Thoreau Farm

A Story

My ongoing tracery of Thoreau’s winter of 1854 has carried me to this short-long month in the season’s belly. Like our current winter, 1854’s featured some wild swings – from thaw to freeze, with one morning reading of -19 degrees, from long blue horizons to thick snows, and from walking the winding river to trailing along reading’s lines. And early February of ’54 also contained detailed entries about Thoreau’s gleanings from one Ephraim Jones’ hundred-year-old ledgers, a record of Concord’s wilder days when farmers and hunters still traded wildcat pelts, among other items. Thoreau read and recorded from these ledgers avidly.

As I’ve read through his days, (I’m now some two weeks behind the rush of our current year; I am in no hurry), I’ve noticed how readily Thoreau shifts from the findings of his daily walks to those from his daily readings. A mink’s prints along the riverbank lead to words drawn from Varro…and those words lead back out into the woods where a rabbit’s curious pauses suggest that he may have “whirled around.” Even as he walks abroad, Thoreau burrows into and pulls up lives from the past in these books and ledgers: “Hezekiah Stratton has credit in 1743, ‘Feb. 7 by 1/2 a Catt skin 0-1-4 1/2,’ of course a wildcat.”

“Of course a wildcat.” What, I wonder, does it take to bring a wildcat to life from an old ledger? What quality of imagination finds life equally in a line of prints and the print of a line?

“Howitt says that in Britain ‘the law is opposed to tracking game in a snow.’ I feel some pity for the wild animals when I see how their tracks betray them in calm weather after a snowstorm, and consider what risks they run of being exterminated.

Is not January alone pure winter? December belongs to the fall; is a wintry November: February to the spring; it is a snowy March.

The water was several inches deep in the road last evening, but it has run nearly dry by morning. The illustrious farmer Romans who lived simply on their land, to whom Columella refers are Q. Cincinnatus, C. Fabricius, and Curius Dentatus.” Journal, 2/9/54

Wild animals, thaws and snows, Roman farmers – they are all alive together in the terrain of this mind whose tracks line the page before me; this afternoon, I will go look to see what has passed along the river before the next storm blows in.

What are you seeing and reading, these winter days? Who’s alive in your mind?

By Corinne H. Smith

“The question is not what you look at but how you look & whether you see.” ~ Thoreau’s journal entry, August 5, 1851

One January day, I put water in the kettle and turned up the heat. While I waited for the boil, I stared out of the kitchen window at nothing. It was a cloudy winter afternoon, and the back yard was shaded in tones of brown. Brown trees grew out of brown grass in front of a brown-gray fence. A pile of brown leaves and compost stood nearby. Soon I would be slurping my hot brown tea to ward off the brisk brown chill.

A flash of brown and white dropped from a tree. It was a hawk, aiming for his lunch. “Wow, a hawk!” I cried to my father. “Come here, quick!” But the guy outside must have missed whatever prey he was after, because he quickly flew out of view, with empty talons. My father wasn’t fast enough. “Never mind, he’s gone now,” I said, as Daddy came up behind me. “He was a big one, though.”

My father and I were newly reunited, and we were still learning each other’s habits. I had been teaching him about hawks, my favorite birds. I love to drive around and spot them sitting in trees, especially at this time of year, when no leaves impede their view, or mine. A few days earlier, I had gone out of my way to pull our car into a convenience store parking lot, just to show my father the beautiful red-tailed hawk who was perched on the gasoline price sign. Hundreds of oblivious others just drove past. My father was getting used to hearing, “Look, there’s a hawk! See it?”

I filled my brown teapot and resumed my window post. I hoped the hawk was still in the area, and that we’d get another chance to see him. Sure enough, there was an extra glob of brown out there. The hawk had returned, and he was sitting on our wooden fence. I called my father back. It took more than a minute of my pointing and explaining for him to see the hawk. But he did. And then the bird took off again. He was magnificent.

