Day would not dawn if it were not for the inward Morning.

As we sat on the bank eating our supper, 

the clear light of the western sky fell on the eastern trees, 

and was reflected in the water, 

and we enjoyed so serene an evening as left nothing to describe . . .

It is when we do not have to believe, 

but come into actual contact with Truth, 

and are related to her 

in the most direct and intimate way.

Waves of serener life pass over us from time to time, 

like flakes of sunlight over the fields in cloudy weather. . .

This world is but canvas to our imaginations . . .
“Imagination is the air of mind,” in which it lives and breathes.

All things are as I am . . . 

I am astonished at the singular pertinacity 

and endurance of our lives. 

The miracle is, that what is is,

when it is so difficult, if not impossible, for anything else to be;

•  that we walk on in our particular paths so far, before we fall on death and fate, merely because we must walk in some path; 
• that every man can get a living, and so few can do anything more. 
• So much only can I accomplish ere health and strength are gone,

 and yet this suffices . . .

When every other path would fail, 

with singular and unerring confidence 

we advance on our particular course. 

What risks we run! . . .

yet every man lives till he—dies. 

How did he manage that?

. . . 

I have found all things thus far, persons and inanimate matter, elements and seasons, strangely adapted to my resources . . .

Day would not dawn if it were not for the inward morning.

THE INWARD MORNING

Packed in my mind lie all the clothes
    Which outward nature wears,
And in its fashion’s hourly change
    It all things else repairs.

In vain I look for change abroad,
    And can no difference find,
Till some new ray of peace uncalled
    Illumes my inmost mind.

What is it gilds the trees and clouds,
    And paints the heavens so gay,
But yonder fast-abiding light
    With its unchanging ray?

Lo, when the sun streams through the wood,
    Upon a winter’s morn,
Where’er his silent beams intrude,
    The murky night is gone.

How could the patient pine have known
    The morning breeze would come,
Or humble flowers anticipate
    The insect’s noonday hum,—

Till the new light with morning cheer
    From far streamed through the aisles,
And nimbly told the forest trees
    For many stretching miles?

I’ve heard within my inmost soul
    Such cheerful morning news,
In the horizon of my mind
    Have seen such orient hues,

As in the twilight of the dawn,
    When the first birds awake,
Are heard within some silent wood,
    Where they the small twigs break,

Or in the eastern skies are seen,
    Before the sun appears,
The harbingers of summer heats
    Which from afar he bears.

Whole weeks and months of my summer life slide away in thin volumes like mist and smoke, till at length, some warm morning, perchance, I see a sheet of mist blown down the brook to the swamp, and I float as high above the fields with it. 

H. D. Thoreau, A Week, Wednesday

Waves of serener life pass over us from time to time, like flakes of sunlight over the fields in cloudy weather. See June 22, 1851 ("I awake . . .with the calmness of a lake when there is not a breath of wind.")

I have found all things thus far, persons and inanimate matter, elements and seasons, strangely adapted to my resources. See Walden ("Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Nature is genial to man (the anthropic principle)

Such cheerful morning news / in the horizon of my mind. See Walden (“Only that day dawns to which we are awake.”); Walden ("We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, by an infinite expectation of the dawn.”);  Walden (“Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.”); March 17, 1852 ("There is a moment in the dawn, when the darkness of the night is dissipated and before the exhalations of the day commence to rise, when we see things more truly than at any other time")

and I float as high above the fields See Walden ("By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences; and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent . . . I may be either the driftwood in the stream, or Indra in the sky looking down on it")

AND SEE.

"There is no Road":


Traveler, your footprints 

are the only road, nothing else.
Traveler, there is no road;
you make your own path as you walk.
As you walk, you make your own road,
and when you look back
you see the path 

you will never travel again.
Traveler, there is no road;
only a ship's wake on the sea.

-Antonio Machado

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  the Inward Morning.

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

These are true mornings of creation, original and poetic days, not mere repetitions of the past.

January 7

January 7, 2019

The storm is over, and it is one of those beautiful winter mornings when a vapor is seen hanging in the air between the village and the woods. Though the snow is only some six inches deep, the yards appear full of those beautiful crystals (star or wheel shaped flakes), lying light, as a measure is full of grain. 

9 A. M. — To Hill. 

It snowed so late last night, and so much has fallen from the trees, that I notice only one squirrel, and a fox, and perhaps partridge track, into which the snow has blown. The fox has been beating the bush along walls and fences. The surface of the snow in the woods is thickly marked by the snow which has fallen from the trees on to it. The mice have not been forth since the snow, or perhaps in some places where they have, their tracks are obliterated. 

By 10.30 A.M. it begins to blow hard, the snow comes down from the trees in fine showers, finer far than ever falls direct from the sky, completely obscuring the view through the aisles of the wood, and in open fields it is rapidly drifting. It is too light to make good sleighing. 

