June 8. Thursday.
June 8, 2020
A. M. — Gentle, steady rain storm.
The Rosa nitida bud which I plucked yesterday has blossomed to-day, so that, notwithstanding the rain, I will put it down to to-day.
P. M. – On river.
Sidesaddle, apparently to-morrow (?).
Earliest and common potamogeton.
Erigeron strigosus slowly opening, perhaps to-morrow.
Meadow-rue, with its rank dog-like scent.
Ribwort plantain is abundantly in bloom, fifteen or sixteen inches high; how long?
Utricularia vulgaris.
Young robins in nest.
Herndon, in his ”Exploration of the Amazon,” says that ”there is wanting an industrious and active population, who know what the comforts of life are, and who have artificial wants to draw out the great resources of the country.”
But what are the ”artificial wants” to be encouraged, and the ”great resources” of a country?
Surely not the love of luxuries like the tobacco and slaves of his native (?) Virginia, or that fertility of soil which produces these. The chief want is ever a life of deep experiences, – that is, character, — which alone draws out ”the great resources” of Nature.
When our wants cease to be chiefly superficial and trivial, which is commonly meant by artificial, and begin to be wants of character, then the great resources of a country are taxed and drawn out, and the result, the staple production, is poetry.
Have the ”great resources” of Virginia been drawn out by such ”artificial wants” as there exist? Was that country really designed by its Maker to produce slaves and tobacco, or something more even than freemen and food for freemen?
Wants of character, aspirations, — this is what is wanted; but what is called civilization does not always substitute this for the barren simplicity of the savage.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 8, 1854
The Rosa nitida bud which I plucked yesterday has blossomed to-day See June 15, 1853 (“Here are many wild roses northeast of Trillium Woods. It is the pride of June. I bring home the buds ready to expand, put them in a pitcher of water, and the next morning they open and fill my chamber with fragrance.”) [Rosa nitida (Shining rose) is a wild rose found in bogs, swamps, and wet thickets, which reaches the southern edge of its range in southern New England. It produces bright pink flowers in June and July that are 2 inches across,The stems are covered in many slender, straight prickles (unlike a similar wetland rose, R. palustris). The leaves are lustrous on both sides. ~GoBotany]
Sidesaddle, apparently to-morrow. See June 8, 1858 ("The sidesaddle-flower is out, — how long?") and note to June 12, 1856 (''Sidesaddle flower numerously out now.") [Sarracenia purpurea, also known as the purple pitcherplant or northern pitcher plant, the only pitcherplant native to New England. ]/
The chief want is ever a life of deep experiences, which alone draws out ”the great resources” of Nature. See May 23, 1841 ("All nature is a new impression every instant"); 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,. . .I pray for such inward experience as will make nature significant”); May 23, 1853 ("The poet must bring to Nature the smooth mirror in which she is to be reflected."); August 30, 1856 ("I get my new experiences . . . at Beck Stow's Swamp listening to the native wood thrush.”); October 18, 1856 ("T]he theme is nothing, the life is everything. All that interests the reader is the depth and intensity of the life excited. . . . That is, man is all in all, Nature nothing, but as she draws him out and reflects him.”); October 26, 1857 ("The perfect correspondence of Nature to man, so that he is at home in her!")
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
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