walking thoughts

March 1. 

Rain all day. This will apparently take the frost out very much and still further settle the ways. 

March 1, 2019

It was already yesterday pretty good bare-ground walking on the north side the street. Yesterday was a dark, louring, moist day and still. The afternoon before, the wind was east, and I think that a storm (snow or rain) always succeeds. 

To-day is a still, dripping spring rain, but more fell in the night. It makes the walking worse for the time, but if it does not freeze again, will greatly help to settle the ways. 

I have thoughts, as I walk, on some subject that is running in my head, but all their pertinence seems gone before I can get home to set them down. The most valuable thoughts which I entertain are anything but what I thought. Nature abhors a vacuum, and if I can only walk with sufficient carelessness I am sure to be filled.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 1, 1860

Rain all day. This will apparently take the frost out very much and still further settle the ways. See March 5, 1860("Ways fairly settled generally. "); March 15, 1860 ("Though it is pretty dry and settled travelling on open roads, it is very muddy still in some roads through woods, as the Marlborough road or Second Division road. ");  March 19, 1860 ("The road and paths are perfectly dry and settled in the village, except a very little frost still coming out on the south side the street");; See also February 18, 1857 (" The frost out of the ground and the ways settled in many places."); March 17, 1853 ("The ways are mostly settled, frozen dry."); March 21, 1858 ("This first spring rain . . .helps take the remaining frost out and settles the ways. “)

The afternoon before, the wind was east, and I think that a storm (snow or rain) always succeeds. See March 30, 1852 (“To-day, as frequently for some time past, we have a raw east wind, which is rare in winter.”); September 15, 1858 (“There is a southeast wind, with clouds, and I suspect a storm brewing. It is very rare that the wind blows from this quarter.”); September, 16, 1858 ("A southeast storm. . . . The trees are unprepared to resist a wind from this quarter. ") see also March 24, 1860 ("During the year the wind [at Cambridge] was southwest 130 days, northwest 87, northeast 59, south 33, west 29, east 14, southeast 10, north 3 days.”); May 2, 1860 (“Since (perhaps) the middle of April we have had much easterly (northeast chiefly) wind, and yet no rain, though this wind rarely fails to bring rain in March.”)

I have thoughts, as I walk, on some subject that is running in my head, but all their pertinence seems gone before I can get home to set them down. Compare August 21, 1851 ("A man may walk abroad and no more see the sky than if he walked under a shed. ");  February 12, 1860 ("Surrounded by our thoughts or imaginary objects, living in our ideas, not one in a million ever sees the objects which are actually around him."); Walking (“I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. … But sometimes it happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head and I am not where my body is. I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?” ) with 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 described by De Quincey, 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 the dews begin to descend in your mind, and its atmosphere is strained of all impurities; and home is farther away than ever. Here is home; the beauty of the world impresses you. There is a coolness in your mind as in a well. Life is too grand for supper.")