I hear the Hermit Thrush for the first time. Have I heard it before and not noticed? -- The Spring Arrival of the Hermit Thrush

April 16, 2017

 I hear the Hermit Thrush for the first time. Have I heard it before and not noticed?

Walking the dog just after 7 AM I notice that I am hearing a hermit thrush singing a call so familiar it seems like it had always been here.  The world can never be more beautiful. 

It’s hard to explain. I was present with the song until a moment when I noticed it. Then there was a flood of excitement and confusion whether the bird had been singing all along, or even yesterday. But clearly now later as I write, the bird has just first arrived. And, as I walk around the trails near the house with the dog this song both stops and starts —as the bird does not sing constantly— and the song also comes in and out of consciousness -- especially returning up the stairs, projecting my thoughts forward into the day and room ahead, the voice  comes to me again: it is here in my presence but I hear it only now. To hear without listening. To listen without hearing. To hear with the side of the ear.  zphx ~April 16, 2022 7AM

I am a body

connected to all bodies

awake in the world.

See   May 10, 1853 ("All at once a strain that sounds like old times and recalls a hundred associations. Not at once do I remember that a year has elapsed since I heard it, and then the idea of the bobolink is formed in my mind.”);May 23, 1841 ("All nature is a new impression every instant"); April 5, 1860 ("Thus gradually and moderately the year begins. It creeps into the ears so gradually that most do not observe it, and so our ears are gradually accustomed to the sound, and perchance we do not perceive it when at length it has become very much louder and more general."); April 15, 1859 ("[W]hether he is conscious of it or not, that the world is beautiful and life a fair enterprise to engage in . . . If you yield for a moment to the impressions of sense, you hear some bird giving expression to its happiness in a pleasant strain. We are provided with singing birds and with ears to hear them "); April 30, 1856 ("I was trying to get the exact course of a wall thickly beset with shrub oaks and birches, making an opening through them with axe and knife, while the hillside seemed to quiver or pulsate with the sudden melody. Again, it is with the side of the ear that you hear. The music or the beauty belong not to your work itself but some of its accompaniments. You would fain devote yourself to the melody, but you will hear more of it if you devote yourself to your work."); January 12, 1855 ("What a delicious sound! . . .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

The Spring Arrival of the Hermit Thrush

Aprill 6. l hear my first hermit thrush sing east of the house while walking the dog in the morning. April 6, 2025. 

April 10. Hear my first hermit thrush midafternoon at the fort. Vreee vreeen; then the song. She is looking at a trillium at the noisy stream and does not hear. April 10, 2021

April 10. I hear the vreeen call at sunset north of the house after a drizzly day, distinctly as a new sound and think hermit -- but no song.  April 10, 2024

April 11. On the way back on the road for the first time this spring  we both hear the hermits' song in the hemlocks  We stop and listen.  Heard the call note last night.

We stop and listen -

the song of the Hermit Thrush

among the hemlocks

April 11, 2024

April 12. The ice is out on Lake Champlain. April 12, 1856.  

April 12. This morning  it comes to me that I am listening to a hermit thrush while walking the dog. April 12, 2023

April 14. Hear my first hermit thrush of the season this morning before dawn on my way to work -- later I learn the ice is out of the Broad lake and it reaches 80° in Burlington. April 14, 2014

April 14. Just at dusk we hear the hermit thrush ( I for the first time) and then later in Eastland its clucking sound. I have to be reminded it is the hermit.  April 14, 2017 

April 15. Open the garage early this morning and hear the hermit thrush after a night of rain. April 15, 2019

April 16. She says that hermit thrush is back. Not singing, but clucking. April 16, 2016

April 16. A quarter moon in the sky follows us back through the old growth trees, coming home after our walk at dusk,  orange sky in the west, to end a perfect day we first hear the hermit thrush. April 16, 2016

April 16. I hear the hermit thrush singing it’s familiar song near the driveway first thing in the morning. April  16, 2022 

April 16.  I first hear the Hermit thrush singing this morning, west of the house. April 16, 2026

April 18.  Was surprised to see a wagtail thrush, the golden-crowned, at the Assabet Spring, which inquisitively followed me along the shore over the snow, hopping quite near. I should say this was the golden-crowned thrush without doubt, though I saw none of the gold, if this and several more which I saw had not kept close to the water. May possibly be the aquaticus. Have a jerk of the forked tail. April 18, 1854.

