Author Archives: Sandy Stott

Perhaps I’ll offer confession later, but for now, a dropped jaw will have to do.

On November 7th the business world, at least its stock market manifestation, was agog with the public’s chance to buy into the future. At least the future in 140 or fewer characters. Offered at a mere $26 per share to begin, Twitter’s stock price soon reached the 40s, the sort of rise that suggests some interstellar tangent. Okay, we’d seen this wild, financial optimism, this placing of bets, before.

But what does Twitter do? “It shares,” might be one answer. “Shares what?” we ask, as we reach for our wallets. “It allows me to share what I am doing in real time.” Whose voice is that, we wonder. “Never mind,” says the exchequer of the wallet. “This stock is hot.”

As is often true when society sends up its party balloons and celebrates self, I turned to Henry Thoreau for perspective. He too wondered about our need to know the minutia of others’ lives, their daily gossip, even as he stopped into town to hear it and read newspapers avidly. Henry understood that our appetites, even for morsels of “news,” could get out of hand quickly.

And, of course, he did offer his “experiment” at the pond as example of pursuit of understanding and elevating “I.” But he avoided the short, banal expressions of “tweeting.”

Thoreau’s sentences often exceed 140 words; and when he does go short, we read Walden’s, “Our life is startlingly moral.” Or, “There is nothing inorganic.”

These are koan-like sentences to ponder.

I’ve read between lots of Thoreau’s lines and through his Journals, and I’ve yet to find this: b-fast porridge rockin the pond; AT back w/ “borrowed” Iliad; may walk later w/ EC; wonder bout my beard.

I’ll keep my wallet holstered.

Estabrook Woods: In November the downed leaves make a noisy pathway, and they hide the roots and stones, forcing me to pay attention. This repeated phrase is my late fall mantra. But sometimes, when I do look up, I find pale beauty in the understory. With the leafy canopy gone, light streams into this lower region, and there, it finds the pale fire of the burning bush and the parchment delicacy of the ferns.

In its suburban yard incarnation the burning bush is often just that, a fiery flare of red leaves that, depending upon the individual bush, either burst into short-lived flame or burn steadily for days. But in the woods the bush is a subtle fire, a pastel murmur of flame that keeps in it hints of green until deep autumn.

Now seems the right time to acknowledge that the burning bush is an invasive species; in some states (our Massachusetts, for example) it is even an outlaw. Nurseries are forbidden its sale, and occasional posses of citizens root out clusters where they are found.

Here, I may start a fire of my own, but, in this case, I can’t summon alarm. In fact the whole invasive species argument seems to me arbitrary, as the floral and faunal history of the world seems one of migration rather than homesteading. Yes, I will agree that in some cases where a purple loosestrife or a water chestnut crowds out all competitors and changes a whole land- or waterscape, I feel regret. As a fan of goldenrod, for example, I rue the way some late summer fields that used to say gold now speak purple. (Added note: recently I read – and now can’t rediscover – that goldenrod is the most (or second-most) noted plant in Thoreau’s journals).

But are not we also an invasive species? Certainly in our subgroups we are, riding like so many Huns or Visigoths into the “open” territory of some other peoples and animals and declaring it open for our business.

In any event, each fall as I walk these woods, and especially as I reach the old limekiln site along the Carlisle Road, I spend time with the pink and pale fire that burns in the understory air and lights the ground. If you step into the midst of this cluster with the sun slanting in from the west, the light is so intense it feels warm, even as the wind rackets coldly in the bare branches high above.

Part of the Old Limekiln Site

Added note: help, by the way, is on the way. A horticultural scientist at the University of Connecticut has developed a sterile version of the burning bush. Soon, perhaps, as sales of these popular bushes continue, their seeds, spread by birds who eat them, will fall on the cold earth and nothing will rise from them.

a meditation on “Higher Laws”

Walden’s Higher Laws chapter rarely fails to provoke (and so, wake up?) a reader. Year after year, we arrive on its shores, and I watch as students shift from nodding acceptance of Thoreau’s portrait of the young boy as hunter and fisher to puzzlement (or outrage) when, late in chapter, he writes, “Nature is hard to be overcome but she must be overcome.” After weeks in the woods and an ongoing paean to “the wild,” this sentence seems a looped snare in the middle of the trail. Here we are, walking our leafy way through the woods, when, suddenly, we are airborne…and upside down. It seems a hard way to “invert your head.”

So there we were leafing through the chapter with these predictable results, and I had asked, “So, what might Thoreau mean when he says, ‘she must be overcome?'”

“So, perhaps,” said Daniel, “what Thoreau is talking about is the shift from hunter to poet. The poet still reaches out to take hold of the world, but he does so with words. The instinct is undimmed, but its expression has changed.” Mild confession: here, I have paraphrased, but I think I have caught the insight and the spirit of Daniel’s thinking.

Quiet ensued. Every so often in a classroom, there comes a moment of appreciative silence; the oiled click of so many locks sliding open is barely but clearly audible. In an instant, we know more. In the next instant there is nothing more to say, and we let the silence deepen for a bit before we turn to what’s next.

What the Poet-hunter Seeks

Now and for the rest of the years I read and reread this chapter, I’ll see the hunter become poet as he or she fashions the capture-cage of words that would both bring the wild close and leave it intact. Thank you, Daniel.

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