A sermon on economy of fuel

April 26

April 26, 2015

Riordan's cock follows close after me while spading in the garden, and hens commonly follow the gardener and plowman, just as cowbirds the cattle in a pasture. 

I turn up now in the garden those large leather- colored nymphs. 

P. M. — Up Assabet to White Cedar Swamp. 

See on the water over the meadow, north of the boat's place, twenty rods from the nearest shore and twice as much from the opposite shore, a very large striped snake swimming. It swims with great ease, and lifts its head a foot above the water, darting its tongue at us. 

A snake thus met with on the water appears far more monstrous, not to say awful and venomous, than on the land. It is always something startling and memorable to meet with a serpent in the midst of a broad water, careering over it. But why had this one taken to the water? Is it possible that snakes ever hibernate in meadows which are subject to be overflown?

This one when we approached swam toward the boat, apparently to rest on it, and when I put out my paddle, at once coiled itself partly around it and allowed itself to be taken on board. It did not hang down from the paddle like a dead snake, but stiffened and curved its body in a loose coil about it.

This snake was two feet and eleven inches long; the tail alone, seven and a quarter. There [were] one hundred and forty-five large abdominal plates, besides the three smaller under the head, and sixty-five pairs of caudal scales. The central stripe on the back was not bright-yellow, as Storer describes, but a pale brown or clay-color; only the more indistinct lateral stripes were a greenish yellow, the broad dark-brown stripes being between; beneath greenish. Beneath the tail in centre, a dark, somewhat greenish line. 

This snake was killed about 2 p. m.; i. e., the head was perfectly killed then; yet the posterior half of the body was apparently quite alive and would curl strongly around the hand at 7 p. m. It had been hanging on a tree in the meanwhile.

I have the same objection to killing a snake that I have to the killing of any other animal, yet the most humane man that I know never omits to kill one.

I see a great many beetles, etc., floating and struggling on the flood.

We sit on the shore at Wheeler's fence, opposite Merriam's. At this season still we go seeking the sunniest, most sheltered, and warmest place. C. says this is the warmest place he has been in this year.

We are in this like snakes that lie out on banks. In sunny and sheltered nooks we are in our best estate. There our thoughts flow and we flourish most. 

By and by we shall seek the shadiest and coolest place. How well adapted we are to our climate! In the winter we sit by fires in the house; in spring and fall, in sunny and sheltered nooks; in the summer, in shady and cool groves, or over water where the breeze circulates. Thus the average temperature of the year just suits us. Generally, whether in summer or winter, we are not sensible either of heat or cold. 

A great part of our troubles are literally domestic or originate in the house and from living indoors. I could write an essay to be entitled "Out of Doors," — undertake a crusade against houses. What a different thing Christianity preached to the house-bred and to a party who lived out of doors! 

Also a sermon is needed on economy of fuel. 

What right has my neighbor to burn ten cords of wood, when I burn only one? Thus robbing our half-naked town of this precious covering. Is he so much colder than I? It is expensive to maintain him in our midst. If some earn the salt of their porridge, are we certain that they earn the fuel of their kitchen and parlor? One man makes a little of the driftwood of the river or of the dead and refuse (unmarketable!) [wood] of the forest suffice, and Nature rejoices in him.

Another, Herod-like, requires ten cords of the best of young white oak or hickory, and he is commonly esteemed a virtuous man. He who burns the most wood on his hearth is the least warmed by the sight of it growing. Leave the trim wood-lots to widows and orphan girls. Let men tread gently through nature. Let us religiously burn stumps and worship in groves, while Christian vandals lay waste the forest temples to build miles of meeting-houses and horse-sheds and feed their box stoves. 

The white cedar is apparently just out. The higher up the tree, the earlier. 

Towed home an oak log some eighteen feet long and more than a foot through, with a birch withe around it and another birch fastened to that.

Father says he saw a boy with a snapping turtle yesterday.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  April 26, 1857

I have the same objection to killing a snake that I have to the killing of any other animal, yet the most humane man that I know never omits to kill one. Compare May 28, 1854 ("The inhumanity of science concerns me, as when I am tempted to kill a rare snake that I may ascertain its species.”) and April 22, 1857 (“Near Tall's Island, rescue a little pale or yellowish brown snake that was coiled round a willow half a dozen rods from the shore . . . ”)

At this season still we go seeking the sunniest, most sheltered, and warmest place . . .Compare October 26, 1852 ("At this season we seek warm sunny lees and hillsides . . .where we cuddle and warm ourselves in the sun as by a fire, where we may get some of its reflected as well as direct heat.")

One man makes a little of the driftwood of the river . . . Another . . .requires ten cords of the best of young white oak or hickory . . .See March 18, 1857 ("While Emerson sits writing [in] his study this still, overcast, moist day, Goodwin is paddling up the still, dark river. Emerson burns twenty-five cords of wood and fourteen tons of coal; Goodwin perhaps a cord and a half, much of which he picks out of the river.")

