knows that he is there, or to go there if he knows where he is going. The man who is bent upon his work is frequently in the best attitude to observe what is irrelevant to his work. (Mem. Wordsworth's observations on relaxed attention.)

November 18, 2013

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 18, 1851

I rejoice that there are owls, a world in which owls live.   See November 9, 1851 (“Observing me still scribbling, [Channing] will say that he confines himself to the ideal. . . he leaves the facts to me. Sometimes, too, he will say a little petulantly, "I am universal; I have nothing to do with the particular and definite." I, too, would fain set down something beside facts.”); November 17, 1859 ("Thus disappear the haunts of the owls. The time may come when their aboriginal hoo-hoo-hoo will not be heard hereabouts."). See also Walden ("I rejoice that there are owls. Let them do the idiotic and maniacal hooting for men. It is a sound admirably suited to swamps and twilight woods which no day illustrates, suggesting a vast and undeveloped nature which men have not recognized. They represent the stark twilight and unsatisfied thoughts which all have. All day the sun has shone on the surface of some savage swamp, where the single spruce stands hung with usnea lichens, and small hawks circulate above, and the chickadee lisps amid the evergreens, and the partridge and rabbit skulk beneath; but now a more dismal and fitting day dawns, and a different race of creatures awakes to express the meaning of Nature there.”)

Rejoice there are owls,

the roominess of nature

this world where owls live. 

November 18, 1851

The man who is bent upon his work is frequently in the best attitude to observe what is irrelevant to his work.  .See April 12, 1854 ("I observe that it is when I have been intently, and it may be laboriously, at work . . . that the muse visits me, and I see or hear beauty. It is from out the shadow of my toil that I look into the light.”); June 14, 1853 ("That favorable frame of mind described by De Quincey, 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."); December 11, 1855 ("It is only necessary to behold thus the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair’s breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance.”) See also Walden ("Fishermen, hunters, woodchoppers, and others, spending their lives in the fields and woods, in a peculiar sense a part of Nature themselves, are often in a more favorable mood for observing her, in the intervals of their pursuits, than philosophers or poets even, who approach her with expectation.")

Mem. Wordsworth's observations on relaxed attention.  

Relaxed attention

to the unexpected flash

of the infinite.

See De Quincy LAKE REMINISCENCES; BY THE ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER  quoting Wordsworth's description of  the  observations possible after a period of focused attention:

 "At the very instant when the organs of attention were all at once relaxing from their tension, the bright star hanging in the air above those outlines of massy blackness fell suddenly upon my eye, and penetrated my capacity of apprehension with a pathos and a sense of the infinite"

-- as illustrated  in Wordsworth's poem, "There was a Boy"  by  the boy's "gentle shock of mild surprise . . .carried far into his  heart"  while listening for owls. ("Then, sometimes, in that silence, while he hung listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise has carried far into his heart the voice o mountain-torrents or the visible scene would enter unawares into his mind") See also  Erica McAlpine, The Poet's Mistake - Page 42 (2020)

:

There was a Boy

There was a Boy; ye knew him well, ye cliffs

And islands of Winander! many a time,

At evening, when the earliest stars began

To move along the edges of the hills,

Rising or setting, would he stand alone,

Beneath the trees, or by the glimmering lake;

And there, with fingers interwoven, both hands

Pressed closely palm to palm and to his mouth

Uplifted, he, as through an instrument,

Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls

That they might answer him.—And they would shout

Across the watery vale, and shout again,

Responsive to his call,—with quivering peals,

And long halloos, and screams, and echoes loud

Redoubled and redoubled; concourse wild

Of jocund din! And, when there came a pause

Of silence such as baffled his best skill:

Then, sometimes, in that silence, while he hung

Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise

Has carried far into his heart the voice

Of mountain-torrents; or the visible scene

Would enter unawares into his mind

With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,

Its woods, and that uncertain heaven received

Into the bosom of the steady lake . . .

Solstice  2004

This summer

collecting moments

untouched by hope or regret

expanding the present with

relaxed attention to the unexpected

splash!

a blue heron floats reflected in the lake.

a doe alert on the lawn

a fox runs across the road

a loon calls in the night

the light on the water

the sound of the waves.

A sudden wind clears the air.

ZPHX

Nov. 18. Surveying these days the Ministerial Lot. 

Now at sundown I hear the hooting of an owl, — hoo hoo hoo, hoorer hoo. It sounds like the hooting of an idiot or a maniac broke loose. This is faintly answered in a different strain, apparently from a greater distance, almost as if it were the echo, i. e. so far as the succession is concerned. 

This is my music each evening. I heard it last evening. The men who help me call it the "hooting owl " and think it is the cat owl. It is a sound admirably suited [to] the swamp and to the twilight woods, suggesting a vast undeveloped nature which men have not recognized nor satisfied. 

I rejoice that there are owls. They represent the stark, twilight, unsatisfied thoughts  I have. Let owls do the idiotic and maniacal hooting for men. This sound faintly suggests the infinite roominess of nature, that there is a world in which owls live. 

Yet how few are seen, even by the hunters! 

The sun has shone for a day over this savage swamp, where the single spruce stands covered with usnea moss, which a Concord merchant mortgaged once to the trustees of the ministerial fund and lost, but now for a different race of creatures a new day dawns over this wilderness, which one would have thought was sufficiently dismal before. 

Here hawks also circle by day, and chickadees are heard, and rabbits and partridges abound. 

The chopper who works in the woods all day for many weeks or months at a time becomes intimately acquainted with them in his way. He is more open in some respects to the impressions they are fitted to make than the naturalist who goes to see them. He is not liable to exaggerate insignificant features. He really forgets himself, forgets to observe, and at night he dreams of the swamp, its phenomena and events. Not so the naturalist; enough of his unconscious life does not pass there.

A man can hardly be said to be there if he knows that he is there, or to go there if he knows where he is going. The man who is bent upon his work is frequently in the best attitude to observe what is irrelevant to his work. (Mem. Wordsworth's observations on relaxed attention.) You must be conversant with things for a long time to know much about them, like the moss which has hung from the spruce, and as the partridge and the rabbit are acquainted with the thickets and at length have acquired the color of the places they frequent. If the man of science can put all his knowledge into propositions, the woodman has a great deal of incommunicable knowledge. 

Deacon Brown told me to-day of a tall, raw-boned fellow by the name of Hosmer who used to help draw the seine behind the Jones house, who once, when he had hauled it without getting a single shad, held up a little perch in sport above his face, to show what he had got. At that moment the perch wiggled and dropped right down his throat head foremost, and nearly suffocated him; and it was only after considerable time, during which the man suffered much, that he was extracted or forced down. He was in a worse predicament than a fish hawk would have been. 

In the woods south of the swamp are many great holes made by digging for foxes.

A tall, raw-boned fellow by the name of Hosmer. See June 4, 1856 ("Dr. Heywood worked over him a fortnight, while the perch was dissolving in his throat. He got little compassion generally, and the nickname “Perch” into the bargain. Think of going to sleep for fourteen nights with a perch, his fins set and his scales (!), dissolving in your throat! ! What dreams! What waking thoughts ")

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