By 10 o'clock I notice a very long level stratum of cloud not very high in the southeastern sky, — all the rest being clear, — which I suspect to be the vapor from the sea. This lasts for several hours. 

These are true mornings of creation, original and poetic days, not mere repetitions of the past. There is no lingering of yesterday's fogs, only such a mist as might have adorned the first morning. 

P. M. – I see some tree sparrows feeding on the fine grass seed above the snow, near the road on the hillside below the Dutch house. They are flitting along one at a time, their feet commonly sunk in the snow, uttering occasionally a low sweet warble and seemingly as happy there, and with this wintry prospect before them for the night and several months to come, as any man by his fireside. One occasionally hops or flies toward another, and the latter suddenly jerks away from him. They are reaching or hopping up to the fine grass, or oftener picking the seeds from the snow. At length the whole ten have collected within a space a dozen feet square, but soon after, being alarmed, they utter a different and less musical chirp and flit away into an apple tree.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 7, 1858

The storm is over and it is one of those beautiful winter mornings.

I feel spirits rise.

The life, the joy that is in

blue sky after storm!

January 7, 1851

See January 7, 1853 ("This is one of those pleasant winter mornings when you find the . . . air is serene and the sun feels gratefully warm an hour after sunrise.") 

These are true mornings of creation, original and poetic days. See December 31, 1855 (“It is one of the mornings of creation.”); January 20, 1855 (“The world is not only new to the eye, but is still as at creation.”); January 23, 1860 ("Walking on the ice by the side of the river this very pleasant morning, I recommence life.”); January 26, 1853 (“There are from time to time mornings, both in summer and winter, when especially the world seems to begin anew,”);  and A Week, Wednesday ("Day would not dawn if it were not for the inward morning.")

The fox has been beating the bush along walls and fences.  See January 7, 1857 ("Going down path to the spring, I see where some fox (apparently) has passed down it.”); January 7, 1860 (“I saw yesterday the track of a fox, and in the course of it a place where he had apparently pawed to the ground, eight or ten inches, and on the just visible ground lay frozen a stale-looking mouse, probably rejected by him.”) See also January 21, 1857 (“It is remarkable how many tracks of foxes you will see quite near the village, where they have been in the night, and yet a regular walker will not glimpse one oftener than once in eight or ten years. ”); February 2, 1860 (“And as we were kindling a fire on the pond by the side of the island , we saw the fox himself at the inlet of the river . He was busily examining along the sides of the pond by the button - bushes and willows , smelling in the snow . Not appearing to regard us much , he slowly explored along the shore of the pond thus , half - way round it ; at Pleasant Meadow , evidently looking for mice ( or moles ? ) in the grass of the bank , smelling in the shallow snow there amid the stubble , often retracing his steps and pausing at particular spots”) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Fox

January 7. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 7

 These poetic days

 true mornings of creation

 not repetitions.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  These are true mornings of creation

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-580107

I feel my Maker blessing me.

June 22 

The world is a musical instrument. The very touch affords an exquisite pleasure. I awake to its music with the calmness of a lake when there is not a breath of wind. Whom shall I thank for it? 

To be calm, to be serene! 

Are our serene moments mere foretastes of heaven,  – or a transient realization of what might be the whole tenor of our lives? 

June 22, 2016

Sometimes we are clarified and calmed healthily, as never before in our lives. We become like a still lake of purest crystal. All the world goes by us and is reflected in our deeps. 

And without effort our depths are revealed to ourselves. Such clarity obtained by such pure means! -- by simple living, by honesty of purpose.

So is it with us.

We live and rejoice.

I feel my Maker blessing me. 

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, June 22, 1851

All the world goes by us and is reflected in our deeps. See Walden ("A lake . . . is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.")

There is the calmness of the lake when there is not a breath of wind; See Day would not dawn if it were not for the inward Morning.("Waves of serener life pass over us from time to time, like flakes of sunlight over the fields in cloudy weather"); August 31, 1852 ("The wind is gone down; the water is smooth; a serene evening is approaching; the clouds are dispersing. . . .The reflections are the more perfect for the blackness of the water. This is the most glorious part of this day, the serenest, warmest, brightest part, and the most suggestive."); July 21, 1853 ("He who passes over a lake at noon, when the waves run, little imagines its serene and placid beauty at evening, as little as he anticipates his own serenity."). June 16, 1854 ("We walk to lakes to see our serenity reflected in them. When we are not serene, we go not to them."); Walden ("By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences; and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent . . . I may be either the driftwood in the stream, or Indra in the sky looking down on it")

The unclouded mind,

serene, pure, ineffable

like the western sky.

January 17, 1852

Serene as the sky,

emulating nature with

calm and peaceful lives.

October 3, 1859

So perfectly calm,

yet no man but myself sees

the Pond this morning.

April 14, 1852

See  also  Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Serene as the Sky and  Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A body awake in the world.

