March 31.
Intended to get up early this morning and commence a series of spring walks, but clouds and drowsiness prevented.
Early, however, I saw the clouds in the west, for my window looks west, suffused with rosy light, but that "flattery” is all forgotten now. How can one help being an early riser and walker in that season when the birds begin to twitter and sing in the morning?
Is not here an instance of the civilized man detecting the traces of a friend or foe with a skill at least equal to that of the savage? Indeed it is in both cases but a common sense applied to the objects, and in a manner most familiar to the parties. The skill of the savage is just such a science, though referred sometimes to instinct.
Perhaps after the thawing of the trees their buds universally swell before they can be said to spring.
Perchance as we grow old we cease to spring with the spring, and we are indifferent to the succession of years, and they go by without epoch as months.
Why the moaning of the storm gives me pleasure. Methinks it is because it puts to rout the trivialness of our fair-weather life and gives it at least a tragic interest. The sound has the effect of a pleasing challenge, to call forth our energy to resist the invaders of our life's territory. It is musical and thrilling, as the sound of an enemy's bugle.
Our spirits revive like lichens in the storm. There is something worth living for when we are resisted, threatened. As at the last day we might be thrilled with the prospect of the grandeur of our destiny, so in these first days our destiny appears grander.
What would the days, what would our life, be worth, if some nights were not dark as pitch, of darkness tangible or that you can cut with a knife? How else could the light in the mind shine? How should we be conscious of the light of reason? If it were not for physical cold, how should we have discovered the warmth of the affections? I sometimes feel that I need to sit in a far-away cave through a three weeks' storm, cold and wet, to give a tone to my system.
The spring has its windy March to usher it in, with many soaking rains reaching into April.
Methinks I would share every creature's suffering for the sake of its experience and joy.
The song sparrow and the transient fox colored sparrow, -- have they brought me no message this year? Do they go to lead heroic lives in Rupert's Land? They are so small, I think their destinies must be large. Have I heard what this tiny passenger has to say, while it flits thus from tree to tree ? Is not the coming of the fox-colored sparrow something more earnest and significant than I have dreamed of ? Can I forgive myself if I let it go to Rupert's Land before I have appreciated it?
Intended to get up early this morning and commence a series of spring walks, but clouds and drowsiness prevented. See March 17, 1858 ("No mortal is alert enough to be present at the first dawn of the spring. “); March 15, 1857 (“An early dawn and premature blush of spring, at which I was not present.”) Compare March 31, 1855 (“ I go listening for the croak of the first frog, or peep of a hylodest is suddenly warm, and this amelioration of the weather is incomparably the most important fact in this vicinity.. . . Now you would think that there was a sudden awakening in the very crust of the earth, as if flowers were expanding and leaves putting forth — but not so. I listen in vain to hear a frog or a new bird as yet; only the frozen ground is melting a little deeper, and the water is trickling down the hills in some places. No, the change is mainly in us. We feel as if we had obtained a new lease of life.”)
How can one help being an early riser and walker in that season when the birds begin to twitter and sing in the morning? March 22, 1853 ("As soon as these spring mornings arrive in which the birds sing, I am sure to be an early riser.. . .expecting the dawn in so serene and joyful and expectant a mood."); March 31, 1853 (" The robins sing at the very earliest dawn. I wake with their note ringing in my ear.")
Perchance as we grow old we cease to spring with the spring, and we are indifferent to the succession of years, and they go by without epoch as months. See March 30, 1852 ("Perhaps we grow older and older till we no longer sympathize with the revolution of the seasons, and our winters never break up."); August 23, 1853 ("Perhaps after middle age man ceases to be interested in the morning and in the spring.")
Methinks I would share every creature's suffering for the sake of its experience and joy. Cf. December 23, 1856 ("If the writer would interest readers, ...[t]hey must have the essence or oil of himself, tried out of the fat of his experience and joy."); July 13, 1852 (A journal, a book that shall contain a record of all your joy, your ecstasy.); November 18, 1857 "Each man's necessary path, though as obscure and apparently uneventful as that of a beetle in the grass, is the way to the deepest joys he is susceptible of ."); February 23, 1860 ("May we measure our lives by our joys")
The expedition in search of Sir John Franklin in 1850 landed at Cape Riley on the north side of Lan caster Sound, and one vessel brought off relics of Franklin, viz. “five pieces of beef, mutton, and pork bones, together with a bit of rope, a small rag of can vas, and a chip of wood cut by an ax.”
Richardson says: From a careful examination of the beef bones, I came to the conclusion that they had belonged to pieces of salt-beef ordinarily supplied to the Navy, and that probably they and the other bones had been exposed to the atmosphere and to friction in rivulets of melted snow for four or five summers.
The rope was proved by the ropemaker who examined it to have been made at Chatham, of Hungarian hemp, subsequent to 1841. The fragment of canvas, which seemed to have been part of a boat's swab, had the Queen's broad arrow painted on it; and the chip of wood was of ash, a tree which does not grow on the banks of any river that falls into the Arctic Sea. It had, however, been long exposed to the weather, and was likely to have been cut from a piece of drift-timber found lying on the spot, as the mark of the ax was recent compared to the surface of the wood, which might have been exposed to the weather for a century.” “The grounds of these conclusions were fully stated in a report made to the Admiralty by Sir Edward Parry, myself, and other officers.”
