I have noticed how willow trees line our roads and highways and yet none of them seem to
grow in the middle of a field, only on the borders where a stream, a railroad, or a highway passes.
In recent years, I noticed that the Chinese tallow tree has begun to compete with the indigenous
willow hereabouts. This was clearly in evidence along a new road through a field which soon became
lined about half and half with willow trees and Chinese tallow trees. Thoreau noticed this feature of
willow trees and extolled them for their tenacity. He is writing here about a railroad built through
the middle of a meadow which previously had no willows, but now the willows line both sides of
the railroad right of way. He sees the willows as drifted against the railroad causeway like snow
against fences.
[page 181, 182] For years a willow might not have been persuaded to take root in that
meadow; but run a barrier like this through it, and in a few years it is lined with them.
They plant themselves here solely, and not in the open meadow, as exclusively as along
the shores of a river. The sand-bank is a shore to them, and the meadow a lake. How
impatient, how rampant, how precocious these osiers! They have hardly made two
shoots from the sand in as many springs, when silvery catkins burst out along
them, and anon golden blossoms and downy seeds, spreading their race with
incredible rapidity. Thus they multiply and clan together. Thus they take
advantage even of the railroad, which elsewhere disturbs and invades their
domains. May I ever be in as good spirits as a willow! How tenacious of life!
How withy! How soon it gets over its hurts! They never despair. Is there no
moisture longer in nature which they can transmute into sap? They are
emblems of youth, joy, and everlasting life. Scarcely is their growth restrained
by winter, but their silvery down peeps forth in the warmest days in January.
The very trees and shrubs and weeds, if we consider their origin, have drifted
thus like snow against the fences and hillsides. Their growth is protected and
favored there. Soon the alders will take their places with them. This hedge is, of
course, as straight as the railroad or its bounding fence.
As a young boy I went blackberry picking with my family on many occasions and never once saw a snake. I was warned to watch out for them as they liked blackberries, but in all my picking days, I never saw a snake while picking blackberries. All I saw was blackberries — what I had gone to find. What one seeks, one finds(2).
[page 192] How various are the talents of men! From the brook in which one
lover of nature has never during all his lifetime detected anything larger than
a minnow, another extracts a trout that weighs three pounds, or an otter four
feet long. How much more game he will see who carries a gun, i. e. who goes to
see it! Though you roam the woods all your days, you never will see by chance
what he sees who goes on purpose to see it. One gets his living by shooting
woodcocks; most never see one in their lives.
In this next passage Thoreau speaks of a delicacy of relationship which is very familiar to me,
but I have never found it outlined so accurately before.
[page 199] Mar. 4. I had another friend, who, through a slight obtuseness,
perhaps, did not recognize a fact which the dignity of friendship would by no
means allow me to descend so far as to speak of, and yet the inevitable effect of
that ignorance was to hold us apart forever.
Here is a paean Thoreau sings to the art of printing. He calls to mind for us the possible
written human thoughts on the waste newspaper which we use for trivial purposes. Here is a man
who would prefer to spend his days abroad in the forest or rivers reading the wonders of nature, but
would consider himself not fully alive if he didn't also spend some of his time reading.
[page 203] Mar. 10. Think of the art of printing, what miracles it has
accomplished! Covered the very waste paper which flutters under our feet like
leaves and is almost as cheap, a stuff now commonly put to the most trivial uses,
with thought and poetry! The woodchopper reads the wisdom of ages recorded
on the paper that holds his dinner, then lights his pipe with it. When we ask for
a scrap of paper for the most trivial use, it may have the confessions of
Augustine or the sonnets of Shakespeare, and we not observe it. The student
kindles his fire, the editor packs his trunk, the sportsman loads his gun, the
traveler wraps his dinner, the Irishman papers his shanty, the schoolboy
peppers the plastering, the belle pins up her hair, with the printed thoughts of
men. Surely he who can see so large a portion of earth's surface thus darkened
with the record of human thought and experience, and feel no desire to learn to
read it, is without curiosity. He who cannot read is worse than deaf and blind,
is yet but half alive, is still-born.
In this rare vignette, we hear Thoreau speak of his father. It reveals his father as a practical man who understood neither his son’s proclivity for simplicity nor his son’s true calling.