Sometimes we are calmed

like a still lake when there is

not a breath of wind.

All the world goes by

 and without effort our depths 

revealed to ourselves.

We touch the world and

feel our Maker blessing us.

June 22, 1851

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, I feel my Maker blessing me.

 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

My pulse must beat with Nature. After a hard day's work without a thought, turning my very brain into a mere tool, only in the quiet of evening do I so far recover my senses as to hear the cricket, which in fact has been chirping all day.

In my better hours I am conscious of the influx of a serene and unquestionable wisdom ... What is that other kind of life to which I am thus continually allured ? which alone I love ? Is it a life for this world? ... Are our serene moments mere foretastes of heaven, — joys gratuitously vouchsafed to us as a consolation, — or simply a transient realization of what might be the whole tenor of our lives? 

To be calm, to be serene! There is the calmness of the lake when there is not a breath of wind; there is the calmness of a stagnant ditch. So is it with us. 

Sometimes we are clarified and calmed healthily, as we never were before in our lives, not by an opiate, but by some unconscious obedience to the all-just laws, so that we become like a still lake of purest crystal and without an effort our depths are revealed to our selves. All the world goes by us and is reflected in our deeps. 

Such clarity! obtained by such pure means! by simple living, by honesty of purpose. We live and rejoice. I awoke into a music which no one about me heard. Whom shall I thank for it ? 

The luxury of wisdom! the luxury of virtue! Are there any intemperate in these things ? I feel my Maker blessing me. To the sane man the world is a musical instrument. The very touch affords an exquisite pleasure.

And I hear around me, but never in sight, the many wood thrushes whetting their steel-like notes. Such keen singers ! It takes a fiery heat, many dry pine leaves added to the furnace of the sun, to temper their strains! Always they are either rising or falling to a new strain. After what a moderate pause they deliver themselves again ! saying ever a new thing, avoiding repetition, methinks answering one another. While most other birds take their siesta, the wood thrush discharges his song. It is delivered like a bolas, or a piece of jingling steel.

A meteorological journal of the mind.

 

The poet must be

continually watching

the moods of his mind.

Henry Thoreau, August 19, 1851

Such cheerful morning news,

In the horizon of my mind

A Week, ("The Inward Morning")

July 23, 1851.  The mind is subject to moods, as the shadows of clouds pass over the earth.   

August 17, 1851 I feel as if this coolness would do me good. If it only makes my life more pensive! Why should pensiveness be akin to sadness? There is a certain fertile sadness which I would not avoid, but rather earnestly seek. It is positively joyful to me. 

August 17, 1851   Ah ! if I could so live that . . . when small fruits are ripe, my fruits might be ripe also!  that I could match nature always with my moods!  that in each season when some part of nature especially flourishes, then a corresponding part of me may not fail to flourish!

 August 18, 1851 It plainly makes men sad to think. Hence pensiveness is akin to sadness. 

August 19, 1851. The poet must be continually watching the moods of his mind . . . What might we not expect from a long life faithfully spent in this wise? . . . A faithful description . . . of the thoughts which visited a certain mind in threescore years and ten . . . A meteorological journal of the mind.

August 28, 1851 The poet is a man who lives at last by watching his moods.  An old poet comes at last to watch his moods as narrowly as a cat does a mouse.

August 30, 1851  I can be said to note the flower's fall only when I see in it the symbol of my own change. When I experience this, then the flower appears to me.

A cold afternoon

windy with some snow not yet

melted on the ground.

My eye wanders as

I sit on an oak stump by

an old cellar-hole.

Methinks that in my 

mood I am asking Nature 

to give me a sign.

Transient gladness.

I do not know what it is –

something that I see.

This recognition

from white pines now reflecting

a silvery light.

Where is my home? 

It is as indistinct as 

an old cellar-hole. 

And  by the old site

I sit on the stump of an

oak which once grew here.

November 30, 1851

December 27, 1851  The man is blessed who every day is permitted to behold anything so pure and serene as the western sky at sunset . . . The sky is always ready to answer to our moods.

January 17, 1852.  As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind. Some see only clouds there; some behold there serenity, purity, beauty ineffable. 

January 26, 1852.  Would you see your mind, look at the sky. Would you know your own moods, be weather-wise.

February 3, 1852 .  The sky must have a few clouds, as the mind a few moods; nor is the evening the less serene for them.

March 5, 1852.  Such is the mood of my mind, and I call it studying lichens.  . . . The habit of looking at things microscopically, as the lichens on the trees and rocks, really prevents my seeing aught else in a walk. 

May 9, 1852. Our moods vary from week to week, with the winds and the temperature and the revolution of the seasons.  It is impossible to remember a week ago. A river of Lethe flows with many windings the year through, separating one season from another.

June 25, 1852.  There is a flower for every mood of the mind.

