Friday.
As we paddled along, we saw many peetweets, also the common iris or blue flag, along the rocky shore, and here and afterwards great fields of epilobium or fire-weed, a mass of color. . . .
P. said that Bematinichtik meant high land generally and no particular height. . . .
Near this island, or rather some miles southwest of it, on the mainland, where we stopped to stretch our legs and look at the vegetation, I measured a canoe birch, five and a half feet in circumference at two and a half from the ground. . . .
I was disappointed to find my clothes under my india-rubber coat as completely wetted by perspiration as they could have been by rain, and that this would always be the consequence of working in such a garment, at least in warm weather. . . .
We looked down on the unpretending buildings and grounds of the Kineo House, as on a little flat map, oblong-square, at our feet. . . .
It [the phosphorescent wood] suggested to me how unexplored still are the realms of nature, that what we know and have seen is always an insignificant portion. We may any day take a walk as strange as Dante's imaginary one to L' Inferno or Paradiso.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 24, 1857
See The Maine Woods ("About four o'clock the next morning (July 24), though it was quite cloudy, accompanied by the landlord to the water's edge, in the twilight, we launched our canoe from a rock on the Moosehead Lake. . . . Think of our little eggshell of a canoe tossing across that great lake, a mere black speck to the eagle soaring above it! . . . [We] were soon partly under the lee of the mountain, about a mile north of the Kineo House, having paddled about twenty miles. It was now about noon. . . . The clouds breaking away a little, we had a glorious wild view, as we ascended, of the broad lake with its fluctuating surface and numerous forest-clad islands, extending beyond our sight both north and south, and the boundless forest undulating away from its shores on every side . . . From the summit of the precipice which forms the southern and eastern sides of this mountain peninsula, and is its most remarkable feature, being described as five or six hundred feet high, we looked, and probably might have jumped, down to the water, or to the seemingly dwarfish trees on the narrow neck of land which connects it with the main. It is a dangerous place to try the steadiness of your nerves. . . . Getting up some time after midnight to collect the scattered brands together, while my companions were sound asleep, I observed, partly in the fire, which had ceased to blaze, a perfectly regular elliptical ring of light . . . phosphorescent wood, which I had so often heard of, but never chanced to see. . . .I did not regret my not having seen this before, since I now saw it under circumstances so favorable. I was in just the frame of mind to see something wonderful, and this was a phenomenon adequate to my circumstances and expectation, and it put me on the alert to see more like it. . . . I let science slide, and rejoiced in that light as if it had been a fellow creature. . . . It suggested to me that there was something to be seen if one had eyes. It made a believer of me more than before.")
The common iris or blue flag. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Flag Iris (Versicolor)
Phosphorescent wood, which I had so often heard of, but never chanced to see. See August 8, 1857 ("Speaking with Dr. Reynolds about the phosphorescence which I saw in Maine, etc., etc., he said that he had seen the will-o'-the-wisp, a small blue flame, like burning alcohol, a few inches in diameter, over a bog, which moved when the bog was shaken.")
What we know and have seen is always an insignificant portion. We may any day take a walk as strange as Dante's imaginary one . . . See March 29, 1853 (“ a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to...appreciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature.”); June 14, 1853(". . . that favorable frame of mind described by De Quincey, open to great impressions”); 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. .”); September 2, 1856 and note ("It commonly chances that I make my most interesting botanical discoveries when I am in a thrilled and expectant mood, . . . My expectation ripens to discovery. I am prepared for strange things.") and note to July 2, 1857 ("We find only the world we look for.")
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