to witness our own limits transgressed

 

 

We need the tonic of wildness, 

to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, 

and hear the booming of the snipe; 

to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, 

and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.  

At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, 

we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, 

that land and sea be infinitely wild, 

unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable,

we can never have enough of nature.  

We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, 

vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, 

the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, 

the thunder cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. 
.

We need to witness our own limits transgressed, 

and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.

 

 

~ Henry David Thoreau

from Walden, 'Spring,' 1854

photos by Eliot Porter from:

Wilderness Is the Preservation of the World 

 

leap in the dark

.

There is always some accident in the best things,

whether thoughts or expressions or deeds.  

The memorable thought, the happy expression, 

the admirable deed are only partly ours. 

 

The thought came to us because we were in a fit mood;

 also we were unconscious and did not know that we had said or done a good thing.

 

 We must walk consciously only partway toward our goal,

 and then leap in the dark to our success.

~ Henry David Thoreau

from his journal, March 11, 1858

photo by Robert Goulet

when I detect a beauty

.

 

When I detect a beauty in any of the recesses of nature, 

I am reminded by the serene and retired spirit in which it requires to be contemplated, 

of the inexpressible privacy of life - how silent and unambitious it is.  

The beauty there in mosses will have to be considered from the holiest, quietest nook.

 

My truest, serenest moments are too still for emotion; they have woolen feet.  

In all our lives we live under the hill, and if we are not gone we live there still. 

....

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 ourselves.  

 

I awoke into a music which no one by me heard.

Whom shall I thank for it?  I feel my Maker blessing me.

To the sane man the world is a musical instrument.

The very touch affords an exquisite pleasure.

 

~ Henry David Thoreau

taken from a journal entry, June 22,1851

 

to steady the ladder

Some say that compassion, kindness and caring are our true nature.The instinct to help, to steady the ladder, to be there when we are needed,to do so without so much as a thought for ourselves may arise from deep within the seed of our being.

 In an article a few years ago one researcher discovered what turned out to be a predictable response from very young children.

Oops, the scientist dropped his clothespin.
Not to worry — a wobbly toddler raced to help, eagerly handing it back.
The simple experiment shows the capacity for altruism emerges
as early as 18 months of age.

Psychology researcher Felix Warneken of Germany’s 
Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology 
performed a series of ordinary tasks in front of toddlers,
such as hanging towels with clothespins or stacking books.

Sometimes he “struggled” with the tasks; sometimes he deliberately messed up.
Over and over, whether Warneken dropped clothespins or knocked over his books,
each of 24 toddlers offered help within seconds — but only if he appeared to need it.

Video shows how one overall-clad baby glanced between Warneken’s face
and the dropped clothespin before quickly crawling over,
grabbing the object, pushing up to his feet
and eagerly handing back the pin.

Warneken never asked for the help and didn’t even say “thank you,”
so as not to taint the research by training youngsters to expect praise


if they helped. After all, altruism means helping
with no expectation of anything in return
— the toddlers didn’t bother to offer help when he deliberately
pulled a book off the stack or threw a pin to the floor,

~ Felix Warneken

a pastime

For more than five years, I maintained myself this solely
 by the labor of my hands, and I found, that by working
 about six weeks a year, I could meet all the expenses of living.

In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience,
 that to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship
 but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely...
It is not necessary that a man should earn his living 
by the sweat of his brow, unless he sweats easier than I do.

Some are "industrious," and appear to love labor for its own sake, 
or perhaps because it keeps them out of worse mischief; to such
 I have at present nothing to say.  Those who would not know 
what to do with more leisure than they now enjoy, 
I might advise to work twice as hard as they do - work till they pay 
for themselves, and get their free papers.  For myself I have found
 that the occupation of a day laborer was the most independent of any, 
especially as it required only thirty or forty days in a year to support one. 


