The wildness of genius

February 16

P. M. — From the entrance of the Mill road I look back through the sun, this soft afternoon, to some white pine tops near Jenny Dugan’s. Their flattish boughs rest stratum above stratum like a cloud, a green mackerel sky, hardly reminding me of the concealed earth so far beneath. They are like a flaky crust of the earth, a more ethereal, terebinthine, evergreen earth. 

It occurs to me that my eyes rest on them with the same pleasure as do those of the hen-hawk which has been nestled in them. 

My eyes nibble the piny sierra which makes the horizon’s edge, as a hungry man nibbles a cracker. 

February 16, 2019

The hen-hawk and the pine are friends. The same thing which keeps the hen-hawk in the woods, away from the cities, keeps me here. That bird settles with confidence on a white pine top and not upon your weathercock. That bird will not be poultry of yours, lays no eggs for you, forever hides its nest. Though willed, or wild, it is not willful in its wildness. 

The unsympathizing man regards the wildness of some animals, their strangeness to him, as a sin; as if all their virtue consisted in their tamableness. He has always a charge in his gun ready for their extermination. 

What we call wildness is a civilization other than our own. 

The hen-hawk shuns the farmer, but it seeks the friendly shelter and support of the pine. It will not consent to walk in the barn-yard, but it loves to soar above the clouds. It has its own way and is beautiful, when we would fain subject it to our will. 

So any surpassing work of art is strange and wild to the mass of men, as is genius itself. No hawk that soars and steals our poultry is wilder than genius, and none is more persecuted or above persecution. 

It can never be poet laureate, to say “Pretty Poll” and “Polly want a cracker.”

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 16, 1859

I look back through the sun, this soft afternoon, to some white pine tops. See February 16, 1855 (“In the woods by the Cut, in this soft air, under the pines draped with mist, my voice and whistling are peculiarly distinct and echoed back to me.”) See also February 5, 1852 (“The boughs, feathery boughs, of the white pines, tier above tier, reflect a silvery light against the darkness of the grove, as if both the silvery-lighted and greenish bough and the shadowy intervals of the shade behind belong to one tree.”);  November 11, 1851 (“There is a cold, silvery light on the white pines as I go through J.P. Brown's field near Jenny Dugan's.”)

He has always a charge in his gun ready for their extermination. See June 13, 1853  ("I would rather save one of these hawks than have a hundred hens and chickens. It was worth more to see them soar, especially now that they are so rare in the landscape. It is easy to buy eggs, but not to buy hen-hawks")

Any surpassing work of art is strange and wild as is genius itself. See February 1 6, 1857(“Genius has evanescent boundaries.”); May 11, 1854 (“The true poet will ever live aloof from society, wild to it, as the finest singer is the wood thrush, a forest bird.”)

February 16. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 16

February 15, 1859 <<<<<                                                                          >>>>> February 18, 1859

What we call wildness

is a civilization

other than our own.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The wildness of genius

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-590216

Do not advise a man who follows his own genius.

December 27. 

Talk of fate! How little one can know what is fated to anotherl—what he can do and what he can not do! I doubt whether one can give or receive any very pertinent advice. In all important crises one can only consult his genius. Though he were the most shiftless land craziest of mortals, if he still recognizes that he has any genius to consult, none may presume to go between him and her. They, methinks, are poor stuff and creatures of a miserable fate who can be advised and persuaded in very important steps. Show me a man who consults his genius, and you have shown me a man who cannot be advised. You may know what a thing costs or is worth to you; you can never know what it costs or is worth to me. All the community may scream because one man is born who will not do as it does, who will not conform because conformity to him is death, — he is so constituted. They know nothing about his case; they are fools when they presume to advise him. The man of genius knows what he is aiming at; nobody else knows. And he alone knows when something comes between him and his object. In the course of generations, however, men will excuse you for not doing as they do, if you will bring enough to pass in your own way.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 27, 1858

The man of genius

knows what he is aiming at -- 

nobody else knows.

