Nature loves gradation.

January 26. 

At the Doublechair
January 26, 2018

A warm rain from time to time. 

P. M. — To Clintonia Swamp down the brook. 

When it rains it is like an April shower. The brook is quite open, and there is no snow on the banks or fields. 

From time to time I see a trout glance, and sometimes, in an adjoining ditch, quite a school of other fishes, but I see no tortoises. In a ditch I see very light-colored and pretty large lizards moving about, and I suspect I may even have heard a frog drop into the water once or twice. 

I like to sit still under my umbrella and meditate in the woods in this warm rain. 

On the side-hill at the swamp, I see how the common horizontal birch fungus is formed. I see them in all stages and of all sizes on a dead Betula alba, both on the upper and under sides, but always facing the ground. At first you perceive the bark merely raised into a nub and perhaps begun to split, and, removing a piece of the bark, you [find] a fibrous whitish germ like a mildew in the bark, as it were of a fungus be neath, in the bark and decayed wood. Next you will see the fungus pushed out like a hernia, about the size as well as form of a pea. At first it is of a nearly uniform convex and homogeneous surface, above and below, but very soon, or while yet no larger than a pea,it begins to show a little horizontal flat disk, always on the under side, which you would not suspect with out examining it, and the upper surface already be gins to be water. So it goes on, pushing out through the bark further and further, spreading and flatting out more and more, till it has attained its growth, with a more or less elongated neck to its peninsula. The fungus as it grows fills the rent in the bark very closely, and the edges of the bark are recurved, lip-like. They commonly break off at the junction of the true bark with the wood, bringing away some of the woody fibre. Apparently the spongy decayed bark and wood is their soil. 

This is a lichen day. 

The white lichens, partly encircling aspens and maples, look as if a painter had touched their trunks with his brush as he passed. 

The yellow birch tree is peculiarly interesting. It might be described as a tree whose trunk or bole was covered with golden and silver shavings glued all over it and dangling in curls. The edges of the curls, like a line of breakers, form commonly diagonal lines up and down the tree, corresponding to the twist of the nerve or grain. 

Nature loves gradation. Trees do not spring abruptly from the earth. Mosses creep up over the insteps of the trees and endeavor to reclaim them. Hence the propriety of lacing over the instep. 

Is not the moccasin a more picturesque and fitter sort of shoe than ours in which to move amid the herbage? 

How protean is life! One may eat and drink and sleep and digest, and do the ordinary duties of a man, and have no excuse for sending for a doctor, and yet he may have reason to doubt if he is as truly alive or his life is as valuable and divine as that of an oyster. He may be the very best citizen in the town, and yet it shall occur to him to prick himself with a pin to see if he is alive. 

It is wonderful how quiet, harmless, and ineffective a living creature may be. No more energy may it have than a fungus that lifts the bark of a decaying tree. 

I raised last summer a squash which weighed 123 1/2 pounds. If it had fallen on me it would have made as deep and lasting an impression as most men do. I would just as lief know what it thinks about God as what most men think, or are said to think. In such a squash you have already got the bulk of a man. My man, perchance, when I have put such a question to him, opes his eyes for a moment, essays in vain to think, like a rusty firelock out of order, then calls for a plate of that same squash to eat and goes to sleep, as it is called, — and that is no great distance to go, surely. 

Melvin would have sworn he heard a bluebird the other day if it hadn’t been January. Some say that this particularly warm weather within a few days is the January thaw, but there is nothing to thaw. The sand-banks in the Deep Cut are as dry as in summer. 

Some men have a peculiar taste for bad words, mouthing and licking them into lumpish shapes like the bear her cubs,—words like “tribal” and “ornamentation,” which drag a dead tail after them. They will pick you out of a thousand the still-born words, the falsettos, the wing-clipped and lame words, as if only the false notes caught their ears. They cry encore to all the discords. 

The cocks crow in the yard, and the hens cackle and scratch, all this winter. Eggs must be plenty.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 26, 1858

I like to sit still under my umbrella and meditate in the woods in this warm rain. See May 30, 1857 (“Perhaps I could write meditations under a rock in a shower.”)  Also January 27, 1858 ("sit long at a time, still, and have your thoughts. . . .The part of you that is wettest is fullest of life, like the lichens. You discover evidences of immortality not known to divines. You cease to die. You detect some buds and sprouts of life. . . . And then the rain comes thicker and faster than before, thawing the remaining frost in the ground, detaining the migrating bird; and you turn your back to it, full of serene, contented thought, soothed by the steady dropping on the withered leaves, more at home for being abroad, more comfortable for being wet, , , ,You can not go home yet; you stay and sit in the rain. ")

Edges of the yellow birch curls, like a line of breakers, form commonly diagonal lines up and down the tree. See February 18, 1854 (“The curls of the yellow birch bark form more or less parallel straight lines up and down on all sides of the tree, like parted hair blown aside by the wind, or as when a vest bursts and blows open. ”)

 She takes me out  to see bear tracks.  We continue on straight up the mountain to our north east corner.. The snow is  a hard packed crust. The walking is easy everywhere in the woods as there is a smooth surface covering all imperfections. I am wearing studded boots

We stop at the double chair and sit. This is one of those blue sky days. Now in late afternoon we see the first quarter moon in the east

We bushwhack down off the mountain to the top of the rocky trail and then bushwhack straight up to the view. Nature is putting on another orange sunset way to the south. It seems to be setting right over Giant. 

I start to feel chilled. Even though the day seem to be in the 30s the temperature here is now 16°

We head north through the woods and then down to the under view Trail where it connects with the rocky trail. We feel the freedom to go anywhere on this crusty snow

Though we have our headlamps we do not pull them out as it gets dark. Jane suddenly exclaims what is that shadow – we realize we are now walking in the moonlight– Moon light and shadows the rest of the way home.

Moonlight and shadows.

Freedom to go anywhere 

on this crusty snow.

Zypx 20180126