The storm still continues.
When I
walked in the storm day before yesterday, I felt very cold when my clothes were
first wet through, but at last they, being saturated with water, were tight and
kept out the air and fresh wet like a thicker and closer garment, and, the
water in them being warmed by my person, I felt warmer and even drier.
The
color of the water changes with the sky. It is as dull and sober as the sky to-day.
The woodchuck has not far to go to his home. In foul weather, if he chooses, he
can turn in anywhere. He lives on and in the earth. A little parasite on the
skin of the earth, that knows the taste of clover and bean leaves and beetles.
2 P. M. – Another walk in the rain.
The river is remarkably high. Nobody
remembers when the water came into so many cellars.
The water is up to the top
of the easternmost end of the eastern most iron truss on the south side of the
stone bridge. It is over the Union Turnpike that was west of the bridge, so
that it is impassable to a foot-traveller, and just over the road west of Wood’s
Bridge. Of eight carriage roads leading into Concord, the water to my knowledge
is now over six, viz., Lee’s Bridge, the Corner road, Wood’s Bridge, Stone
Bridge, Red Bridge (on both sides, full half a mile in all, over the walls),
and the Turnpike. All of these are impassable to foot-travellers except Wood’s
Bridge, where only a lady would be stopped. I should think that nine inches
more would carry it over Flint’s Bridge road. How it is at the East Quarter
schoolhouse I don’t know, nor at the further stone bridge and above, nor at
Derby’s Bridge. It is probably over the road near Miles’s in the Corner, and in
two places on the Turnpike, perhaps between J. P. Brown’s and C. Miles’s. This
may suggest how low Concord is situated.
Most of the cellars on both sides of
the main street east of our house have water in them, and some that are on high
ground. All this has been occasioned by the repeated storms of snow and rain
for a month or six weeks past, especially the melting of the deep snow of April
13th, and, added to this, the steady rain from Sunday morning, April 18th, to
this moment, 8 P. M., April 21st.
The element of water is in the ascendant.
From the Poplar Hill, the expanse of water looks about as large on the southwest as the northeast. Many new islands are made, -- of grassy and sometimes rocky
knolls, and clumps of trees and bushes where there is no dry land. Straight
willow hedges rising above the water in some places, marking the boundaries of
some man’s improvements, look prettily.
Some of the bushy islands on the Great
Meadows are distinctly red at this distance, even a mile off, from the stems of
some bush not red (distinctly) in fair weather, wet now. Is it cornel?
In
front of Peter’s. — The grass has been springing in spite of the snow and rain,
and the earth has an increased greenish tinge,
though it is still decidedly tawny.
Men are out in boats in the rain for
muskrats, ducks, and geese.
It appears to me, as I stand on this hill, that the
white houses of the village, seen through the whitish misty storm and rain, are
a very suitable color and harmonize well with the scenery, like concentrations
of the mist. It is a cheerful color in stormy weather.
A few patches of snow
are still left.
The robins sing through the ceaseless rain, and the song
sparrows, and I hear a lark’s plaintive strain.
I am glad that men are so
dispersed over the earth. The need of fuel causes woods to be left, and the use
of cattle and horses requires pastures, and hence men live far apart and the
walkers of every town have this wide range over forest and field.
Sitting
behind the wall on the height of the road beyond N. Barrett’s (for we have come
down the north bank of the river), I love in this weather to look abroad and
let my eye fall on some sandy hill clothed with pitch pines on its sides, and
covered on its top with the whitish cladonia lichen, usually so dry but now
saturated with water. It reminds me of northern regions.
I am thinking of the
hill near Tarbell’s, three quarters of a mile from me. They are agreeable
colors to my eye, the green pine and, on the summit, the patches of whitish
moss like mildew seen through the mist and rain, for I think, perhaps, how much
moisture that soil can bear, how grateful it is to it.
Proceed toward Hubbard’s
black birch hill. The grass is greenest in the hollows where some snow and ice
are still left melting, showing by its greenness how much space they recently
covered.
