Glorious mountains, how impossible to remember daily that they are there.

November 4. 

Glorious mountains, how impossible to remember daily that they are there.

P. M. —To Pine Hill via Spanish Brook. 

I leave the railroad at Walden Crossing and follow the path to Spanish Brook. 

How swift Nature is to repair the damage that man does! When he has cut down a tree and left only a white-topped and bleeding stump, she comes at once to the rescue with her chemistry, and covers it decently with a fresh coat of gray, and in course of time she adds a thick coat of green cup and bright cockscomb lichens, and it be comes an object of new interest to the lover of nature! Suppose it were always to remain a raw stump instead! It becomes a shell on which this humble vegetation spreads and displays itself, and we forget the death of the larger in the life of the less. 

I see in the path some rank thimble-berry shoots covered with that peculiar hoary bloom very thickly. It is only rubbed off in a few places down to the purple skin, by some passing hunter perchance. It is a very singular and delicate outer coat, surely, for a plant to wear. I find that I can write my name in it with a pointed stick very distinctly, each stroke, however fine, going down to the purple. It is a new kind of enamelled card. 

What is this bloom, and what purpose does it serve? Is there anything analogous in animated nature? It is the coup de grace, the last touch and perfection of any work, a thin elysian veil cast over it, through which it may be viewed. It is breathed on by the artist, and thereafter his work is not to be touched without injury. It is the evidence of a ripe and completed work, on which the unexhausted artist has breathed out of his superfluous genius, and his work looks through it as a veil. 

If it is a poem, it must be invested with a similar bloom by the imagination of the reader. It is the subsidence of superfluous ripeness. Like a fruit preserved in its own sugar. It is the handle by which the imagination grasps it. 

I frequently see a spreading pitch pine on whose lower and horizontal limbs the falling needles have lodged, forming thick and unsightly masses, where anon the snow will collect and make a close canopy. The evergreens, with their leaves, are, of course, more likely to catch this litter than the deciduous trees, and the pines especially, because their lower branches are oftener horizontal and flat, beside being unyielding to the wind. Robins build there. 

I notice the new and as yet unswollen scales of willow catkins or buds (the first [?] by the pond) quite yellow in the sun, but nearer I find that half are turned black. 

The evergreen ferns and lycopodiums, etc., on the forest floor, though partly fallen, represent the evergreen trees among humbler plants. 

I climb Pine Hill just as the sun is setting, this cool evening. Sitting with my back to a thick oak sprout whose leaves still glow with life, Walden lies an oblong square endwise to, beneath me. Its surface is slightly rippled, and dusky prolonged reflections of trees extend wholly across its length, or half a mile, — I sit high. 

The sun is once or twice its diameter above the horizon, and the mountains north of it stand out grand and distinct, a decided purple. But when I look critically, I distinguish a whitish mist — such is the color of the denser air—about their lower parts, while their tops are dark-blue. (So the mountains too have a bloom on them; and is not the bloom on fruits equivalent to that blue veil of air which distance gives to many objects?) 

I see one glistening reflection on the dusky and leafy northwestern earth, seven or eight miles off, betraying a window there, though no house can be seen. It twinkles incessantly, as from a waving surface. This, probably, is the undulation of the air. 

Now that the sun is actually setting, the mountains are dark-blue from top to bottom. As usual, a small cloud attends the sun to the portals of the day and reflects this brightness to us, now that he is gone. But those grand and glorious mountains, how impossible to remember daily that they are there, and to live accordingly! They are meant to be a perpetual reminder to us, pointing out the way.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 4, 1857

. . .where anon the snow will collect and make a close canopy. See November 4, 1851 (“[These little cheerful hemlocks] remind me of winter, the snows which are to come . . .”)

I notice the new and as yet unswollen scales of willow catkins or buds. .  . See October 30, 1853 ("Now, now is the time to look at the buds.”); November 4, 1854 (“The shad-bush buds have expanded into small leaflets already.”).

I climb Pine Hill just as the sun is setting, this cool evening.  See November 25, 1857 ("I shiver about awhile on Pine Hill, waiting for the sun to set."); November 30, 1852 ("From Pine Hill, Wachusett is seen over Walden.”)

Grand and glorious mountains, how impossible to remember daily that they are there, and to live accordingly! See September 12, 1851("It is worth the while to see the mountains in the horizon once a day."):August 14, 1854(“I have come forth to this hill at sunset to see the forms of the mountains in the horizon.");October 22, 1857 (“But what a perfect crescent of mountains we have in our northwest horizon! Do we ever give thanks for it? ”); May 17, 1858 ("I doubt if in the landscape there can be anything finer than a distant mountain-range. They are a constant elevating influence.")

The artist changes the direction of Nature and makes her grow according to his idea.

September 4.

Aster multiflorus.

