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Produced by Q Myers | |
WALKING | |
by Henry David Thoreau | |
I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as | |
contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil--to regard man as | |
an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member | |
of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make | |
an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the | |
minister and the school committee and every one of you will take care of | |
that. | |
I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who | |
understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks--who had a | |
genius, so to speak, for SAUNTERING, which word is beautifully derived | |
"from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and | |
asked charity, under pretense of going a la Sainte Terre," to the Holy | |
Land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a Sainte-Terrer," a | |
Saunterer, a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their | |
walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they | |
who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, | |
however, would derive the word from sans terre without land or a home, | |
which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular | |
home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of | |
successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be | |
the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is | |
no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while | |
sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea. But I prefer the | |
first, which, indeed, is the most probable derivation. For every walk is | |
a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth | |
and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels. | |
It is true, we are but faint-hearted crusaders, even the walkers, | |
nowadays, who undertake no persevering, never-ending enterprises. Our | |
expeditions are but tours, and come round again at evening to the old | |
hearth-side from which we set out. Half the walk is but retracing our | |
steps. We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the | |
spirit of undying adventure, never to return--prepared to send back | |
our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms. If you are | |
ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife | |
and child and friends, and never see them again--if you have paid your | |
debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free | |
man--then you are ready for a walk. | |
To come down to my own experience, my companion and I, for I sometimes | |
have a companion, take pleasure in fancying ourselves knights of a new, | |
or rather an old, order--not Equestrians or Chevaliers, not Ritters or | |
Riders, but Walkers, a still more ancient and honorable class, I trust. | |
The Chivalric and heroic spirit which once belonged to the Rider seems | |
now to reside in, or perchance to have subsided into, the Walker--not | |
the Knight, but Walker, Errant. He is a sort of fourth estate, outside | |
of Church and State and People. | |
We have felt that we almost alone hereabouts practiced this noble art; | |
though, to tell the truth, at least if their own assertions are to be | |
received, most of my townsmen would fain walk sometimes, as I do, but | |
they cannot. No wealth can buy the requisite leisure, freedom, and | |
independence which are the capital in this profession. It comes only | |
by the grace of God. It requires a direct dispensation from Heaven | |
to become a walker. You must be born into the family of the Walkers. | |
Ambulator nascitur, non fit. Some of my townsmen, it is true, can | |
remember and have described to me some walks which they took ten years | |
ago, in which they were so blessed as to lose themselves for half | |
an hour in the woods; but I know very well that they have confined | |
themselves to the highway ever since, whatever pretensions they may make | |
to belong to this select class. No doubt they were elevated for a moment | |
as by the reminiscence of a previous state of existence, when even they | |
were foresters and outlaws. | |
"When he came to grene wode, | |
In a mery mornynge, | |
There he herde the notes small | |
Of byrdes mery syngynge. | |
"It is ferre gone, sayd Robyn, | |
That I was last here; | |
Me Lyste a lytell for to shote | |
At the donne dere." | |
I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend | |
four hours a day at least--and it is commonly more than that--sauntering | |
through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from | |
all worldly engagements. You may safely say, A penny for your thoughts, | |
or a thousand pounds. When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics | |
and shopkeepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all | |
the afternoon too, sitting with crossed legs, so many of them--as if the | |
legs were made to sit upon, and not to stand or walk upon--I think that | |
they deserve some credit for not having all committed suicide long ago. | |
I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without acquiring some | |
rust, and when sometimes I have stolen forth for a walk at the eleventh | |
hour, or four o'clock in the afternoon, too late to redeem the day, | |
when the shades of night were already beginning to be mingled with the | |