On
the east side of Ponkawtasset I hear a robin singing cheerily from some perch
in the wood, in the midst of the rain, where the scenery is now wild and dreary.
His song a singular antagonism and offset to the storm. As if Nature said, “Have faith, these two things I can do.” It sings with power, like a bird of
great faith that sees the bright future through the dark present, to reassure
the race of man, like one to whom many talents were given and who will improve
its talents. They are sounds to make a dying man live. They sing not their
despair. It is a pure, immortal melody.
The side of the hill is covered first
with tall birches rising from a reddish ground, just above a small swamp; then
comes a white pine wood whose needles, covered with the fine rain-drops, have a
light sheen on them. I see one pine that has been snapped off half-way up in
the storm, and, seen against the misty background, it is a diştinct yellow mark.
The sky is not one homogeneous color, but somewhat mottled with darker clouds
and white intervals, and anon it rains harder than before.
(I saw the other day
the rootlets which spring from the alder above the ground, so tenacious of the
earth is it.)
Was that a large shad-bush where Father’s mill used to be? There
is quite a waterfall beyond, where the old dam was. Where the rapids commence,
at the outlet of the pond, the water is singularly creased as it rushes to the
fall, like braided hair, as the poet has it. I did not see any inequalities in
the rock it rushed over which could make it so plaited. Here is enough of that
suds which in warm weather disperses such a sense of coolness through the air.
Sat under the dark hemlocks, gloomy hemlocks, on the hillside beyond. In a
stormy day like this there is the gloom of night beneath them. The ground beneath them almost bare, with wet rocks and fine twigs, without leaves (but
hemlock leaves) or grass.
The birds are singing in the rain about the small
pond in front, the inquisitive chickadee that has flown at once to the alders
to reconnoitre us, the blackbirds, the song sparrow, telling of expanding buds.
But above all the robin sings here too, I know not at what distance in the wood.
“Did he sing thus in Indian days?” I ask myself ; for I have always
associated this sound with the village and the clearing, but now I do detect
the aboriginal wildness in his strain, and can imagine him a woodland bird, and
that he sang thus when there was no civilized ear to hear him, a pure forest
melody even like the wood thrush.
Every genuine thing retains this wild tone,
which no true culture displaces.
I heard him even as he might have sounded to
the Indian, singing at evening upon the elm above his wigwam, with which was
associated in the red man’s mind the events of an Indian’s life, his childhood.
Formerly I had heard in it only those strains which tell of the white man’s
village life; now I heard those strains which remembered the red man’s life,
such as fell on the ears of Indian children,-as he sang when these arrowheads,
which the rain has made shine so on the lean stubble-field, were fastened to
their shaft.
Thus the birds sing round this piece of water, some on the alders
which fringe, some farther off and higher up the hills; it is a centre to them.
Here stand buttonwoods, an uncommon tree in the woods, naked to look at,
and now covered with little tufts of twigs on the sides of the branches in
consequence of the disease which has attacked them. The singing of birds
implies fair weather.
I see where some farmer has been at pains to knock to
pieces the manure which his cattle have dropped in the pasture, so to spread it
over the sward.
The yellow birch is to me an interesting tree from its remarkable and peculiar color, like a silvery gold.
In the pasture beyond the
brook, where grow the barberries, huckleberries, — creeping juniper, etc., are
half a dozen huge boulders, which look grandly now in the storm, covered with
greenish-gray lichens, alternating with the slatish-colored rock. Slumbering,
silent, like the exuviæ of giants; some of their cattle left. From a height I
look down on some of them as on the backs of oxen. A certain personality, or at
least brute life, they seem to have.
C. calls it Boulder Field. There is a good
prospect southward over the pond, between the two hills, even to the river
meadows now.
As we stand by the monument on the Battle-Ground, I see a white
pine dimly in the horizon just north of Lee’s Hill, at 5. 30 P. M., its upright
stem and straight horizontal feathered branches, while at the same time I hear
a robin sing. Each enhances the other.
