Expecting the Hunter's Azalea

20160531

Augustine deduced logically – from the existence of an infinite past and an infinite future – that the present moment must also be an infinity.

In today's journal entry, which I have extensively reorganized, Thoreau explains why the infinite present has its peculiar vibrancy. [The Hunter's Azalea and  The Significance of the Hunter's Azalea]

What distinguishes future from past? Have we not all experienced the sameness of now? The endless repetition of the infinite past. "What is new?" one is asked, and "Same old same old." is the reply.

What is the present moment?

Today, May 31, 1853, Thoreau explains that the experience of novelty is a matter of practice and discipline. Expect the unexpected and, paradoxically, the moment arrives in harmony, "perfectly in keeping with my life and characteristic."

Only a detailed study of the flowering plants of Concord, together with the right openness or receptiveness – what Thoreau calls "My subjective philosophy"  -- leads to the realization that the hunter's azalea is new.

The strangeness of now. The unexpected recognized as such. This present moment. Stunning and strange. And significant: "Events my imagination prepares me for, no matter how incredible."

Time is a vibration impelling the future to actuality. The future is distinguished from the past, now, only by relaxed attention to the unexpected present. Seeing without looking. Understanding without knowing.

"The boundaries of the actual are no more fixed and rigid than the elasticity of our imaginations." 

We cross the river

Melvin and I and his dog

to the azalea.

May 31, 1853

~Zphx 20130531/20240531

20240531

See May 23, 1841 ("All nature is a new impression every instant"); November 21, 1850 ("I begin to see such an object when I cease to understand it"); February 14, 1851 ("We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see"); September 7, 1851 ("We are receiving our portion of the infinite. We are surrounded by a rich and fertile mystery."); 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. (Mem. Wordsworth's observations on relaxed attention.)");April 18, 1852 ("Can I not by expectation affect the revolutions of nature, make a day to bring forth something new?"); March 29, 1853 ("Not till we are completely lost or turned round, - for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost,- do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature . . . In fact, not till we are lost do we begin to realize where we are, and the infinite extent of our relations. ")Walden, Conclusion ("There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world. . . Only that day dawns to which we are awake.") See also Una Chaudhuri,Land/scape/theater, p366 ("a mode of knowledge that consists of the chronic presence of change . . . all within the sameness of every now, repetition of the now, the sameness of now that is always new.") and The sameness of now that is always new.

May 31. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 31

See also The Hunter's Azalea and The Significance of the Hunter's Azalea

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Expecting the Hunter's Azalea

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

tinyurl.com/HDTnow 

The Significance of the Hunter's Azalea

May 31.

Some incidents in my life have seemed far more allegorical than actual; they were so significant that they plainly served no other use. That is, they have been like myths or passages in a myth, rather than mere incidents or history, which have to wait to become significant.

Ever and anon something will occur which my philosophy has not dreamed of. Yet they are all just such events as my imagination prepares me for, no matter how incredible. Quite in harmony with my subjective philosophy. Perfectly in keeping with my life and characteristic.

This, for instance:  that, when I thought I knew the flowers so well, the beautiful purple azalea should be shown me by the hunter who found it. The fact that a rare and beautiful flower which we never saw, perhaps never heard of, for which therefore there was no place in our thoughts may be found in our immediate neighborhood, is very suggestive.

Such facts are lifted quite above the level of the actual.  That which had seemed a rigid wall of vast thickness unexpectedly proves a thin and undulating drapery. The limits of the actual are set some thoughts further off. The boundaries of the actual are no more fixed and rigid than the elasticity of our imaginations.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 31, 1853

See November 30, 1858: ("How wild it makes the pond and the township to find a new fish in it!") and November 4, 1858 ("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.")

See also February 9, 1852; ("The novelty is in us, and it is also in nature. The mirage is constant . . . a constantly varying mirage, answering to the condition of our perceptive faculties and our fluctuating imaginations."); February 16, 1857 ("Genius has evanescent boundaries") and Expecting the Hunter's Azalea

May 31. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 31

See also The Hunter's Azalea and  Expecting the Hunter's Azalea

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Significance of the Hunter's Azalea

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

The Hunter's Azalea.

