The over-curious walker laments: Go not to the object; let it come to you.

March 30.

March 30, 2013

I see again that same kind of clouds that I saw the 10th of last April, low in the sky; higher and over head those great downy clouds, equal to the intervals of celestial blue, with glowing edges and with wet bases. 

The sky is mapped with them as with New Hollands and Borneos. There are mares’-tails and rosettes in the west. 

The motions of a hawk correcting the flaws in the wind by raising his shoulder from time to time, are much like those of a leaf yielding to them. For the little hawks are hunting now. You have not to sit long on the Cliffs before you see one. 

I still see fresh earth where the skunk, if it is he, has been probing last night for insects about the pines in pastures and any dead twigs that afford lurking-places. Saw a dead cricket in one. They make a hole sometimes so deep and pointed that only two fingers will fathom it. If dor-bugs make such holes as the spiders, they can easily find them. 

I am surprised to find many of the early sedge already out. It may have been out a day or two. I should put it between the skunk-cabbage and the aspen, at any rate, before the last. 

Little black ants in the pitchy-looking earth about the base of white pines in woods are still dormant.

Ah, those youthful days! are they never to return? when the walker does not too curiously observe particulars, but sees, hears, scents, tastes, and feels only himself, - the phenomena that show themselves in him, - his expanding body, his intellect and heart. No worm or insect, quadruped or bird, confined his view, but the unbounded universe was his. A bird is now become a mote in his eye.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 30, 1853

Hawks are hunting now.  See March 30, 1856 ("The south hillsides no sooner begin to be bare, and the striped squirrels and birds resort there, than the hawks come from southward to prey on them.")

Ah, those youthful days! See June 1850 ("My imagination, my love and reverence and admiration, my sense of the miraculous, is not so excited by any event as by the remembrance of my youth."); July 16, 1851 ("I am all alive, and inhabit my body with inexpressible satisfaction. . . . To have such sweet impressions made on me, such ecstasies begotten of the breezes! . . . There comes to me such an indescribable, infinite, all-absorbing, divine, heavenly pleasure, a sense of elevation and expansion"); January 9. 1853 (" How much - how, perhaps, all - that is best in our experience in middle life may be resolved into the memory of our youth! I remember how I expanded")

When the walker does not too curiously observe particulars. See March 5, 1852 ("Such is the mood of my mind, and I call it studying lichens. The habit of looking at things microscopically, as the lichens on the trees and rocks, really prevents my seeing aught else in a walk"); September 13, 1852 (“I have the habit of attention to such excess that my senses get no rest, but suffer from a constant strain. When I have found myself ever looking down and confining my gaze to the flowers, I have thought it might be well to get into the habit of observing the clouds as a corrective; but no! that study would be just as bad. It is as bad to study stars and clouds as flowers and stones.”): March 23, 1853 (“I feel that I am dissipated by so many observations. . . . I have almost a slight, dry headache as the result of all this observing.”)

Looking with the side of the eye

March 23

The buds of the shad-blossom look green. The crimson-starred flowers of the hazel begin to peep out, though the catkins have not opened. 

The alders are almost generally in full bloom, and a very handsome and interesting show they make with their graceful tawny pendants, inclining to yellow. They shake like ear-drops in the wind, perhaps the first completed ornaments with which the new year decks herself. Their yellow pollen is shaken down and colors my coat like sulphur as I go through them. 

Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at Nature directly, but only with the side of his eye. He must look through and beyond her.

To look at her is as fatal as to look at the head of Medusa. It turns the man of science to stone. I feel that I am dissipated by so many observations. I should be the magnet in the midst of all this dust and filings. I knock the back of my hand against a rock, and as I smooth back the skin, I find myself prepared to study lichens there. I look upon man but as a fungus. I have almost a slight, dry headache as the result of all this observing.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 23, 1853

The alders are almost generally in full bloom, See March 22, 1853 ("The very earliest alder is in bloom and sheds its pollen . . . This the first native flower.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Alders; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding

I find myself prepared to study lichens there. See January 26, 1852 ("The beauty of lichens, with their scalloped leaves, the small attractive fields, the crinkled edge! I could study a single piece of bark for hour.”); March 5, 1852 ("Such is the mood of my mind, and I call it studying lichens. The habit of looking at things microscopically, as the lichens on the trees and rocks, really prevents my seeing aught else in a walk"); February 5, 1853 ("It is a lichen day. . . . All the world seems a great lichen and to grow like one to-day”). 