daylight, have felt as if I had committed some sin to be atoned for,--I | |
confess that I am astonished at the power of endurance, to say nothing | |
of the moral insensibility, of my neighbors who confine themselves to | |
shops and offices the whole day for weeks and months, aye, and years | |
almost together. I know not what manner of stuff they are of--sitting | |
there now at three o'clock in the afternoon, as if it were three o'clock | |
in the morning. Bonaparte may talk of the three-o'clock-in-the-morning | |
courage, but it is nothing to the courage which can sit down cheerfully | |
at this hour in the afternoon over against one's self whom you have | |
known all the morning, to starve out a garrison to whom you are bound | |
by such strong ties of sympathy. I wonder that about this time, or say | |
between four and five o'clock in the afternoon, too late for the morning | |
papers and too early for the evening ones, there is not a general | |
explosion heard up and down the street, scattering a legion of | |
antiquated and house-bred notions and whims to the four winds for an | |
airing-and so the evil cure itself. | |
How womankind, who are confined to the house still more than men, stand | |
it I do not know; but I have ground to suspect that most of them do not | |
STAND it at all. When, early in a summer afternoon, we have been shaking | |
the dust of the village from the skirts of our garments, making haste | |
past those houses with purely Doric or Gothic fronts, which have such | |
an air of repose about them, my companion whispers that probably about | |
these times their occupants are all gone to bed. Then it is that I | |
appreciate the beauty and the glory of architecture, which itself never | |
turns in, but forever stands out and erect, keeping watch over the | |
slumberers. | |
No doubt temperament, and, above all, age, have a good deal to do with | |
it. As a man grows older, his ability to sit still and follow indoor | |
occupations increases. He grows vespertinal in his habits as the | |
evening of life approaches, till at last he comes forth only just before | |
sundown, and gets all the walk that he requires in half an hour. | |
But the walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking | |
exercise, as it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated hours--as | |
the Swinging of dumb-bells or chairs; but is itself the enterprise and | |
adventure of the day. If you would get exercise, go in search of the | |
springs of life. Think of a man's swinging dumbbells for his health, | |
when those springs are bubbling up in far-off pastures unsought by him! | |
Moreover, you must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast | |
which ruminates when walking. When a traveler asked Wordsworth's servant | |
to show him her master's study, she answered, "Here is his library, but | |
his study is out of doors." | |
Living much out of doors, in the sun and wind, will no doubt produce | |
a certain roughness of character--will cause a thicker cuticle to grow | |
over some of the finer qualities of our nature, as on the face and | |
hands, or as severe manual labor robs the hands of some of their | |
delicacy of touch. So staying in the house, on the other hand, may | |
produce a softness and smoothness, not to say thinness of skin, | |
accompanied by an increased sensibility to certain impressions. Perhaps | |
we should be more susceptible to some influences important to our | |
intellectual and moral growth, if the sun had shone and the wind blown | |
on us a little less; and no doubt it is a nice matter to proportion | |
rightly the thick and thin skin. But methinks that is a scurf that will | |
fall off fast enough--that the natural remedy is to be found in the | |
proportion which the night bears to the day, the winter to the summer, | |
thought to experience. There will be so much the more air and sunshine | |
in our thoughts. The callous palms of the laborer are conversant with | |
finer tissues of self-respect and heroism, whose touch thrills the | |
heart, than the languid fingers of idleness. That is mere sentimentality | |
that lies abed by day and thinks itself white, far from the tan and | |
callus of experience. | |
When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods: what would become | |
of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall? Even some sects | |
of philosophers have felt the necessity of importing the woods to | |
themselves, since they did not go to the woods. "They planted groves and | |
walks of Platanes," where they took subdiales ambulationes in porticos | |
open to the air. Of course it is of no use to direct our steps to the | |
woods, if they do not carry us thither. I am alarmed when it happens | |
that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there | |
in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning | |
occupations and my obligations to Society. But it sometimes happens that | |
I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run | |
in my head and I am not where my body is--I am out of my senses. In | |
my walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the | |
woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods? I suspect myself, | |
and cannot help a shudder when I find myself so implicated even in what | |
are called good works--for this may sometimes happen. | |
My vicinity affords many good walks; and though for so many years I have | |
