The thing that really concerns me is not there.

November 5. 

P. M. — To the Dam Meadows. 

But little corn is left in the field now, and that looks rather black. There is an abundance of cat-tail in the Dam Meadows. 

Returning, talked with Minott. He told me how he and Harry Hooper used to go to Howard's meadow (Heywood's, by the railroad) when it was flowed and kill fishes through the ice. They would cuft a long stick and go carefully over the ice when it was only a couple of inches thick, and when they saw a fish, strike the ice smartly, cracking it in all directions, right over him, and when he turned his belly, being stunned, would cut him out quickly before he came to. These were little fishes which he called “prods.” He didn’t know much more about them. They were somewhat like a small pout, but had different heads. They got so many once that he told Harry to cut a stick and string them and they'd give them to Zilpha as they went by. He has caught pickerel in the brook there which weighed two or three pounds.

He went to Bateman’s Pond once in the winter to catch minnows with a net through the ice, but didn’t get any. He went—rode—with Oliver Williams first into Acton and then round to this pond on this errand. 

Minott was rather timid. One day early in the winter he had been over to Fair Haven Hill after a fox with John Wyman, but they didn’t get him. The pond was frozen about two inches thick, but you could easily see the water through the ice, and when they came back, Wyman said he was going straight across because it was nearer, but Minott objected. But Wyman told him to follow; it was safe enough. Minott followed half a dozen rods and then decided that he wouldn’t risk it and went back; he’d go ten miles round sooner than cross. “But,” said Minott, “the fellow kept on and I’ll be hanged if he didn’t get safe across.” 

The pitch pines generally have lost their leaves now, and the larches are fast falling. The elms have been bare some time. 

November 4, 2021

 "My thoughts are with the

 polypody a long time after 

my body has passed."

November 2, 1857

Sometimes I would rather get a transient glimpse or side view of a thing than stand fronting to it, — as those polypodies. The object I caught a glimpse of as I went by haunts my thoughts a long time, is infinitely suggestive, and I do not care to front it and scrutinize it, for I know that the thing that really concerns me is not there, but in my relation to that. That is a mere reflecting surface. 

It is not the polypody in my pitcher or herbarium, or which I may possibly persuade to grow on a bank in my yard, or which is described in botanies, that interests me, but the one that I pass by in my walks a little distance off, when in the right mood. Its influence is sporadic, wafted through the air to me. Do you imagine its fruit to stick to the back of the leaf all winter? At this season polypody is in the air. 

It is worth the while to walk in swamps now, to bathe your eyes with greenness. The terminal shield fern is the handsomest and glossiest green. 

Start up a snipe feeding in a wet part of the Dam Meadows. 

I think that the man of science makes this mistake, and the mass of mankind along with him: that you should coolly give your chief attention to the phenomenon which excites you as something independent on you, and not as it is related to you. The important fact is its effect on me. He thinks that I have no business to see anything else but just what he defines the rainbow to be, but I care not whether my vision of truth is a waking thought or dream remembered, whether it is seen in the light or in the dark. It is the subject of the vision, the truth alone, that concerns me. The philosopher for whom rainbows, etc., can be explained away never saw them. With regard to such objects, I find that it is not they themselves (with which the men of science deal) that concern me; the point of interest is somewhere between me and them (i. e. the objects). . . . 

And where does your Eastern stuff go to? Whose houses does it build? It has built Bangor, and what is the precise value of Bangor, omitting the lumber on its wharves? Western stuff is good enough for me. I think that this craving a better material than we deserve, and wasting what we get, is the secret of bankruptcy. And what is it, after all, but lumber? I do not wish to see any more poor men in rich houses. I would rather see one rich man in a poor house. No more cripples on stilts. . . . 

For a man to pride himself on this kind of wealth, as if it enriched him, is as ridiculous as if one struggling in the ocean with a bag of gold on his back should gasp out, “I am worth a hundred thousand dollars!” I see his ineffectual struggles just as plainly, and what it is that sinks him.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 5, 1857

The terminal shield fern is the handsomest and glossiest green. See October 23, 1857 ("The ferns which I can see on the bank, apparently all evergreens, are polypody at rock, marginal shield fern, terminal shield fern, and (I think it is) Aspidium spinulosum . . . The above-named evergreen ferns are so much the more conspicuous on that pale-brown ground. They stand out all at once and are seen to be evergreen; their character appears.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Evergreen Ferns, Part Three: Polypody, Marginal Shield Fern, Terminal Shield Fern

The object I caught a glimpse of as I went by haunts my thoughts a long time. See November 2, 1857 (“My thoughts are with the polypody a long time after my body has passed. ”). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Polypody

Sometimes I would rather get a transient glimpse or side view of a thing . . .  for I know that the thing that really concerns me is not there, but in my relation to that. See September 13, 1852 ("I must walk more with free senses. I must let my senses wander as my thoughts, my eyes see without looking. . . .. Go not to the object; let it come to you.”); August 7, 1853 ("The objects I behold correspond to my mood.“); May 6, 1854 ("There is no such thing as pure objective observation. Your observation, to be interesting, i. e. to be significant, must be subjective.”);  February 20, 1857 ("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."); 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.")