[page 217] Mar. 21. Had a dispute with Father about the use of my making this
sugar when I knew it could be done and might have bought sugar cheaper at
Holden's. He said it took me from my studies. I said I made it my study; I felt
as if I had been to a university.
As spring begins to show itself, Thoreau shares with us a blush he perceives on the face of
the Earth.
[page 243] It is surprising how the earth on bare south banks begins to show
some greenness in its russet cheeks in this rain and fog, — a precious emerald-green tinge, almost like a green mildew, the growth of the night, — a green
blush suffusing her cheek, heralded by twittering birds. This sight is no less
interesting than the corresponding bloom and ripe blush of the fall. How
encouraging to perceive again that faint tinge of green, spreading amid the
russet on earth's cheeks! I revive with Nature; her victory is mine. This is my
jewelry.
Thoreau often writes of the pewee. Here it is the first pewee of spring that he records for us
in vivid fashion.
[page 252] April 6. Just beyond Wood's Bridge, I hear the pewee. With what
confidence after the lapse of many months, I come out to this waterside, some
warm and pleasant spring morning, and, listening, hear, from farther or nearer,
through the still concave of the air, the note of the first pewee! If there is one
within half a mile, it will be here, and I shall be sure to hear its simple notes
from those trees, borne over the water. It is remarkable how large a mansion of
the air you can explore with your ears in the still morning by the waterside.
Thoreau used his sense of hearing to great effect on his walks. His reference to “seringo note” is that of the seringo bird which he talks about in six places in Volume 4 of his Journal (pages 18, 21, 26, 63, 70, and 161 of the Patrick F. O’Connell edition — Note: pages are numbered differently than the edition used for this review ).
[page 263] April 9. The air is full of birds, and as I go down the causeway, I
distinguish the seringo note. You have only to come forth each morning to be
surely advertised of each newcomer into these broad meadows. Many a larger
animal might be concealed, but a cunning ear detects the arrival of each new
species of bird.
Later in the spring, more bird listening plus a description of a clumsy woodchuck. Note how
he records the bloom of the cherry tree. He does this for many other blooms during the warm
months.
[page 336] May 15. As I sat by the Riordan crossing, thought it was the tanager
I heard? I think now, only because it is so early, that may have been the yellow-throat vireo.
See also, for a moment, in dry woods, a warbler with blue-slate head and
apparently all yellow beneath for a minute, nothing else conspicuous; note slight
like tseep, tseep, tseep, tseep, tsit sitter ra-re-ra, the last fast, on maples, etc. Maybe
I heard the same yesterday.
Northern wild red cherry out, cut by railroad; maybe a day or two
elsewhere. At Heywood Spring I see a clumsy woodchuck, now at 4 p. m., out
feeding, gray or grizzly above, brown beneath. It runs, or waddles, to its hole
two or three rods off, and as usual pauses, listening, at its entrance till I start
again, then dives in.
This next passage tickled me because I have noted a similar effort on the part of my friends to show me their things while hiding their selves from me directly. (I gather from the context that rare meat was considered unfinished and therefore not palatable to Thoreau.)
[page 348] May 19. If my friend would take a quarter part the pains to show me
himself that he does to show me a piece of roast beef, I should feel myself
irresistibly invited. He says, —
"Come and see
Roast beef and me."
I find the beef fat and well done, but him rare.
Thoreau had another friend who knew how to catch partridges with his bare hands. Apparently partridges rummage under leaves in the forest and his friend knew how to locate them and what to do next.
[page 355] May 24. Says he has caught as many as a dozen partridges in his
hands. He lies right down on them, or where he knows them to be, then passes
his hands back and forth under his body till he feels them. You must not lift
your body at all or they will surely squeeze out, and when you feel one must be
sure you get hold of their legs or head, and not feathers merely.
In another lyrical flight Thoreau describes the shadows thrown by a passing cloud with a hint
of lightning in the offing.
[page 372] June 9. Without an umbrella, thinking the weather settled at last.