Look only with the side of the eye.  See August 5, 1851 ("The question is not what you look at, but what you see."); November 18 1851 ("The chopper who works in the woods all day is more open in some respects to the impressions they are fitted to make than the naturalist who goes to see them. He really forgets himself, forgets to observe, and at night he dreams of the swamp, its phenomena and events. Not so the naturalist; enough of his unconscious life does not pass there. A man can hardly be said to be there if he knows that he is there, or to go there if he knows where he is going.The man who is bent upon his work is frequently in the best attitude to observe what is irrelevant to his work.); February 18, 1852 ("One discovery in meteorology, one significant observation, is a good deal. I am grateful to the man who introduces order among the clouds. Yet I look up into the heavens so fancy free, I am almost glad not to know any law for the winds."); September 13, 1852 ("I must walk more with free senses. I must let my senses wander as my thoughts, my eyes see without looking. Carlyle said that how to observe was to look, but I say that it is rather to see, and the more you look the less you will observe. Be not preoccupied with looking. Go not to the object; let it come to you. What I need is not to look at all, but a true sauntering of the eye.");   June 14, 1853 (". . . you are in that favorable frame of mind described by De Quincey, open to great impressions, and you see those rare sights with the unconscious side of the eye, which you could not see by a direct gaze before.”); 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.”); April 28, 1856 ("Again, as so many times, I am reminded of the advantage to the poet, and philosopher, and naturalist, and whomsoever, of pursuing from time to time some other business than his chosen one, — seeing with the side of the eye.")

I have a slight, dry

headache as the result of

all this observing.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 23, 1853

A human entity

August 8

5 A.M. –– Awoke into a rosy fog.  

I was enveloped by the skirts of Aurora.

August 8, 2014

The small dewdrops rest on the Asclepias pulchra by the roadside like gems and the flower has lost half its beauty when they are shaken off,  

I only know myself as a human entity, the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections, and am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. 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. When the play - it may be the tragedy of life - is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.

No man ever makes a discovery, even an observation of the least importance, but he is advertised of the fact by a joy that surprises him.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 8, 1852 

Doubleness.  See A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers:

"My life has been the poem I would have writ,

But I could not both live and utter it."

Walden (Solitude) ("With thinking we may be beside ourselves in a sane sense. By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences; and 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. I may be affected by a theatrical exhibition; on the other hand, I may not be affected by an actual event which appears to concern me much more. I only know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections; and am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. 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. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned. This doubleness may easily make us poor neighbors and friends sometimes. ")  See also  

 

 I see my shadow

as a second person who 

sits down on this rock.

June 11, 1851 

August 17, 1851 ("How can that depth be fathomed where a man may see himself reflected?");  November 18, 1851 ("A man can hardly be said to be there if he knows that he is there, or to go there if he knows where he is going."); April 28, 1860 (" Now that the hum of insects begins to be heard []You seem to have a great companion with you. . .  as if it were the noise of your own thinking.")

The tragedy of life - a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only. See December 15, 1852 ("But is this fact of "our life " commonly but a puff of air, a flash in the pan, a smoke, a nothing? It does not afford arena for a tragedy.")

Discovery/ perception of truth. See 2/27/1851 ("a novel and grand surprise, or a sudden revelation of the insufficiency of all that we had called knowledge before; an indefinite sense of the grandeur and glory of the universe.”); April 19 1852 ("How sweet is the perception of a new natural fact! suggesting what worlds remain to be unveiled. That phenomenon of the andromeda seen against the sun cheers me exceedingly. When the phenomenon was not observed, it was not at all. I think that no man ever takes an original or detects a principle, without experiencing an inexpressible, as quite infinite and sane, pleasure, which advertises him of the dignity of that truth he has perceived.”). See also September 4-7, 1851(" All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy.”); September 24 1854("The perception of truth, as of the duration of time, etc., produces a pleasurable sensation”) November 4, 1858 ("We cannot see any thing until we are possessed with the idea of it.”); January 5, 1860 ("A man receives only what he is ready to receive. His observations make a chain. He does not observe the phenomenon that cannot be linked with the rest which he has observed, however novel and remarkable it may be. A man tracks himself through life, apprehending only what he already half knows.”); August 22, 1860 ("I never find a remarkable Indian relic but I have first divined its existence, and planned the discovery of it. Frequently I have told myself distinctly what it was to be before I found it.")