August 25. 1852. At length, before sundown, it begins to rain . . . and now, after dark, the sound of it dripping and pattering without is quite cheering. It is long since I heard it . . . something regular, a fall rain, coincident with a different mood or season of the mind.

March 22, 1853  I am waked by my genius, surprised to find myself expecting the dawn in so serene and joyful and expectant a mood.

March 31, 1853    It is affecting to see a distant mountain-top, like the summits of Uncanoonuc, well seen from this hill, whereon you camped for a night in your youth, which you have never revisited, still as blue and ethereal to your eyes as is your memory of it.  

Distant mountain top

as blue to the memory

as now to the eyes.

March 31, 1853

May 17, 1853 I was surprised, on turning round, to behold the serene and everlasting beauty of the world, it was so soothing . . . It was so much fairer, serener, more beautiful, than my mood had been.

May 23, 1853   Every new flower that opens, no doubt, expresses a new mood of the human mind. 

June 14, 1853  This seems the true hour to be abroad sauntering far from home . . . you are in that favorable frame of mind . . . open to great impressions, and you see those rare sights with the unconscious side of the eye, which you could not see by a direct gaze before. Then the dews begin to descend in your mind, and its atmosphere is strained of all impurities; and home is farther away than ever. Here is home; the beauty of the world impresses you. There is a coolness in your mind as in a well. 

August 7, 1853.  [The poet] sees a flower or other object, and it is beautiful or affecting to him because it is a symbol of his thought . . . The objects I behold correspond to my mood.

July 31, 1856.  I hear the distant sound of a flail, and thoughts of autumn occupy my mind, and the memory of past years.

Thoughts of autumn and

the memory of past years

occupy my mind.

July 31, 1856

 August 18, 1856 I hear the steady shrilling of . . . the alder cricket, clear, loud, and autumnal, a season sound . . . It reminds me of past autumns and the lapse of time, suggests a pleasing, thoughtful melancholy.

September 2, 1856 It commonly chances that I make my most interesting botanical discoveries when I am in a thrilled and expectant mood.

June 6, 1857. A year is made up of a certain series and number of sensations and thoughts which have their language in nature. Now I am ice, now I am sorrel. Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind.

October 26, 1857. The seasons and all their changes are in me  . . .  After a while I learn what my moods and seasons are . . . My moods are thus periodical, not two days in my year alike. 

November 2, 1857.  It is only a reflecting mind that sees reflections. I am aware often that I have been occupied with shallow and commonplace thoughts, looking for something superficial, when I did not see the most glorious reflections, though exactly in the line of my vision. 

November 18, 1857.  You cannot perceive beauty but with a serene mind.

January 23, 1858.  It is in vain to write on the seasons unless you have the seasons in you.

August 26, 1858 Each humblest plant, or weed, as we call it, stands there to express some thought or mood of ours.

November 17, 1858.  Not only different objects are presented to our attention at different seasons of the year, but we are in a frame of body and of mind to appreciate different objects at different seasons.

August 20, 1858 The grass and foliage and landscape generally are of a more thought-inspiring color suggest what some perchance would call a pleasing melancholy. 

December 25, 1858.  How full of soft, pure light the western sky now, after sunset! . . . In a pensive mood I enjoy the complexion of the winter sky at this hour.

 April 24, 1859.  The moods and thoughts of man are revolving just as steadily and incessantly as nature’s.

 September 24, 1859.  I would know when in the year to expect certain thoughts and moods, as the sportsman knows when to look for plover.

January 18, 1860,   They are very different seasons in the winter when the ice of the river and meadows and ponds is bare, — blue or green, a vast glittering crystal, — and when it is all covered with snow or slosh; and our moods correspond.

February 18, 1860  Sometimes, when I go forth at 2 P. M., there is scarcely a cloud in the sky, but soon one will appear in the west and steadily advance and expand itself, and so change the whole character of the afternoon and of my thoughts.

 September 18, 1860  If you are not happy to-day you will hardly be so to-morrow.

Western sunset sky

serene, pure, ineffable

– the unclouded mind.

January 17, 1852

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Moods and Seasons of the Mind.

 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

Each experience

reduces itself to a mood

of the mind. 

June 6, 1857  

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-mind

;

 

Overflow and significance

May 10

All at once a strain that sounds like old times and recalls a hundred associations. Not at once do I remember that a year has elapsed since I heard it, and then the idea of the bobolink is formed in my mind.  

See a kingbird, looking like a large phoebe, on a willow by the river, and hear higher the clear whistle of the oriole. 

New days, then, have come, ushered in by the warbling vireo, yellowbird, Maryland yellow-throat, and small pewee, and now made perfect by the twittering of the kingbird and the whistle of the oriole amid the elms, which are but just beginning to leaf out, thinking of his nest there, - if not already the bobolink. 

The warbling vireo promised warmer days, but the oriole ushers in summer heats.