walked almost every day, and sometimes for several days together, I have | |
not yet exhausted them. An absolutely new prospect is a great happiness, | |
and I can still get this any afternoon. Two or three hours' walking | |
will carry me to as strange a country as I expect ever to see. A single | |
farmhouse which I had not seen before is sometimes as good as the | |
dominions of the King of Dahomey. There is in fact a sort of harmony | |
discoverable between the capabilities of the landscape within a circle | |
of ten miles' radius, or the limits of an afternoon walk, and the | |
threescore years and ten of human life. It will never become quite | |
familiar to you. | |
Nowadays almost all man's improvements, so called, as the building of | |
houses and the cutting down of the forest and of all large trees, simply | |
deform the landscape, and make it more and more tame and cheap. A people | |
who would begin by burning the fences and let the forest stand! I saw | |
the fences half consumed, their ends lost in the middle of the prairie, | |
and some worldly miser with a surveyor looking after his bounds, while | |
heaven had taken place around him, and he did not see the angels | |
going to and fro, but was looking for an old post-hole in the midst of | |
paradise. I looked again, and saw him standing in the middle of a boggy | |
Stygian fen, surrounded by devils, and he had found his bounds without | |
a doubt, three little stones, where a stake had been driven, and looking | |
nearer, I saw that the Prince of Darkness was his surveyor. | |
I can easily walk ten, fifteen, twenty, any number of miles, commencing | |
at my own door, without going by any house, without crossing a road | |
except where the fox and the mink do: first along by the river, and then | |
the brook, and then the meadow and the woodside. There are square miles | |
in my vicinity which have no inhabitant. From many a hill I can see | |
civilization and the abodes of man afar. The farmers and their works | |
are scarcely more obvious than woodchucks and their burrows. Man and | |
his affairs, church and state and school, trade and commerce, and | |
manufactures and agriculture even politics, the most alarming of them | |
all--I am pleased to see how little space they occupy in the landscape. | |
Politics is but a narrow field, and that still narrower highway yonder | |
leads to it. I sometimes direct the traveler thither. If you would go to | |
the political world, follow the great road--follow that market-man, keep | |
his dust in your eyes, and it will lead you straight to it; for it, too, | |
has its place merely, and does not occupy all space. I pass from it as | |
from a bean field into the forest, and it is forgotten. In one half-hour | |
I can walk off to some portion of the earth's surface where a man does | |
not stand from one year's end to another, and there, consequently, | |
politics are not, for they are but as the cigar-smoke of a man. | |
The village is the place to which the roads tend, a sort of expansion of | |
the highway, as a lake of a river. It is the body of which roads are | |
the arms and legs--a trivial or quadrivial place, the thoroughfare and | |
ordinary of travelers. The word is from the Latin villa which together | |
with via, a way, or more anciently ved and vella, Varro derives from | |
veho, to carry, because the villa is the place to and from which things | |
are carried. They who got their living by teaming were said vellaturam | |
facere. Hence, too, the Latin word vilis and our vile, also villain. | |
This suggests what kind of degeneracy villagers are liable to. They | |
are wayworn by the travel that goes by and over them, without traveling | |
themselves. | |
Some do not walk at all; others walk in the highways; a few walk across | |
lots. Roads are made for horses and men of business. I do not travel | |
in them much, comparatively, because I am not in a hurry to get to any | |
tavern or grocery or livery-stable or depot to which they lead. I am | |
a good horse to travel, but not from choice a roadster. The | |
landscape-painter uses the figures of men to mark a road. He would not | |
make that use of my figure. I walk out into a nature such as the old | |
prophets and poets, Menu, Moses, Homer, Chaucer, walked in. You may | |
name it America, but it is not America; neither Americus Vespueius, | |
nor Columbus, nor the rest were the discoverers of it. There is a truer | |
amount of it in mythology than in any history of America, so called, | |
that I have seen. | |
However, there are a few old roads that may be trodden with profit, as | |
if they led somewhere now that they are nearly discontinued. There | |
is the Old Marlborough Road, which does not go to Marlborough now, | |
me-thinks, unless that is Marlborough where it carries me. I am the | |
bolder to speak of it here, because I presume that there are one or two | |
such roads in every town. | |
THE OLD MARLBOROUGH ROAD | |
Where they once dug for money, | |
But never found any; | |
Where sometimes Martial Miles | |
Singly files, | |
And Elijah Wood, | |
I fear for no good: | |
No other man, | |
Save Elisha Dugan-- | |
O man of wild habits, | |
Partridges and rabbits | |
Who hast no cares | |
Only to set snares, | |
Who liv'st all alone, | |
Close to the bone | |
And where life is sweetest | |
Constantly eatest. | |
When the spring stirs my blood | |
With the instinct to travel, | |