The laborer's day ends with the going down of the sun,
 and he is then free to devote himself to his chosen pursuit,
 independent of his labor; but his employer, who speculates from
 month to month, has no respite from one end of the year to another.

~ Henry David Thoreau

from Walden, 'Economy,' 1854

art by Roderick Maclver

his peaceful death and his insight

 
excerpts from:

Henry David Thoreau

Henry Thoreau as Remembered by a Young Friend
Edward Emerson, (1917)

 


Thoreau was but forty-four years old when he died.
 Even his health could not throw off a chill got by long stooping
 in a wet snow storm counting the growth-rings on the stumps of some old trees.
 The family infection became active. He lived a year and a half 
after this exposure and made a trip to Minnesota in vain for health.

 For the last months he was confined to the house, he was affectionate,
 and utterly brave, and worked on his manuscript until the last days.
 When his neighbour, Reverend Mr. Reynolds, came in
 he found him so employed, and he looked up cheerfully and, 
with a twinkle in his eye, whispered -- his voice was gone --
 "you know it's respectable to leave an estate to one's friends "
His old acquaintance Staples, once his jailer,
 coming out, meeting Mr. Emerson coming in, reported that he
 "never saw a man dying with so much pleasure and peace." 

To his Calvinistic Aunt who felt obliged to ask,
 "Henry, have you made your peace with God?" -- 
"I did not know we had ever quarreled, Aunt," 
was the pleasant answer. 

His friend and companion, Edward Hoar, 
said to me, "With Thoreau's life something went out of Concord woods
 and fields and river that never will return. He so loved Nature,
 delighted in her every aspect and seemed to infuse himself into her." 
Yes, something went. But our woods and waters will always be different
 because of this man. Something of him abides and truly "for good"
 in his town. Here he was born, and within its borders he found 
a wealth of beauty and interest -- 
all that he asked -- 
and shared it with us all.

...

Thoreau writes: "Explore your own higher latitudes; nay,

 be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, 

opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.

 Every man is lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar

 is but a petty state. I do not wish to be any more busy with my hands 

than is necessary. My head is hands and feet. I feel all my best faculties

 concentrated in it. My instinct tells me that my head is an organ for burrowing,

 as some creatures use their snout and fore-paws, and with it I would mine

 and burrow my way through these hills. I think that the richest vein 

is somewhere hereabouts: so by the divining rod and thin rising vapours

 I judge: and here I will begin to mine."

Again: "If my curve is large, why bend it to a smaller circle?"

Emerson wrote of Thoreau:

 "He who sees the horizon may securely say what he pleases

 of any twig or tree between him and it."


Thoreau, living by Walden wrote:
 "In a pleasant spring morning all men's sins are forgiven. 
Such a day is a truce to vice. While such a sun holds out to burn,
 the vilest sinner may return. Through our own recovered innocence
 we discern the innocence of our neighbors. You may have known
 your neighbour yesterday for a thief, a drunkard, or a sensualist, 
and merely pitied or despised him, and despaired of the world;
 but the sun shines bright and warm this spring morning, 
recreating the world, and you meet him at some serene work, 
and see how his exhausted and debauched veins expand with still joy
 and bless the new day, feel the spring influence with the innocence 
of infancy, and all his faults are forgotten. There is not only an atmosphere 
of goodwill about him, but even a savour of holiness groping for expression,
 blindly and ineffectually perhaps, like a new-born instinct, 
 and for a short hour the south hill-side echoes to no vulgar jest. 
You see some innocent fair shoots preparing to burst from his gnarled rind 
 and try another year's life, tender and fresh as the youngest plant. 
Even he has entered into the joy of his lord. 
Why the jailer does not leave open his prison doors, -- 
why the judge does not dismiss his case, --
 why the preacher does not dismiss his congregation.
 It is because they do not obey the hint that God gives them, 
nor accept the pardon that he freely offers to all."