Up Assabet to White Cedar Swamp. . . .The white cedar is apparently just out. See April 26, 1856 ("The white cedar gathered the 23d does not shed pollen in house till to-day, and I doubt if it will in swamp before to-morrow."); April 23, 1856 ("The white cedar swamp consists of hummocks, now surrounded by water, where you go jumping from one to another.”); April 24, 1855 ("The sprigs of red cedar, now full of the buff-colored staminate flowers, like fruit, are very rich . . . [Its pollen] is a clear buff color, while that of the white cedar is very different, being a faint salmon.”); April 23, 1855 ("The anthers of the larch are conspicuous, but I see no pollen. White cedar to-morrow."); April 24, 1854 ("Up Assabet, and thence to Cedar Swamp. . . The white cedar female blossoms are open.")  See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cedar Swamps

Father says he saw a boy with a snapping turtle yesterday. See April 26, 1859 ("Rice says that he saw a large mud turtle in the river . . . Thinks they come out about the first of April. ") See also April 1, 1858   ("At Hemlock Brook  . . . I see on the wet mud a little snapping turtle evidently hatched last year. "):  April 24, 1856 ("Warren Miles at his new mill tells me that he found a mud turtle of middling size in his brook there last Monday, or the 21st ."); April 25, 1856 ("Warren Miles had caught three more snapping turtles since yesterday, at his mill ")

The joy of firewood.

November 28

Goodwin tells me that Therien, who lives in a shanty of his own building and alone in Lincoln, uses for a drink only checkerberry-tea. (G. also called it "ivory- leaf.") Is it not singular that probably only one tea-drinker in this neighborhood should use for his beverage a plant which grows here? Therien, really drinking his checkerberry-tea from motives of simplicity or economy and saying nothing about it, deserves well of his country. As he does now, we may all do at last. 

There is scarcely a wood of sufficient size and density left now for an owl to haunt in, and if I hear one hoot I may be sure where he is. 

Goodwin is cutting out a few cords of dead wood in the midst of E. Hubbard's old lot. This has been Hubbard's practice for thirty years or more, and so, it would seem, they are all dead before he gets to them.

Saw Abel Brooks there with a half-bushel basket on his arm. He was picking up chips on his and neighboring lots; had got about two quarts of old and blackened pine chips, and with these was returning home at dusk more than a mile. 

Such a petty quantity as you would hardly have gone to the end of your yard for, and yet he said that he had got more than two cords of them at home, which he had collected thus and sometimes with a wheelbarrow. He had thus spent an hour or two and walked two or three miles in a cool November evening to pick up two quarts of pine chips scattered through the woods. 

He evidently takes real satisfaction in collecting his fuel, perhaps gets more heat of all kinds out of it than any man in town. He is not reduced to taking a walk for exercise as some are. It is one thing to own a wood-lot as he does who perambulates its bounds almost daily, so as to have worn a path about it, and another to own one as many another does who hardly knows where it is. 

Evidently the quantity of chips in his basket is not essential; it is the chippy idea which he pursues. It is to him an unaccountably pleasing occupation. And no doubt he loves to see his pile grow at home. 

Think how variously men spend the same hour in the same village! The lawyer sits talking with his client in the twilight; the trader is weighing sugar and salt; while Abel Brooks is hastening home from the woods with his basket half full of chips. 

I think I should prefer to be with Brooks. He was literally as smiling as a basket of chips. A basket of chips, therefore, must have been regarded as a singularly pleasing (if not pleased) object. 

We make a good deal of the early twilights of these November days, they make so large a part of the afternoon.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 28, 1859

Goodwin is cutting out a few cords of dead wood in the midst of E. Hubbard's old lot. See November 28, 1858 ("Goodwin cannot be a very bad man, he is so cheery.") See also October 22, 1853 ("One-eyed John Goodwin, the fisherman, was loading into a hand-cart and conveying home the piles of driftwood which of late he had collected with his boat. It was a beautiful evening, and a clear amber sunset lit up all the eastern shores; and that man's employment, so simple and direct, — . . . thus to obtain his winter's wood, — charmed me unspeakably"); November 4, 1858 ("I took out my glass, and beheld Goodwin, the one-eyed Ajax, in his short blue frock, short and square-bodied, as broad as for his height he can afford to be, getting his winter's wood; for this is one of the phenomena of the season.")

Early twilights of these November days. See  December 5, 1853 ("Now for the short days and early twilight”); December 9, 1856 ("The worker who would accomplish much these short days must shear a dusky slice off both ends of the night”);  and note to December 11, 1854 ("The day is short; it seems to be composed of two twilights merely; the morning and the evening twilight make the whole day.”); February 17, 1852 ("The shortness of the days, when we naturally look to the heavens and make the most of the little light, when we live an arctic life, when the woodchopper's axe reminds us of twilight at 3 o'clock p. m., when the morning and the evening literally make the whole day")

These November days

twilight makes so large a part

of the afternoon.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The joy of firewood.

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 ©  2009-2025

***

Today I bring the chainsaw into the woods to clear fallen trees from the trails. A sunny refreshing afternoon. Careful with the saw, it does not bind except in one old rotten log I think will be like butter. I kick the log open and retrieve the saw.

On the porcupine trail a snarl of grape vines pulls the trees down. I cleared this same spot a few years ago. And here, on the upper trail a log across the main path with two old cuts where I ran out of gas long ago. I finish the work and head to the stream.

Next to the crossing a large maple is uprooted across the trail. The stream is rushing by with last night's rain. I cut a narrow opening for the trail, leaving the maple as a bench by the stream.

Now kneeling I put the saw to the side so it won't get wet, bring my mouth to the water and take two large gulps. The water is cold and fresh.

Zphx 20091128

November 28, 1859 ("We make a good deal of the early twilights of these November days, they make so large a part of the afternoon.”)