April 18. Coming back next to the pond. There we stop and listen to the Hermit Thrush. The first clear song. Evoking memories. April 18, 2024 

April 19.  First thrush heard in the morning. April 19, 2015.

April 20. H. Mann brings me the hermit thrush. April 20, 1861

April 21. At Cliffs, I hear at a distance a wood [sic] thrush. It affects us as a part of our unfallen selves.  April 21, 1855

April 21. The hermit thrush loudly sounds it's vreeen note but does not sing. April 21, 2017.

April 21,  At the top of the upper ramp She sees a hermit thrush.  April 21, 2018

April 24. 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. I saw the fox-color on his tail-coverts, as well as the brown streaks on the breast. Both kept up a constant jerking of the tail as they sat on their perches.  April 24, 1856

April 25. Hermit thrush is back! The first day. Perhaps five in one spot. She teaches me how to distinguish its voice from the wood thrush. Aprill 25, 2009 

April 27. What a shy fellow my hermit thrush!  April 27, 1854

May 4.  Several larger thrushes on low limbs and on ground, with a dark eye (not the white around it of the wood thrush) and, I think, the nankeen spot on the secondaries. A hermit thrush?  May  4, 1855 

May 6. And on the way home at dusk the hermit thrush and Woodthrush (ee-oo-LAY) alternate.  May 6, 2017. 

May 7. A wood [sic] thrush which . . . betrayed himself by moving, like a large sparrow with ruffled feathers, and quirking his tail like a pewee,  on a low branch. May 7, 1852 . 

May 12. Hermit thrushes are still singing in the woods in the nearly complete darkness. May 12, 2016 

 

May 29. Dusk. We go out after the rain to find the Lady's slipper.  The woods are dripping wet, the hemlocks' bright new growth just beginning to show.   The hermit thrush sings. Along the cliff edge three Lady's slippers in bloom.  May 29, 2016

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HDT needed brushing up on his thrushes. See May 7, 1852 ("A wood [sic] thrush which. . .betrayed himself by moving, like a large sparrow with ruffled feathers, and quirking his tail like a pewee, on a low branch.”); May 22, 1852 ("On my way to Plymouth, looked at Audubon in the State-House. The female (and male?) wood thrush spotted the whole length of belly; the hermit thrush not so.”);; April 18, 1854 ("Was surprised to see a wagtail thrush, the golden-crowned, at the Assabet Spring,”); September 29, 1855 ("At Natural History Library saw Dr. Cabot, who says that he has heard either the hermit, or else the olivaceous, thrush sing,—very like a wood thrush, but softer. Is sure that the hermit thrush sometimes breeds hereabouts.”); April 21, 1855 ("At Cliffs, I hear at a distance a wood [sic] thrush. It affects us as a part of our unfallen selves..”); May 4, 1855 ("Several larger thrushes on low limbs and on ground, with a dark eye (not the white around it of the wood thrush) and, I think, the nankeen spot on the secondaries. A hermit thrush?).

 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2022

I am that rock by the pond-side.

February 20. 

February 20. 5:59 PM

This morning the ground is once more covered about one inch deep. 

Minott says that the house he now lives in was framed and set up by Captain Isaac Hoar just beyond the old house by Moore's, this side the one he was born in, his mother's (?) house (whose well is that buried by Alcott on the sidewalk), and there the frame stood several years, Hoar having gone off, he thinks, to Westminster. 

M. helped a man take down its chimney when he was a boy; it was very old, laid in clay. He was quite a lad and used to climb up on the frame and, with a teaspoon, take the eggs of the house wren out of the mortise-holes. 

At last his grandfather, Dr. Abel Prescott, "an eminent physician," bought it and moved it to where it now stands, and died in it in 1805, aged eighty-eight (born 1717). Said he died exactly where I sat, and the bed stood so and so, north and south from the clock. 

This Dr. Prescott had once probably lived with his nephew Willoughby Prescott, where Loring's is. After, when married, lived in the old rough-cast house near the poorhouse where Minott's mother was born. 

It was Dr. Abel P.'s son Abel (Minott's uncle) who rode into Concord before the British. Minott's father was rich, and died early in the army, Aunt says.

Minott always sits in the corner behind the door, close to the stove, with commonly the cat by his side, often in his lap. Often he sits with his hat on. 

He says that Frank Buttrick (who for a great many years worked at carpentering for John Richardson, and was working for him when he died) told him that Richardson called him when he was at the point of death and told him that he need not stop working on account of his death, but he might come in to the prayer if he wished to. R. is spoken of as a strong and resolute man.

