Thoreau Farm

Thaw – the thermal yo-yo rises. This morning the air is still and grey and the remaining snow looks like shucked-off clothing. Along the winter-black river, the ice that was edging out into the current has pulled back, and the ice-collars on the waterside trees drip drip drip.

Even Mt. Washington, where a few days back the wind-chill dropped below -50 degrees farenheit, is melting. I look at the water-thick air through the lens of one of the mountain observatory’s weather-cams – more grey; everything running downhill.

As happens to those whose 3rd-eye is turned always to the weather, I begin to wonder about this warmth, linking it reflexively with the daily stories of climate change, the warming that spreads out from our bodies and intent. And, as corrective, I remind myself again of the gulf between the immediate weather and the climate, that I would be a ninny to attribute daily variation to global shift.

And yet as a creature of the immediate, given global information, I can’t help but make this linkage. Perhaps that’s one reason why, as a sort of time-spanning outrigger, I read for balance a little each day from Thoreau’s journal. Right now, I’m following along through January, 1854, and the 159-year straddle across days brings me to this:

Jan. 13. Still warm and thawing, springlike; no freezing in the night, though high winds…These thawing days must have been to some extent lichen days too.

Lichen Days Along the River

Yes, it’s January’s thaw, New England tradition, and in that year there are two within January’s first two weeks; and in this false spring, Thoreau is out and about, looking closely at what stirs and what is revealed. Just as in the middle of a snowstorm, we pay attention to the snow, its shapes and swirls, lose sight of what it covers, now we see what presents above it as it shrinks – the dark tree-bark, the tan grasses, the grey-green lichen, the junco gleaning seed, the black specks of snow fleas. I am drawn into the little lives of the day. And in this fascination, I am free for a while from my large, time-hopping mind’s global habits.

And you, what do you see when the snows recede?

In the beginning of one of Walden’s winter chapters, Former Inhabitants; and Winter Visitors, Thoreau writes this: “For human society, I was obliged to conjure up the former inhabitants of these woods.”

In Maine, the snow has come and come again, followed by a preserving cold; on two nights the temperature has slipped below zero. So the snow, when walked upon or poked with a toe, is still fresh, still soft. But along the pathways in the woods of the Town Commons, someones have beaten a track, a record of passage, and each day I go out to walk with them.

Thoreau knew that in winter we often must conjure our company. Fewer people venture out, and those who do often seem to prefer to walk solo; they bend forward, hunch in; they study the slippery ground ahead. And he goes on to offer thumbnail sketches of these conjured folks. It turned out that Walden Woods had once been a thriving neighborhood for those most of the town’s “selectmen” didn’t want as neighbors – former slaves, migrants, those seized by drink – in a word, marginals. And Henry Thoreau, in repeopling his Walden with them, savors and walks too in this company, along these marginal ways.

Today again, this time at twilight, I’m out with the marginals, the company I would keep. It’s not that I expect to meet anyone or everyone, it’s rather that I will follow their tracks, and, as I do, I will wonder about them. The track through the white pines is hard packed; our passing feet have sculpted its bed with icy knobs and shallow depressions. As I walk, I adopt winter’s gait, a stride-shortened shuffle that keeps touch with the path, allowing my feet to “read” its slippery oddities; everyone who walks regularly in New England winter has such a gait.

At the first turn, a dog has cut its corner, leaving a small saffron apron the base of a tree. Others will follow. One boot print says that he pulled his “owner” in behind him. The straightaway that follows pulls me along under its pines that are tipped slightly to each other by their searches for light. Ahead, the light changes; I am nearing an open patch that signals pitch pines. Their short stature and sparse branching leave the sky alone, and across that sky’s fringe are the delicate, inked cirrus in the south. It is stillness and I stop.

The pitch pines are the color of smoke rising in columns from the white ground. The path winds on between them, through the sandy section where in summer the blueberries proliferate. There’s no one here, but I follow the prints of former inhabitants to the turn for home. Always, we walk in their prints.

Who’s out there with you when you walk in winter?

by Corinne H. Smith

“I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail. … Simplify, simplify.” ~ Henry D. Thoreau, Walden, “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For”

‘Tis the season for making resolutions. And if you happen to be on the prowl for suggestions for personal improvement, you need look no further than to Thoreau’s classic admonition to Simplify. He even clarified his statement with some additional advice: “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.” As with any of his sayings, this sentence is open to individual interpretation. What should we “let alone,” Henry? Our bad habits? Junk food? The tendency to become couch potatoes in front of glowing blue screens, hour after mesmerizing hour? (Darn that Facebook, anyway.)

For me, it’s about being bogged down by Stuff. All it takes is the process of moving to bring you face to face with how much junk you really have. In 2012, I was forced to move my household twice. That’s right. All of my possessions were moved twice in under six months. The first time was to another apartment in the same town. The second time was to a rental house in another state. In both instances, I did most of the work myself. I filled the cardboard boxes, carried them up and down several flights of stairs, and loaded them into the car or the U-Haul. When we reached our so-called final destination, I pulled everything out and stacked it into a room at random. Then it was off to repeat the process, ad infinitum. I didn’t have time to do any pre-move sorting. The save-or-toss decisions would have to come later.

Well, now it’s later. And a space that most decorators would call a “bonus room” is instead the “box room.” Dozens of them are piled high. This is the result of living more than fifty years on the planet. Here are some of my childhood toys and craft projects. Then, there are paperwork remnants of every job I’ve ever had. Add to it: the partial contents of the family home my father sold in 1994; the one my aunt and uncle sold in 2008; as well as residual tokens from the apartment of a deceased friend in 2010. There are four bins of piano music, even though the piano was left behind in Illinois in 2003. There are wedding presents I got in 1983, even though the marriage itself lasted only eight years. There are varying numbers of trinkets and knick-knacks. This landscape is the epitome of quiet desperation. I have no option but to simplify.

Inhabitants of the “bonus room”

I have two real-life role models in this endeavor. My friend Marie just went through a purge, when her house had been put up for sale and she herself was preparing to move. But I couldn’t resist when she called me to help her get rid of her extra office supplies. Now I need never buy another notebook or file folder. Another friend named Maud told me that she once faced the same problem with boxes from the past. Eventually, she took drastic measures and got rid of them without lifting a lid or peeking inside. She just made them disappear. I lack such courage.

Yes, Henry, I need to figure out what things I can afford to let alone, i.e. which items I can recycle or give away. In the time it took me to pen this post, I could have sorted through at least one box. I guess I have a priority problem, too.