Observed the under sides of a shrub willow by the river, lit by the rays of the rising sun, shining like silver or dewdrops.

September 4, 2018

Yet, when I stood nearer and looked down on them at a different angle, they were quite dull.

I have provided my little snapping turtle with a tub of water and mud, and it is surprising how fast he learns to use his limbs and this world. He actually runs, with the yolk still trailing from him, as if he had got new vigor from contact with the mud.

The insensibility and toughness of his infancy make our life, with its disease and low spirits, ridiculous.

He impresses me as the rudiment of a man worthy to inhabit the earth. He is born with a shell. That is symbolical of his toughness.

His shell being so rounded and sharp on the back at this age, he can turn over without trouble.

P. M. – To climbing fern.  Polygonum articulatum, apparently three or four days.

In the wood-paths I find a great many of the Castile-soap galls, more or less fresh. Some are saddled on the twigs. They are now dropping from the shrub oaks.

September 4, 2018

Is not Art itself a gall? Nature is stung by God and the seed of man planted in her.

The artist changes the direction of Nature and makes her grow according to his idea.  If the gall was anticipated when the oak was made, so was the canoe when the birch was made.

Genius stings Nature, and she grows according to its idea.

7.30.– To Fair Haven Pond by boat.

Full moon; bats flying about; skaters and water bugs (?) like sparks of fire on the surface between us and the moon.

The high shore above the railroad bridge was very simple and grand, — first the bluish sky with the moon and a few brighter stars, then the near high level bank like a distant mountain ridge or a dark cloud in the eastern horizon, then its reflection in the water, making it double, and finally the glassy water and the sheen in one spot on the white lily pads.

Some willows for relief in the distance on the right.

It was Ossianic.

I noticed this afternoon that bubbles would not readily form on the water, and soon burst, probably on account of the late rains, which have changed its quality.

There is probably less stagnation and scum. It is less adhesive.

A fine transparent mist.

Lily Bay seemed as wide as a lake.

You referred the shore back to the Clamshell Hills. The mere edge which a flat shore presents makes no distinct impression on the eye and, if seen at all, appears as the base of the distant hills.

Commonly a slight mist yet more conceals it.

The dim low shore, but a few rods distant, is seen as the base of the distant hills whose distance you know. The low shore, if not entirely concealed by the low mist, is seen against the distant hills and passes for their immediate base. For the same reason hills near the water appear much more steep than they are.

We hear a faint metallic chip from a sparrow on the button-bushes or willows now and then.

Rowse was struck by the simplicity of nature now, — the sky the greater part, then a little dab of earth, and after some water near you.

Looking up the reach beyond Clamshell, the moon on our east quarter, its sheen was reflected for half a mile from the pads and the rippled water next them on that side, while the willows lined the shore in indistinct black masses like trees made with India ink (without distinct branches), and it looked like a sort of Broadway with the sun reflected from its pavements.

Such willows might be made with soot or smoke merely, lumpish with fine edges.

Meanwhile Fair Haven Hill, seen blue through the transparent mist, was as large and imposing as Wachusett, and we seemed to be approaching the Highlands of the river, a mountain pass, where the river had burst through mountains. A high mountain would be no more imposing.

Now I began to hear owls, screech (?) owls, at a distance up-stream; but we hardly got nearer to them, as if they retreated before us. At length, when off Wheeler's grape and cranberry meadow, we heard one near at hand.

The rhythm of it was pe-pe-ou; this once or twice repeated, but more of a squeal and somewhat human. Or do not all strange sounds thrill us as human, till we have learned to refer them to their proper source? 

They appeared to answer one another half a mile apart; could be heard from far woods a mile off.

The wind has risen and the echo is poor; it does not reverberate up and down the river.

No sound of a bullfrog, but steadily the cricket-like Rana palustris alongshore.

Rowse heard a whip-poor-will at Sleepy Hollow to night.

No scent of muskrats.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 4, 1854

 

Nature is stung by God and the seed of man planted in her. See July 30, 1853 (“It suggests that Nature is a kind of gall, that the Creator stung her and man is the grub she is destined to house and feed.”). See also
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Nature is genial to man (the anthropic principle)

The gall was anticipated when the oak was made.  See January 3, 1852 ("Oak-apples are a winter fruit . . . Do they not suggest that all vegetable fruit is but the albumen about young animal life?") 

The artist changes the direction of Nature and makes her grow according to his idea. See Walden ("There was an artist in the city of Kouroo who was disposed to strive after perfection."); Walden ("To effect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts"); December 11, 1855 ("The winter . . .is as it was designed and made to be, for the artist has had leisure to add beauty.") 

The artist cannot 

be hurried – time stands still while 

art is created

 September 24, 1859

September 4. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, September 4

As God stung Nature

and planted the seed of man

the artist changes

the direction of Nature –

Art itself a gall.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The artist changes the direction of Nature

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

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