"I can remember the very spot in the road, whilst in my carriage, when to my joy the solution occurred to me…." Charles Darwin, Autobiography 99 (Norton paperback edition reissued 2005)

"It is impossible to solve a difficulty except by discovering a truth." Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

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

I am conscious of

my double to whom I am

a kind of fiction.

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 ©  2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-18520808 

Railroad geology

November 3

November 3. 

A violent easterly storm in the night clears up at noon.

I notice that the surface of the railroad causeway, composed of gravel, is singularly marked, as if stratified like some slate rocks, on their edges, so that I can tell within a small fraction of a degree from what quarter the rain came. These lines, as it were of stratification, are perfectly parallel, and straight as a ruler, diagonally across the flat surface of the causeway for its whole length. 

Behind each little pebble, as a protecting boulder, an eighth or a tenth of an inch in diameter, extends northwest a ridge of sand an inch or more, which it has protected from being washed away, while the heavy drops driven almost horizontally have washed out a furrow on each side, and on all sides are these ridges, half an inch apart and perfectly parallel.

All this is perfectly distinct to an observant eye, and yet could easily pass unnoticed by most.*

H. D. Thoreau,  Journal, November 3, 1861

*[This is the final entry; Thoreau dies May 6, 1862.]

The surface of the railroad causeway. . .is singularly marked, as if stratified . . . so that I can tell . . . from what quarter the rain came. See December 31 1850 ("In the cut by the Pond the . . . the stratum deposited by the side of the road in the winter can permanently be distinguished from the summer one . . ..")

Unnoticed by most. See March 27, 1853 ("so minute that only an observer of nature, or one who looked for them, would notice it."); August 19, 1856 (“a careless observer would look through their thin flowery panicles without observing any flower at all.”)

The infinite roominess of nature - relaxed attention to the unexpected flash of the infinite

November 18..

A man can hardly

be said to be there if he

knows that he is there

Surveying these days the Ministerial Lot. Now at sundown I hear the hooting of an owl,-- hoo hoo hoo, hoorer, hoo. This is faintly answered in a different strain, apparently from a greater distance, almost as if it were an echo. This is my music each evening. 

I heard it last evening. It is a sound admirably suited to the swamp and to the twilight woods, suggesting a vast undeveloped nature which men have not recognized. 

I rejoice that there are owls. This sound suggests the infinite roominess of nature, that there is a world in which owls live. 

Here hawks also circle by day, and chickadees are heard, and rabbits and partridges abound. 

The chopper who works in the woods all day for many weeks or months at a time becomes intimately acquainted with them in his way. He is more open in some respects to the impressions they are fitted to make than the naturalist who goes to see them. He really forgets himself, forgets to observe, and at night he dreams of the swamp, its phenomena and events. Not so the naturalist; enough of his unconscious life does not pass there. 

A man can hardly be said to be there if he knows that he is there, or to go there if he knows where he is going. The man who is bent upon his work is frequently in the best attitude to observe what is irrelevant to his work. (Mem. Wordsworth's observations on relaxed attention.)

November 18, 2013

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 18, 1851

A man can hardly be said to be there if he knows that he is there. See note to August 28, 1841:

My life hath been the poem I would have writ,

But I could not both live and live to utter it.

I rejoice that there are owls, a world in which owls live.   See November 9, 1851 (“Observing me still scribbling, [Channing] will say that he confines himself to the ideal. . . he leaves the facts to me. Sometimes, too, he will say a little petulantly, "I am universal; I have nothing to do with the particular and definite." I, too, would fain set down something beside facts.”); November 17, 1859 ("Thus disappear the haunts of the owls. The time may come when their aboriginal hoo-hoo-hoo will not be heard hereabouts."). See also Walden ("I rejoice that there are owls. Let them do the idiotic and maniacal hooting for men. It is a sound admirably suited to swamps and twilight woods which no day illustrates, suggesting a vast and undeveloped nature which men have not recognized. They represent the stark twilight and unsatisfied thoughts which all have. All day the sun has shone on the surface of some savage swamp, where the single spruce stands hung with usnea lichens, and small hawks circulate above, and the chickadee lisps amid the evergreens, and the partridge and rabbit skulk beneath; but now a more dismal and fitting day dawns, and a different race of creatures awakes to express the meaning of Nature there.”)

