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| moonrise at the double chair January 26, 2018 |
Wednesday. P. M.–To Hill and beyond.
It is so mild and moist as I saunter along by the wall east of the Hill that I remember, or anticipate, one of those warm rain-storms in the spring, when the earth is just laid bare, the wind is south, and the cladonia lichens are swollen and lusty with moisture, your foot sinking into them and pressing the water out as from a sponge, and the sandy places also are drinking it in.
You wander indefinitely in a beaded coat, wet to the skin of your legs, sit on moss-clad rocks and stumps, and hear the lisping of migrating sparrows flitting amid the shrub oaks, sit long at a time, still, and have your thoughts.
A rain which is as serene as fair weather, suggesting fairer weather than was ever seen.
You could hug the clods that defile you. You feel the fertilizing influence of the rain in your mind.
The part of you that is wettest is fullest of life, like the lichens.
You discover evidences of immortality not known to divines. You cease to die. You detect some buds and sprouts of life.
Every step in the old rye-field is on virgin soil.
And then the rain comes thicker and faster than before, thawing the remaining frost in the ground, detaining the migrating bird; and you turn your back to it, full of serene, contented thought, soothed by the steady dropping on the withered leaves, more at home for being abroad, more comfortable for being wet, sinking at each step deep into the thawing earth, gladly breaking through the gray rotting ice.
The dullest sounds seem sweetly modulated by the air.
You leave your tracks in fields of spring rye, scaring the fox-colored sparrows along the wood-sides.
You can not go home yet; you stay and sit in the rain.
You glide along the distant wood-side, full of joy and expectation, seeing nothing but beauty, hearing nothing but music, as free as the fox-colored sparrow, seeing far ahead, a courageous knight [?], a great philosopher, not indebted to any academy or college for this expansion, but chiefly to the April rain, which descendeth on all alike; not encouraged by men in your walks, not by the divines nor the professors, and to the law giver an outlaw; not encouraged- (even) when you are reminded of the government at Washington.
Time never passes so quickly and unaccountably, as when I am engaged in composition, i. e. in writing down my thoughts. Clocks seem to have been put forward.The ground being bare this winter, I attend less to buds and twigs. Snow covering the ground secures our attention to twigs, etc., which rise above it.I notice a pretty large rock on the Lee farm, near the site of the old mill over the Assabet, which is quite white and bare, with the roots of a maple, cut down a few years ago, spreading over it, and a thin dark-green crust or mould, a mere patch of soil as big as a dollar, in one or two places on it. It is evident that that rock was covered as much as three inches deep with soil a few years since, for the old roots are two inches thick, and that it has been burnt and washed off since, leaving the surface bare and white. There are a few lichens started at one end.As I came home day before yesterday, over the railroad causeway, at sunset, the sky was overcast, but beneath the edge of the cloud, far in the west, was a narrow stripe of clear amber sky coextensive with the horizon, which reached no higher than the top of Wachusett. I wished to know how far off the cloud was by comparing it with the mountain. It had some what the appearance of resting on the mountain, concealing a part of its summit. I did not suppose it did, because the clouds over my head were too high for that, but when I turned my head I saw the whole outline of the mountain distinctly. I could not tell how far the edge of the cloud was beyond it, but I think it likely that that amber light came to me through a low narrow skylight, the upper sash of whose frame was forty miles distant. The amount of it is that I saw a cloud more distant than the mountain.
Steadily the eternal rain falls, — drip, drip, drip, – the mist drives and clears your sight, the wind blows and warms you, sitting on that sandy upland by the edge of the wood that April day.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 27, 1858
You can not go home yet; you stay and sit in the rain. See May 23, 1853 ("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, "); June 14, 1853 ("This seems the true hour to be abroad sauntering far from home. Your thoughts being already turned toward home, your walk in one sense ended, you are in that favorable frame of mind . . . open to great impressions, and you see those rare sights with the unconscious side of the eye, which you could not see by a direct gaze before. Then . . . home is farther away than ever. Here is home"); June 13, 1854 ("When I have stayed out thus late many miles from home . . . I have felt that I was not far from home after all."); April 16, 1855 ('We are glad that we stayed out so late and feel no need to go home now in a hurry")
The part of you that is wettest is fullest of life. And then the rain comes thicker and faster than before, and you turn your back to it, full of serene, contented thought, soothed by the steady dropping on the withered leaves, more at home for being abroad, more comfortable for being wet. See January 26, 1858 ("I like to sit still under my umbrella and meditate in the woods in this warm rain."); February 28, 1852 (“To get the value of the storm we must be out a long time and travel far in it, so that it may fairly penetrate our skin, . . . and there be no part in us but is wet or weather beaten, - so that we become storm men instead of fair weather men.”); April 19 1852 (" When it rains and blows, keeping men indoors, then the lover of Nature must forth. Then returns Nature to her wild estate.’); December 25, 1856 ("Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary."); March 8, 1859 ("If there is a good chance to be cold and wet and uncomfortable, in other words to feel weather-beaten, you may consume the afternoon to advantage.").
Time never passes so quickly and unaccountably, as when I am engaged in composition. See February, 5, 1852 ("Time never passes so rapidly and unaccountably as when I am engaged in recording my thoughts. The world may perchance reach its end for us in a profounder thought, and Time itself run down.”); March 8, 1859 ("Such a day as this, I. . . explore the moist ground for the radical leaves of plants, while the storm blows overhead, and I forget how the time is passing")
*****
I remember or
anticipate one of those
warm spring rain-storms
when the wind is south
the cladonia lichens
swollen and lusty
you wander wet to
the skin indefinitely
in a serene rain
sit on moss-clad rocks
and stumps sit long at a time
still and have your thoughts –
the part of you that
is wettest is fullest of
life like the lichens
and when the rain comes
thicker and faster you are
more comfortable
you can not go home –
you stay and sit in the rain
free as the sparrow
you glide along the
distant wood-side full of joy
and expectation
wind blows and warms you
the mist drives and clears your sight
eternal rain falls –
drip, drip, drip – sitting
there by the edge of the
wood that April day.
Time never passes
so quickly as when I am
writing down my thoughts.
*****
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/hdt18580127
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