December 27, 1858

See June 23, 1851 ("My genius makes distinctions which my understanding cannot, and which my senses do not report.”); August 3, 1852 ("By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe, I am fitted to hear, my being moves in a sphere of melody, my fancy and imagination are excited to an inconceivable degree. "); May 31, 1853 ("The boundaries of the actual are no more fixed and rigid than the elasticity of our imaginations."); February 16, 1857 ("Genius has evanescent boundaries.")

The humblest fungus betrays a life akin to my own

October 10. 

October 10, 2018

Sunday. P. M. ——-To Annursnack. 

November has already come to the river with the fall of the black willow and the button-bush, and the fall and blackening of the pontederia. The leaves of the two former are the greater part fallen, letting in the autumn light to the water, and the ducks have less shelter and concealment. 

As I go along the Groton road, I see afar, in the middle of E. Wood’s field, what looks like a stone jug or post, but my glass reveals it a woodchuck, a great, plump gray fellow, and when I am nearly half a mile off, I can still see him nibbling the grass there, and from time to time, when he hears, perchance, a wagon on the road, sitting erect and looking warily around for approaching foes. I am glad to see the woodchuck so fat in the orchard. It proves that is the same nature that was of yore. 

The autumnal brightness of the foliage generally is less, or faded, since the fading of the maples and hickories, which began about the 5th. Oak leaves generally (perhaps except scarlet?) begin to wither soon after they begin to turn, and large trees (except the scarlet) do not generally attain to brilliancy.[?] 

Apparently Fringilla pusilla yet.

The Salix humilis leaves are falling fast in Wood Turtle Path (A. Hosmer’s), a dry Wood-path, looking curled and slaty-colored about the half-bare stems.

Thus each humble shrub is contributing its mite to the fertility of the globe. 

I find the under sides of the election-cake fungi there covered with pink-colored fleas, apparently poduras, skipping about when it is turned up to the light. 

The simplest and most lumpish fungus has a peculiar interest to us, compared with a mere mass of earth, because it is so obviously organic and related to ourselves, however mute. It is the expression of an idea; growth according to a law; matter not dormant, not raw, but inspired, appropriated by spirit. If I take up a handful of earth, however separately interesting the particles may be, their relation to one another appears to be that of mere juxtaposition generally. I might have thrown them together thus. But the humblest fungus betrays a life akin to my own. It is a successful poem in its kind. There is suggested something superior to any particle of matter, in the idea or mind which uses and arranges the particles. 

Genius is inspired by its own works; it is hermaphroditic. 

I find the fringed gentian abundantly open at 3 and at 4 P. M., — in fact, it must be all the afternoon, — open to catch the cool October sun and air in its low position. Such a dark blue! surpassing that of the male bluebird’s back, who must be encouraged by its presence. [Inclosing it in a mass of the sphagnum near or in which it often grows, I carry it home, and it opens for several days in succession.]

The indigo-weed, now partly turned black and broken off, blows about the pastures like the fiyaway grass.

I find some of those little rooty tubers (?), now woody, in the turtle field of A. Hosmer’s by Eddy Bridge.

Pulling up some Diplopappus linariifolius, now done, I find many bright-purple shoots, a half to three quarters of an inch long, freshly put forth underground and ready to turn upward and form new plants in the spring.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 10, 1858

November has already come to the river with the fall of the black willow and the button-bush. See note to  October 8, 1858 ("The button-bushes and black willows are rapidly losing leaves, and the shore begins to look Novemberish.")

The simplest and most lumpish fungus . . .betrays a life akin to my own. It is a successful poem in its kind. See  February 19, 1854 ("The mind of the universe rather, which we share, has been intended upon each particular object. . .kindred mind with mine that admires and approves decided it so.") See also August 7, 1853 ("The past has been a remarkably wet week, and now the earth is strewn with fungi."); October 22, 1851 ("The rain and dampness have given birth to a new crop of mushrooms.")