I can get enough gravel | |
On the Old Marlborough Road. | |
Nobody repairs it, | |
For nobody wears it; | |
It is a living way, | |
As the Christians say. | |
Not many there be | |
Who enter therein, | |
Only the guests of the | |
Irishman Quin. | |
What is it, what is it | |
But a direction out there, | |
And the bare possibility | |
Of going somewhere? | |
Great guide-boards of stone, | |
But travelers none; | |
Cenotaphs of the towns | |
Named on their crowns. | |
It is worth going to see | |
Where you MIGHT be. | |
What king | |
Did the thing, | |
I am still wondering; | |
Set up how or when, | |
By what selectmen, | |
Gourgas or Lee, | |
Clark or Darby? | |
They're a great endeavor | |
To be something forever; | |
Blank tablets of stone, | |
Where a traveler might groan, | |
And in one sentence | |
Grave all that is known | |
Which another might read, | |
In his extreme need. | |
I know one or two | |
Lines that would do, | |
Literature that might stand | |
All over the land | |
Which a man could remember | |
Till next December, | |
And read again in the spring, | |
After the thawing. | |
If with fancy unfurled | |
You leave your abode, | |
You may go round the world | |
By the Old Marlborough Road. | |
At present, in this vicinity, the best part of the land is not private | |
property; the landscape is not owned, and the walker enjoys comparative | |
freedom. But possibly the day will come when it will be partitioned off | |
into so-called pleasure-grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and | |
exclusive pleasure only--when fences shall be multiplied, and man-traps | |
and other engines invented to confine men to the PUBLIC road, and | |
walking over the surface of God's earth shall be construed to mean | |
trespassing on some gentleman's grounds. To enjoy a thing exclusively | |
is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it. Let us | |
improve our opportunities, then, before the evil days come. | |
What is it that makes it so hard sometimes to determine whither we will | |
walk? I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we | |
unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright. It is not indifferent | |
to us which way we walk. There is a right way; but we are very liable | |
from heedlessness and stupidity to take the wrong one. We would fain | |
take that walk, never yet taken by us through this actual world, which | |
is perfectly symbolical of the path which we love to travel in the | |
interior and ideal world; and sometimes, no doubt, we find it difficult | |
to choose our direction, because it does not yet exist distinctly in our | |
idea. | |
When I go out of the house for a walk, uncertain as yet whither I will | |
bend my steps, and submit myself to my instinct to decide for me, | |
I find, strange and whimsical as it may seem, that I finally and | |
inevitably settle southwest, toward some particular wood or meadow | |
or deserted pasture or hill in that direction. My needle is slow to | |
settle,--varies a few degrees, and does not always point due southwest, | |
it is true, and it has good authority for this variation, but it always | |
settles between west and south-southwest. The future lies that way to | |
me, and the earth seems more unexhausted and richer on that side. | |
The outline which would bound my walks would be, not a circle, but a | |
parabola, or rather like one of those cometary orbits which have been | |
thought to be non-returning curves, in this case opening westward, in | |
which my house occupies the place of the sun. I turn round and round | |
irresolute sometimes for a quarter of an hour, until I decide, for a | |
thousandth time, that I will walk into the southwest or west. Eastward I | |
go only by force; but westward I go free. Thither no business leads | |
me. It is hard for me to believe that I shall find fair landscapes or | |
sufficient wildness and freedom behind the eastern horizon. I am not | |
excited by the prospect of a walk thither; but I believe that the forest | |
which I see in the western horizon stretches uninterruptedly toward | |
the setting sun, and there are no towns nor cities in it of enough | |
consequence to disturb me. Let me live where I will, on this side is the | |
city, on that the wilderness, and ever I am leaving the city more and | |
more, and withdrawing into the wilderness. I should not lay so much | |
stress on this fact, if I did not believe that something like this is | |
the prevailing tendency of my countrymen. I must walk toward Oregon, and | |
not toward Europe. And that way the nation is moving, and I may say that | |
mankind progress from east to west. Within a few years we have witnessed | |
the phenomenon of a southeastward migration, in the settlement of | |
Australia; but this affects us as a retrograde movement, and, judging | |
from the moral and physical character of the first generation of | |
Australians, has not yet proved a successful experiment. The eastern | |
Tartars think that there is nothing west beyond Thibet. "The world ends | |
there," say they; "beyond there is nothing but a shoreless sea." It is | |
unmitigated East where they live. | |
We go eastward to realize history and study the works of art and | |
literature, retracing the steps of the race; we go westward as into the | |
future, with a spirit of enterprise and adventure. The Atlantic is a | |
Lethean stream, in our passage over which we have had an opportunity | |