P. M. - To Saw Mill Brook and Smith's Hill. It is remarkable that I saw this morning for the first time the bobolink, gold robin, and kingbird, - and have since heard the first two in various parts of the town and am satisfied that they have just come, - and, in the woods, the veery note. I hear the ringing sound of the toads borne on the rippling wind as I keep down the causeway. 


The three colored violet, as I observe them this afternoon, are thus distinguished the ovata, a dark lilac, especially in sun; the cucullata, oftenest slaty blue, sometimes lilac , deeper within, more or less pale and striped; the pedata, large, exposed, clear pale-blue with a white spot. None like the sky, but pedata most like it; lilac ovata least like it. Yet the last is the richest-colored. The pedata often pale to whiteness. It begins now to be quite obvious along the side of warm and sandy woodland paths . May 10, 1853

He is the richest who has most use for nature as raw material of tropes and symbols with which to describe his life. If I am overflowing with life, am rich in experience for which I lack expression, then nature will be my language full of poetry,- all nature will fable, and every natural phenomenon be a myth. The man of science, who is not seeking for expression but for a fact to be expressed merely, studies nature as a dead language. I pray for such inward experience as will make nature significant.

The hornbeam (Carpinus) is just ready to bloom its hop-like catkins shorter than those of the Ostrya do not shed pollen just yet. I was in search of this  and not observing it at first and having forgotten it I sat down on a rock with the thought that if I sat there quietly a little while I might see some flower or other object about me; unexpectedly, as I cast my eyes upward' over my head stretched a spreading branch of the carpinus full of small catkins with anthers now reddish' spread like a canopy just over my head. As it is best to sit in a grove and let the birds come to you, so, as it were, even the flowers will come to you. 

*** 

From the hill I look westward over the landscape. The deciduous woods are in their hoary youth every expanding bud swaddled with downy webs. From this more eastern hill with the whole breadth of the river valley on the west the mountains appear higher still the width of the blue border is greater not mere peaks or a short and shallow sierra but a high blue table land with broad foundations a deep and solid base or tablet in proportion to the peaks that rest on it. As you ascend the near and low hills sink and flatten into the earth no sky is seen behind them the distant mountains rise .The truly great are distinguished Vergers crests of the waves of earth which in the highest break at the summit into granitic rocks over which the air beats . A part of their hitherto concealed base is seen blue. You see not the domes only but the body the façade of these terrene temples. You see that the foundation answers to the superstructure .Moral structures. The sweet fern leaves among odors now .The successive lines of haze which divide the western landscape deeper and more misty over each intervening valley are not yet very dense yet there is a light atmospheric line along the base of the mountains for their whole length formed by this denser and grosser atmosphere through which we look next the earth which almost melts them into the atmosphere like the contact of molten metal with that which is unfused but their pure sublimed tops and main body rise palpable skyland above it like the waving signal of the departing who have already left these shores .

It will be worth the while to observe carefully the direction and altitude of the mountains from the Cliffs. The value of the mountains in the horizon would not that be a good theme for a lecture. The text for a discourse on real values and permanent a sermon on the mount. They are stepping stones to heaven as the rider has a horse block at his gate by which to mount when we would commence our pilgrimage to heaven by which we gradually take our departure from earth from the time when our youthful eyes first rested on them from this bare actual earth which has so little of the hue of heaven. They make it easier to die and easier to live. They let us off. . . .  

Whether any picture by a human master hung on our western wall could supply their place. Whether to shovel them away and level them would really smooth the way to the true west Whether the skies would not weep over their scars/ 

They are valuable to mankind as is the iris of the eye to a man. They are the path of the translated. The undisputed territory between earth and heaven. In our travels rising higher and higher we at length got to where the earth was blue.Suggesting that this earth unless our conduct curse it is as celestial as that sky. They are the pastures to which we drive our thoughts on these 20ths of May. 

George Baker told me the other day that he had driven cows to Winchendon forty miles in one day. Men often spend a great deal on a border to their papered walls of the costliest figure and colors ultramarine or what other. This color bears a price like precious stones. We may measure our wealth then by the number of square rods of superficial blue earth in our earth border . Such proportion as it bears to the area of the visible earth in such proportion are we heavenly minded .Yet I doubt if I can find a man in this country who would not think it better if they were converted into solid gold which could in no case be a blessing to all but only a curse to a few and so they would be stepping stones to hell.  

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 10, 1853

New days, then, have come ushered in by the warbling vireo, yellowbird, Maryland yellow-throat, and small pewee, and now made perfect by the twittering of the kingbird and the whistle of the oriole amid the elms. See May 10, 1858 ("Going down-town in the morning, I hear the warbling vireo, golden robin, catbird, and summer yellowbird. . . .As I paddle along, hear the Maryland yellow-throat, the bobolink, the oven-bird, and the yellow-throated vireo. . . .It is remarkable how many new birds have come all at once to-day. ")

In the woods, the veery note. See May 10, 1858 ("Hear in various woods the yorrick note of the veery.")