Rejoice there are owls,

the roominess of nature

this world where owls live. 

November 18, 1851

The man who is bent upon his work is frequently in the best attitude to observe what is irrelevant to his work.  .See April 12, 1854 ("I observe that it is when I have been intently, and it may be laboriously, at work . . . that the muse visits me, and I see or hear beauty. It is from out the shadow of my toil that I look into the light.”); June 14, 1853 ("That favorable frame of mind described by De Quincey, open to great impressions, and you see those rare sights with the unconscious side of the eye, which you could not see by a direct gaze before."); 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 also Walden ("Fishermen, hunters, woodchoppers, and others, spending their lives in the fields and woods, in a peculiar sense a part of Nature themselves, are often in a more favorable mood for observing her, in the intervals of their pursuits, than philosophers or poets even, who approach her with expectation.")

Mem. Wordsworth's observations on relaxed attention.  

Relaxed attention

to the unexpected flash

of the infinite.

See De Quincey LAKE REMINISCENCES; BY THE ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER  quoting Wordsworth's description of  the observations possible after a period of focused attention, such as a bright star "falling upon the eye" and "carried to the heart"  just when, ear to the ground, listening intensely for the arrival of the post:

 "At the very instant when the organs of attention were all at once relaxing from their tension, the bright star hanging in the air above those outlines of massy blackness fell suddenly upon my eye, and penetrated my capacity of apprehension with a pathos and a sense of the infinite"

--  and as illustrated  in Wordsworth's poem, "There was a Boy"  by  the boy's "gentle shock of mild surprise . . .carried far into his  heart"  while listening for owls. ("in that silence, while he hung listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise has carried far into his heart the voice of mountain-torrents") See also  Erica McAlpine, The Poet's Mistake - Page 42 (2020)

:

There was a Boy

There was a Boy; ye knew him well, ye cliffs

And islands of Winander! many a time,

At evening, when the earliest stars began

To move along the edges of the hills,

Rising or setting, would he stand alone,

Beneath the trees, or by the glimmering lake;

And there, with fingers interwoven, both hands

Pressed closely palm to palm and to his mouth

Uplifted, he, as through an instrument,

Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls

That they might answer him.—And they would shout

Across the watery vale, and shout again,

Responsive to his call,—with quivering peals,

And long halloos, and screams, and echoes loud

Redoubled and redoubled; concourse wild

Of jocund din! And, when there came a pause

Of silence such as baffled his best skill:

Then, sometimes, in that silence, while he hung

Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise

Has carried far into his heart the voice

Of mountain-torrents; or the visible scene

Would enter unawares into his mind

With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,

Its woods, and that uncertain heaven received

Into the bosom of the steady lake . . .

Solstice  2004

collecting moments

untouched by hope or regret

expanding the present with

relaxed attention to the unexpected

splash!

a blue heron floats reflected in the lake.

a doe alert on the lawn

a fox runs across the road

a loon calls in the night

the light on the water

the sound of the waves.

A sudden wind clears the air.

ZPHX

Nov. 18. Surveying these days the Ministerial Lot. 

Now at sundown I hear the hooting of an owl, — hoo hoo hoo, hoorer hoo. It sounds like the hooting of an idiot or a maniac broke loose. This is faintly answered in a different strain, apparently from a greater distance, almost as if it were the echo, i. e. so far as the succession is concerned. 

This is my music each evening. I heard it last evening. The men who help me call it the "hooting owl " and think it is the cat owl. It is a sound admirably suited [to] the swamp and to the twilight woods, suggesting a vast undeveloped nature which men have not recognized nor satisfied. 

I rejoice that there are owls. They represent the stark, twilight, unsatisfied thoughts  I have. Let owls do the idiotic and maniacal hooting for men. This sound faintly suggests the infinite roominess of nature, that there is a world in which owls live. 

Yet how few are seen, even by the hunters! 

The sun has shone for a day over this savage swamp, where the single spruce stands covered with usnea moss, which a Concord merchant mortgaged once to the trustees of the ministerial fund and lost, but now for a different race of creatures a new day dawns over this wilderness, which one would have thought was sufficiently dismal before. 

Here hawks also circle by day, and chickadees are heard, and rabbits and partridges abound. 