to forget the Old World and its institutions. If we do not succeed | |
this time, there is perhaps one more chance for the race left before | |
it arrives on the banks of the Styx; and that is in the Lethe of the | |
Pacific, which is three times as wide. | |
I know not how significant it is, or how far it is an evidence of | |
singularity, that an individual should thus consent in his pettiest walk | |
with the general movement of the race; but I know that something akin | |
to the migratory instinct in birds and quadrupeds--which, in some | |
instances, is known to have affected the squirrel tribe, impelling them | |
to a general and mysterious movement, in which they were seen, say some, | |
crossing the broadest rivers, each on its particular chip, with its tail | |
raised for a sail, and bridging narrower streams with their dead--that | |
something like the furor which affects the domestic cattle in the | |
spring, and which is referred to a worm in their tails,--affects both | |
nations and individuals, either perennially or from time to time. Not | |
a flock of wild geese cackles over our town, but it to some extent | |
unsettles the value of real estate here, and, if I were a broker, I | |
should probably take that disturbance into account. | |
"Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages, | |
And palmeres for to seken strange strondes." | |
Every sunset which I witness inspires me with the desire to go to a West | |
as distant and as fair as that into which the sun goes down. He appears | |
to migrate westward daily, and tempt us to follow him. He is the Great | |
Western Pioneer whom the nations follow. We dream all night of those | |
mountain-ridges in the horizon, though they may be of vapor only, which | |
were last gilded by his rays. The island of Atlantis, and the islands | |
and gardens of the Hesperides, a sort of terrestrial paradise, appear | |
to have been the Great West of the ancients, enveloped in mystery and | |
poetry. Who has not seen in imagination, when looking into the sunset | |
sky, the gardens of the Hesperides, and the foundation of all those | |
fables? | |
Columbus felt the westward tendency more strongly than any before. He | |
obeyed it, and found a New World for Castile and Leon. The herd of men | |
in those days scented fresh pastures from afar, | |
"And now the sun had stretched out all the hills, | |
And now was dropped into the western bay; | |
At last HE rose, and twitched his mantle blue; | |
Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new." | |
Where on the globe can there be found an area of equal extent with that | |
occupied by the bulk of our States, so fertile and so rich and varied in | |
its productions, and at the same time so habitable by the European, as | |
this is? Michaux, who knew but part of them, says that "the species of | |
large trees are much more numerous in North America than in Europe; in | |
the United States there are more than one hundred and forty species that | |
exceed thirty feet in height; in France there are but thirty that attain | |
this size." Later botanists more than confirm his observations. Humboldt | |
came to America to realize his youthful dreams of a tropical vegetation, | |
and he beheld it in its greatest perfection in the primitive forests of | |
the Amazon, the most gigantic wilderness on the earth, which he has so | |
eloquently described. The geographer Guyot, himself a European, goes | |
farther--farther than I am ready to follow him; yet not when he says: | |
"As the plant is made for the animal, as the vegetable world is made for | |
the animal world, America is made for the man of the Old World.... The | |
man of the Old World sets out upon his way. Leaving the highlands of | |
Asia, he descends from station to station towards Europe. Each of his | |
steps is marked by a new civilization superior to the preceding, by a | |
greater power of development. Arrived at the Atlantic, he pauses on the | |
shore of this unknown ocean, the bounds of which he knows not, and turns | |
upon his footprints for an instant." When he has exhausted the rich soil | |
of Europe, and reinvigorated himself, "then recommences his adventurous | |
career westward as in the earliest ages." So far Guyot. | |
From this western impulse coming in contact with the barrier of the | |
Atlantic sprang the commerce and enterprise of modern times. The younger | |
Michaux, in his Travels West of the Alleghanies in 1802, says that the | |
common inquiry in the newly settled West was, "'From what part of | |
the world have you come?' As if these vast and fertile regions would | |
naturally be the place of meeting and common country of all the | |
inhabitants of the globe." | |
To use an obsolete Latin word, I might say, Ex Oriente lux; ex Occidente | |
FRUX. From the East light; from the West fruit. | |
Sir Francis Head, an English traveler and a Governor-General of Canada, | |
tells us that "in both the northern and southern hemispheres of the New | |
World, Nature has not only outlined her works on a larger scale, but has | |
painted the whole picture with brighter and more costly colors than she | |
used in delineating and in beautifying the Old World.... The heavens of | |
America appear infinitely higher, the sky is bluer, the air is fresher, | |
the cold is intenser, the moon looks larger, the stars are brighter the | |
thunder is louder, the lightning is vivider, the wind is stronger, | |