Such a dark blue! surpassing that of the male bluebird’s back, who must be encouraged by its presence. See October 19, 1852 ("It is too remarkable a flower not to be sought out and admired each year, however rare. It is one of the errands of the walker, as well as of the bees, for it yields him a more celestial nectar still. It is a very singular and agreeable surprise to come upon this conspicuous and handsome and withal blue flower at this season, when flowers have passed out of our minds and memories")

Thus each humble shrub is contributing its mite to the fertility of the globe. See September 12, 1858 ("Thus gradually and successively each plant lends its richest color to the general effect, and in the fittest place, and passes away. "); October 14, 1860 (" Consider how many leaves there are to fall each year and how much they must add to the soil. We have had a remarkably fertile year."); October 16, 1857 ("How beautifully they die, making cheerfully their annual contribution to the soil! They fall to rise again; as if they knew that it was not one annual deposit alone that made this rich mould in which pine trees grow. They live in the soil whose fertility and bulk they increase, and in the forests that spring from it. "); October 20, 1853 ("Merrily they go scampering over the earth, selecting their graves, whispering all through the woods about it. They that waved so loftily, how contentedly they return to dust again and afford nourishment to new generations of their kind, as well as to flutter on high! So they troop to their graves, light and frisky. They are about to add a leaf's breadth to the depth of the soil. We are all the richer for their decay."); October 29, 1855 ("When the leaves fall, the whole earth is a cemetery pleasant to walk in. I love to wander and muse over them in their graves, returning to dust again. Here are no lying nor vain epitaphs. The scent of their decay is pleasant to me.")

The indigo-weed, now partly turned black and broken off, blows about the pastures like the fiyaway grass. See June 3, 1851 ("I noticed the indigo-weed a week or two ago pushing up like asparagus."); July 10, 1855 ("Indigo out."); July 17, 1852 ("Some fields are covered now with tufts or clumps of indigo- weed, yellow with blossoms, with a few dead leaves turned black here and there."); July 25, 1853 ("Bunches of indigo, still in bloom, more numerously than anywhere that I remember");  August 6, 1858 ("indigo, ' ' 'is still abundantly in bloom. "); August 17, 1851 ("Indigo-weed still in bloom by the dry wood-path-side,");  October 22, 1859 ("In my blustering walk over the Mason and Hunt pastures yesterday, I saw much of the withered indigo-weed which was broken off and blowing about, and the seeds in its numerous black pods rattling like the rattlepod though not nearly so loud"); February 28, 1860 ("As I stood by Eagle Field wall, I heard a fine rattling sound, produced by the wind on some dry weeds at my elbow. It was occasioned by the wind rattling the fine seeds in those pods of the indigo-weed which were still closed, — a distinct rattling din which drew my attention to it, — like a small Indian's calabash. Not a mere rustling of dry weeds, but the shaking of a rattle, or a hundred rattles, beside.")

Pulling up some Diplopappus linariifolius, now done. See August 22, 1859 ("The savory-leaved aster (Diplopappus linariifolius) out; how long?"); September 18, 1856 ("Diplopappus linariifolius in prime.")

The humblest fungus 

a life akin to my own –

poem in its kind. 

https://tinyurl.com/HDT581010

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.")

Genius has evanescent boundaries

February 16. 

8 a.m. — To Lee house site again. 

It was a rough-cast house when I first knew it. The fire still glowing among the bricks in the cellar. Richard Barrett says he remembers the inscription and the date 1650, but not the rest distinctly. I find that this recess was not in the cellar, but on the west side of the parlor, which was on the same level with the upper cellar at the west end of the house. It was on the back side of a cupboard (in that parlor), which was a few inches deep at the bottom and sloped back to a foot perhaps at top, or on the brick jog three inches at bottom and five and a half at top, and had shelves. The sitting-room of late was on the same level, the west side of this chimney. 