I wish that there was in every town, in some place accessible to the traveller, instead of or beside the common directories, etc., a list of the worthies of the town, i. e. of those who are worth seeing. 

Miss Minott has several old pieces of furniture that belonged to her grandfather Prescott, one a desk made for him and marked 1760. She said the looking-glass was held oldest furniture, she thought. It has the name John scratched on the middle by a madcap named John Bulkley from college, who had got so far with a diamond before he was stopped. 

Beverley, after describing the various kinds of fowl that frequented the shores of Virginia, "not to mention beavers, otters, musk rats, minxes," etc., etc., says, "Although the inner lands want these benefits (which, however, no pond or plash is without)," etc. I admire the offhand way of describing the superfluous fertility of the land and water. 


What is the relation between a bird and the ear that appreciates its melody, to whom, perchance, it is more charming and significant than to any else? Certainly they are intimately related, and the one was made for the other. It is a natural fact. If I were to discover that a certain kind of stone by the pond-shore was affected, say partially disintegrated, by a particular natural sound, as of a bird or insect, I see that one could not be completely described without describing the other. I am that rock by the pond-side. 

What is hope, what is expectation, but a seed-time whose harvest cannot fail, an irresistible expedition of the mind, at length to be victorious ?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 20, 1857

This morning the ground is once more covered about one inch deep. See February 20, 1858 ("The most wintry day of the winter; yet not more than three inches on a level is fallen.")

I am that rock by the pond-side.  See July 16 1851 ("I was all alive, and inhabited my body with inexpressible satisfaction”); August 8, 1852 ("I only know myself as a human entity, the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections”); 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.”); December 11, 1855 (" 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.”); 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! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?”); August 30 1856  (“ I believe almost in the personality of such planetary matter. . .”); May 12, 1857 (“He is a brother poet, this small gray bird (or bard), whose muse inspires mine. . . .One with the rocks and with us.”)

Also Walden (Solitude) (“. . .all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent. We are not wholly involved in Nature. I may be either the driftwood in the steam, or Indra in the sky looking down on it.  . . . However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you.”)

My diffuse and vaporous life now concentrated and radiant as frost in a winter morning.

February 8

Debauched and worn-out senses require the violent vibrations of an instrument to excite them, but sound and still youthful senses, not enervated by luxury, hear music in the wind and rain and running water. One would think from reading the critics that music was intermittent as a spring in the desert, dependent on some Paganini or Mozart, or heard only when the Pierians or Euterpeans drive through the villages; but music is perpetual, and only hearing is intermittent. 

I hear it in the softened air of these warm February days which have broken the back of the winter. 

For two nights past it has not frozen, but a thick mist has overhung the earth, and you awake to the unusual and agreeable sight of water in the streets. Several strata of snow have been washed away from the drifts, down to that black one formed when dust was blowing from plowed fields. 

Riordan's solitary cock, standing on such an icy snow-heap, feels the influence of the softened air, and the steam from patches of bare ground here and there, and has found his voice again. The warm air has thawed the music in his throat, and he crows lustily and unweariedly, his voice rising to the last. 

Yesterday morning our feline Thomas, also feeling the springlike influence, stole away along the fences and walls, which raise him above the water, and only returned this morning reeking with wet. Having got his breakfast, he already stands on his hind legs, looking wishfully through the window, and, the door being opened a little, he is at once off again in spite of the rain. 

Again and again I congratulate myself on my so-called poverty. I was almost disappointed yesterday to find thirty dollars in my desk which I did not know that I possessed, though now I should be sorry to lose it. 

The week that I go away to lecture, however much I may get for it, is unspeakably cheapened. The preceding and succeeding days are a mere sloping down and up from it. In the society of many men, or in the midst of what is called success, I find my life of no account, and my spirits rapidly fall. I would rather be the barrenest pasture lying fallow than cursed with the compliments of kings, than be the sulphurous and accursed desert where Babylon once stood. 

But when I have only a rustling oak leaf, or the faint metallic cheep of a tree sparrow, for variety in my winter walk, my life be comes continent and sweet as the kernel of a nut. I would rather hear a single shrub oak leaf at the end of a wintry glade rustle of its own accord at my approach, than receive a shipload of stars and garters from the strange kings and peoples of the earth. 

By poverty, i. e. simplicity of life and fewness of incidents, I am solidified and crystallized, as a vapor or liquid by cold. It is a singular concentration of strength and energy and flavor. 