the rain is heavier, the mountains are higher, the rivers longer, the | |
forests bigger, the plains broader." This statement will do at least | |
to set against Buffon's account of this part of the world and its | |
productions. | |
Linnaeus said long ago, "Nescio quae facies laeta, glabra plantis | |
Americanis" (I know not what there is of joyous and smooth in the aspect | |
of American plants); and I think that in this country there are no, | |
or at most very few, Africanae bestiae, African beasts, as the Romans | |
called them, and that in this respect also it is peculiarly fitted for | |
the habitation of man. We are told that within three miles of the | |
center of the East-Indian city of Singapore, some of the inhabitants | |
are annually carried off by tigers; but the traveler can lie down in | |
the woods at night almost anywhere in North America without fear of wild | |
beasts. | |
These are encouraging testimonies. If the moon looks larger here than | |
in Europe, probably the sun looks larger also. If the heavens of America | |
appear infinitely higher, and the stars brighter, I trust that these | |
facts are symbolical of the height to which the philosophy and poetry | |
and religion of her inhabitants may one day soar. At length, perchance, | |
the immaterial heaven will appear as much higher to the American mind, | |
and the intimations that star it as much brighter. For I believe that | |
climate does thus react on man--as there is something in the mountain | |
air that feeds the spirit and inspires. Will not man grow to greater | |
perfection intellectually as well as physically under these influences? | |
Or is it unimportant how many foggy days there are in his life? I trust | |
that we shall be more imaginative, that our thoughts will be clearer, | |
fresher, and more ethereal, as our sky--our understanding more | |
comprehensive and broader, like our plains--our intellect generally on a | |
grander scale, like our thunder and lightning, our rivers and mountains | |
and forests-and our hearts shall even correspond in breadth and depth | |
and grandeur to our inland seas. Perchance there will appear to the | |
traveler something, he knows not what, of laeta and glabra, of joyous | |
and serene, in our very faces. Else to what end does the world go on, | |
and why was America discovered? | |
To Americans I hardly need to say-- | |
"Westward the star of empire takes its way." | |
As a true patriot, I should be ashamed to think that Adam in paradise | |
was more favorably situated on the whole than the backwoodsman in this | |
country. | |
Our sympathies in Massachusetts are not confined to New England; though | |
we may be estranged from the South, we sympathize with the West. There | |
is the home of the younger sons, as among the Scandinavians they took to | |
the sea for their inheritance. It is too late to be studying Hebrew; it | |
is more important to understand even the slang of today. | |
Some months ago I went to see a panorama of the Rhine. It was like | |
a dream of the Middle Ages. I floated down its historic stream in | |
something more than imagination, under bridges built by the Romans, and | |
repaired by later heroes, past cities and castles whose very names were | |
music to my ears, and each of which was the subject of a legend. There | |
were Ehrenbreitstein and Rolandseck and Coblentz, which I knew only in | |
history. They were ruins that interested me chiefly. There seemed to | |
come up from its waters and its vine-clad hills and valleys a hushed | |
music as of Crusaders departing for the Holy Land. I floated along under | |
the spell of enchantment, as if I had been transported to an heroic age, | |
and breathed an atmosphere of chivalry. | |
Soon after, I went to see a panorama of the Mississippi, and as I | |
worked my way up the river in the light of today, and saw the steamboats | |
wooding up, counted the rising cities, gazed on the fresh ruins of | |
Nauvoo, beheld the Indians moving west across the stream, and, as before | |
I had looked up the Moselle, now looked up the Ohio and the Missouri and | |
heard the legends of Dubuque and of Wenona's Cliff--still thinking more | |
of the future than of the past or present--I saw that this was a Rhine | |
stream of a different kind; that the foundations of castles were yet to | |
be laid, and the famous bridges were yet to be thrown over the river; | |
and I felt that THIS WAS THE HEROIC AGE ITSELF, though we know it not, | |
for the hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men. | |
The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and what I | |
have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of | |
the World. Every tree sends its fibers forth in search of the Wild. The | |
cities import it at any price. Men plow and sail for it. From the | |
forest and wilderness come the tonics and barks which brace mankind. Our | |
ancestors were savages. The story of Romulus and Remus being suckled by | |
a wolf is not a meaningless fable. The founders of every state which has | |
risen to eminence have drawn their nourishment and vigor from a similar | |
wild source. It was because the children of the Empire were not suckled | |
by the wolf that they were conquered and displaced by the children of | |
the northern forests who were. | |
I believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the night in which | |