The old part of the chimney, judging from the clay and the size of the brick, was seven feet wide east and west and about ten north and south. There was the back side of an old oven visible on the south side (late the front of the house) under the stairs (that had been), which had been filled up with the large bricks in clay. 

The chimney above and behind the oven and this recess had been filled in with great stones, many much bigger than one's head, packed in clay mixed with the coarsest meadow-hay. Sometimes there were masses of pure clay and hay a foot in diameter. There was a very great proportion of the hay, consisting of cut-grass, three-sided carex, ferns, and still stouter woody stems, apparently a piece of corn-husk one inch wide and several long. And impressions in the clay of various plants, — grasses, ferns, etc., — exactly like those in coal in character. These are perhaps the oldest pressed plants in Concord. I have a mass eight or nine inches in diameter which is apparently one third vegetable. About these stones there is generally only the width (four and one quarter inches) of one brick, so that the chimney was a mere shell. 

Though the inscription was in a coarse mortar mixed with straw, the sooty bricks over which it was spread were laid in a better mortar, without straw, and yet the mass of the bricks directly above this recess, in the chimney, were all laid in clay. Perhaps they had used plastering there instead of clay because it was a fireplace. A thin coating of whiter and finer mortar or plastering without straw had been spread over the sloping and rounded chimney above the recess and on each side and below it, and this covered many small bricks mingled with the large ones, and though this looked more modern, the straw-mixed mortar of the inscription overlapped at the top about a foot, proving the coarser mortar the more recent. 

The inscription, then, was made after the chimney was built, when some alteration was made, and a small brick had come to be used. Yet so long ago that straw was mixed with the mortar. 

If that recess was an old fireplace, then, apparently, the first house fronted east, for the oven was on the south side. 

A boy who was at the fire said to me, "This was the chimney in which the cat was burned up; she ran into a stove, and we heard her cries in the midst of the fire." Parker says there was no cat; she was drowned. 

According to Shattuck, Johnson, having the period from 1645 to 1650 in view, says of Concord that it had been more populous. "The number of families at present are about 50. Their buildings are conveniently placed, chiefly in one straite street under a sunny banke in a low level," etc. (History, page 18.) 

According to Shattuck (page 14), Governor Winthrop "selected (judiciously, I think) a lot in Concord [apparently in 1638], which 'he intended to build upon,' near where Captain Humphrey Hunt now lives." 

I was contending some time ago that our meadows must have been wetter once than they now are, else the trees would have got up there more. I see that Shattuck says under 1654 (page 33), "The meadows were some what drier, and ceased to be a subject of frequent complaint." 

According to Wood's "New England's Prospect," the first settlers of Concord for meat bought "venison or rockoons" of the Indians. The latter must have been common then. The wolves robbed them of their swine.

February 16, 2019

A wonderfully warm day (the third one); about 2 p.m., thermometer in shade 58.

I perceive that some, commonly talented, persons are enveloped and confined by a certain crust of manners, which, though it may sometimes be a fair and transparent enamel, yet only repels and saddens the beholder, since by its rigidity it seems to repress all further expansion. They are viewed as at a distance, or like an insect under a tumbler. They have, as it were, prematurely hardened both seed and shell, and this has severely taxed, if not put a period to, the life of the plant. This is to stand upon your dignity. 

Genius has evanescent boundaries, like an altar from which incense rises. 

The former are, after all, but hardened sinners in a mild sense. The pearl is a hardened sinner. Manners get to be human parchment, in which sensible books are often bound and honorable titles engrossed, though they may be very stiff and dry.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 16, 1857

To Lee house site again. See February 15, 1857 ("The Lee house, of which six weeks ago I made an accurate plan, had been completely burned up the evening before,"); February 17, 1857 ("E. Hosmer says that his father said that Dr. Lee told him that he put on the whole upper, i.e. third, story of the Lee house.")

