Category Archives: Thoreau Quote

Firstling

Posted on December 31, 2015 by Sandy Stott | 1 comment

It is, as the Roman god Janus is said to remind us, the time for looking backward and forward. And, for a two-faced god, or a weary human, looking one way inflects the other. In such a state it can be hard to inhabit the present. Resolution hotfoots it into the past or the future.

Enter the walking (or skating) man, Henry Thoreau, who lived the stuff of resolution – “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, and front only the essential facts of life…” – but who rooted that resolution firmly in the immediate. Reduced to a somewhat inelegant phrasing, Thoreau’s life might be contained by this command: Be here fully, now.

What, I wonder, did Henry Thoreau make of New Year’s day?

I pull out all the journals and align them chronologically; I make sure too that I have my buck knife, reserved on indoor days for the opening of still-joined pages, should I encounter some. Then, I begin to leaf through the years 1850 to 1861, years of prolific output and years when Thoreau attached his journal-writing firmly to dates. Specifically, I want to see those years’ endings and beginnings. How did Henry Thoreau ring out the old and write in the new? Did he even mention something as arbitrarily imposed as a “new year?” Or was the calendrical shift seamless, unmentioned as he opened his door on simply another day, which was simply another chance to walk out into and see the world?

Part of the scatter. With a bonus view of a piece of my step-sister Anne’s pottery.

Page-turning (and occasional page-slicing) ensues. I work my way through this marvelous decade+ of expression, getting sidetracked sometimes by a flash of insight, an apt phrasing, a shiver of recognition.

It is just as I suspected – there’s no ringing out of old or in of new; these years (and others) are fused as neatly as uncut pages. I draw my knife along one joined set, pulling its edge smoothly, carefully toward me; the pages part. I set aside the knife, and begin to read as 1854 becomes 1855.

Both days are river-days, which is to say too they are outside days:

Dec. 31. P.M. — On river to Fair Haven Pond.

Jan. 1. P.M. — Skated to Pantry brook with C.

And one offers a near-ecstatic wheel of color, a feast for eyes. The other has a slightly grumpy tone. Sounds like the present, like everyday life to me.

Here is each in its entirety:

1/31/54: On the river to Fair Haven Pond. A beautiful, clear, not very cold day. The shadows on the snow are indigo-blue. The pines look very dark. The white oak leaves are a cinnamon-color, the black and red (?) oak leaves a reddish brown or leather-color. I see mice and rabbit and fox tracks on the meadow. Once a partridge rises from the alders and skims across the river at its widest part just before me; a fine sight. On the edge of A. Wheeler’s cranberry meadow I see the track of an otter made since yesterday morning. How glorious the perfect stillness and peace of the winter landscape!
1/1/55: Skated to Pantry Brook with C. All the tolerable skating was a narrow strip, often only two or three feet wide, between the frozen spew and the broken ice of the middle.

Just so life: one day stopped with exclamation; another day threading the tolerable between the spew and broken ice. Always present.

Best wishes to you for the immediate.

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Posted in Arts, Environment, General, Henry David Thoreau, Literature, Living Deliberately, Nature, News and Events, The Roost, Thoreau Quote, Walden

Perhaps…Poems

Posted on December 24, 2015 by Sandy Stott | 3 comments

Perhaps…

…you too scrolled through the list of favorite poems cited by various notables the other day (12/23) on the NY Times site.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/27/books/review/whats-your-favorite-poem.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=mini-moth®ion=top-stories-below&WT.nav=top-stories-below

Given some modest holiday travel, some seasonal spirit and the general retrospection of this time of year, I thought it might be fun to offer the same chance here.

Henry Thoreau began his writings as a poet, and, while he made his name as a prose writer, it’s also clear that poetry never left his heart or mind – so much of his work has the stir of poetry in it.

Here then, is a short, predictive poem Henry Thoreau published in The Dial (1840-44). I’ve always loved its reminder:

My life has been the poem I would have writ,
But I could not both live and utter it.

And here is a favorite of mine with a sweet, little backstory.

In my early 40s, I received a slim, wrapped present for my birthday from my father. Though he read little poetry himself, he knew I loved and read many poets and poems. He knew also that Mary Oliver was my favorite. I unwrapped the gift, a copy of The Night Traveller, a hard-to-find early chapbook of Oliver’s poetry. The gift deepened when I opened the chapbook: There, on the formerly blank backside of the cover was a handwritten version of the poem you’ll find below. The handwriting belonged to Mary Oliver, and I found also a little birthday note from her. My father had, with a kind determination he showed all his life, found Mary Oliver and, clearly, touched her with his request for his son.