The chopper who works in the woods all day for many weeks or months at a time becomes intimately acquainted with them in his way. He is more open in some respects to the impressions they are fitted to make than the naturalist who goes to see them. He is not liable to exaggerate insignificant features. He really forgets himself, forgets to observe, and at night he dreams of the swamp, its phenomena and events. Not so the naturalist; enough of his unconscious life does not pass there.

A man can hardly be said to be there if he knows that he is there, or to go there if he knows where he is going. The man who is bent upon his work is frequently in the best attitude to observe what is irrelevant to his work. (Mem. Wordsworth's observations on relaxed attention.) You must be conversant with things for a long time to know much about them, like the moss which has hung from the spruce, and as the partridge and the rabbit are acquainted with the thickets and at length have acquired the color of the places they frequent. If the man of science can put all his knowledge into propositions, the woodman has a great deal of incommunicable knowledge. 

Deacon Brown told me to-day of a tall, raw-boned fellow by the name of Hosmer who used to help draw the seine behind the Jones house, who once, when he had hauled it without getting a single shad, held up a little perch in sport above his face, to show what he had got. At that moment the perch wiggled and dropped right down his throat head foremost, and nearly suffocated him; and it was only after considerable time, during which the man suffered much, that he was extracted or forced down. He was in a worse predicament than a fish hawk would have been. 

In the woods south of the swamp are many great holes made by digging for foxes.

A tall, raw-boned fellow by the name of Hosmer. See June 4, 1856 ("Dr. Heywood worked over him a fortnight, while the perch was dissolving in his throat. He got little compassion generally, and the nickname “Perch” into the bargain. Think of going to sleep for fourteen nights with a perch, his fins set and his scales (!), dissolving in your throat! ! What dreams! What waking thoughts ")

Its sound reminds me

this infinite roominess-

a world where owls live.

November 18, 1851

https://tinyurl.com/HDT511118

The Poet Naturalist

July 23.


Wednesday.

I remember the last moon, shining through a creamy atmosphere, with a tear in the eye of Nature and her tresses dishevelled and drooping, sliding up the sky, the glistening air, the leaves shining with dew, pulsating upward; an atmosphere unworn, unprophaned by day.

What self-healing in Nature !-swept by the dews.

For some weeks past the roadsides and the dry and trivial fields have been covered with the field trefoil (Trifolium arvense), now in bloom.

8 A. M. – A comfortable breeze blowing.

Methinks I can write better in the afternoon, for the novelty of it, if I should go abroad this morning.

My genius makes distinctions which my understanding cannot, and which my senses do not report.

If I should reverse the usual, — go forth and saunter in the fields all the forenoon, then sit down in my chamber in the afternoon, which it is so unusual for me to do,-it would be like a new season to me, and the novelty of it (would) inspire me.

The wind has fairly blown me outdoors; the elements were so lively and active, and I so sympathized with them, that I could not sit while the wind went by.

And I am reminded that we should especially improve the summer to live out-of-doors.

When we may so easily, it behooves us to break up this custom of sitting in the house, for it is but a custom, and I am not sure that it has the sanction of common sense.

A man no sooner gets up than he sits down again.

Fowls leave their perch in the morning, and beasts their lairs, unless they are such as go abroad only by night.

The cockerel does not take up a new perch in the barn, and he is the embodiment of health and common sense.

Is the literary man to live always or chiefly sitting in a chamber through which nature enters by a window only? What is the use of the summer? You must walk so gently as to hear the finest sounds, the faculties being in repose.

Your mind must not perspire.

True, out of doors my thought is commonly drowned, as it were, and shrunken, pressed down by stupendous piles of light ethereal influences, for the pressure of the atmosphere is still fifteen pounds to a square inch.

I can do little more than preserve the equilibrium and resist the pressure of the atmosphere.

I can only nod like the rye-heads in the breeze.

I expand more surely in my chamber, as far as expression goes, as if that pressure were taken off; but here out doors is the place to store up influences. 

The swallow's twitter is the sound of the lapsing waves of the air, or when they break and burst, as his wings represent the ripple.

He has more air in his bones than other birds; his feet are defective.

The fish of the air.

His note is the voice of the air.

As fishes may hear the sound of waves lapsing on the surface and see the outlines of the ripples, so we hear the note and see the flight of swallows.

The influences which make for one walk more than another, and one day more than another, are much more ethereal than terrestrial.