A wonderfully warm day (the third one); about 2 p.m., thermometer in shade 58. See February 16, 1854 ("For the last month the weather has been remarkably changeable; hardly three days together alike."); February 16, 1856 ("It is the warmest day at 12 M. since the 22d of December, when the thermometer stood at 50°. To-day it is at 44. I hear the eaves running before I come out, and our thermometer at 2 P. M. is 38°. The sun is most pleasantly warm on my cheek; the melting snow shines in the ruts."); see also February 14, 1857 ("It is a fine, somewhat springlike day. . .the thermometer in the shade north of house standing 42°."); February 24, 1857 ("[It is already 40°, and by noon is between 50° and 60°.")

.
Genius has evanescent boundaries.  See February 16, 1859 ("Any surpassing work of art is strange and wild to the mass of men, as is genius itself. No hawk that soars and steals our poultry is wilder than genius, and none is more persecuted or above persecution"); See also January 9, 1853.("Perhaps, all that is best in our experience in middle life may be resolved into the memory of our youth ! ...If the genius visits me now I am not quite taken off my feet, but I remember how this experience is like, but less than, that I had long since."); November 6, 1853 (“It is remarkable how little we attend to what is passing before us constantly, unless our genius directs our attention that way.”); August 30, 1856 ("I have always reaped unexpected and incalculable advantages from carrying out at last, however tardily, any little enterprise which my genius suggested to me long ago as a thing to be done, — some step to be taken, however slight, out of the usual course. . . . Many of our days should be spent, not in vain expectations and lying on our oars, but in carrying out deliberately and faithfully the hundred little purposes which every man's genius must have suggested to him."). Also May 31, 1853 ("The boundaries of the actual are no more fixed and rigid than the elasticity of our imaginations."); February 9, 1852; ("The novelty is in us, and it is also in nature. The mirage is constant . . . a constantly varying mirage, answering to the condition of our perceptive faculties and our fluctuating imaginations.")

February 15, 1857 <<<<<                                                                         >>>>> February 17, 1857

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,   Genius has evanescent boundaries

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

Though fitted to drain Amazons, we ordinarily live with dry channels.

April 19.

Was awakened in the night to a strain of music dying away, — passing travellers singing. 

My being was so expanded and infinitely and divinely related for a brief season that I saw how unexhausted, how almost wholly unimproved, was man’s capacity for a divine life. When I remembered what a narrow and finite life I should anon awake to! Though, with respect to our channels, our valleys, and the country we are fitted to drain, we are Amazons, we ordinarily live with dry channels. 

The arbor-vita: by riverside behind Monroe’s appears to be just now fairly in blossom. 

I notice acorns sprouted. 

My birch wine now, after a week or more, has become pretty clear and colorless again, the brown part having settled and now coating the glass. 

Helped Mr. Emerson set out in Sleepy Hollow two over-cup oaks, one beech, and two arbor-vitaes. 

As dryness will open the pitch pine cone, so moisture closes it up again. I put one which had been open all winter into water, and in an hour or two it shut up nearly as tight as at first.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 19, 1856

I saw how unexhausted, how almost wholly unimproved, was man’s capacity for a divine life. . . . See March 17, 1852  ("I am conscious of having, in my sleep, transcended the limits of the individual"); July 16, 1851(" I am astonished. I am daily intoxicated. There comes to me such an indescribable, infinite, all-absorbing, divine, heavenly pleasure, a sense of elevation and expansion -- . . . I am dealt with by superior powers"); May 24, 1851 ("My most sacred and memorable life is commonly on awaking in the morning. I frequently awake with an atmosphere about me as if my unremembered dreams had been divine, as if my spirit had journeyed to its native place”).

A pitch pine cone which had been open all winter shut up. Compare January 25, 1856 ("A closed pitch pine cone gathered January 22d opened last night in my chamber. ") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Pitch Pine

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-540904

In the morning sun

April 27

April 27, 2024,  7:28AM

7 A. M. – To Cliffs. 

Equisetum arvense on the railroad; and may have been two or three days did not look. 