That tree seems the emblem of my life;
it stands for the west, the wild. The sight of it is grateful to me as to a
bird whose perch it is to be at the end of a weary flight. I [am] not sure
whether the music I hear is most in the robin’s song or in its boughs. My
wealth should be all in pine-tree shillings.
The pine
tree that stands on the verge of the clearing, whose boughs point westward;
which the village does not permit to grow on the common or by the roadside;
which is banished from the village; in whose boughs the crow and the hawk have
their nests.
We have heard enough nonsense about the Pyramids. If Congress
should vote to rear such structures on the prairies to-day, I should not think
it worth the while, nor be interested in the enterprise. It was the foolish
undertaking of some tyrant. “ But, ” says my neighbor, “ when they were built,
all men believed in them and were inspired to build them. ” Nonsense ! nonsense
! I believe that they were built essentially in the same spirit in which the
public works of Egypt, of England, and America are built to-day, — the Mahmoudi
Canal, the Tubular Bridge, Thames Tunnel, and the Washington Monument. The
inspiring motive in the actual builders of these works is garlic, or beef, or
potatoes. For meat and drink and the necessaries of life men can be hired to do
many things. “ Ah, ” says my neighbor, “ but the stones are fitted with such
nice joints ! ” But the joints were nicer yet before they were disjointed in
the quarry. Men are wont to speak as if it were a noble work to build a pyramid,
— to set, forsooth, a hundred thousand Irishmen at work at fifty cents a day to
piling stone. As if the good joints could ennoble it, if a noble motive was
wanting ! To ramble round the world to see that pile of stones which ambitious
Mr. Cheops, an Egyptian booby, like some Lord Timothy Dexter, caused a hundred
thousand poor devils to pile up for low wages, which contained for all
treasure the thigh-bone of a cow. The tower of Babel has been a good deal
laughed at. It was just as sensible an undertaking as the Pyramids, which,
because they were completed and have stood to this day, are admired. I don’t
believe they made a better joint than Mr. Crab, the joiner, can.
I have not this season heard more robins sing than this rainy day.
H.
D. Thoreau, Journal, April 21, 1852
When I walked in the storm day before yesterday, I felt very cold when my clothes were first wet through, but at last they, being saturated with water, were tight and kept out the air and fresh wet like a thicker and closer garment, and, the water in them being warmed by my person, I felt warmer and even drier. See April 19, 1852 ("It is a violent northeast storm, in which it is very difficult and almost useless to carry an umbrella. I am soon wet to my skin over half my body. At first, and for a long time, I feel cold and as if I had lost some vital heat by it, but at last the water in my clothes feels warm to me, and I know not but I am dry. ")See also
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.”) ;
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.").
Of eight carriage roads leading into Concord, the water to my knowledge is now over six.This may suggest how low Concord is situated. See February 3, 1855 ("I still recur in my mind to that skate of the 3lst. I was thus enabled to get a bird’s-eye view of the river, -— to survey its length and breadth within a few hours, connect one part (one shore) with another in my mind, and realize what was going on upon it from end to end, —to know the whole as I ordinarily knew a few miles of it only. It is all the way of one character, — a meadow river, or dead stream,—Musketicook,—the abode of muskrats, pickerel, etc., crossed within these dozen miles each way, —or thirty in all, —by some twenty low wooden bridges, connected with the mainland by willowy causeways. Thus the long, shallow lakes divided into reaches. These long causeways all under water and ice now, only the bridges peeping out from time to time like a dry eyelid.")
I have not this season heard more robins sing than this rainy day. See March 8, 1855 ("This sound reminds me of rainy, misty April days in past years."); April 2, 1854 ("Sitting on the rail over the brook, I hear something which reminds me of the song of the robin in rainy days in past springs."); April 13, 1852 ("The robin is the only bird as yet that makes a business of singing, steadily singing, — sings continuously out of pure joy and melody of soul"); April 16, 1856 ("A moist, misty, rain-threatening April day. . . The robin sings throughout it. "); April 26, 1855 ("We see and hear more birds than usual this mizzling and still day, and the robin sings with more vigor and promise than later in the season.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Robins in Spring and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Birds in the Rain A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Robins in Spring