  He loved the River: "It is my own highway, the only wild 
and unfenced part of the world hereabouts.
" But always he looked for something behind what he saw. 
At another time he writes: "Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.
 I drink at it, but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect
 how shallow it is. Its thin current glides away, but eternity remains.
 I would drink deeper; fish in the sky whose bottom
 is pebbly with stars."

...

 

  The news of Thoreau's death came to Louisa Alcott, 
then nursing in a military hospital. In the watches of the night, 
sitting by the cot of a dying soldier, her thoughts wandered back 
to the happy evenings when Thoreau might bring his flute with him 
to please the growing girls, when he visited the elders; that yellow flute, 
very melodious in its tone, which his brother John used to play. 
In these sad surroundings she wrote: --

Thoreau's Flute We sighing said, "Our Pan is dead --
His pipe hangs mute beside the river,
Around it friendly moonbeams quiver,
But music's airy voice is fled.
Spring comes to us in guise forlorn,
The blue-bird chants a requiem,
The willow-blossom waits for him,
The genius of the wood is gone"
Then from the flute, untouched by hands,
There came a low, harmonious breath:
For such as he there is no death.
His life the eternal life commands.
Above men's aims his nature rose.
The wisdom of a just content
Made one small spot a continent,
And turned to poetry life's prose
Haunting the hills, the stream, the wild,
Swallow and aster, lake and pine
To him seemed human or divine,
Fit mates for this large-hearted child.
Such homage Nature ne'er forgets;
And yearly on the coverlid
'Neath which her darling lieth hid
Will write his name in violets.
To him no vain regrets belong
Whose soul, that finer instrument,
Gave to the world no poor lament,
But wood-notes ever sweet and strong.
Oh lonely friend, He still will be
A potent presence, though unseen,
Steadfast, sagacious and serene.
Seek not for him: he is with Thee.

...

  The friendship and honour one for the other ran true to the end, 
in spite of temperamental barriers in communication.
 Emerson spoke his feeling about his friend at the burial: -- 

"The Country knows not yet, or in the least part how great a son it has lost. 
It seems an injury that he should leave, in the midst, his broken task, 
which none can finish, a kind of indignity to so noble a soul 
that he should depart out of Nature before yet he has been really shown
 to his peers for what he is. But he, at least, is content.
 His soul was made for the noblest society; he had in a short life
 exhausted the capabilities of this world: wherever there is knowledge,
 wherever there is virtue, wherever there is beauty,
 he will find a home."

the entire transcript found here:
https://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/thoreau/youngfriend.html

we conceal ourselves

Like cuttlefish we conceal ourselves, 

we darken the atmosphere in which we move; 

we are not transparent. I pine for one to whom

 I can speak my first thoughts; thoughts which

 represent me truly, which are no better and no worse than I; 

thoughts which have the bloom on them, which alone 

can be sacred and divine. Our sin and shame 

prevent our expressing even the innocent thoughts 

we have. I know of no one to whom I can

 be transparent instinctively. I live the life of the cuttlefish; 

another appears, and the element in which I move is tinged 

and I am concealed. My first thoughts are azure; 

there is a bloom and a dew on them; they are papillaceous feelers

 which I put out, tender, innocent.

 Only to a friend can I expose them.

~ Henry David Thoreau

.

man is but the place where I stand

.

I do not value any view of the universe

 into which man and the institutions of man 

enter very largely and absorb much of the attention.  

Man is but the place where I stand; 

and the prospect hence is infinite.

~ Henry David Thoreau

from his journal, 1852

art by roderick maclver

.

the walls and fences

.

.