Chastity is perpetual acquaintance with the All. 

February 8, 2020

My diffuse and vaporous life becomes as the frost leaves and spiculae radiant as gems on the weeds and stubble in a winter morning. 

You think that I am impoverishing myself by withdrawing from men, but in my solitude I have woven for myself a silken web or chrysalis, and, nymph-like, shall ere long burst forth a more perfect creature, fitted for a higher society. 

By simplicity, commonly called poverty, my life is concentrated and so becomes organized, or a κόσμος , which before was inorganic and lumpish.

The otter must roam about a great deal, for I rarely see fresh tracks in the same neighborhood a second time the same winter, though the old tracks may be apparent all the winter through. I should not wonder if one went up and down the whole length of the river. 

Hayden senior (sixty-eight years old) tells me that he has been at work regularly with his team almost every day this winter, in spite of snow and cold. Even that cold Friday, about a fortnight ago, he did not go to a fire from early morning till night. As the thermometer, even at 12.45 p.m., was at -9°, with a very violent wind from the northwest, this was as bad as an ordinary arctic day. He was hauling logs to a mill, and persevered in making his paths through the drifts, he alone breaking the road. However, he froze his ears that Friday. Says he never knew it so cold as the past month. 

He has a fine elm directly behind his house, divided into many limbs near the ground. It is a question which is the most valuable, this tree or the house. In hot summer days it shades the whole house. He is going to build a shed around it, inclosing the main portion of the trunk. 

P. M. — To Hubbard Bath. 

Another very warm day, I should think warmer than the last. The sun is from time to time promising to show itself through the mist, but does not. A thick steam is everywhere rising from the earth and snow, and apparently this makes the clouds which conceal the sun, the air being so much warmer than the earth. The snow is gone off very rapidly in the night, and much of the earth is bare, and the ground partially thawed. 

It is exciting to walk over the moist, bare pastures, though slumping four or five inches, and see the green mosses again. This vapor from the earth is so thick that I can hardly see a quarter of a mile, and ever and anon it condenses to rain-drops, which are felt on my face. 

The river has risen, and the water is pretty well over the meadows. If this weather holds a day or two longer, the river will break up generally. 

I see one of those great ash-colored puffballs with a tinge of purple, open like a cup, four inches in diameter. The upper surface is (as it were bleached) quite hoary. Though it is but just brought to light from beneath the deep snow, and the last two days have been misty or rainy without sun, it is just as dry and dusty as ever, and the drops of water rest on it, at first undetected, being coated with its dust, looking like unground pearls. 

I brought it home and held it in a basin of water. To my surprise, when held under water it looked like a mass of silver or melted lead, it was so coated with air, and when I suffered it to rise, — for it had to be kept down by force, — instead of being heavy like a sponge which has soaked water, it was as light as a feather, and its surface perfectly dry, and when touched it gave out its dust the same as ever. 

It was impossible to wet. It seems to be encased in a silvery coat of air which is water-tight. The water did not penetrate into it at all, and running off as you lifted it up, it was just as dry as before, and on the least jar floating in dust above your head. 

The ground is so bare that I gathered a few Indian relics. 

And now another friendship is ended. I do not know what has made my friend doubt me, but I know that in love there is no mistake, and that every estrangement is well founded. 

But my destiny is not narrowed, but if possible the broader for it. The heavens withdraw and arch themselves higher. 

I am sensible not only of a moral, but even a grand physical pain, such as gods may feel, about my head and breast, a certain ache and fullness. This rending of a tie, it is not my work nor thine. It is no accident that we mind; it is only the awards of fate that are affecting. I know of no aeons, or periods, no life and death, but these meetings and separations. 

My life is like a stream that is suddenly dammed and has no outlet; but it rises the higher up the hills that shut it in, and will become a deep and silent lake.

Certainly there is no event comparable for grandeur with the eternal separation — if we may conceive it so — from a being that we have known. I become in a degree sensible of the meaning of finite and infinite. What a grand significance the word "never" acquires! 

With one with whom we have walked on high ground we cannot deal on any lower ground ever after. We have tried for so many years to put each other to this immortal use, and have failed.

Undoubtedly our good genii have mutually found the material unsuitable. We have hitherto paid each other the highest possible compliment; we have recognized each other constantly as divine, have afforded each other that opportunity to live that no other wealth or kindness can afford. And now, for some reason inappreciable by us, it has become necessary for us to withhold this mutual aid.