May 31.

I am going in search of the Azalea nudiflora.  

Sophia brought home a single flower without twig or leaf from Mrs. Brooks's last evening. Mrs. Brooks. I find, has a large twig in a vase of water, still pretty fresh, which she says George Melvin gave to her son George. I called at his office. He says that Melvin came in to Mr. Gourgas's office, where he and others were sitting Saturday evening, with his arms full and gave each a sprig, but he doesn't know where he got it. 

Somebody, I heard, had seen it at Captain Jarvis's; so I went there. I found that they had some still pretty fresh in the house. Melvin gave it to them Saturday night, but they did not know where he got it. 

A young man working at Stedman Buttrick's said it was a secret; there was only one bush in the town; Melvin knew of it and Stedman knew; when asked, Melvin said he got it in the swamp, or from a bush, etc. The young man thought it grew on the Island across the river on the Wheeler farm. 

I went on to Melvin's house, though I did not expect to find him at home at this hour, so early in the afternoon.  At length I saw his dog by the door, and knew he was at home. He was sitting in the shade, bareheaded, at his back door. He had a large pailful of the azalea recently plucked and in the shade behind his house, which he said he was going to carry to town at evening. He had also a sprig set out. 

He had been out all the forenoon and said he had got seven pickerel, -perhaps ten. Apparently he had been drinking and was just getting over it. At first he was a little shy about telling me where the azalea grew, but I saw that I should get it out of him. He dilly-dallied a little; called to his neighbor Farmer, whom he called "Razor," to know if he could tell me where that flower grew. He called it, by the way, the "red honeysuckle." This was to prolong the time and make the most of his secret.

I felt pretty sure the plant was to be found on Wheeler's land beyond the river, as the young man had said, for I had remembered how some weeks before this, when I went up the Assabet after the yellow rocket, I saw Melvin, who had just crossed with his dog, and when I landed to pluck the rocket he appeared out of the woods, said he was after a fish-pole, and asked me the name of my flower. Didn't think it was very handsome, - "not so handsome as the honeysuckle, is it?" And now I knew it was his "red honeysuckle," and not the columbine, he meant.

Well, I told him he had better tell me where it was; I was a botanist and ought to know. But he thought I couldn't possibly find it by his directions. I told him he'd better tell me and have the glory of it, for I should surely find it if he didn't; I'd got a clue to it, and shouldn't give it up. I should go over the river for it. I could smell it a good way, you know. 

He thought I could smell it half a mile, and he wondered that I hadn't stumbled on it, or Channing. Channing, he said, came close by it once, when it was in flower.  He thought he'd surely find it then; but he didn't, and he said nothing to him.

He told me he found it about ten years ago, and he went to it every year. It blossomed at the old election time, and he thought it "the handsomest flower that grows." ....

 In the meanwhile, Farmer, who was hoeing, came up to the wall, and we fell into a talk about Dodge's Brook, which runs through his farm. A man in Cambridge, he said, had recently written to Mr. Monroe about it, but he didn't know why. All he knew about the brook was that he had seen it dry and then again, after a week of dry weather in which no rain fell, it would be full again, and either the writer or Monroe said there were only two such brooks in all North America. One of its sources — he thought the principal one — was in his land. We all went to it. It was in a meadow, — rather a dry one, once a swamp. He said it never ceased to flow at the head now, since he dug it out, and never froze there. He ran a pole down eight or nine feet into the mud to show me the depth. He had minnows there in a large deep pool, and cast an insect into the water, which they presently rose to and swallowed. Fifteen years ago he dug it out nine feet deep and found spruce logs as big as his leg, which the beavers had gnawed, with the marks of their teeth very distinct upon them ; but they soon crumbled away on coming to the air. Melvin, meanwhile, was telling me of a pair of geese he had seen which were breeding in the Bedford Swamp. He had seen them within a day. Last year he got a large brood (11?) of black ducks there.