It is the quality of the air much more than the quality of the ground that concerns the walker, — cheers or depresses him.

What he may find in the air, not what he may find on the ground.

On such a road (the Corner) I walk securely, seeing far and wide on both sides, as if I were flanked by light infantry on the hills, to rout the provincials, as the British marched into Concord, while my grenadier thoughts keep the main road.

That is, my light-armed and wandering thoughts scour the neighboring fields, and so I know if the coast is clear.

With what a breadth of van I advance ! I am not bounded by the walls.

I think more than the road full. (Going southwesterly.)

 While I am abroad, the ovipositors plant their seeds in me; I am fly-blown with thought, and go home to hatch and brood over them.

I was too discursive and rambling in my thought for the chamber, and must go where the wind blows on me walking . . . . .

A little brook crossing the road (the Corner road), a few inches’depth of transparent water rippling over yellow sand and pebbles, the pure blood of nature.

How miraculously crystal-like, how exquisite, fine, and subtle, and liquid this element, which an imperceptible inclination in the channel causes to flow thus surely and swiftly! How obedient to its instinct, to the faintest suggestion of the hills! If inclined but a hair’s breadth, it is in a torrent haste to obey.

And all the revolutions of the planet — nature is so exquisitely adjusted – and the attraction of the stars do not disturb this equipoise, but the rills still flow the same way, and the water levels are not disturbed.

We are not so much like debauchees as in the after noon.

The mind is subject to moods, as the shadows of clouds pass over the earth.

Pay not too much heed to them.

Let not the traveller stop for them.

They consist with the fairest weather.

By the mood of my mind, I suddenly felt dissuaded from continuing my walk, but I observed at the same instant that the shadow of a cloud was passing over [ the ] spot on which I stood, though it was of small extent, which, if it had no connection with my mood, at any rate suggested how transient and little to be regarded that mood was.

I kept on, and in a moment the sun shone on my walk within and without.

The button-bush in blossom.

The tobacco-pipe in damp woods.

Certain localities only a few rods square in the fields and on the hills, sometimes the other side of a wall, attract me as if they had been the scene of pleasure in another state of existence: 

But this habit of close observation, — in Humboldt, Darwin, and others. Is it to be kept up long, this science?

Do not tread on the heels of your experience. Be impressed without making a minute of it. Poetry puts an interval between the impression and the expression, — waits till the seed germinates naturally.



H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 23, 1851


This habit of close observation. . . See September 13, 1852 (“I have the habit of attention to such excess that my senses get no rest, but suffer from a constant strain. When I have found myself ever looking down and confining my gaze to the flowers, I have thought it might be well to get into the habit of observing the clouds as a corrective; but no! that study would be just as bad. It is as bad to study stars and clouds as flowers and stones.”):March 23, 1853 (“I feel that I am dissipated by so many observations. . . . I have almost a slight, dry headache as the result of all this observing.”); See also Chapter 3, Thoreau and Humboldtean Science in Seeing New Worlds; and Chapter 19, Henry David Thoreau and Humboldt in The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World


I am reminded that we should especially improve the summer to live out-of-doors. Here out doors is the place to store up influences. See December 29, 1856 (“We must go out and re-ally ourselves to Nature every day. . . .. Staying in the house breeds a sort of insanity always.”) September 13, 1859 ("You must be outdoors long, early and late, and travel far and earnestly, in order to perceive the phenomena of the day. ")

The mind is subject to moods, as the shadows of clouds pass over the earth. See January 26, 1852 ("Would you see your mind, look at the sky. Would you know your own moods, be weather-wise."); February 18, 1860 ("Sometimes, when I go forth at 2 P. M., there is scarcely a cloud in the sky, but soon one will appear in the west and steadily advance and expand itself, and so change the whole character of the afternoon and of my thoughts. ")

A little brook crossing the road . . . a few inches’depth of transparent water rippling over yellow sand and pebbles. See March 26, 1860  (" One of the most interesting sights this afternoon is the color of the yellow sand in the sun at the bottom of Nut Meadow and Second Division Brooks. The yellow sands of a lonely brook seen through the rippling water, with the shadows of the ripples like films passing over it. ")

Poetry puts an interval between the impression and the expression. . . See Do not tread on the heels of your experience.

July 23. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 23

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 © 2009-2021

Tracking

January 5.

How much the snow reveals! 