the corn grows. We require an infusion of hemlock, spruce or arbor | |
vitae in our tea. There is a difference between eating and drinking | |
for strength and from mere gluttony. The Hottentots eagerly devour the | |
marrow of the koodoo and other antelopes raw, as a matter of course. | |
Some of our northern Indians eat raw the marrow of the Arctic reindeer, | |
as well as various other parts, including the summits of the antlers, as | |
long as they are soft. And herein, perchance, they have stolen a march | |
on the cooks of Paris. They get what usually goes to feed the fire. This | |
is probably better than stall-fed beef and slaughterhouse pork to make | |
a man of. Give me a wildness whose glance no civilization can endure--as | |
if we lived on the marrow of koodoos devoured raw. | |
There are some intervals which border the strain of the wood thrush, | |
to which I would migrate--wild lands where no settler has squatted; to | |
which, methinks, I am already acclimated. | |
The African hunter Cumming tells us that the skin of the eland, as well | |
as that of most other antelopes just killed, emits the most delicious | |
perfume of trees and grass. I would have every man so much like a wild | |
antelope, so much a part and parcel of nature, that his very person | |
should thus sweetly advertise our senses of his presence, and remind us | |
of those parts of nature which he most haunts. I feel no disposition to | |
be satirical, when the trapper's coat emits the odor of musquash even; | |
it is a sweeter scent to me than that which commonly exhales from the | |
merchant's or the scholar's garments. When I go into their wardrobes and | |
handle their vestments, I am reminded of no grassy plains and flowery | |
meads which they have frequented, but of dusty merchants' exchanges and | |
libraries rather. | |
A tanned skin is something more than respectable, and perhaps olive is | |
a fitter color than white for a man--a denizen of the woods. "The pale | |
white man!" I do not wonder that the African pitied him. Darwin the | |
naturalist says, "A white man bathing by the side of a Tahitian was like | |
a plant bleached by the gardener's art, compared with a fine, dark green | |
one, growing vigorously in the open fields." | |
Ben Jonson exclaims,-- | |
"How near to good is what is fair!" | |
So I would say,-- | |
"How near to good is what is WILD!" | |
Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet | |
subdued to man, its presence refreshes him. One who pressed forward | |
incessantly and never rested from his labors, who grew fast and made | |
infinite demands on life, would always find himself in a new country | |
or wilderness, and surrounded by the raw material of life. He would be | |
climbing over the prostrate stems of primitive forest trees. | |
Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not | |
in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps. When, | |
formerly, I have analyzed my partiality for some farm which I had | |
contemplated purchasing, I have frequently found that I was attracted | |
solely by a few square rods of impermeable and unfathomable bog--a | |
natural sink in one corner of it. That was the jewel which dazzled me. | |
I derive more of my subsistence from the swamps which surround my native | |
town than from the cultivated gardens in the village. There are no | |
richer parterres to my eyes than the dense beds of dwarf andromeda | |
(Cassandra calyculata) which cover these tender places on the earth's | |
surface. Botany cannot go farther than tell me the names of the shrubs | |
which grow there--the high blueberry, panicled andromeda, lambkill, | |
azalea, and rhodora--all standing in the quaking sphagnum. I often | |
think that I should like to have my house front on this mass of dull red | |
bushes, omitting other flower plots and borders, transplanted spruce | |
and trim box, even graveled walks--to have this fertile spot under my | |
windows, not a few imported barrowfuls of soil only to cover the sand | |
which was thrown out in digging the cellar. Why not put my house, my | |
parlor, behind this plot, instead of behind that meager assemblage of | |
curiosities, that poor apology for a Nature and Art, which I call my | |
front yard? It is an effort to clear up and make a decent appearance | |
when the carpenter and mason have departed, though done as much for the | |
passer-by as the dweller within. The most tasteful front-yard fence was | |
never an agreeable object of study to me; the most elaborate ornaments, | |
acorn tops, or what not, soon wearied and disgusted me. Bring your sills | |
up to the very edge of the swamp, then (though it may not be the best | |
place for a dry cellar), so that there be no access on that side to | |
citizens. Front yards are not made to walk in, but, at most, through, | |
and you could go in the back way. | |
Yes, though you may think me perverse, if it were proposed to me to | |
dwell in the neighborhood of the most beautiful garden that ever human | |
art contrived, or else of a Dismal Swamp, I should certainly decide for | |
the swamp. How vain, then, have been all your labors, citizens, for me! | |
My spirits infallibly rise in proportion to the outward dreariness. Give | |
me the ocean, the desert, or the wilderness! In the desert, pure air | |
and solitude compensate for want of moisture and fertility. The traveler | |
Burton says of it--"Your MORALE improves; you become frank and cordial, | |