There are some large cumuli with glowing downy cheeks floating about. Now
I notice where an elm is in the shadow of a cloud, — the black elm-tops and
shadows of June. It is a dark eyelash which suggests a flashing eye beneath. It
suggests houses that lie under the shade, the repose and siesta of summer noons,
the thunder-cloud, bathing, and all that belongs to summer. These veils are now
spread here and there over the village. It suggests also the creak of crickets, a
June sound now fairly begun, inducing contemplation and philosophic thoughts,
— the sultry hum of insects.
Thoreau mentions bathing in various bodies of water throughout his Journal, but this passage
describes his bathing in some detail.
[page 424] July 23. Bathing in Walden, I find the water considerably colder at
the bottom while I stand up to my chin, but the sandy bottom much warmer to
my feet than the water. The heat passes through the water without being
absorbed by it much.
Earlier Thoreau had noted the retribution that the wolves and crows had heaped upon their
brethren, so it is fitting that he adds this anecdote about the sacrifice of a swallow which helps
another swallow survive to fly another day.
[page 433] Pratt says he one day walked out with Wesson, with their rifles, as
far as Hunt's Bridge. Looking downstream, he saw a swallow sitting on a bush
very far off, at which he took aim and fired with ball. He was surprised to see
that he had touched the swallow, for it flew directly across the river toward
Simon Brown's barn, always descending toward the earth or water, not being
able to maintain itself; but what surprised him most was to see a second swallow
come flying behind and repeatedly strike the other with all his force beneath,
so as to toss him up as often as he approached the ground and enable him to
continue his flight, and thus he continued to do till they were out of sight. Pratt
said he resolved that he would never fire at a swallow again.
Thoreau was fooled by the playing of a new instrument called the calliope, thinking it was
nearby children tooting on what he called “pumpkin stems,” apparently homemade flutes.
[page 449] Heard this forenoon what I thought at first to be children playing on
pumpkin stems in the next yard, but it turned out to be the new steam-whistle
music, what they call the Calliope (!) In the next town. It sounded still more like
the pumpkin stem near at hand, only a good deal louder. . . . At Acton, six miles
off, it sounded like some new seraphim in the next house with the blinds closed.
All the milkmen and their horses stood still to hear it.
And now for a sample of Thoreau's broad knowledge of plant species. He is able to recognize
a third species of a plant I have never heard of and describes its petioles, whatever those are.
[page 463] Aug. 12. Am surprised to see still a third species or variety of
helianthus (which may have opened near August 1st, say only a week). Only the
first flowers out. At edge of the last clearing south of spring. I cannot identify
it. It has very short but not margined petioles; leaves narrower than yesterday's,
and rough beneath as well as above. The outer scales of involucre a little the
longest; but I think this of little importance, for the involucre of the H.
divaricatus is very variable, hardly two alike; rays about ten In some respects
it is most like H. strumosus, but not downy beneath.
Another year spent shadowing Henry David Thoreau in his rounds of the woods, streams, and
lakes of his beloved Concord and environs. We shivered through the big snow winter of 1856, the
worst since 1780. We know that because his uncle was born during one big snow winter and died
during the other. We caught glimpses of him remembering his mother on one occasion and his father
on another. We attended the funeral of a great elm tree and read the obituary and eulogy he wrote
for the tree. We dogged his heels from November through August and what did we learn? We
learned that walking with Henry is never dull — there is always some adventure, some lesson for
him to learn in his university of the world, and we are blessed with the opportunity to audit he
courses he is taking.
---------------------------- Footnotes -----------------------------------------
Footnote 1. Translates to "Concerning the dead, people should say nothing except good." Thoreau's note indicates "great
good" to be spoken of the elm tree.
Return to text directly before Footnote 1.
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Footnote 1. One of Matherne’s Rules is EAT-O-TWIST which is an acronym for the process: Everything Allways Turns Out The Way It’s Supposed To. Thoreau points to this process here.
Return to text directly before Footnote 2.
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To Read Other Volumes of Thoreau's Journals:
Vol. 1,
Vol. 2,
Vol. 3,
Vol. 4,
Vol. 5,
Vol. 6,
Vol. 7
Vol. 8,
Vol. 9,
Vol. 10,
Vol. 11,
Vol. 12,
Vol. 13,
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Any questions about this review, Contact: Bobby Matherne
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