We went on down the brook, - Melvin and I and his dog, - and crossed the river in his boat, and he conducted me to where the Azalea nudiflora grew,

 -it was a little past its prime, perhaps, -and showed me how near Channing came . (" You won't tell him what I said; will You? " said he.)  I offered to pay for his trouble, but he wouldn't take anything. had just as lief I'd know as not. He thought it came out last Wednesday, on the 25th.

 Azalea nudiflora, -purple azalea, pinxter-flower,... It is a conspicuously beautiful flowering shrub, with the sweet fragrance of the common swamp-pink, but the flowers are larger and, in this case, a fine lively rosy pink,...With a broader, somewhat downy pale-green leaf. Growing in the shade of large wood, like the laurel. The flowers, being in naked umbels, are so much the more conspicuous. ... It must be an undescribed variety -a viscous one-of A. nudiflora.

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


Old election time  See note to May 31, 1854 (Old Election Day.) and May 27, 1857("I hear the sound of fife and drum the other side of the village, and am reminded that it is May Training.")

It blossomed at the old election time, and he thought it "the handsomest flower that grows." .... Azalea nudiflora,-- purple azalea, pinxter-flower . See May 17, 1854 ("Azalea nudiflora in woods begins to leaf now.");May 29, 1855 ("Azalea nudiflora in garden"); June 2, 1855 ("The Azalea nudiflora now in its prime.”); May 25, 1856 ("Azalea nudiflora in garden"); June 2, 1856 ("To Azalea nudiflora, which is in prime.");; May 26, 1857 ("Pink azalea in garden"); May 24, 1858 ("The pink azalea, too, not yet out at home, is generally out[ in New York)”); May 19, 1859 (“Our Azalea nudiflora flowers.”); May 27, 1859 (“Azalea nudiflora blooms generally.”); May 26, 1860 ("Our pink azalea”)

The sweet fragrance of the common swamp-pink. See June 18, 1853 ("The first day I began . . . at night [to] sleep with both windows open; say, when the swamp-pink opens"); June 19, 1852 ("We found the swamp pink in blossom a most cool refreshing fragrance to travellers in hot weather. I should place this with if not before the mayflower. Its flowers just opened have caught but few insects "); June 23, 1852 ("The sweet fragrance of swamp pinks fills all the swamps."); June 23, 1853 ("I every year, as to-day, observe the sweet, refreshing fragrance of the swamp-pink, when threading the woods and swamps in hot weather. It is positively cool. Now in its prime"). See alsoA Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Swamp-pink

May 31.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 31

See also The Significance of the Hunter's Azalea and Expecting the Hunter's Azalea

Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Hunter's Azalea
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

Leafy June

May 27.

Cleared up last night after two and a half days' rain. This, with the two days' rain the 18th and 19th, makes our May rain -- and more rain either of the two than at any other time this spring. Coming out into the sun after this rain, with my thick clothes, I find it unexpectedly and oppressively warm. Yet the heat seems tempered by a certain moisture still lingering in the air. 

A new season has commenced - summer - leafy June. The elms begin to droop and are heavy with shade. The buttercups in the church-yard and on some hillsides are now looking more glossy and bright than ever after the rain. The vireo, too, is heard more than ever on the elms; his note begins to prevail.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 27, 1853

A new season has commenced - summer - leafy June. . . . See June 6, 1857 ("This is June, the month of grass and leaves.”) and note to May 27, 1855 (“The fields now begin to wear the aspect of June, their grass just beginning to wave.”)

The buttercups in the church-yard and on some hillsides are now looking more glossy and bright than ever after the rain. See May 30, 1857 ("Buttercups thickly spot the churchyard.");  June 2, 1852 (“Buttercups now spot the churchyard.”)

The vireo, too, is heard more than ever . . .See note to May 27, 1854 ("The red-eye is an indefatigable singer.”)

A season of ferns.

May 25, 2018

May 26

Now is the time to walk in low, damp maple copses and see the tender, luxuriant foliage that has pushed up, mushroom-like, before the sun has come to harden it -- the ferns of various species and in various stages, some now in their most perfect and beautiful condition, completely unfolded, tender and delicate, but perfect in all their details, far more than any lace work - the most elaborate leaf we have. Unfolding with such mathematical precision in the free air, forming an almost uninterrupted counter of green leaves a foot or two above the damp ground.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 26, 1853

May 26, 2012

May 26. See  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 26

After leaf-out. Another season of spring.