I am at length convinced of the increased freshness (green or yellow) of the willow bark in the spring. Some a clear yellow, others a delightful liquid green. The bark peels well now; how long? 

The rain of last night is helping to bring down the oak leaves. 

The [] thrush afar, so superior a strain to that of other birds. I was doubting if it would affect me as of yore, but it did measurably. I did not believe there could be such differences. This is the gospel according to the [] thrush. He makes a sabbath out of a week-day. I could go to hear him, could buy a pew in his church. Did he ever practice pulpit eloquence? He is right on the slavery question. 

The brown thrasher, too, is along. 

I find a thread like stamen now between the nutlets of the callitriche- probably three or four days. Some creature appears to have eaten this plant. 

The yellow redpolls still numerous; sing chill lill lill lill lill lill.

The meadow-sweet and sweet-fern are beginning to leaf, and the currant in garden.

Stand on Cliffs about 7 a.m. Through a warm mistiness I see the waters with their reflections in the morning sun, while the wood thrush and huckleberry-bird, etc., are heard, — an unprofaned hour. 

I hear the black and white creeper's note, — seeser seeser seeser se. 

What a shy fellow my hermit thrush! 

I hear the beat of a partridge and the spring hoot of an owl, now at 7 a.m. 

Hear a faint sort of oven-bird's (?) note. 

. . .

Misfortunes occur only when a man is false to his Genius. You cannot hear music and noise at the same time.

. . .

It is remarkable that the rise and fall of Walden, though unsteady, and whether periodical or merely occasional, are not completed but after many years. I have observed one rise and part of two falls. It attains its maximum slowly and surely, though un-steadily. It is remarkable that this fluctuation, whether periodical or not, requires many years for its accomplishment, and I expect that a dozen or fifteen years hence it will again be as low as I have ever known. 

The Salix alba begins to leaf, and the catkins are three quarters of an inch long. 

The balm-of-Gilead is in bloom, about one and a half or two inches long, and some hang down straight. 

Quite warm to-day. In the afternoon the wind changed to east, and apparently the cool air from the sea condensed the vapor in our atmosphere, making us think it would rain every moment; but it did not till midnight.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 27, 1854

I am at length convinced of the increased freshness (green or yellow) of the willow bark in the spring. See March 25, 1854 ("Willow osiers near Mill Brook mouth I am almost certain have acquired a fresher color; at least they surprise me at a distance by their green passing through yellowish to red at top."); . February 24, 1855 ("You will often fancy that they look brighter before the spring has come, and when there has been no change in them"); March 2, 1860 ("This phenomenon, whether referable to a change in the condition of the twig or to the spring air and light, or even to our imaginations, is not the less a real phenomenon, affecting us annually at this season. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Osier in Winter and early Spring

In the morning sun. See September 13, 1851("The morning is not pensive like the evening, but joyous and youthful,"); July 18, 1851 ("It is a test question affecting the youth of a person , — Have you knowledge of the morning? Do you sympathize with that season of nature? Are you abroad early, brushing the dews aside ? "); June 13, 1852 ("All things in this world must be seen with the morning dew on them, must be seen with youthful, early-opened, hopeful eyes"); August 31, 1852 ("Morning is full of promise and vigor. Evening is pensive."); 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."); February 25, 1859 ("Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature, — if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you,— know that the morning and spring of your life are past.")

Black and white creeper's note. , , ,.Hear a faint sort of oven-bird's  note.   See April 27, 1855 ("The black and white creepers running over the trunks or main limbs of red maples and uttering their fainter oven-bird—like notes."); May 3, 1852. ("That oven-birdish note which I heard here on May 1st I now find to have been uttered by the black and white warbler or creeper. He has a habit of looking under the branches.")   See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Black and White Creeper

The yellow redpolls still numerous; sing chill lill lill lill lill lill. See  April 9, 1854 ("Saw several more redpolls with their rich, glowing yellow breasts by the causeway sides."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Yellow Redpoll ( Palm) Warbler

