in Thoreau’s Journal

Speech is fractional, silence is integral.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Silence is ever less strange than noise, lurking amid the boughs of the hemlock or the pine, just in proportion as we find ourselves there.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Our true epitaphs are those which the sun and wind write upon the atmosphere around our graves so conclusively that the traveler does not draw near to read the lie on our tombstones.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Surveying today. We had one hour of most Indian-summer weather in the middle of the day. I felt the influence of the sun. It softened my stoniness a little. The pines looked like old friends again. Cutting a path through swamp where was much brittle dogwood, etc, I wanted to know the name of every bush. This varied employment to which my necessities compel me serves instead of foreign travel and the lapse of time. If it makes me forget some things which I ought to remember, it no doubt makes me forget many things which I ought to forget. By stepping aside from my chosen path so often, I see myself better, and am enabled to criticize myself better. It seems an age since I took walks and wrote in my journal, and when shall I revisit the glimpses of the moon? To be able to see ourselves, not merely as others see us, but as we are, that service a variety of absorbing employments does us. (italics, mine)

December 13, 2012:

in Thoreau’s Journal

Ah dear nature—the mere remembrance, after a short forgetfulness, of the pine woods! I come to it as a hungry man to a crust of bread.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

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. It is the exception that we see and hear.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I discover a strange track in the snow, and learn that some migrating otter has made across from the river to the wood, by my yard and the smith’s shop, in the silence of the night. I cannot but smile at my own wealth when I am thus reminded that every chink and cranny of nature is full to overflowing. Such an incident as this startles me with the assurance that the primeval nature is still working, and makes tracks in the snow. It is my own fault that he must thus skulk across my premises by night. Now I yearn toward him, and heaven to me consists in a complete communion with the otter nature. He travels a more wooded path by watercourses and hedgerows, I by the highways, but though his tracks are now crosswise to mine, our courses are not divergent, but we shall meet at last.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

How prominent the late or fall flowers are, now withered above the snow, —the goldenrods and asters, Roman wormwood, etc., etc.! These late ones have a sort of life extended into winter, hung with icy jewelry.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

How is it that what is actually present and transpiring is commonly perceived by the common sense and understanding only, is bare and bald, without halo, or the blue enamel of intervening air? But let it be past or to come, and it is at once idealized.

Never do we live a quite free life, like Adam’s, but are enveloped in an invisible network of speculations. Our progress is from one such speculation to another, and only at rare intervals do we perceive that it is no progress. Could we for moment drop this by-play, and simply wonder without reference or inference!

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Go out at 9 AM to see the glaze. It is already half fallen, melting off. The dripping trees and wet falling ice will wet you through like rain in the woods. It is a lively sound, a busy tinkling, the incessant brattling and from time to time rushing, crashing sound of this falling ice, and trees suddenly erecting themselves when relieved of their loads. It is now perfect only on the north sides of woods which the sun has not touched or affected. Looking at a dripping tree between you and the sun, you may see here or there one or another rainbow color, a small brilliant point of light.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Before I got home the whole atmosphere was suddenly filled with a mellow yellowish light equally diffused—so that it seemed much lighter around me than immediately after the sun sank behind the horizon cloud 15 minutes before — Apparently not till the sun had sunk thus far did I stand in the angle of reflection.

in Thoreau’s Journal:
Awake to winter, and snow two or three inches deep, the first of any consequence.

December 4, 2015, Chick’s Corner, Center Sandwich, NH, USA

December 3, 1853 in Thoreau’s Journal:
I see along the sides of the river 2 to 4 inches above the surface—but all at one level clear drop shaped crystals of ice—either held up by some twig—or hanging by a dead vine of climbing mikania— They are the remains of a thin sheet of ice, which melted as the river went down & in drops formed around & ran down these cores—& again froze & being thicker than the surrounding ice have outlasted it.

December 2, 1839 in Thoreau’s Journal:

A rare landscape immediately suggests a suitable inhabitant, whose breath shall be its wind, whose moods its seasons, and to whom it will always to be fair. To be chafed and worried, and not as serene as nature, does not become one whose nature is as steadfast….

December 1, 1853 in Thoreau’s Journal:

We may infer that every withered culm of grass or sedge—or weed that still stands in the fields—answers some purpose by standing— Those trees & shrubs which retain their withered leaves through the winter—shrub oaks—& young white red & black oacks—the lower branches of larger trees of the last mentioned species—horn-beam &c & young hickories seem to form an intermediate class between deciduous & evergreen trees— They may almost be called the ever-reds. Their leaves which are falling all winter long serve as a shelter to rabbits & partridges & other winter quadrupeds & birds—even the little chickadees love to skulk amid them & peep out from behind them. I hear their faint silvery lisping notes‚ like tinkling glass—& occasionally a sprightly day-day-day—as they inquisitively hop nearer & nearer to me. They are our most honest & innocent little bird—drawing yet nearer to us as the winter advances—& deserve best of any of the walker.

November 30, 1851 in Thoreau’s Journal:

The squirrel is always an unexpectedly large animal to see frisking about. My eye wanders across the valley to the pine woods which fringe the opposite side, and in their aspect my eye finds something which addresses itself to my nature. Methinks that in my mood I was asking nature to give me a sign— I do not know exactly what it was that attracted my eye— I experienced a transient gladness at any rate at something which I saw. I am sure that my eye rested with pleasure on the white pines now reflecting a silvery light—the infinite stories of their boughs—tier above tier—a sort of basaltic structure—a crumbling precipice of pine horizontally stratified. Each pine is like a great green feather stuck in the ground. A myriad white pine boughs extend themselves horizontally one above & behind another each bearing its burden of silvery sun-light—with darker seams between them—as if it were a great crumbling piny precipice thus stratified—On this my eyes pastured while the squirrels were up the trees behind me. That at any rate it was that I got by my afternoon walk —a certain recognition from the pine. some congratulation. Where is my home? It is indistinct as a old cellar hole now a faint indentation merely in a farmer’s field—which he has ploughed into & rounded off its edges—years ago and I sit by the old site on the stump of an oak which once grew there. Such is the nature where we have lived— Thick birch groves stand here & there dark brown? now with white lines more or less distinct—

July 18, 1851 from Thoreau’s Journal:   “In the morning sing—as do the birds.”