May 25.

May 25, 2013

Steady fisherman's rain, without wind, straight down, flooding the ground and spattering on it, beating off the apple blossoms.

Within the last week or so the grass and leaves have grown many shades darker, and if we had leaped from last Wednesday to this, we should have been startled by the change - the dark bluish green of rank grass especially. 

How rapidly the young twigs shoot - the herbs, trees, shrubs no sooner leaf out than they shoot forward surprisingly, as if they had acquired a head by being repressed so long. They do not grow nearly so rapidly at any other season. 

Many do most of their growing for the year in a week or two at this season. They shoot - they spring - and the rest of the Year they harden and mature, and perhaps have a second spring in the latter part of summer or in the fall.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 25, 1853

Within the last week or so the grass and leaves have grown many shades darker. See May 25, 1860 ("The earth wears a new and greener vest.")

Many do most of their growing for the year in a week or two at this season. They shoot See.May 15, 1859 ("Very properly these are called shoots. This plant has, perhaps, in four or five days accomplished one fourth part its whole summer's growth.")

A pensive walk -- in season.

May 23. 

The poet must bring to Nature the smooth mirror in which she is to be reflected. 

I am surprised by the dark orange-yellow of the senecio. At first we had the lighter, paler spring yellows of willows, dandelion, cinquefoil, then the darker and deeper yellow of the buttercup; and then this broad distinction between the buttercup and the senecio, as the seasons revolve toward July. 

Every new flower that opens, no doubt, expresses a new mood of the human mind. Have I any dark or ripe orange-yellow thoughts to correspond? The flavor of my thoughts begins to correspond.

When the chaste and pensive eve draws on, suddenly the walker begins to reflect. A certain lateness in the sound releases me from the obligation to return in any particular season. I have passed the Rubicon of staying out. I have said to myself, that way is not homeward; I will wander further from what I have called my home - to the home which is forever inviting me. In such an hour the freedom of the woods is offered me, and the birds sing my dispensation. 

At Loring's Wood I hear and see a tanager.  

How he enhances the wildness and wealth of the woods! That contrast of a red bird with the green pines and the blue sky! Even when I have heard his note and look for him and find the fellow sitting on a dead twig of a pine, I am always startled. (They seem to love the darkest and thickest pines.) That incredible red, with the green and blue.

I am transported; these are not the woods I ordinarily walk in.

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

I am surprised by the dark orange-yellow of the senecio. See June 9, 1853 ("The meadows are now yellow with the golden senecio, a more orange yellow, mingled with the light glossy yellow of the buttercup") and note to June 6, 1858 ("Golden senecio is not uncommon now.")

How different the ramrod jingle of the chewink or any bird's note sounds now at 5 p. m. in the cooler, stiller air, when also the humming of insects is more distinctly heard, and perchance some impurity has begun to sink to earth strained by the air. Or is it, perchance, to be referred to the cooler, more clarified and pensive state of the mind, when dews have begun to descend in it and clarify it? Chaste eve! A certain lateness in the sound, pleasing to hear, which releases me from the obligation to return in any particular season. I have passed the Rubicon of staying out. I have said to myself, that way is not homeward; I will wander further from what I have called my home — to the home which is forever inviting me. In such an hour the freedom of the woods is offered me, and the birds sing my dispensation. 

In dreams the links of life are united: we forget that our friends are dead; we know them as of old. An abundance of pure white fringed polygalas, very delicate, by the path at Harrington's mud-hole. Thus many flowers have their nun sisters, dressed in white. 

At Loring's Wood heard and saw a tanager. That contrast of a red bird with the green pines and the blue sky! Even when I have heard his note and look for him and find the bloody fellow, sitting on a dead twig of a pine, I am always startled. (They seem to love the darkest and thickest pines.) That incredible red, with the green and blue, as if these were the trinity we wanted. Yet with his hoarse note he pays for his color. I am transported; these are not the woods I ordinarily walk in. He sunk Concord in his thought. How he enhances the wildness and wealth of the woods! This and the emperor moth make the tropical phenomena of our zone. There is warmth in the pewee's strain, but this bird's colors and his note tell of Brazil. Even in remotest woods the trivial noon has its rule and its limit. When the chaste and pensive eve draws on, suddenly the walker begins to reflect.

