How to spend this afternoon.

April 29.

The art of life, of a poet's life, is, not having anything to do, to do something.

The leaves are dry enough to burn; and I see a smoke this afternoon in the west horizon. There is a slight haziness on the woods, as I go to Mayflower Road at 2:30 P.M.

The ground is dry. I smell the dryness of the woods. Their shadows look more inviting, and I am reminded of the hum of bees.

The pines have an appearance they have not worn before, yet not easy to describe. The mottled sunlight and shade, seen looking into the woods, is more like summer. 

At the Second Division Brook the cowslip is in blossom. 

The butterflies are now more numerous, red and blue-black or dark velvety. 

Observe two thrushes arrived that I do not know. 

Discover a hawk over my head by his shadow on the ground.

The acorns among the leaves are sprouted, the shells open and the blushing (red) meat exposed at the sprout end, where the sprout is already turning toward the earth. 

Coming home over the Corner road, the sun, now getting low, is reflected very bright and silvery from the water on the meadows, seen through the pines of Hubbard's Grove. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 29, 1852

The art of life, not having anything to do, is to do something. See September 13, 1852 ("To the . . . idle man, the stillness of a placid September day sounds like the din and whirl of a factory. Only employment can still this din in the air.");   September 8, 1858 ("It is good policy to be stirring about your affairs, for the reward of activity and energy is that if you do not accomplish the object you had professed to yourself, you do accomplish something else.”); and note to September 7, 1851: ("I do not remember any page which will tell me how to spend this afternoon.”); See also December 29, 1841 ("One does not soon learn the trade of life. That one may work out a true life requires more art and delicate skill than any other work.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, To effect the quality of the day

At the Second Division Brook [o]bserve two thrushes arrived that I do not know. See note to April 24, 1856 ("Returning, in the low wood just this side the first Second Division Brook, near the meadow, see a brown bird flit, and behold my hermit thrush, with one companion, flitting silently through the birches”)

Discover a hawk over my head by his shadow on the ground. See September 27, 1857 ("I see the shadow of a hawk flying above and behind me.”)

The art of life – not 

having anything to do –

is to do something.