I pray for such inward experience as will make nature significant:  See June 30, 1852 ("Nature must be viewed humanly to be viewed at all; her scenes must be associated with humane affections... She is most significant to a lover."); August 7, 1853( "The objects I behold correspond to my mood");  May 6, 1854 ("Your observation, to be interesting, i. e. to be significant, must be subjective. "); May 23,1854 ("We soon get through with nature.")

All nature will fable, and every natural phenomenon be a myth: See November 9, 1851 ("Facts should be material to the mythology which I am writing; I would so state facts that they shall be significant, shall be myths or mythologic.”)

It is a lush spring-green morning. Rained in the night. Low gray clouds driving Dylan to work. Suddenly sunlight in the Meadows and I am chasing shadows down the road. At the dump I hear a Yellow warbler. ~ Zphx Saturday, May 10, 2013.

May 10.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 10

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 ©  2009-2021

My Journal should be the record of my love.

November 16

A truly good book is something as wildly natural and primitive, mysterious and marvelous, ambrosial and fertile, as a fungus or a lichen.

***

I hear deep amid the birches some row among the birds or the squirrels, where evidently some mystery is being developed to them. The jay is on the alert, mimicking every woodland note. What has happened? Who 's dead? The twitter retreats before you, and you are never let into the secret. Some tragedy surely is being enacted, but murder will out. How many little dramas are enacted in the depth of the woods at which man is not present! 

November 16, 2023

When I am considering which way I will walk, my needle is slow to settle, my compass varies by a few degrees and does not always point due southwest; and there is good authority for these variations in the heavens. It pursues the straighter course for it at last, like the ball which has come out of a rifle, or the quoit that is twirled when cast. To-day it is some particular wood or meadow or deserted pasture in that direction that is my southwest.

***

There is a place whither I should walk to-day. Though oftenest I fail to find, when by accident I ramble into it, great is my delight. I have stood by my door sometimes half an hour, irresolute as to what course I should take.

Apparently all but the evergreens and oaks have lost their leaves now. It is singular that the shrub oaks retain their leaves through the winter. Why do they? 

***

Some of our richest days are those in which no sun shines outwardly, but so much the more a sun shines inwardly. I love nature, I love the landscape, because it is so sincere. It never cheats me. It never jests. It is cheerfully, musically earnest. I lie and relie on the earth. 

Land where the wood has been cut off and is just beginning to come up again is called sprout land. 

The sweet-scented life-everlasting has not lost its scent yet, but smells like the balm of the fields.  

The partridge-berry leaves checker the ground on the side of moist hillsides in the woods. Are they not properly called checker-berries? 

The era of wild apples will soon be over. I wander through old orchards of great extent, now all gone to decay, all of native fruit which for the most part went to the cider-mill. But since the temperance reform and the general introduction of grafted fruit, no wild apples, such as I see everywhere in deserted pastures, and where the woods have grown up among them, are set out. I fear that he who walks over these hills a century hence will not know the pleasure of knocking off wild apples. 

Ah, poor man! there are many pleasures which he will be debarred from! Notwithstanding the prevalence of the Baldwin and the Porter, I doubt if as extensive orchards are set out to-day in this town as there were a century ago, when these vast straggling cider-orchards were planted. Men stuck in a tree then by every wall side and let it take its chance. I see nobody planting trees to-day in such out of the way places, along almost every road and lane and wall-side, and at the bottom of dells in the wood. Now that they have grafted trees and pay a price for them, they collect them into a plot by their houses and fence them in. 

My Journal should be the record of my love. I would write in it only of the things I love, my affection for any aspect of the world, what I love to think of. I have no more distinctness or pointedness in my yearnings than an expanding bud, which does indeed point to flower and fruit, to summer and autumn, but is aware of the warm sun and spring influence only. 

I feel ripe for something, yet do nothing, can't discover what that thing is. I feel fertile merely. It is seedtime with me. I have lain fallow long enough. 

Notwithstanding a sense of unworthiness which possesses me, not without reason, notwithstanding that I regard myself as a good deal of a scamp, yet for the most part the spirit of the universe is unaccountably kind to me, and I enjoy perhaps an unusual share of happiness. Yet I question sometimes if there is not some settlement to come 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 16, 1850

A truly good book. See November 16, 1855 ("A part of to-day and yesterday I have been making shelves for my Oriental books”)

The jay is on the alert, See  November 11, 1853 ("The jays are seen and heard more of late, their plumage apparently not dimmed at all."):  December 31, 1850 ("The blue jays evidently notify each other of the presence of an intruder, and will sometimes make a great chattering about it, and so communicate the alarm to other birds and to beasts"). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Jay

There is a place whither I should walk to-day. See September 7, 1851("I do not remember any page which will tell me how to spend this afternoon.”); August 22, 1854 ("Walking may be a science, so far as the direction of a walk is concerned."); October 20, 1858 ("There is one advantage in walking eastward these afternoons, at least, that in returning you may have the western sky before you"). See also note to December 18, 1856 ("stepping westward seem to be / a kind of heavenly destiny.”); Walking (“Eastward I go only by force; but westward I go free.”)

