I hear it in the softened air of these warm February days which have broken the back of the winter.
For two nights past it has not frozen, but a thick mist has overhung the earth, and you awake to the unusual and agreeable sight of water in the streets. Several strata of snow have been washed away from the drifts, down to that black one formed when dust was blowing from plowed fields.
Riordan's solitary cock, standing on such an icy snow-heap, feels the influence of the softened air, and the steam from patches of bare ground here and there, and has found his voice again. The warm air has thawed the music in his throat, and he crows lustily and unweariedly, his voice rising to the last.
Yesterday morning our feline Thomas, also feeling the springlike influence, stole away along the fences and walls, which raise him above the water, and only returned this morning reeking with wet. Having got his breakfast, he already stands on his hind legs, looking wishfully through the window, and, the door being opened a little, he is at once off again in spite of the rain.
Again and again I congratulate myself on my so-called poverty. I was almost disappointed yesterday to find thirty dollars in my desk which I did not know that I possessed, though now I should be sorry to lose it.
The week that I go away to lecture, however much I may get for it, is unspeakably cheapened. The preceding and succeeding days are a mere sloping down and up from it. In the society of many men, or in the midst of what is called success, I find my life of no account, and my spirits rapidly fall. I would rather be the barrenest pasture lying fallow than cursed with the compliments of kings, than be the sulphurous and accursed desert where Babylon once stood.
But when I have only a rustling oak leaf, or the faint metallic cheep of a tree sparrow, for variety in my winter walk, my life be comes continent and sweet as the kernel of a nut. I would rather hear a single shrub oak leaf at the end of a wintry glade rustle of its own accord at my approach, than receive a shipload of stars and garters from the strange kings and peoples of the earth.
By poverty, i. e. simplicity of life and fewness of incidents, I am solidified and crystallized, as a vapor or liquid by cold. It is a singular concentration of strength and energy and flavor.
Chastity is perpetual acquaintance with the All.
My diffuse and vaporous life becomes as the frost leaves and spiculae radiant as gems on the weeds and stubble in a winter morning.
You think that I am impoverishing myself by withdrawing from men, but in my solitude I have woven for myself a silken web or chrysalis, and, nymph-like, shall ere long burst forth a more perfect creature, fitted for a higher society.
By simplicity, commonly called poverty, my life is concentrated and so becomes organized, or a koo^os, which before was inorganic and lumpish.
The otter must roam about a great deal, for I rarely see fresh tracks in the same neighborhood a second time the same winter, though the old tracks may be apparent all the winter through. I should not wonder if one went up and down the whole length of the river.
Hayden senior (sixty-eight years old) tells me that he has been at work regularly with his team almost every day this winter, in spite of snow and cold. Even that cold Friday, about a fortnight ago, he did not go to a fire from early morning till night. As the thermometer, even at 12.45 p.m., was at -9°, with a very violent wind from the northwest, this was as bad as an ordinary arctic day. He was hauling logs to a mill, and persevered in making his paths through the drifts, he alone breaking the road. However, he froze his ears that Friday. Says he never knew it so cold as the past month.
He has a fine elm directly behind his house, divided into many limbs near the ground. It is a question which is the most valuable, this tree or the house. In hot summer days it shades the whole house. He is going to build a shed around it, inclosing the main portion of the trunk.
P. M. — To Hubbard Bath.
Another very warm day, I should think warmer than the last. The sun is from time to time promising to show itself through the mist, but does not. A thick steam is everywhere rising from the earth and snow, and apparently this makes the clouds which conceal the sun, the air being so much warmer than the earth. The snow is gone off very rapidly in the night, and much of the earth is bare, and the ground partially thawed.
It is exciting to walk over the moist, bare pastures, though slumping four or five inches, and see the green mosses again. This vapor from the earth is so thick that I can hardly see a quarter of a mile, and ever and anon it condenses to rain-drops, which are felt on my face.
The river has risen, and the water is pretty well over the meadows. If this weather holds a day or two longer, the river will break up generally.
I see one of those great ash-colored puffballs with a tinge of purple, open like a cup, four inches in diameter. The upper surface is (as it were bleached) quite hoary. Though it is but just brought to light from beneath the deep snow, and the last two days have been misty or rainy without sun, it is just as dry and dusty as ever, and the drops of water rest on it, at first undetected, being coated with its dust, looking like unground pearls.
