The third warm day; now overcast and beginning to drizzle. Still it is inspiriting as the brightest weather. Though the sun surely is not a-going to shine, there is a latent light in the mist. It is a good day to study lichens.
The view so confined it compels your attention to near objects, and the white background reveals the disks of the lichens distinctly. They appear more loose, flowing, expanded, flattened out, the colors brighter for the damp.
The round greenish-yellow lichens on the white pines loom through the mist. The trees appear all at once covered with their crop of lichens and mosses of all kinds, the livid green of some, the fruit of others. Your eyes run swiftly through the mist to these things only. They eclipse the trees they cover.
This is their solstice. Nature has a day for each of her creatures, her creations. To-day it is an exhibition of lichens at Forest Hall.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 31, 1851
The third warm day; now overcast and beginning to drizzle. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The weather, New Year's Eve
Nature has a day for each of her creatures, her creations. See January 26, 1853 ("I look back for the era of this creation, not into the night, but to a dawn for which no man ever rose early enough. . . . Mornings when men are new-born, men who have the seeds of life in them.”)
Dec. 31. The third warm day; now overcast and be ginning to drizzle. Still it is inspiriting as the brightest weather. Though the sun surely is not a-going to shine, there is a latent light in the mist, as if there were more electricity than usual in the air. There are warm, foggy days in winter which excite us.
It reminds me, this thick, spring-like weather, that I have not enough valued and attended to the pure clarity and brilliancy of the winter skies. Consider in what respects the winter sunsets differ from the summer ones. Shall I ever in summer evenings see so celestial a reach of blue sky contrasting with amber as I have seen a few days since. The day sky in winter corresponds for clarity to the night sky, in which the stars shine and twinkle so brightly in this latitude.
I am too late, perhaps, to see the sand foliage in the Deep Cut; should have been there day before yester day ; it is now too wet and soft . Yet in some places it is perfect . I see some perfect leopards ' paws . " These things suggest that there is motion in the earth as well as on the surface ; it lives and grows . It is warmed and influenced by the sun , just as my blood by my thoughts . I seem to see some of the life that is in the spring bud and blossom more intimately , nearer its fountainhead , the fancy sketches and designs of the artist . It is more simple and primitive growth ; as if for ages sand and clay might have thus flowed into the forms of foliage , before plants were produced to clothe the earth . The earth I tread on is not a dead , inert mass . It is a body , has a spirit , is organic , and fluid to the influence of its spirit , and to whatever particle of that spirit is in me . She is not dead , but sleepeth . It is more cheering than the fertility and luxuriance of vineyards , this fundamental fertility near to the principle of growth . To be sure it is somewhat fæcal and stercoral . ' So the poet's creative moment is when the frost is coming out in the spring , but , as in the case of some too easy poets , if the weather is too warm and rainy or long continued it becomes mere diarrhea , mud and clay relaxed . The poet must not have something pass his bowels merely ; that is women's poetry . He must have something pass i his brain and heart and bowels , too , it may be , all together . So he gets delivered . There is no end to the fine bowels here exhibited , - heaps of liver , lights , and bowels . Have you no bowels ? Nature has some bowels . And there again she is mother of humanity. Concord is a worthier place to live in, the globe is a worthier place , for these creations , this slumbering life that may wake . Even the solid globe is permeated by the living law . It is the most living of creatures . No doubt all creatures that live on its surface are but parasites .
I observed this afternoon the old Irishwoman at the shanty in the woods, sitting out on the hillside, bare headed, in the rain and on the icy though thawing ground, knitting. She comes out, like the ground squirrel, at the least intimation of warmer weather. She will not have to go far to be buried, so close she lives to the earth, while I walk still in a greatcoat and under an umbrella. Such Irish as these are naturalizing themselves at a rapid rate, and threaten at last to displace the Yankees, as the latter have the Indians. The process of acclimation is rapid with them; they draw long breaths in the American sick - room. What must be the philosophy of life to that woman, ready to flow down the slope with the running sand! Ah , what would I not give for her point of view! She does not use any th’s in her style. Yet I fear that even she may have learned to lie.