I see where the downy woodpecker has worked lately by the chips of bark and rotten wood scattered over the snow, though I rarely see him in the winter. 

 Also I see where a flock of goldfinches in the morning had settled on a hemlock's top, by the snow strewn with scales, literally blackened or darkened with them for a rod. 

And now, about the hill in front of Smith's, I see where the quails have run along the roadside, and can count the number of the bevy better than if I saw them.

A man receives only what he is ready to receive. His observations make a chain. He does not observe the phenomenon that cannot be linked with the rest which he has observed, however novel and remarkable it may be. A man tracks himself through life, apprehending only what he already half knows.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 5, 1860

I see where a flock of goldfinches in the morning had settled on a hemlock's top. See November 11, 1859 ("A flock of goldfinches on the top of a hemlock, — as if after its seeds?"); November 15, 1859 ("About the 23d of October I saw a large flock of goldfinches (judging from their motions and notes) on the tops of the hemlocks up the Assabet, apparently feeding on their seeds, then falling. They were collected in great numbers on the very tops of these trees and flitting from one to another. Rice has since described to me the same phenomenon.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau the Goldfinch

A man receives only what he is ready to receive. See November 4, 1858 (“ All this you will see, and much more, if you are prepared to see it, — if you look for it. . . .Objects are concealed from our view not so much because they are out of the course of our visual ray (continued) as because there is no intention of the mind and eye toward them. We do not realize how far and widely, or how near and narrowly, we are to look. The greater part of the phenomena of nature are for this reason concealed to us all our lives. . . . The actual objects which one person will see from a particular hilltop are just as different from those which another will see as the persons are different. The scarlet oak must, in a sense, be in your eye when you go forth. We cannot see any thing until we are possessed with the idea of it, and then we can hardly see anything else. In my botanical rambles I find that first the idea, or image, of a plant occupies my thoughts, though it may at first seem very foreign to this locality, and for some weeks or months I go thinking of it and expecting it unconsciously, and at length I surely see it, and it is henceforth an actual neighbor of mine. This is the history of my finding a score or more of rare plants which I could name.”)

How much the snow reveals! See February 16, 1854 ("For snow is a great revealer not only of tracks made in itself, but even in the earth before it fell.. . . A light snow will often reveal a faint foot or cart track in a field which was hardly discernible before, for it reprints it, as it were, in clear white type, alto-relievo.”); December 8, 1855 ("Let a snow come and clothe the ground and trees, and I shall see the tracks of many inhabitants now unsuspected"); January 4, 1860 ("Again see what the snow reveals.. .that the woods are nightly thronged with little creatures which most have never seen");


   * * *

How much the snow reveals! I see where the downy woodpecker has worked lately by the chips of bark and rotten wood scattered over the snow, though I rarely see him in the winter. Once to-day, however, I hear his sharp voice, even like a woodchuck's. Also I have occasionally seen where (probably) a flock of goldfinches in the morning had settled on a hemlock's top, by the snow strewn with scales, literally blackened or darkened with them for a rod. And now, about the hill in front of Smith's, I see where the quails have run along the roadside, and can count the number of the bevy better than if I saw them. Are they not peculiar in this, as compared with partridges, — that they run in company, while at this season I see but [one] or two partridges together?

A man receives only what he is ready to receive, whether physically or intellectually or morally, as animals conceive at certain seasons their kind only. We hear and apprehend only what we already half know. If there is something which does not concern me, which is out of my line, which by experience or by genius my attention is not drawn to, however novel and remarkable it may be, if it is spoken, we hear it not, if it is written, we read it not, or if we read it, it does not detain us. Every man thus tracks himself through life, in all his hearing and reading and observation and travelling. His observations make a chain. The phenomenon or fact that cannot in any wise be linked with the rest which he has observed, he does not observe. By and by we may be ready to receive what we cannot receive now. . . .

...I find, for example, in Aristotle some.thing about the spawning, etc., of the pout and perch, because I know something about it already and have my attention aroused; but I do not discover till very late that he has made other equally important observations on the spawning of other fishes, because I am not interested in those fishes.

I see the dead stems of the water horehound just rising above the snow and curving outward over the bank of the Assabet, near the stone-heaps, with its brown clusters of dry seeds, etc., every inch or two. These, stripped off or rubbed between the fingers, look somewhat like ground coffee and are agreeably aromatic. They have the fragrance of lemon-peel.