That gift became a recurring one for me: Mary Oliver became a regular contributor to the journal I edited, and, during that decade, her letters also included various asides about dogs and woodlands, affections we shared.

Some Questions You Might Ask

by Mary Oliver

Is the soul solid, like iron?
Or is it tender and breakable, like
the wings of a moth in the beak of the owl?
Who has it, and who doesn’t?
I keep looking around me.
The face of the moose is as sad
as the face of Jesus.
The swan opens her white wings slowly.
In the fall, the black bear carries leaves into the darkness.
One question leads to another.
Does it have a shape? Like an iceberg?
Like the eye of a hummingbird?
Does it have one lung, like the snake and the scallop?
Why should I have it, and not the anteater
who loves her children?
Why should I have it, and not the camel?
Come to think of it, what about the maple trees?
What about the blue iris?
What about all the little stones, sitting alone in the moonlight?
What about roses, and lemons, and their shining leaves?
What about the grass?

And here is another link to Robert Pinsky’s brilliant Favorite Poem Project, begun while he was U.S Poet Laureate. For the project all sorts of people choose and recite a favorite poem; it is simply inspiring, as well as being great fun: http://www.favoritepoem.org/

And you? We welcome your thoughts, favorite poems, links.

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Posted in Arts, Environment, General, Henry David Thoreau, Literature, Living Deliberately, Nature, The Roost, Thoreau Quote

Faith in a Seed (of Light) – Two Solstice Stories

Posted on December 21, 2015 by Sandy Stott | Comments Off

“I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.” Henry Thoreau

Sisyphus at Solstice

Well that was, as always, a long way down to where the year’s slope relaxes and my stone is still.

But here’s a day of rest at the bottom; then, I get to begin the work I like, pushing this glowing rock uphill, seeing it add to each day a thumbnail’s worth of light on both margins. From here to the stretched light of summer’s a long climb. But that climb begins right after 11:49 p.m. on the 21st.; we top out next year on June 20th.

It’s not that I mind going downhill into this dark nick in time. Every day’s a gift, and I’ve said often that November’s long sightlines make it my favorite month. But like all my breathing brethren, I like also the light that rims each growing day, and I like the easy warmth it suggests may come.

Mostly, however, as I imagine my part in rolling this light up toward the sky, I like the direction – uphill is all about life; climbing is living. And so being put to this stony task seems also the greatest gift imaginable. Who wouldn’t go gladly, day in, day out, to this work?

What is funny, I reflect while testing shoulder to stone, rocking it a little, is that the old gods thought they’d devised the perfect torment when they set me this work. They thought it all added up to nothing. But they, in their haste, gave me a stone that’s round and weighted nicely to my strength. And they gave me – bless them, foremost – a hill to climb. And then, as if those gifts weren’t enough, I got also two days of pause, this near one down here at bottom, the other in the high country of summer light. Solstices.

And I get to do this forever.

Second Solstice Story

The season’s low-angled sun

The other evening, as a rare (for this year) cold front blew in, we went to a solstice party. Even as we took the narrowing roads that went finally to dirt, the lid of darkness slipped over the land; strings of lights stirred and winked in the wind. The house was warm and food-filled, and the small percussions of exclamation and laughter added to that warmth. We burn words too against darkness.

Later in the evening everyone bundled on coats and trundled back outside…for a celebration of light. A fire burned in an outdoor chiminea, but the wind quickly snuffed the candles and lanterns we carried; a few headlamps flashed on. We listened to the sweet voice of a child as he joined his mother in singing a nursery school song about light. Then, we held copies of a Wendell Berry piece aloft to catch the headlamp light and read together about an enduring sycamore he knows. Our murmur of voices threaded the wind.

Our eyes turned then toward the yard, where our host prepared an unsanctioned evocation of light that he promised would bring “slightly longer days starting soon. Just watch,” he said.

We looked up, as if from the bottom of a long well; the half-moon slipped behind a flying cloud; it was gone. Then, in rapid succession – green, red, blue, gold, gold again – little orbs of light raced up into the sky, where they blew into bright cinders that arced slowly back our way. The Roman Candles gave way then to the fizzing rise of three streaks against the night’s slate, and, above our upturned faces, each opened with a soft pop into starburst. Again, again, again.

Evocation of light drifted over the dark pines and settled down, seeding our minds.

Reading to the end brings this little reward

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Posted in Arts, Environment, General, Henry David Thoreau, Living Deliberately, Nature, News and Events, The Roost, Thoreau Quote