Thoreau Farm

Sitting the Morning

Deep summer. Something seasonal stirs: light slants, a leaf turns, cool pools. And yet…on this morning, I lose sight of oncoming change and sit by the window in a shaft of sunlight; the day gains immediacy.

I am reminded of Thoreau’s stoop-sitting morning at the start of “Sounds” in Walden:

I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise until noon, rapt in revery, amidst the pines and the hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller’s wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night and they were far better than any work of hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance.

We are, I think, born to grow on the edge, or in the margins, whether of seasons or in the doorways of the various constructions we make. Thoreau sited his tiny house at Concord’s margin, and, on the morning described above, set himself in between the tiny house’s interior and Nature’s ‘big house.’ The birds recognized the seamless presence of the house as they equally “[sing] around or [flit] noiselessly through” it. Not so easily done by a human, however, and Thoreau must be “rapt in revery” to “[grow] in those seasons like corn in the night.”

By this window, the jay squalls; the cardinal whistles; I sit. May your deep summer contain like moments.