When by accident I ramble into it, great is my delight.  See note to September 8, 1858 ("So, in my botanizing or natural history walks, it commonly turns out that, going for one thing, I get another thing.”)

Shrub oaks retain their leaves through the winter. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Shrub Oak.

Some of our richest days are those in which no sun shines outwardly, but so much the more a sun shines inwardly. See A Week, Wednesday ("Day would not dawn if it were not for the inward morning."); Walden (“Only that day dawns to which we are awake.”)

My Journal should be the record of my love. I would write in it only of the things I love, my affection for any aspect of the world, what I love to think of. See September 2, 1851 ("A writer, a man writing, is the scribe of all nature; he is the corn and the grass and the atmosphere writing. It is always essential that we love to do what we are doing, do it with a heart.");  July 13, 1852 ("A journal, a book that shall contain a record of all your joy, your ecstasy."); March 13, 1853 ("The great art of life is how to turn the surplus life of the soul into life for the body . . . You must get your living by loving."); May 6, 1854 ("Every important worker will report what life there is in him. All that a man has to say or do that can possibly concern mankind, is in some shape or other to tell the story of his love, — to sing; and, if he is fortunate and keeps alive, he will be forever in love.”)

The partridge-berry leaves checker the ground on the side of moist hillsides in the woods. Are they not properly called checker-berries? See November 19, 1850 ("Now that the grass is withered and the leaves are withered or fallen, it begins to appear what is evergreen the partridge-berry and checkerberry, and winter-green leaves even, are more conspicuous.”); November 27, 1853 ("Checkerberries and partridge-berries are both numerous and obvious now"); December 3, 1853 ("The still green Mitchella repens  and checkerberry in shelter, both with fruit"); December 7, 1853 ("The liquid wet glossy leaves of the Chimaphila (winter or snow-loving) umbellata, with its dry fruit. Not to mention the still green Mitchella repens and checkerberry in shelter, both with fruit")

Note: Partridge-berry is Mitchella repens. See November 16, 1858 (listing Mitchella repens and Checkerberry separately as among "our shrubby evergreen plants " and Chimaphila umbellata as among "the herbaceous") Checkerberry" is another name for American wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens). See Checkerberry cum Wintergreen. and GoBotany. What HDT calls “wintergreen” is Chimaphila umbellata, a/k/a pipsissewa, See July 3, 1852 ("The Chimaphila umbellata, wintergreen, must have been in blossom some time.”); November 16, 1858 (“Methinks the wintergreen, pipsissewa, is our handsomest evergreen, so liquid glossy green and dispersed almost all over the woods.”). 

The spirit of the universe is unaccountably kind to me, and I enjoy perhaps an unusual share of happiness. See November 22, 1860 ("Summer is gone with all its infinite wealth, and still nature is genial to man.") ; A Week, Wednesday ("I have found all things thus far, persons and inanimate matter, elements and seasons, strangely adapted to my resources.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Nature is genial to man (the anthropic principle)

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

The jay on alert

mimicking each woodland note –

What happened? Who's dead?

Some of our richest

days are those in which no

sun shines outwardly.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  My Journal should be the record of my love.

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-501116

Nov. 16. I found three good arrowheads to-day behind Dennis's. The season for them began some time ago, as soon as the farmers had sown their winter rye, but the spring, after the melting of the snow, is still better. 

I am accustomed to regard the smallest brook with as much interest for the time being as if it were the Orinoco or Mississippi. What is the difference, I would like to know, but mere size ? And when a tributary rill empties in, it is like the confluence of famous rivers I have read mid- passage and look down into the water, and study its bottom, its little mystery. There is none so small but you may see a pickerel regarding you with a wary eye, or a pygmy trout glance from under the bank, or in spring, perchance, a sucker will have found its way far up its stream. You are sometimes astonished to see a pickerel far up some now shrunken rill, where it is a mere puddle by the roadside. I have stooped to drink at a clear spring no bigger than a bushel basket in a meadow, from which a rill was scarcely seen to dribble away, and seen lurking at its bottom two little pickerel not so big as my finger, sole monarchs of this their ocean, and who probably would never visit a larger water. 

In literature it is only the wild that attracts us. Dullness is only another name for tameness. It is the untamed, uncivilized, free, and wild thinking in Hamlet, in the Iliad, and in all the scriptures and mythologies that delights us, — not learned in the schools, not refined and polished by art. 

A truly good book is something as wildly natural and primitive, mysterious and marvellous, ambrosial and fertile, as a fungus or a lichen. 

