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I am a body
connected to all bodies
awake in the world.
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P. M. —To Holden Swamp, Conantum.
For the first time I wear gloves, but I have not walked early this season.
I see no birds, but hear, methinks, one or two tree sparrows. No snow; scarcely any ice to be detected. It is only an aggravated November.
I thread the tangle of the spruce swamp, admiring the leafets of the swamp pyrus which had put forth again, now frost bitten, the great yellow buds of the swamp-pink, the round red buds of the high blueberry, and the fine sharp red ones of the panicled andromeda.
Slowly I worm my way amid the snarl, the thicket of black alders and blueberry, etc.; see the forms, apparently, of rabbits at the foot of maples, and catbirds’ nests now exposed in the leafless thicket.
Standing there, though in this bare November landscape, I am reminded of the incredible phenomenon of small birds in winter. ...
The traveller is frozen on his way. But under the edge of yonder birch wood will be a little flock of crimson-breasted lesser redpolls, busily feeding on the seeds of the birch and shaking down the powdery snow! As if a flower were created to be now in bloom, a peach to be now first fully ripe on its stem.
I am struck by the perfect confidence and success of nature.
There is no question about the existence of these delicate creatures, their adaptedness to their circumstances. When some rare northern bird like the pine grosbeak is seen thus far south in the Winter, he does not suggest poverty, but dazzles us with his beauty.
The winter, with its snow and ice, is not an evil to be corrected. It is as it was designed and made to be, for the artist has had leisure to add beauty. My acquaintances, angels from the north. ....
.... My acquaintances, angels from the north. I had a vision thus of these birds as I stood in the swamps.
I saw this familiar fact at a different angle.
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.
Only what we have touched and worn is trivial, —our scurf, repetition, tradition, conformity.
To perceive freshly, with fresh senses, is to be inspired.
Great winter itself looked like a precious gem, reflecting rainbow colors from one angle.
My body is all sentient. As I go here or there, I am tickled by this or that I come in contact with, as if I touched the wires of a battery. I can generally recall-- have fresh in my mind --several scratches last received. These I continually recall to mind, reimpress, and harp upon.
The age of miracles is each moment thus returned. Now it is wild apples, now river reflections, now a flock of lesser redpolls.
In winter, too, resides immortal youth and perennial summer.
We get only transient and partial glimpses of the beauty of the world.
Standing at the right angle, we are dazzled by the colors of the rainbow in colorless ice. From the right point of view, every storm and every drop in it is a rainbow.
Beauty and music are not mere traits and exceptions. They are the rule and character. It is the exception that we see and hear.
Then I try to discover what it was in the vision that charmed and translated me. For I am surprised and enchanted often by some quality which I cannot detect. It is a wonderful fact that I should be affected, and thus deeply and powerfully, more than by aught else in all my experience, — that this fruit should be borne in me and bear flowers and fruits of immortal beauty.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, 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 1850
(“What shall we make of the fact that you have only to stand on your head a
moment to be enchanted with the beauty of the landscape ?”); March 29, 1853 ("Not till we are lost do we begin to realize where we are, and the infinite extent of our relations. ")
My body is all sentient. See July 16 1851 ("I was all alive, and inhabited my body with inexpressible satisfaction . . To have such sweet impressions made on me”); the Maine Woods (" Daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it-rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth! the actual world!"); June 21, 1852 ("With our senses applied to the surrounding world we are reading our own physical and corresponding moral revolutions."); ;August 23, 1852 ("There is something invigorating in this air, which I am peculiarly sensible is a real wind blowing from over the surface of a planet.”); August 30 1856 (“ I believe almost in the personality of such planetary matter”); January 12, 1855 ("What a delicious sound! It is not merely crow calling to crow, for it speaks to me too. I am part of one great creature with him; if he has voice, I have ears. I can hear when he calls."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A body awake in the world.
I am a body
connected to all bodies
awake in the world.
Zphx
But under the edge of yonder birch wood will be a little flock of crimson-breasted lesser redpolls, busily feeding on the seeds of the birch and shaking down the powdery snow!See November 21, 1852 ("The commonest bird I see and hear nowadays is that little red crowned or fronted bird I described the 13th. . . . They have a mewing note which reminds me of a canary-bird. They make very good forerunners of winter. ); March 5, 1853 ("They have a sharp bill, black legs and claws, and a bright-crimson crown or frontlet, in the male reaching to the base of the bill, with, in his case, a delicate rose or carmine on the breast and rump. [I]t has been the prevailing bird here this winter."); January 8, 1860 ("See a few on the top of a small black birch by the pond-shore, of course eating the seed. . . .When I heard their note, I looked to find them on a birch, and lo, it was a black birch!"); January 24, 1860 (" See a large flock of lesser redpolls, eating the seeds of the birch (and perhaps alder) in Dennis Swamp by railroad. . . . They alight on the birches, then swarm on the snow beneath, busily picking up the seed in the copse"); January 29, 1860 ("To-day I see quite a flock of the lesser redpolls eating the seeds of the alder, picking them out of the cones just as they do the larch, often head downward; and I see, under the alders, where they have run and picked up the fallen seeds, making chain-like tracks, two parallel lines. "); ; See also A Book of the Seasons, the Lesser Redpoll
When some rare northern bird like the pine grosbeak is seen thus far south in the Winter, he dazzles us with his beauty. See December 24, 1851 (“Saw also some pine grosbeaks, magnificent winter birds, among the weeds and on the apple trees; . . .when they flit by, are seen to have gorgeous heads, breasts, and rumps, with red or crimson reflections, more beautiful than a steady bright red would be.”)
Great winter itself looked like a precious gem, reflecting rainbow color. See January 21, 1838 ("The scene changed at every step, or as the head was inclined to the right or the left. There were the opal and sapphire and emerald and jasper and beryl and topaz and ruby"); December 11, 1854 ("It is but mid-afternoon when I see the sun setting far through the woods, and there is that peculiar clear vitreous greenish sky in the west, as it were a molten gem.”); February 13, 1859 ("The old ice is covered with a dry, powdery snow about one inch deep, from which, as I walk toward the sun, this perfectly clear, bright afternoon, at 3.30 o’clock, the colors of the rainbow are reflected from a myriad fine facets. It is as if the dust of diamonds and other precious stones were spread all around. The blue and red predominate."); compare April 9, 1855 ("With April showers, me thinks, come rainbows. Why are they so rare in the winter?")
We get only transient and partial glimpses of the beauty of the world. See June 21, 1852 ("The perception of beauty is a moral test"); January 21, 1838 ("f I seek her elsewhere because I do not find her at home, my search will prove a fruitless one.")
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