Now I yearn for one of those old, meandering, dry uninhabited roads, 
which lead away from towns, which lead us away from temptation, 
which conduct to the outside of Earth, over its uppermost crust; 
where you may forget in what country you are traveling; where no farmer can
 complain that you are treading down his grass, no gentleman who has
 recently constructed a seat in the country that you are trespassing; 
on which you can go off at half cock and wave adieu to the village;
 along which you may travel like a pilgrim, going nowhither; 
where travelers are not too often to be met; where my spirit is free;
 where the walls and fences are not cared for; where your head is more
 in heaven than your feet are on earth; which have long reaches 
where you can see the approaching traveler half a mile off
 and be prepared for him; not so luxuriant a soil as to attract men; 
some root and stump fences which do not need attention; where travelers 
have no occasion to stop, but pass along and leave you to your thoughts; 
where it makes no odds which way you face, whether you are going or coming, 
whether it is morning or evening, mid-noon or midnight; where earth is 
cheap enough by being public; where you can walk and think with least obstruction,
 where you can pace when your breast is full, and cherish your moodiness; 
where you are not in false relations with men, are not dining nor conversing 
with them; by which you may go to the uttermost parts of the earth.

.

~ Henry David Thoreau

from his journal, July 21 1851

art by Roderick Maclver

.

a stream I go a-fishing in

In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime.

 But all these times and places and occasions are now and here.  

God himself culminates in the present moment 

and will never be more divine in the lapse of the ages.  

Time is but a stream I go a-fishing in.  

I drink at it, but when I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is.  

Its thin current slides away but eternity remains.

~ Henry David Thoreau 

from: Walden, "Where I lived and what I lived for," 1854

life in us

The life in us is like the water in the river. 
 It may rise this year higher than man has ever known it, 
and flood the parched uplands; even this may be the eventful year, 
which will drown out all our muskrats.  It was not always dry land 
where we dwell.  I see far inland the banks which the stream 
anciently washed,  before science began to record its freshets.

... Who does not feel his faith in a resurrection and immortality
 strengthened by hearing of this?  Who knows what beautiful
 and winged life, whose egg had been buried for ages 
under many concentric layers of woodenness
 in the dead dry life of society, deposited at first in the alburnum 
of the green and living tree, which has been gradually converted
 into the semblance of its well seasoned tomb - may unexpectedly
 come forth from amidst society's most trivial and handseled furniture,
 to enjoy its perfect summer life at last!

~ Henry David Thoreau

from Walden, "Conclusion," 1854

art by Roderick Maclver

buried in the grave of custom

In my short experience of human life, the outward obstacles, if there were any such, have not been living men, but the institutions of the dead. It is grateful to make one’s way through this latest generation as through dewy grass. Men are as innocent as the morning to the unsuspicious… I love man-kind, but I hate the institutions of the dead un-kind. Men execute nothing so faithfully as the wills of the dead, to the last codicil and letter. They rule this world, and the living are but they're executors.

Herein is the tragedy; that men doing outrage to their proper natures, even those called wise and good, lend themselves to perform the office of inferior and brutal ones. Hence come war and slavery in; and what else may not come in by this opening? But certainly there are modes by which a man may put bread into his mouth which will not prejudice him as a companion and neighbor.

All men are partially buried in the grave of custom, and of some we see only the crown of the head above ground. Better are the physically dead, for they more lively rot. Even virtue is no longer such if it be stagnant. A man’s life should be constantly as fresh as this river. It should be the same channel, but a new water every instant.

~ Henry David Thoreau

from A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

with thanks to brainpickings 

consenting to be deceived

By closing the eyes and slumbering and consenting to be deceived
 by shows, men establish and confirm their daily life of routine 
and habit everywhere, which still is built on purely illusory foundations ...

I have read in a Hindu book, that "there was a king's son,
 who, being expelled in infancy from his native city,
 was brought up by a forester, and, growing to maturity in that state, 
imagined himself to belong to the barbarous race with which he lived. 
 One of his father's ministers having discovered him,
 revealed to him what he was, and the misconception of his character 
was removed, and he knew himself to be a prince.  So soul,
" continues the Hindu philosopher, "from the circumstances in which it is placed,
 mistakes its own character, until the truth is revealed to it
 by some holy teacher, and then it knows itself to be Brahma."

I perceive that we inhabitants of New England live this mean life 
that we do because our vision does not penetrate the surface of things.