See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau May 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

The tanager is arrived.

May 13.

Methinks I hear and see the tanager now. 

A robin's nest, with young, on the causeway. 

At Corner Spring, stood listening to a catbird, sounding a good way off. Was surprised to detect the singer within a rod and a half on a low twig, the ventriloquist. Should not have believed it was he, if I had not seen the movements of his throat, corresponding to each note, -looking at this near singer whose notes sounded so far away.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 13, 1853

Methinks I hear and see the tanager now. See May 15, 1856 (“. . . thought it was the tanager I heard? ”); May 18, 1851("The scarlet tanagers are come.”). See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Scarlet Tanager

Stood listening to a catbird. . . whose notes sounded so far away. See May 13, 1855 (“ Hear the first catbird, more clear and tinkling than the thrasher.”)

Overflow and significance

May 10.

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.  

See a kingbird, looking like a large phoebe, on a willow by the river, and hear higher the clear whistle of the oriole. 

New days, then, have come, ushered in by the warbling vireo, yellowbird, Maryland yellow-throat, and small pewee, and now made perfect by the twittering of the kingbird and the whistle of the oriole amid the elms, which are but just beginning to leaf out, thinking of his nest there, - if not already the bobolink. 

The warbling vireo promised warmer days, but the oriole ushers in summer heats.

P. M. - To Saw Mill Brook and Smith's Hill. It is remarkable that I saw this morning for the first time the bobolink, gold robin, and kingbird, - and have since heard the first two in various parts of the town and am satisfied that they have just come, - and, in the woods, the veery note. I hear the ringing sound of the toads borne on the rippling wind as I keep down the causeway. 


The three colored violet, as I observe them this afternoon, are thus distinguished the ovata, a dark lilac, especially in sun; the cucullata, oftenest slaty blue, sometimes lilac , deeper within, more or less pale and striped; the pedata, large, exposed, clear pale-blue with a white spot. None like the sky, but pedata most like it; lilac ovata least like it. Yet the last is the richest-colored. The pedata often pale to whiteness. It begins now to be quite obvious along the side of warm and sandy woodland paths . May 10, 1853

He is the richest who has most use for nature as raw material of tropes and symbols with which to describe his life. If I am overflowing with life, am rich in experience for which I lack expression, then nature will be my language full of poetry,- all nature will fable, and every natural phenomenon be a myth. The man of science, who is not seeking for expression but for a fact to be expressed merely, studies nature as a dead language. I pray for such inward experience as will make nature significant.

The hornbeam (Carpinus) is just ready to bloom its hop-like catkins shorter than those of the Ostrya do not shed pollen just yet. I was in search of this  and not observing it at first and having forgotten it I sat down on a rock with the thought that if I sat there quietly a little while I might see some flower or other object about me; unexpectedly, as I cast my eyes upward' over my head stretched a spreading branch of the carpinus full of small catkins with anthers now reddish' spread like a canopy just over my head. As it is best to sit in a grove and let the birds come to you, so, as it were, even the flowers will come to you. 

*** 

From the hill I look westward over the landscape. The deciduous woods are in their hoary youth every expanding bud swaddled with downy webs. From this more eastern hill with the whole breadth of the river valley on the west the mountains appear higher still the width of the blue border is greater not mere peaks or a short and shallow sierra but a high blue table land with broad foundations a deep and solid base or tablet in proportion to the peaks that rest on it. As you ascend the near and low hills sink and flatten into the earth no sky is seen behind them the distant mountains rise .The truly great are distinguished Vergers crests of the waves of earth which in the highest break at the summit into granitic rocks over which the air beats . A part of their hitherto concealed base is seen blue. You see not the domes only but the body the façade of these terrene temples. You see that the foundation answers to the superstructure .Moral structures. The sweet fern leaves among odors now .The successive lines of haze which divide the western landscape deeper and more misty over each intervening valley are not yet very dense yet there is a light atmospheric line along the base of the mountains for their whole length formed by this denser and grosser atmosphere through which we look next the earth which almost melts them into the atmosphere like the contact of molten metal with that which is unfused but their pure sublimed tops and main body rise palpable skyland above it like the waving signal of the departing who have already left these shores .