I brought it home and held it in a basin of water. To my surprise, when held under water it looked like a mass of silver or melted lead, it was so coated with air, and when I suffered it to rise, — for it had to be kept down by force, — instead of being heavy like a sponge which has soaked water, it was as light as a feather, and its surface perfectly dry, and when touched it gave out its dust the same as ever.
It was impossible to wet. It seems to be encased in a silvery coat of air which is water-tight. The water did not penetrate into it at all, and running off as you lifted it up, it was just as dry as before, and on the least jar floating in dust above your head.
The ground is so bare that I gathered a few Indian relics.
And now another friendship is ended. I do not know what has made my friend doubt me, but I know that in love there is no mistake, and that every estrangement is well founded.
But my destiny is not narrowed, but if possible the broader for it. The heavens withdraw and arch themselves higher.
I am sensible not only of a moral, but even a grand physical pain, such as gods may feel, about my head and breast, a certain ache and fullness. This rending of a tie, it is not my work nor thine. It is no accident that we mind; it is only the awards of fate that are affecting. I know of no aeons, or periods, no life and death, but these meetings and separations.
My life is like a stream that is suddenly dammed and has no outlet; but it rises the higher up the hills that shut it in, and will become a deep and silent lake.
Certainly there is no event comparable for grandeur with the eternal separation — if we may conceive it so — from a being that we have known. I become in a degree sensible of the meaning of finite and infinite. What a grand significance the word "never" acquires!
With one with whom we have walked on high ground we cannot deal on any lower ground ever after. We have tried for so many years to put each other to this immortal use, and have failed.
Undoubtedly our good genii have mutually found the material unsuitable. We have hitherto paid each other the highest possible compliment; we have recognized each other constantly as divine, have afforded each other that opportunity to live that no other wealth or kindness can afford. And now, for some reason inappreciable by us, it has become necessary for us to withhold this mutual aid.
Perchance there is none beside who knows us for a god, and none whom we know for such. Each man and woman is a veritable god or goddess, but to the mass of their fellows disguised. There is only one in each case who sees through the disguise. That one who does not stand so near to any man as to see the divinity in him is truly alone.
I am perfectly sad at parting from you. I could better have the earth taken away from under my feet, than the thought of you from my mind.
One while I think that some great injury has been done, with which you are implicated, again that you are no party to it. I fear that there may be incessant tragedies, that one may treat his fellow as a god but receive somewhat less regard from him. I now almost for the first time fear this. Yet I believe that in the long run there is no such inequality.
Here we are in the backwoods of America repeating Hebrew prayers and psalms in which occur such words as amen and selah, the meaning of some of which we do not quite understand, reminding me of Moslem prayers in which, it seems, the same or similar words are used. How Mormon-like!
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 8, 1857
Music in the wind and rain and running water. See February 15, 1855 ("The steady, soaking, rushing sound of the rain on the shingles is musical.")
Music is perpetual, and only hearing is intermittent. See December 11, 1855 ("Beauty and music are not mere traits and exceptions. They are the rule and character. It is the exception that we see and hear. ")
. . .the softened air of these warm February days which have broken the back of the winter. See February 8, 1856 ("The snow is soft, and the eaves begin to run as not for many weeks."); February 8, 1854 ("Rain, rain, rain, carrying off the snow and leaving a foundation of ice. "); February 8, 1852 ("Night before last, our first rain for a long time; this afternoon, the first crust to walk on.")
The otter must roam about a great deal, for I rarely see fresh tracks in the same neighborhood a second time the same winter, though the old tracks may be apparent all the winter through. See January 29. 1853 ("Melvin . . . Never saw an otter track"); January 30, 1854 ("How retired an otter manages to live! He grows to be four feet long without any mortal getting a glimpse of him,");February 4, 1855 ("See this afternoon a very distinct otter-track by the Rock, at the junction of the two rivers.”); February 20, 1855 (Among the quadrupeds of Concord, the otter is "very rare.”); February 20, 1856 (“See a broad and distinct otter-trail, made last night or yesterday"); . February 22, 1856 (“Just below this bridge begins an otter track, several days old yet very distinct, which I trace half a mile down the river.")
That cold Friday, about a fortnight ago . . . See January 23, 1857 ("The coldest day that I remember recording, clear and bright, but very high wind, blowing the snow. "); February 7, 1857(" Several men I have talked with froze their ears a fortnight ago yesterday, the cold Friday; one who had never frozen his ears before.”)
And now another friendship is ended. See February 19, 1857 ("A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend. “)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 8
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 © 2009-2023
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