Perchance there is none beside who knows us for a god, and none whom we know for such. Each man and woman is a veritable god or goddess, but to the mass of their fellows disguised. There is only one in each case who sees through the disguise. That one who does not stand so near to any man as to see the divinity in him is truly alone. 

I am perfectly sad at parting from you. I could better have the earth taken away from under my feet, than the thought of you from my mind. 

One while I think that some great injury has been done, with which you are implicated, again that you are no party to it. I fear that there may be incessant tragedies, that one may treat his fellow as a god but receive somewhat less regard from him. I now almost for the first time fear this. Yet I believe that in the long run there is no such inequality. 

Here we are in the backwoods of America repeating Hebrew prayers and psalms in which occur such words as amen and selah, the meaning of some of which we do not quite understand, reminding me of Moslem prayers in which, it seems, the same or similar words are used. How Mormon-like!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 8, 1857

Music in the wind and rain and running water. See February 15, 1855 ("The steady, soaking, rushing sound of the rain on the shingles is musical.")

Music is perpetual, and only hearing is intermittent. See December 11, 1855 ("Beauty and music are not mere traits and exceptions. They are the rule and character. It is the exception that we see and hear. ")

The softened air of these warm February days which have broken the back of the winter. See February 8, 1856 ("The snow is soft, and the eaves begin to run as not for many weeks."); February 8, 1854 ("Rain, rain, rain, carrying off the snow and leaving a foundation of ice. "); February 8, 1852 ("Night before last, our first rain for a long time; this afternoon, the first crust to walk on."); February 8, 1860 ("There is a peculiarity in the air when the temperature is thus high and the weather fair, at this season, which makes sounds more clear and pervading, as if they trusted themselves abroad further in this genial state of the air.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring: Change in the Air

 Music is perpetual, and only hearing is intermittent. I hear it in the softened air of these warm February days which have broken the back of the winter.  February 8, 1857

  

The otter must roam about a great deal, for I rarely see fresh tracks in the same neighborhood a second time the same winter, though the old tracks may be apparent all the winter through. See March 31, 1857 ("The existence of the otter, our largest wild animal, is not betrayed to any of our senses (or at least not to more than one in a thousand)!") See also  January 30, 1854 ("How retired an otter manages to live! He grows to be four feet long without any mortal getting a glimpse of him."); January 29. 1853 ("Melvin . . . Never saw an otter track"); January 30, 1854 ("How retired an otter manages to live! He grows to be four feet long without any mortal getting a glimpse of him,"); February 4, 1855 ("See this afternoon a very distinct otter-track by the Rock, at the junction of the two rivers.”); February 20, 1855 (Among the quadrupeds of Concord, the otter is "very rare.”); February 20, 1856 (“See a broad and distinct otter-trail, made last night or yesterday"); . February 22, 1856 (“Just below this bridge begins an otter track, several days old yet very distinct, which I trace half a mile down the river.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Otter

That cold Friday, about a fortnight ago  See January 23, 1857 ("The coldest day that I remember recording, clear and bright, but very high wind, blowing the snow. ");  February 7, 1857(" Several men I have talked with froze their ears a fortnight ago yesterday, the cold Friday; one who had never frozen his ears before.”)

And now another friendship is ended. See e.g. January 21, 1852 ("I never realized so distinctly as this moment that I am peacefully parting company with the best friend I ever had, by each pursuing his proper path. ");  February 19, 1857 ("A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend." ); February 23, 1857 ('That aching of the breast, the grandest pain that man endures, which no ether can assuage . . .  If the teeth ache they can be pulled. If the heart aches, what then? Shall we pluck it out?");  February 5, 1859 ("When we have experienced many disappointments, such as the loss of friends, the notes of birds cease to affect us as they did")

February 8. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 8

My vaporous life

now radiant as frost in

a winter morning.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, My vaporous life

 "A book, each page written in its own season, 

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-570208

A winter's ecstasy

December 31

Down railroad to Walden and circle round to right, through Wheeler's woods out to railroad again.  

Four more inches of snow fell last night, making in all now two feet on a level. 

Walden froze completely over last night. It is, however, all snow ice, as it froze while it was snowing hard, and it looks like frozen yeast somewhat.

I wade about in the woods through the snow, which certainly averages considerably more than two feet deep where I go. It is a remarkable sight, this snow-clad landscape, with the fences and bushes half buried and the warm sun on it.  