The meadow-sweet and sweet-fern are beginning to leaf, and the currant in garden. See  April 24, 1860 (The meadow-sweet and hardhack have begun to leaf);  April 26, 1860 ("Sweet-fern (that does not flower) leafing"); April 22, 1855 ("The black currant is just begun to expand leaf — probably yesterday elsewhere -a little earlier than the red.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Leaf-Out

The Salix alba begins to leaf. See April 24, 1855 ("The Salix alba begins to leaf."); April 29, 1855 ("For two or three days the Salix alba, with its catkins (not yet open) and its young leaves, or bracts (?), has made quite a show, before any other tree, —a pyramid of tender yellowish green in the russet landscape.")

I was doubting if it would affect me as of yore, but it did measurably. . .What a shy fellow my hermit thrush! See  April 18, 1854. ("Was surprised to see a wagtail thrush."); April 21, 1855 (" It affects us as a part of our unfallen selves.”) and  note to April 24, 1856 ("Behold my hermit thrush, with one companion, flitting silently through the birches.") See also   A Book of the Seasons , by Henry Thoreau, Early Spring: The Arrival of the Hermit Thrush


You cannot hear music and noise at the same time. Compare November 20, 1851 ("It is often said that melody can be heard farther than noise, and the finest melody farther than the coarsest. I think there is truth in this, and that accordingly those strains of the piano which reach me here in my attic stir me so much more.")

Rise and fall of Walden. See December 5, 1852 ("This great rise of [Walden] pond after an interval of many years, and the water standing at this great height for a year or more, kills the shrubs and trees about its edge, — pitch pines, birches, alders, aspens, etc., — and, falling again, leaves an unobstructed shore"); November 26, 1858 (“Walden is very low, compared with itself for some years. . . ., and what is remarkable, I find that not only Goose Pond also has fallen correspondingly within a month, but even the smaller pond-holes only four or five rods over, such as Little Goose Pond, shallow as they are. I begin to suspect, therefore, that this rise and fall extending through a long series of years is not peculiar to the Walden system of ponds, but is true of ponds generally, and perhaps of rivers”) See also Walden ("The pond rises and falls, but whether regularly or not, and within what period, nobody knows, though, as usual, many pretend to know. It is commonly higher in the winter and lower in the summer, though not corresponding to the general wet and dryness. I can remember when it was a foot or two lower, and also when it was at least five feet higher, than when I lived by it. . . . This makes a difference of level, at the outside, of six or seven feet.") And see R. Primack, Tracing Water Levels at Walden Pond. (2016); Walden Pond - Water Level Changes (2018)

In the afternoon the wind changed to east. . . making us think it would rain every moment; but it did not till midnight. See April 27, 1857 ("It is a true April morning with east wind, the sky overcast with wet-looking clouds, and already some drops have fallen. It will surely rain to-day, but when it will begin in earnest and how long it will last, none can tell."); See also April 22, 1856 ("It has rained two days and nights, and now the sun breaks out, but the wind is still easterly, and the storm probably is not over . . . These rain-storms -- this is the third day of one -- characterize 'the season, and belong rather to winter than to summer."); April 26, 1859 ("This is the last of the rains (spring rains !) which invariably followed an east wind."); April 28, 1856(" On our return the wind changed to easterly, and I felt the cool, fresh sea-breeze.");   April 29, 1856 ("It was quite warm when I first came out, but about 3 P. M. I felt a fresh easterly wind, and saw quite a mist in the distance produced by it, a sea-turn . . .  Your first warning of it may be the seeing a thick mist on all the hills and in the horizon."); April 30, 1856 ("at one o’clock there was the usual fresh easterly wind and sea-turn . . .and a fresh cool wind from the sea produces a mist in the air.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Sea-turn

April 27.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, April 27

An unprofaned hour –

waters with their reflections

in the morning sun.

The beat of a partridge

and spring hoot of an owl now

at 7 a.m.

April 27, 2014

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, in the morning sun.

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-540427