Author Archives: allandibiase

January 30, 1841

in Thoreau’s Journal:

These particles of snow which the early wind shakes down are what is stirring, or the morning news of the wood.

Sometimes it is blown up above the trees, like the sand of the desert.

January 29, 1856

in Thoreau’s Journal:

It is interesting to see near the sources even of  small streams or brooks which now flow through an open country–

perhaps shrunken in their volume–the traces of ancient mills–which have devoured the primitive forest–the earthen dams & old sluice ways–& ditches and banks for obtaining a supply of water–

_________

January 28, 1852

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Perhaps I can never find so good a setting for my thoughts as I shall thus have taken them out of.  The crystal never sparkles more brightly than in the cavern. The world have always loved best the fable with the moral. The children could read the fable alone, the grown-up read both. The truth so told has the best advantages of the most abstract statement, for it is not the less universally applicable. Where else will you ever find the true cement for your thoughts?

How will you ever rivet them together without leaving the marks of the file? Yet Plutarch did not so; Montaigne did not so. Men have written travels in this form, but perhaps no man’s daily life has been rich enough to be journalized.

January 27, 1852

in Thoreau’s Journal:

As I stand under the hill beyond J. Hosmer’s and look over the plains westward toward Acton and see the farmhouses nearly half a mile apart, few and solitary, in these great fields between these stretching woods, out of the world, where the children have to go far to school; the still, stagnant, heart-eating, life-everlasting, and gone-to-seed country, so far from the post-office where the weekly paper comes, wherein the new-married wife cannot live for loneliness, and the young man has to depend upon his horse for society; see young J. Hosmer’s house, whither he returns with his wife in despair after living in the city, — I standing in Tarbell’s road, which he alone cannot break, — the world in winter for most walkers reduced to a sled track winding far through the drifts, all springs sealed up and no digressions;

where the old man thinks he may possibly afford to rust it out, not having long to live, but the young man pines to get nearer the post-office and the Lyceum, is restless and resolves to go to California, because the depot is a mile off (he hears the rattle of the cars at a distance and thinks the world is going by and leaving him); where rabbits and partridges multiply, and muskrats are more numerous than ever, and none of the farmer’s sons are willing to be farmers, and the apple trees are decayed, and the cellar-holes are more numerous than the houses, and the rails are covered with lichens, and the old maids wish to sell out and move into the village, and have waited twenty years in vain for this purpose and never finished but one room in the house, never plastered nor painted, inside or out, lands which the Indian was long since dispossessed [of], and now the farms are run out, and what were forests are grain-fields, what were grain-fields, pastures; dwellings which only those Arnolds of the wilderness, those coureurs de bois, the baker and the butcher visit, to which at least the latter penetrates for the annual calf, — and as he returns the cow lows after, — whither the villager never penetrates, but in huckleberry time, perchance, and if he does not, who does? — where some men’s breaths smell of rum, having smuggled in a jugful to alleviate their misery and solitude; where the owls give a regular serenade; — I say, standing there and seeing these things, I cannot realize that this is that hopeful young America which is famous throughout the world for its activity and enterprise, and this is the most thickly settled and Yankee part of it.

January 26, 1853

in Thoreau’s Journal:

It is surprising how much room there is in nature if a man will follow his proper path.

In these broad fields, in these extensive woods, on this stretching river, I never meet a walker.

January 25, 1858

in Thoreau’s Journal:

What a rich book might be made about buds, including perhaps, sprouts. The impregnable, vivacious willow catkins, but half asleep along the twigs, under the armor of their black scales, the birch and oak sprouts, the rank and lusty dogwood sprouts, the sound, red buds of the blueberry, the small pointed red buds, close to the twig, of the panicled andromeda, the large yellowish buds of the swamp pink, etc.

How healthy and vivacious must he be who would treat of these things.

January 24, 1856

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Thus we go about, raised, generally speaking, more than a foot above the summer level. So much higher do we carry our heads in the winter.

What a great odds such a little difference makes! When the snow raises us one foot higher than we have been accustomed to walk, we are surprised at our elevation ! So we soar.

January 23, 1841

in Thoreau’s Journal:

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 a life.  How silent and unambitious it is! The beauty there is in mosses will have to be considered from the holist, quietest nook.

—The gods delight in stillness…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.

January 22, 1854

in Thoreau’sJournal:

Once or twice of late I have seen the mother-of-pearl tints and rainbow flecks in the western sky. The usual time is when the air is clear and pretty cool, about an hour before sunset.

Yesterday I saw a very permanent specimen, like a long knife handle of mother-of-pearl, very pale with and interior blue, and rosaceous tinges. I think the summer sky never exhibits this so finely.

January 21, 1855

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The sky has gradually become overcast & now it is just beginning to snow—looking against a dark roof—I detect a single flake from time to time—but when I look at the dark side of the woods 2 miles off in the horizon there already is seen a slight thickness or mistiness in the air—In this way, perhaps, may it first be detected…..

Pines & oaks seen at a distance—say 2 miles off—are considerably blended & make one harmonious impression—the former if you attend—are seen to be of a blue or misty black—and the latter form commonly a reddish brown ground, out of which the former rise—These colors are no longer in strong contrast with each other—

January 20, 1854

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The world is not only new to the eye but is still as at creation; every blade and leaf is hushed; not a bird or insect is heard; only perchance, a faint sleigh-bell in the distance.

January 18, 1860

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The temperature of the air and the clearness or serenity of the sky are indispensable to a knowledge of a day, so entirely do we sympathize with the moods of nature.

It is important to know of a day that is past whether it was warm or cold, clear or cloudy, calm or windy, etc.

January 17, 1852

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Fair thoughts and a serene mind make fair days.…As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind….

The World runs to see the panorama, while there is panorama in the sky which few go out to see.

January 16, 1856

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Why so much (five and one half inches) more now in the woods than on the 12th, as compared with open fields ? Was the driving snow caught in a small wood, or did it settle less in the rain there, or since the snow on account of bushes ?

With this snow the fences are scarcely an obstruction to the traveller; he easily steps over them. Often they are buried. I suspect it is two and a half feet deep in Andromeda Swamps now. The snow is much deeper in yards, roads, and all small inclosures than in broad fields.

January 14, 1853

in Thoreau’s Journal:

White walls of snow rest on the boughs of trees, in height two or three times their thickness. These white irregular arms give the forest a wintry and picturesque look at a distance. The evergreens, especially the pitch pine, often bear large irregular white burdens, agreeably diversified and loopholed by the interstices of the plumes. But it is only when fresh that this snow on the trees is beautiful. Already, before the storm is over, the surface of the snow in the high woods is full of indentations and hollows where some of this burden has fallen.

January 13, 1842

in Thoreau’s Journal:

We should offer up our perfect thoughts to the gods daily—our writing should be hymns and psalms. Who keeps a journal is purveyor for the Gods.

There are two sides to every sentence; the one is contiguous to me, but the other faces the gods, and no man ever fronted it. When I utter a thought I launch a vessel which never sails in my haven more, but goes sheer off into the deep. Consequently it demands a godlike insight—a fronting view, to read what was greatly written.

January 12, 1860

in Thoreau’s Journal:

It is a very beautiful and spotless snow now, it having just ceased falling.  You are struck by its peculiar tractlessness, as if it were a thick white blanket just spread.

As it were, each snow-flake lies as it first fell, or there is a regular gradation from the denser bottom up to the surface which is perfectly light, and as it were fringed with the last flakes that fell.