The town and country are now so still, there being no rattle of wagons nor even jingle of sleigh-bells, every tread being as with woolen feet, I hear very distinctly from the railroad causeway the whistle of the locomotive on the Lowell road. 

I hear it, and I realize and see clearly what at other times I only dimly remember. I get the value of the earth's extent and the sky's depth. It, as it were, takes me out of my body and gives me the freedom of all bodies and all nature. I leave my body in a trance and accompany the zephyr and the fragrance.

He that hath ears, let him hear.  Sugar is not so sweet to the palate, as sound to the healthy ear.  The contact of sound with a human ear whose hearing is pure and unimpaired is coincident with an ecstasy. 

Saw probably an otter's track, very broad and deep, as if a log had been drawn along. It was nearly as obvious as a man's track. It was made before last night's snow fell. The creature from time to time went beneath the snow for a few feet, to the leaves. This animal probably I should never see the least trace of, were it not for the snow, the great revealer.

The birds I saw were a partridge, perched on an evergreen, apparently on account of the deep snow, heard a jay, and heard and saw together white-bellied nuthatches and chickadees, the former uttering a faint quank quank and making a loud tapping, and the latter its usual lisping note.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 31, 1853

Four more inches of snow fell last night, making in all now two feet on a level. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The weather, New Year's Eve

Walden froze completely over last night. See December 22, 1853 ("Walden skimmed over in the widest part, but some acres still open; will probably freeze entirely to-night if this weather holds.”); December 26, 1853 ("Walden still open.. . . the only pond hereabouts that is open.”); December 30, 1853 ("The pond not yet frozen entirely over; about six acres open, the wind blew so hard last night.“) See also
December 31, 1850 ("Walden pond has frozen over since I was there last. ") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Annual ice-in at Walden

The whistle of the locomotive on the Lowell road. See August 15, 1854 ("The locomotive whistle, far southwest, sounds like a bell.”); May 1, 1857 ("The bell was ringing for town meeting, and every one heard it, but It is a sound from amid the waves of the aerial sea, that breaks on our ears with the surf of the air, a sound that is almost breathed with the wind."); March 22, 1856 ("I thought I heard the hum of a bee, but perhaps it was a railroad whistle on the Lowell Railroad."); November 21, 1857 ("Paddling along, a little above the Hemlocks, I hear, I think, a boy whistling upon the bank above me, but immediately perceive that it is the whistle of the locomotive a mile off in that direction . . . the moment that the key was changed from a very high to a low one.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Bells and Whistles

I realize and see clearly what at other times I only dimly remember . . . I leave my body in a trance . . . The contact of sound with a human ear whose hearing is pure and unimpaired is coincident with an ecstasy. See March 3, 1841 ("Nature always possesses a certain sonorousness, as in the hum of insects, the booming of ice, the crowing of cocks in the morning, and the barking of dogs in the nigh, which indicates her sound state. God's voice is but a clear bell sound. I drink in a wonderful health, a cordial, in sound.")  September 12, 1851 ("I heard the telegraph-wire vibrating . . .. It told me by the faintest imaginable strain, it told me by the finest strain that a human ear can hear, yet conclusively and past all refutation, that there were higher, infinitely higher, planes of life which it behooved me never to forget."); March 17, 1852 ("By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe, I am fitted to hear, my being moves in a sphere of melody, my fancy and imagination are excited to an inconceivable degree.”); May 23, 1854 ("Think of going abroad out of one's self to hear music . . .There was a time when the beauty and the music were all within, and I sat and listened to my thoughts, and there was a song in them. I sat for hours on rocks and wrestled with the melody which possessed me. I sat and listened by the hour to a positive though faint and distant music."); 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.”); February 20, 1857 ("What is the relation between a bird and the ear that appreciates its melody, to whom, perchance, it is more charming and significant than to any else? Certainly they are intimately related, and the one was made for the other. . . . I see that one could not be completely described without describing the other. “);  April 15, 1859 ("We are provided with singing birds and with ears to hear them. . . . Whether a man's work be hard or easy, whether he be happy or unhappy, a bird is appointed to sing to a man while he is at his work. ")

Saw probably an otter's track. See December 31, 1854 ("I see the track of an otter made since yesterday morning. How glorious the perfect stillness and peace of the winter landscape!") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Otter

Hearing the whistle

of the locomotive takes

me out of body.

I see clearly what

at other times I only

dimly remember.

The earth's extent

the freedom of all nature

and the sky's depth.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A winter's ecstasy

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, 

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2024

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