Someone in my past used to needle me because I was always saying, “look and see.” He maintained that the two words held exactly the same meaning, and that I was therefore being forever redundant. I could never quite convey to him just how different the concepts of “look” and “see” are. Henry Thoreau certainly knew the distinction. Anyone can LOOK by directing her eyes toward an object. To truly SEE something requires perspective, position (location and opportunity), patience, and practice.

Weeks later, as I put the finishing touches on this post, I walked out to the kitchen again to get more tea. My eyes were drawn back to the window while my cup was circling in the microwave. I was thinking of the hawk and wondering where he’d gone. Just then I realized that he had come back! Again, he was sitting on our fence, right where we’d seen him before. Now it didn’t take as long for my father to find him, and we even had enough time to grab the binoculars and bird identification books. But not the camera. Next time, for sure. And the next time we may also be able to verify that our visitor is a broad-winged hawk.

Broad-winged Hawk

We spend most of our waking hours passing through familiar territory: our homes, our cars, our commute routes, our schools and workplaces. We know these landscapes so well that we need only to glance at their edges in order to sleep-walk along their paths and through our routines. But what’s beneath these surfaces? What’s using camouflage to blend in with its environment? What are we missing, day after day? .

“To be awake is to be alive,” Thoreau told us. Stop. Look. Go beyond the familiar. Scrutinize. Open yourself up to further possibilities. You may very well see something remarkable. A hawk may be waiting.

“Feb 4. F. Brown showed me this afternoon his game killed day before yesterday — a gray hare, a gray squirrel and a red squirrel…The gray was a fine large fellow in good condition; weighed one pound and a quarter…and his tail still perfectly and beautifully curved over his back. It recovered its place when you stroked it, as if it were full of electricity.” Henry Thoreau, Journal, 1854

A number of years ago, when wolf-advocacy groups were first making their case for this canid’s return to our region, I went to a lecture (and showing) by Wild Sentry at the Thoreau Institute. The talk took place in a crowded central hall (there must have been around 100 people there), and it treated the audience to various arguments and facts for this topline predator’s recovery or restoration in the ungulate-heavy woods of the northeast. But most of us were already persuaded of this need, and so we were there for the star of the show, a wolf rescued and sheltered by the presenters. He would descend the central staircase after the talk; in an odd cultural inversion, it would be a “runway moment.”

For this evening, I was carrying a local press pass, and so I got a few moments behind the scenes. Outside, before the talk, I met Koani, a 100-pound, 6-year-old black wolf. By now an experienced “ambassador,” Koani still seemed a little uncertain about the hand I extended so she could sniff it. But then, after a long sniff, she raised and stretched out her right paw to ask for a pat. Long silly about dogs, I was delighted. And, as I ran my hand along Koani’s back, I was surprised – the fur beneath my palm was wiry and stiff; it was unlike any fur I’d patted before. There, in the dark, I had my hand on a wildness that had been absent from New England since the last wolf in Maine was killed in 1909. “Welcome back,” I said.

Koani

This moment came back to me while reading Thoreau’s journal and the entry excerpted in this posting. Thoreau is always reaching out with his hands, picking up this pinecone, examining that flower, and here, when presented with a squirrel’s tail “still perfectly and beautifully curved over his back,” Thoreau strokes it. And “it recovered its place…as if it were full of electricity.”

All of this reminds me what it is to be in touch with the world. Today, while I walked, it reminded me to run my hands over the rough, corrugated bark of a large white pine.

Odd Note about Touch: Once I’d written this posting, I did what I often do when I’ve referred to a group or a program – I googled them. At the top of a list of results, I found a movie, True Wolf…that Pat Tucker and Bruce Weide, the two people of what they called “their pack” – themselves, a wolf (Koani) and a dog – have made about their experiences teaching people about wolves for 16 years. Here’s the link: http://www.truewolfmovie.com/

Official Movie Poster – True Wolf