~ Henry David Thoreau

from Walden, "Where I lived, and what I lived for," 1854

a stream I go a-fishing in

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. 
 I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is.
 Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky,
 whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know not the first letter
 of the alphabet. I have always been regretting that I was not
 as wise as the day I was born.

~ Henry David Thoreau

from Walden: Where I lived and What I lived for

 

 

 

 

hoeing

As I drew a still fresher soil about the rows with my how, I disturbed the ashes of unchronicled nations who in primeval years lived under these heavens, and their small implements of war and hunting were brought to the light of this modern day.  They lay mingled with other natural stones, some of which bore the marks of having been burned by Indian fires, and some by the sun, and also bits of pottery and glass brought hither by the recent cultivators of the soil.  When my hoe tinkled against the stones, that music echoed to the woods and the sky, and was an accompaniment to my labor which yielded an instant and immeasurable crop.  It was no longer beans that I hoed, nor I that hoed beans...

~ Henry David Thoreau

from Walden, The Bean-Field

art by Clotilde Espinosa

wind on water

A field of water betrays a spirit that is in the air. It is continually receiving

new life and motion from above.  It is intermediate in its nature between land

and sky.  On land only the grass and trees wave, but the water itself is rippled

by the wind. I see where the breeze dashes across it by the streaks or flakes of

light.  It is remarkable that we can look down on its surface.  We shall, perhaps, 

look down thus on the surface of air at length, and mark where a still subtler

spirit sweeps over it.

 ~ Henry David Thoreau

excerpt from Walden, the ponds

ten to fifteen years of the laborer's life

In the savage state, every family owns a shelter as good as the best, and sufficient for its coarser and simpler wants; though the birds of the air have their nests, and the foxes their holes, and the savages their wigwams, in modern civilized society not more than one half the families own a shelter.  In the large towns and cities, where civilization especially prevails, the number of those who own a shelter is a very small fraction of a whole.  The rest pay an annual tax for this outside garment of all, become indispensable summer and winter, which would buy a village of Indian wigwams, but now helps to keep them poor as long as they live.  I do not mean to insist here on the disadvantage of hiring compared with owning, but it is evident that the savage owns his shelter because it costs little, while the civilized man hires his commonly because he cannot afford to own it; nor can he, in the long run, any better afford to hire....An average house ... will take a man ten to fifteen years of the laborer's life.

~ Henry David Thoreau

from Walden, "Economy,"  1854

the great harvest

.

Consider the vast crop is thus annually shed upon the earth.  

This, more than any mere grain or seed, is the great harvest of the year.  

This annual decay and death, this dying by inches, 

before the whole tree at last lies down and turns to soil.  

As trees shed their leaves, so deer their horns, and men their hair or nails.  

The year's great crop.   

I am more interested in it than in the English grass alone or in the corn.  

It prepares the virgin mold for future cornfields on which the earth fattens.  

They teach us how to die.

~ Henry David Thoreau

from his journal entry, 1853

the beauty

If any part of nature excites our pity, it is for ourselves we grieve, 
for there is eternal health and beauty.  
We get only transient and partial glimpses of the beauty of the world.  
Standing at the right angle, we are dazzled by the colors of the rainbow in colorless ice.  
From the right point of view, every storm and every drop in it is a rainbow.  
Beauty and music are not mere traits and exceptions.  
They are the rule and character.

~ Henry David Thoreau

from his journal, 1856

art by Roderick Maclver

paths which the mind travels

.

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there.  

Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, 

and could not spare any more time for that one.  

It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, 

and make a beaten track for ourselves.  I had not lived there a week

 before my feet wore a path from my door to the pondside; 

and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct... 

 

The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; 

and so with the paths which the mind travels.  How worn and dusty, 

then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts 

of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage,

 but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, 

for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. 

 I do not wish to go below now.

~ Henry David Thoreau

from the last chapter of Walden

art by van gogh