Suppose the muskrat or beaver were to turn his views to literature, what fresh views of nature would he present ! The fault of our books and other deeds is that they are too humane, I want something speaking in some measure to the condition of muskrats and skunk-cabbage as well as of men, — not merely to a pining and complaining coterie of philanthropists.

 I discover again about these times that cranberries are good to eat in small quantities as you are crossing the meadows. 

I hear deep amid the birches some row among the birds or the squirrels, where evidently some mystery is being developed to them. The jay is on the alert, mimicking every woodland note. What has happened? Who 's dead? The twitter retreats before you, and you are never let into the secret. Some tragedy surely is being enacted, but murder will out. How many little dramas are enacted in the depth of the woods at which man is not present! 

When I am considering which way I will walk, my needle is slow to settle, my compass varies by a few degrees and does not always point due southwest; and there is good authority for these variations in the heavens. It pursues the straighter course for it at last, like the ball which has come out of a rifle, or the quoit that is twirled when cast. To-day it is some particular wood or meadow or deserted pasture in that direction that is my southwest.

I love my friends very much, but I find that it is of no use to go to see them. I hate them commonly when I am near them. They belie themselves and deny me continually. 

Somebody shut the cat's tail in the door just now, and she made such a caterwaul as has driven two whole worlds out of my thoughts. I saw unspeakable things in the sky and looming in the horizon of my mind, and now they are all reduced to a cat's tail. Vast films of thought floated through my brain, like clouds pregnant with rain enough to fertilize and restore a world, and now they are all dissipated. 

There is a place whither I should walk to-day. Though oftenest I fail to find, when by accident I ramble into it, great is my delight. I have stood by my door sometimes half an hour, irresolute as to what course I should take.

Apparently all but the evergreens and oaks have lost their leaves now. It is singular that the shrub oaks retain their leaves through the winter. Why do they? 

The walnut trees spot the sky with black nuts. Only catkins are seen on the birches.

 I saw the other day a dead limb which the wind or some other cause had broken nearly off, which had lost none of its leaves, though all the rest of the tree, which was flourishing, had shed them. 

There seems to be in the fall a sort of attempt at a spring, a rejuvenescence, as if the winter were not expected by a part of nature. Violets, dandelions, and some other flowers blossom again, and mulleins and in numerable other plants begin again to spring and are only checked by the increasing cold. There is a slight uncertainty whether there will be any winter this year. 

I was pleased to-day to hear a great noise and trampling in the woods produced by some cows which came running toward their homes, which apparently had been scared by something unusual, as their ancestors might have been by wolves. I have known sheep to be scared in the same [way] and a whole flock to run bleating to me for protection. 

What shall we do with a man who is afraid of the woods, their solitude and darkness? What salvation is there for him? God is silent and mysterious. 

Some of our richest days are those in which no sun shines outwardly, but so much the more a sun shines inwardly. I love nature, I love the landscape, because it is so sincere. It never cheats me. It never jests. It is cheerfully, musically earnest. I lie and relie on the earth. 

Land where the wood has been cut off and is just beginning to come up again is called sprout land. 

The sweet-scented life-everlasting has not lost its scent yet, but smells like the balm of the fields. 

The partridge-berry leaves checker the ground on the side of moist hillsides in the woods. Are they not properly called checker-berries? 

The era of wild apples will soon be over. I wander through old orchards of great extent, now all gone to decay, all of native fruit which for the most part went to the cider-mill. But since the temperance reform and the general introduction of grafted fruit, no wild apples, such as I see everywhere in deserted pastures, and where the woods have grown up among them, are set out. I fear that he who walks over these hills a century hence will not know the pleasure of knocking off wild apples. Ah, poor man! there are many pleasures which he will be debarred from! Notwithstanding the prevalence of the Baldwin and the Porter, I doubt if as extensive orchards are set out to-day in this town as there were a century ago, when these vast straggling cider-orchards were planted. Men stuck in a tree then by every wall side and let it take its chance. I see nobody planting trees to-day in such out of the way places, along almost every road and lane and wall-side, and at the bottom of dells in the wood. Now that they have grafted trees and pay a price for them, they collect them into a plot by their houses and fence them in. 

My Journal should be the record of my love. I would write in it only of the things I love, my affection for any aspect of the world, what I love to think of. I have no more distinctness or pointedness in my yearnings than an expanding bud, which does indeed point to flower and fruit, to summer and autumn, but is aware of the warm sun and spring influence only. 

I feel ripe for something, yet do nothing, can't discover what that thing is. I feel fertile merely. It is seedtime with me. I have lain fallow long enough. 

Notwithstanding a sense of unworthiness which possesses me, not without reason, notwithstanding that I regard myself as a good deal of a scamp, yet for the most part the spirit of the universe is unaccountably kind to me, and I enjoy perhaps an unusual share of happiness. Yet I question sometimes if there is not some settlement to come.