The rope was proved by the ropemaker who examined it to have been made at Chatham, of Hungarian hemp, subsequent to 1841. The fragment of canvas, which seemed to have been part of a boat's swab, had the Queen's broad arrow painted on it; and the chip of wood was of ash, a tree which does not grow on the banks of any river that falls into the Arctic Sea. It had, however, been long exposed to the weather, and was likely to have been cut from a piece of drift-timber found lying on the spot, as the mark of the ax was recent compared to the surface of the wood, which might have been exposed to the weather for a century.” “The grounds of these conclusions were fully stated in a report made to the Admiralty by Sir Edward Parry, myself, and other officers.”
March 31. 2023
Perhaps after the thawing of the trees their buds universally swell before they can be said to spring.
Perchance as we grow old we cease to spring with the spring, and we are indifferent to the succession of years, and they go by without epoch as months.
Woe be to us when we cease to form new resolutions on the opening of a new year!
A cold, raw day with alternating hail - like snow and rain.
According to Gilpin, a copse is composed of forest trees mixed with brushwood, which last is periodically cut down in twelve or fourteen years.
What Gilpin says about copses, glens, etc., suggests that the different places to which the walker resorts may be profitably classified and suggest many things to be said.
Gilpin prefers the continuous song of the insects in the shade of a copse to the buzzing vagrant fly in the glare of day.
He says the pools in the forest must receive their black hue from clearness. I suppose he means they may have a muddy bottom or covered with dark dead leaves, but the water above must be clear to reflect the trees.
It would be worth the while to tell why a swamp pleases us, what kinds please us, also what weather, etc., etc., - analyze our impressions.
Why the moaning of the storm gives me pleasure. Methinks it is because it puts to rout the trivialness of our fair-weather life and gives it at least a tragic interest. The sound has the effect of a pleasing challenge, to call forth our energy to resist the invaders of our life's territory. It is musical and thrilling, as the sound of an enemy's bugle.
Our spirits revive like lichens in the storm. There is something worth living for when we are resisted, threatened. As at the last day we might be thrilled with the prospect of the grandeur of our destiny, so in these first days our destiny appears grander.
What would the days, what would our life, be worth, if some nights were not dark as pitch, of darkness tangible or that you can cut with a knife? How else could the light in the mind shine? How should we be conscious of the light of reason? If it were not for physical cold, how should we have discovered the warmth of the affections? I sometimes feel that I need to sit in a far-away cave through a three weeks' storm, cold and wet, to give a tone to my system.
The spring has its windy March to usher it in, with many soaking rains reaching into April.
Methinks I would share every creature's suffering for the sake of its experience and joy.
The song sparrow and the transient fox colored sparrow, -- have they brought me no message this year? Do they go to lead heroic lives in Rupert's Land? They are so small, I think their destinies must be large. Have I heard what this tiny passenger has to say, while it flits thus from tree to tree ? Is not the coming of the fox-colored sparrow something more earnest and significant than I have dreamed of ? Can I forgive myself if I let it go to Rupert's Land before I have appreciated it?
God did not make this world in jest; no, nor in indifference.
These migrating sparrows all bear messages that concern my life.
I do not pluck the fruits in their season. I love the birds and beasts because they are mythologically in earnest. I see that the sparrow cheeps and flits and sings adequately to the great design of the universe; that man does not communicate with it, understand its language, because he is not at one with nature. I reproach myself because I have regarded with indifference the passage of the birds; I have thought them no better than I.
What philosopher can estimate the different values of a waking thought and a dream?
I hear late to-night the unspeakable rain, mingled with rattling snow against the windows, preparing the ground for spring.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 31, 1852
These migrating sparrows all bear messages that concern my life. See March 22, 1860 ("About twenty-nine migratory birds arrive [in March], and two or three more utter their spring notes and sounds . . . , while apparently the snow bunting, lesser redpoll, shrike, and doubtless several more — as owls, crossbills (?) — leave us."); March 23, 1853 ("The birds which are merely migrating or tarrying here for a season are especially gregarious now, — the redpoll, Fringilla hyemalis, fox-colored sparrow, etc."); March 18, 1852 ("I hear the song sparrow's simple strain, most genuine herald of the spring, and see flocks of chubby northern birds with the habit of snowbirds, passing north."); April 1, 1852 ("Saw the fox-colored sparrows and slate-colored snowbirds on Smith's Hill, the latter singing in the sun, — a pleasant jingle.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter
I sometimes feel that I need to sit in a far-away cave through a three weeks' storm, cold and wet, to give a tone to my system. See 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 we be as it were turned inside out to it, and there be no part in us but is wet or weather beaten."); April 13, 1852 (" I love to hear the wind howl."); April 22, 1852. (" 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."); May 13, 185 2("They who do not walk in the woods in the rain never behold them in their freshest, most radiant and blooming beauty."); August 31, 1852 ("It is worth the while to have had a cloudy, even a stormy, day for an excursion, if only that you are out at the clearing up.");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.");
Methinks I would share
each creature's suffering for
the sake of its joy.
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/hdt-520331