It will be worth the while to observe carefully the direction and altitude of the mountains from the Cliffs. The value of the mountains in the horizon would not that be a good theme for a lecture. The text for a discourse on real values and permanent a sermon on the mount. They are stepping stones to heaven as the rider has a horse block at his gate by which to mount when we would commence our pilgrimage to heaven by which we gradually take our departure from earth from the time when our youthful eyes first rested on them from this bare actual earth which has so little of the hue of heaven. They make it easier to die and easier to live. They let us off. . . .  

Whether any picture by a human master hung on our western wall could supply their place. Whether to shovel them away and level them would really smooth the way to the true west Whether the skies would not weep over their scars/ 

They are valuable to mankind as is the iris of the eye to a man. They are the path of the translated. The undisputed territory between earth and heaven. In our travels rising higher and higher we at length got to where the earth was blue.Suggesting that this earth unless our conduct curse it is as celestial as that sky. They are the pastures to which we drive our thoughts on these 20ths of May. 

George Baker told me the other day that he had driven cows to Winchendon forty miles in one day. Men often spend a great deal on a border to their papered walls of the costliest figure and colors ultramarine or what other. This color bears a price like precious stones. We may measure our wealth then by the number of square rods of superficial blue earth in our earth border . Such proportion as it bears to the area of the visible earth in such proportion are we heavenly minded .Yet I doubt if I can find a man in this country who would not think it better if they were converted into solid gold which could in no case be a blessing to all but only a curse to a few and so they would be stepping stones to hell.  

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 10, 1853

New days, then, have come ushered in by the warbling vireo, yellowbird, Maryland yellow-throat, and small pewee, and now made perfect by the twittering of the kingbird and the whistle of the oriole amid the elms. See May 10, 1858 ("Going down-town in the morning, I hear the warbling vireo, golden robin, catbird, and summer yellowbird. . . .As I paddle along, hear the Maryland yellow-throat, the bobolink, the oven-bird, and the yellow-throated vireo. . . .It is remarkable how many new birds have come all at once to-day. ")

In the woods, the veery note. See May 10, 1858 ("Hear in various woods the yorrick note of the veery.")

I pray for such inward experience as will make nature significant:  See June 30, 1852 ("Nature must be viewed humanly to be viewed at all; her scenes must be associated with humane affections... She is most significant to a lover."); August 7, 1853( "The objects I behold correspond to my mood");  May 6, 1854 ("Your observation, to be interesting, i. e. to be significant, must be subjective. "); May 23,1854 ("We soon get through with nature.")

All nature will fable, and every natural phenomenon be a myth: See November 9, 1851 ("Facts should be material to the mythology which I am writing; I would so state facts that they shall be significant, shall be myths or mythologic.”)

It is a lush spring-green morning. Rained in the night. Low gray clouds driving Dylan to work. Suddenly sunlight in the Meadows and I am chasing shadows down the road. At the dump I hear a Yellow warbler. ~ Zphx Saturday, May 10, 2013.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 10

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

The civility of one's ancestors I.

May 8.

A long row of elms just set out by Wheeler from his gate to the old Lee place. The planting of so long a row of trees which are so stately and may endure so long deserves to be recorded. In many localities a much shorter row, or even a few scattered trees, set out sixty or a hundred years since, is the most conspicuous as well as interesting relic of the past in sight. Nothing more proves the civility of one's ancestors.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 8, 1853

Mornings of Creation. The First Local Group.

Awake this morning I see an osprey dive for a fish. Suddenly present. Every other speck of life so tightly joined on this spinning blue dot revolves around a glowing ball of energy, and the rising sun in my eyes, a spiraling speck in our local group, is but a morning star.

zphx. 20130502