There is a low mist in the woods . It is a good day to study lichens . The view so confined it compels your attention to near objects , and the white background reveals the disks of the lichens distinctly . They appear more loose , flowing , expanded , flattened out , the colors brighter for the damp . The round greenish - yellow lichens on the white pines loom through the mist ( or are seen dimly ) like shields whose devices you would fain read . The trees appear all at once covered with their crop of lichens and mosses of all kinds , - flat and tearful are some , distended by moisture . This is their solstice , and your eyes run swiftly through the mist to these things only . On every fallen twig , even , that has lain under the snows , as well as on the trees , they appear erect and now first to have attained their full expansion . Nature has a day for each of her creatures , her creations . To - day it is an exhibition of lichens at Forest Hall, the livid green of some , the fruit of others . They eclipse the trees they cover . And the red , club pointed ( baobab - tree - like ) on the stumps, the erythrean stumps! Ah , beautiful is decay! True, as Thales said, the world was made out of water. That is the principle of all things.
I do not lay myself open to my friends !? The owner of the casket locks it , and unlocks it . Treat your friends for what you know them to be . Regard no surfaces . Consider not what they did , but what they intended . Be sure , as you know them you are known of them again . Last night I treated my dearest friend ill . Though I could find some excuse for myself , it is not such excuse as under the circumstances could be pleaded in so many words . Instantly I blamed myself , and sought an opportunity to make atonement , but the friend avoided me , and , with kinder feelings even than before , I was obliged to depart . And now this morning I feel that it is too late to speak of the trifle , and , besides , I doubt now in the cool morning , if I have a right to suppose such intimate and serious relations as afford a basis for the apology I had conceived , for even magnanimity must ask this poor earth for a field . The virtues even wait for invitation . Yet I am resolved to know that one centrally , through thick and thin , and though we should be cold to one another , though we should never speak to one another , I will know that inward and essential love may exist even under a superficial cold , and that the law of attraction speaks louder than words . My true relation this instant shall be my apology for my false relation the last instant . I made haste to cast off my injustice as scurf . I own it least of any body, for I have absolutely done with it. Let the idle and wavering and apologizing friend appropriate it. Methinks our estrangement is only like the divergence of the branches which unite in the stem.
This night I heard Mrs. S— lecture on womanhood. The most important fact about the lecture was that a woman said it, and in that respect it was suggestive. Went to see her afterward, but the interview added nothing to the previous impression, rather subtracted . She was a woman in the too common sense after all . You had to fire small charges: I did not have a finger in once, for fear of blowing away all her works and so ending the game . You had to substitute courtesy for sense and argument . It requires nothing less than a chivalric feeling to sustain a conversation with a lady. I carried her lecture for her in my pocket wrapped in her handkerchief ; my pocket exhales cologne to this moment. The championess of woman's rights still asks you to be a ladies ' man. I can't fire a salute, even, for fear some of the guns may be shotted. I had to unshot all the guns in truth's battery and fire powder and wadding only. Certainly the heart is only for rare occasions; the intellect affords the most unfailing entertainment. It would only do to let her feel the wind of the ball.
( To go on with walk , this written next morning . )
How deceptive the size of a large pine ! still , as you approach it , even within a rod or two , it looks only like a reasonable stick , fit for a string - piece , perchance , the average size of trees one foot in diameter , big as a keg or a half - barrel , it may be , - fit for the sill or the beams of an old - fashioned house . This you think is a generous appreciation and allowance . Not till you stand close to its foot , upon one of its swelling insteps , and compare its diameter with the diameter of your own eye balls , do you begin to discover its width . Stand by its side , and see how it shuts out a hemisphere from you . Why , it is as wide as a front door . What a slender ar row , a light shaft , now that you stand a rod or two off ! What a ballista , a battering ram , a mighty vegetable monster , a cannon , near at hand ! Now set a barrel , aye , a hogshead beside it . You apply your measures . The foot rule seems suddenly shrunk . Your umbrella is but half as long as it was . The pine I saw fall yesterday measured to - day one hundred and five feet , and was about ninety - four years old . There was one still larger lying beside it , one hun dred and fifteen feet long , ninety - six years old , four feet diameter the longest way . The tears were streaming from the sap - wood - about twenty circles - of each , pure amber or pearly tears . Through the drizzling fog , now just before night fall , I see from the Cliffs the dark cones of pine trees that rise above the level of the tree - tops , and can trace a few elm tree tops where a farmhouse hides beneath . Denuded pines stand in the clearings with no old cloak to wrap about them , only the apexes of their cones entire , telling a pathetic story of the companions that clothed them . So stands a man . It is clearing around him . He has no companions on the hills . The lonely traveller , looking up , wonders why he was left when his companions were taken .