November 5. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, November 5

It is worth the while 

to walk in swamps now – to bathe 

your eyes with greenness.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The thing that really concerns me is not there

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-571105

Green next the shore

June 26. 

Walden; June, 2012

The earliest water surfaces, as I remember, as soon as the ice is melted, present as fair and matured scenes, as soft and warm, reflecting the sky through the clear atmosphere, as in midsummer, -- far in advance of the earth. 

The earliest promise of the summer, - is it not in the smooth reflecting surface of woodland lakes in which the ice is just melted? Those liquid eyes of nature, blue or black or even hazel, deep or shallow, clear or turbid; green next the shore, the color of their iris.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 26, 1852

Green next the shore . . .See September 1, 1852 ("Viewed from the hilltop, [Walden] reflects the color of the sky. Beyond the deep reflecting surface, near the shore, it is a vivid green."); August 27, 1852("Viewed from a hilltop, it is blue in the depths and green in the shallows, but from a boat it is seen to be a uniform dark green.”) and Walden ("Walden is blue at one time and green at another, even from the same point of view. Lying between the earth and the heavens, it partakes of the color of both. Viewed from a hill top it reflects the color of the sky, but near at hand it is of a yellowish tint next the shore where you can see the sand, then a; light green, which gradually deepens to a uniform dark green in the body of the pond. In some lights, viewed even from a hilltop, it is of a vivid green next the shore.”)

Those liquid eyes of nature, blue or black or even hazel. See May 27, 1859 ("The dark river, now that shades are increased, is like the dark eye of a maiden.”); May 29, 1857 ("Looking into the light and dark eye of the lake"); See also note to June 6, 1855 ("The dark eye and shade of June”)

Coming to the window, August 23, 1852

August 23.

The perception of surfaces will always have the effect of miracle.

Now I sit on the Cliffs and look abroad over the river and Conantum hills.

I live so much in my habitual routine of thoughts, that I forget there is any outside to the globe and am surprised when I behold it as now, - yonder hills and river in the moonlight, the monsters. 

What are these rivers and hills, these hieroglyphics which my eyes behold?

There is something invigorating in this air, which I am peculiarly sensible is a real wind blowing from over the surface of a planet. 

I look out at my eyes, I come to my window, and I feel and breathe the fresh air. It is a fact equally glorious with the most inward experience.

I can see Nobscot faintly.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 23, 1852

What are these rivers and hills, these hieroglyphics which my eyes behold? See November 21, 1850 ("What are these things?")


How adapted these forms and colors to my eye! A meadow and an island! I am made to love the pond and the meadow, as the wind is made to ripple the water.")

I am peculiarly sensible is a real wind blowing from over the surface of a planet. I look out at my eyes, I come to my window, and I feel and breathe the fresh air. See 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?”); Walden ("And we are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us")

About 8 p.m.- To Cliffs, moon half full. 

As I go up the back road, I hear the loud ringing creak of crickets, louder singers on each apple tree by the roadside, with an intermittent pulsing creak. Not the sound of a bird all the way to the woods.

How dark the shadows of the pines and oaks fall across the woodland path! There is a new tree, another forest in the shadow. It is pleasant walking in these forest paths, with heavy darkness on one side and a silvery moonlight on the oak leaves on the other, and again, when the trees meet overhead, to tread the checkered floor of finely divided light and shade. 

I hear a faint metallic titter from a bird, so faint that if uttered at noonday it would not be heard, — not so loud as a cricket. I cannot remember the last moon. Now that birds and flowers fall off, fruits take their places, and young birds in flocks. 

What a list of bright-colored, sometimes venomous-looking berries spot the swamps and copses amid changing leaves! For colors they will surpass the flowers, methinks. There is some thing rare, precious, and gem-like about them. Now is their time, and I must attend to them. Some, like grapes, we gather and eat, but the fairest are not edible. 

Now I sit on the Cliffs and look abroad over the river and Conantum hills. I live so much in my habitual thoughts, a routine of thought, that I forget there is any outside to the globe, and am surprised when I behold it as now, — yonder hills and river in the moon light, the monsters. Yet it is salutary to deal with the surface of things. What are these rivers and hills, these hieroglyphics which my eyes behold ? There is some thing invigorating in this air, which I am peculiarly sensible is a real wind, blowing from over the surface of a planet. I look out at my eyes, I come to my window, and I feel and breathe the fresh air. It is a fact equally glorious with the most inward experience. Why have we ever slandered the outward? The perception of surfaces will always have the effect of miracle to a sane sense. I can see Nobscot faintly. 

Descend the rocks and return through woods to railroad. How picturesque the moonlight on rocks in the woods! To-night there are no fireflies, no nighthawks nor whip-poor-wills.