They must have the essence or oil of himself, tried out of the fat of his experience and joy.

December 23

December 23, 2016

Some savage tribes must share the experience of the lower animals in their relation to man. With what thoughts must the Esquimau manufacture his knife from the rusty hoop of a cask drifted to his shores, not a natural but an artificial product, the work of man's hands, the waste of the commerce of a superior race, whom perchance he never saw! 

The cracking of the ground is a phenomenon of the coldest nights. After being awaked by the loud cracks the night of the 18th at Amherst (a man told me in the morning that he had seen a crack running across the plain (I saw it), almost broad enough to put his hand into; this was an exaggeration; it was not a quarter of an inch wide), I saw a great many the same forenoon running across the road in Nashua, every few rods, and also by our house in Concord the same day when I got home. So it seems the ground was cracking all the country over, partly, no doubt, because there was so little snow, or none (none at Concord). 

If the writer would interest readers, he must report so much life, using a certain satisfaction always as a point d'appui. However mean and limited, it must be a genuine and contented life that he speaks out of. They must have the essence or oil of himself, tried out of the fat of his experience and joy.

1 P. M. — Surveying for Cyrus Jarvis. 

Snows more or less all day, making an inch or two.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 23, 1856

The cracking of the ground . . . at Amherst. . . . See December 19, 1856 ("[I]n Amherst, I had been awaked by the loud cracking of the 'ground, which shook the house like the explosion of a powder-mill. . . . This is a sound peculiar to the coldest nights.")

The writer . . . must report so much life, . . . experience and joy .See October 18, 1856 ("All that interests the reader is the depth and intensity of the life excited."); May 6, 1854 ("Every important worker will report what life there is in him. All that a man has to say or do that can possibly concern mankind, is in some shape or other to tell the story of his love, — to sing; and, if he is fortunate and keeps alive, he will be forever in love."); July 13, 1852 (A journal, a book that shall contain a record of all your joy, your ecstasy.); September 2, 1851 ("We cannot write well or truly but what we write with gusto. . . . Expression is the act of the whole man. . . A writer, a man writing, is the scribe of all nature; he is the corn and the grass and the atmosphere writing. It is always essential that we love to do what we are doing, do it with a heart.")

All is moist and dissolving.

January 13.

Still warm and thawing, springlike; no freezing in the night, though high winds. 

I saw yesterday my snowshoe tracks quite distinct, though made January 2d. Though they pressed the snow down four or five inches, they consolidated it, and it now endures and is two or three inches above the general level there, and more white. 

The landscape is now patches of bare ground and snow; much running water with the sun reflected from it. Lately all was clean, dry, and tight. Now, though clear and bright, all is moist and dissolving. 

Walden is covered with puddles, in which you see a dim reflection of the trees and hills on the grayish or light-colored snow-ice.

In the deep hollow this side of Britton's Camp, I hear a singular buzzing sound from the ground, exactly like that of a large fly or bee in a spider's web. I kneel down, and with pains trace it to a small bare spot as big as my hand, amid the snow, and searched there amid the grass stubble for several minutes, putting the grass aside with my fingers, till, when nearest to the spot, not knowing but I might be stung, I use a stick. The sound is incessant, like that of a large fly in agony, but I find neither prey nor oppressor. 

At length I change the tone with my stick, and so trace it to a few spires of dead grass standing in the melted snow water. It is a sound issuing from the earth. 

There is no bubble in the water. Perhaps it is air confined under the frozen ground, now expanded by the thaw, and escaping upward through the water by a hollow grass stem.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 13, 1854

Walden is covered with puddles, in which you see a dim reflection of the trees and hills on the grayish or light-colored snow-ice. See  January 8, 1860 ("The sloshy edges of the puddles are the frames of so many wave-shaped mirrors in which the leather-colored oak leaves, and the dark-green pines and their stems, on the hillside, are reflected. "); February 7, 1857 (“The water on the ice is for the most part several inches deep, and trees reflected in it appear as when seen through a mist or smoke, apparently owing to the color of the ice.”); February 15, 1859 ("We walk through almost invisible puddles on the river and meadows, in which we see the trees, etc., reflected. ")

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, I love you like I love the sky

January 13.  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 13

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