February 13.
Skated to Sudbury. A beautiful, summer-like day.
The meadows were frozen just enough to bear.
Examined now the fleets of ice-flakes close at hand. They are a very singular and interesting phenomenon, which I do not remember to have seen.
I should say that when the water was frozen about as thick as paste board, a violent gust had here and there broken it up, and while the wind and waves held it up on its edge, the increasing cold froze it in firmly. So it seemed, for the flakes were for the most part turned one way; i. e. standing on one side, you saw only their edges, on another the northeast or southwest their sides.
They were for the most part of a triangular form, like a shoulder-of - mutton sail, slightly scalloped, like shells. They looked like a fleet of a thousand mackerel fishers under a press of sail careering before a smacking breeze. Sometimes the sun and wind had reduced them to the thinness of writing-paper, and they fluttered and rustled and tinkled merrily.
I skated through them and strewed their wrecks around.
They appear to have been elevated expressly to reflect the sun like mirrors, to adorn the river and attract the eye of the skater. Who will say that their principal end is not answered when they excite the admiration of the skater? Every half-mile or mile, as you skate up the river, you see these crystal fleets.
Nature is a great imitator and loves to repeat herself.
She wastes her wonders on the town. It impresses me as one superiority in her art, if art it may be called, that she does not require that man appreciate her, takes no steps to attract his attention.
The trouble is in getting on and off the ice; when you are once on you can go well enough. It melts round the edges.
Again I saw to-day, half a mile off in Sudbury, a sandy spot on the top of a hill, where I prophesied that I should find traces of the Indians. When within a dozen rods, I distinguished the foundation of a lodge, and merely passing over it, I saw many fragments of the arrowhead stone. I have frequently distinguished these localities half a mile, gone forward, and picked up arrowheads.
Saw in a warm, muddy brook in Sudbury, quite open and exposed, the skunk-cabbage spathes above water. The tops of the spathes were frost- bitten, but the fruit sound. There was one partly expanded.
The first flower of the season; for it is a flower. I doubt if there is [a] month without its flower. Examined by the botany all its parts, the first flower I have seen. The Ictodes fætidus.
Also mosses, mingled red and green. The red will pass for the blossom.
As for antiquities, one of our old deserted country roads, marked only by the parallel fences and cellar - hole with its bricks where the last inhabitant died, the victim of intemperance, fifty years ago, with its bare and exhausted fields stretching around, suggests to me an antiquity greater and more remote from the America of the newspapers than the tombs of Etruria. I insert the rise and fall of Rome in the interval. This is the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.
The meadows were frozen just enough to bear.
Examined now the fleets of ice-flakes close at hand. They are a very singular and interesting phenomenon, which I do not remember to have seen.
I should say that when the water was frozen about as thick as paste board, a violent gust had here and there broken it up, and while the wind and waves held it up on its edge, the increasing cold froze it in firmly. So it seemed, for the flakes were for the most part turned one way; i. e. standing on one side, you saw only their edges, on another the northeast or southwest their sides.
They were for the most part of a triangular form, like a shoulder-of - mutton sail, slightly scalloped, like shells. They looked like a fleet of a thousand mackerel fishers under a press of sail careering before a smacking breeze. Sometimes the sun and wind had reduced them to the thinness of writing-paper, and they fluttered and rustled and tinkled merrily.
I skated through them and strewed their wrecks around.
They appear to have been elevated expressly to reflect the sun like mirrors, to adorn the river and attract the eye of the skater. Who will say that their principal end is not answered when they excite the admiration of the skater? Every half-mile or mile, as you skate up the river, you see these crystal fleets.
Nature is a great imitator and loves to repeat herself.
She wastes her wonders on the town. It impresses me as one superiority in her art, if art it may be called, that she does not require that man appreciate her, takes no steps to attract his attention.
The trouble is in getting on and off the ice; when you are once on you can go well enough. It melts round the edges.
Again I saw to-day, half a mile off in Sudbury, a sandy spot on the top of a hill, where I prophesied that I should find traces of the Indians. When within a dozen rods, I distinguished the foundation of a lodge, and merely passing over it, I saw many fragments of the arrowhead stone. I have frequently distinguished these localities half a mile, gone forward, and picked up arrowheads.
Saw in a warm, muddy brook in Sudbury, quite open and exposed, the skunk-cabbage spathes above water. The tops of the spathes were frost- bitten, but the fruit sound. There was one partly expanded.
The first flower of the season; for it is a flower. I doubt if there is [a] month without its flower. Examined by the botany all its parts, the first flower I have seen. The Ictodes fætidus.
Also mosses, mingled red and green. The red will pass for the blossom.
As for antiquities, one of our old deserted country roads, marked only by the parallel fences and cellar - hole with its bricks where the last inhabitant died, the victim of intemperance, fifty years ago, with its bare and exhausted fields stretching around, suggests to me an antiquity greater and more remote from the America of the newspapers than the tombs of Etruria. I insert the rise and fall of Rome in the interval. This is the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.
It is important to observe not only the subject of our pure and unalloyed joys, but also the secret of any dissatisfaction one may feel.
In society, in the best institutions of men, I remark a certain precocity. When we should be growing children, we are already little men. Infants as we are, we make haste to be weaned from our great mother's breast, and cultivate our parts by intercourse with one another.
I have not much faith in the method of restoring impoverished soils which relies on manuring mainly and does not add some virgin soil or muck.
Many a poor, sore-eyed student that I have heard of would grow faster, both intellectually and physically, if, instead of sitting up so very late to study, he honestly slumbered a fool's allowance.
I would not have every man cultivated, any more than I would have every acre of earth cultivated. Some must be preparing a mould by the annual decay of the forests which they sustain.
Saw half a dozen cows let out and standing about in a retired meadow as in a cow-yard.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 13, 1851
Saw half a dozen cows let out and standing about in a retired meadow as in a cow-yard.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 13, 1851
Examined now the fleets of ice-flakes close at hand . . .They looked like a fleet of a thousand mackerel fishers under a press of sail careering before a smacking breeze. See February 12, 1851 ("I saw to-day something new to me. . . thin cakes of ice forced up on their edges and reflecting the sun like so many mirrors, whole fleets of shining sails, giving a very lively appearance to the river, — where for a dozen rods the flakes of ice stood on their edges, like a fleet beating up-stream against the sun, a fleet of ice-boats")
Nature is a great imitator and loves to repeat herself. Compare October 14, 1857 ("I doubt if you can ever get Nature to repeat herself exactly") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Nature
I saw to-day, half a mile off in Sudbury, a sandy spot on the top of a hill, where I prophesied that I should find traces of the Indians. See August 22, 1860 ("I never find a remarkable Indian relic but I have first divined its existence, and planned the discovery of it. Frequently I have told myself distinctly what it was to be before I found it.”); see also note to February 4, 1858 (" It is a remarkable fact that, in the case of the most interesting plants which I have discovered in this vicinity, I have anticipated finding them perhaps a year before the discovery.")
Mosses now in fruit
are warmly red in the sun
when seen from one side.
April 25, 1857
See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau., signs of spring: mosses bright green
No comments:
Post a Comment