hospitable and single-minded.... In the desert, spirituous liquors | |
excite only disgust. There is a keen enjoyment in a mere animal | |
existence." They who have been traveling long on the steppes of Tartary | |
say, "On re-entering cultivated lands, the agitation, perplexity, and | |
turmoil of civilization oppressed and suffocated us; the air seemed to | |
fail us, and we felt every moment as if about to die of asphyxia." When | |
I would recreate myself, I seek the darkest woods the thickest and most | |
interminable and, to the citizen, most dismal, swamp. I enter a swamp as | |
a sacred place,--a sanctum sanctorum. There is the strength, the marrow, | |
of Nature. The wildwood covers the virgin mould,--and the same soil is | |
good for men and for trees. A man's health requires as many acres of | |
meadow to his prospect as his farm does loads of muck. There are | |
the strong meats on which he feeds. A town is saved, not more by the | |
righteous men in it than by the woods and swamps that surround it. A | |
township where one primitive forest waves above while another primitive | |
forest rots below--such a town is fitted to raise not only corn and | |
potatoes, but poets and philosophers for the coming ages. In such a | |
soil grew Homer and Confucius and the rest, and out of such a wilderness | |
comes the Reformer eating locusts and wild honey. | |
To preserve wild animals implies generally the creation of a forest for | |
them to dwell in or resort to. So it is with man. A hundred years ago | |
they sold bark in our streets peeled from our own woods. In the very | |
aspect of those primitive and rugged trees there was, methinks, a | |
tanning principle which hardened and consolidated the fibers of men's | |
thoughts. Ah! already I shudder for these comparatively degenerate days | |
of my native village, when you cannot collect a load of bark of good | |
thickness, and we no longer produce tar and turpentine. | |
The civilized nations--Greece, Rome, England--have been sustained by the | |
primitive forests which anciently rotted where they stand. They survive | |
as long as the soil is not exhausted. Alas for human culture! little is | |
to be expected of a nation, when the vegetable mould is exhausted, and | |
it is compelled to make manure of the bones of its fathers. There | |
the poet sustains himself merely by his own superfluous fat, and the | |
philosopher comes down on his marrow-bones. | |
It is said to be the task of the American "to work the virgin soil," and | |
that "agriculture here already assumes proportions unknown everywhere | |
else." I think that the farmer displaces the Indian even because he | |
redeems the meadow, and so makes himself stronger and in some respects | |
more natural. I was surveying for a man the other day a single straight | |
line one hundred and thirty-two rods long, through a swamp at whose | |
entrance might have been written the words which Dante read over the | |
entrance to the infernal regions,--"Leave all hope, ye that enter"--that | |
is, of ever getting out again; where at one time I saw my employer | |
actually up to his neck and swimming for his life in his property, | |
though it was still winter. He had another similar swamp which I | |
could not survey at all, because it was completely under water, and | |
nevertheless, with regard to a third swamp, which I did SURVEY from a | |
distance, he remarked to me, true to his instincts, that he would not | |
part with it for any consideration, on account of the mud which it | |
contained. And that man intends to put a girdling ditch round the whole | |
in the course of forty months, and so redeem it by the magic of his | |
spade. I refer to him only as the type of a class. | |
The weapons with which we have gained our most important victories, | |
which should be handed down as heirlooms from father to son, are not the | |
sword and the lance, but the bushwhack, the turf-cutter, the spade, and | |
the bog hoe, rusted with the blood of many a meadow, and begrimed with | |
the dust of many a hard-fought field. The very winds blew the Indian's | |
cornfield into the meadow, and pointed out the way which he had not | |
the skill to follow. He had no better implement with which to intrench | |
himself in the land than a clam-shell. But the farmer is armed with plow | |
and spade. | |
In literature it is only the wild that attracts us. Dullness is but | |
another name for tameness. It is the uncivilized free and wild thinking | |
in Hamlet and the Iliad, in all the scriptures and mythologies, not | |
learned in the schools, that delights us. As the wild duck is more swift | |
and beautiful than the tame, so is the wild--the mallard--thought, which | |
'mid falling dews wings its way above the fens. A truly good book is | |
something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and | |
perfect, as a wild-flower discovered on the prairies of the West or | |
in the jungles of the East. Genius is a light which makes the darkness | |
visible, like the lightning's flash, which perchance shatters the temple | |
of knowledge itself--and not a taper lighted at the hearthstone of the | |
race, which pales before the light of common day. | |
English literature, from the days of the minstrels to the Lake | |
Poets--Chaucer and Spenser and Milton, and even Shakespeare, | |
included--breathes no quite fresh and, in this sense, wild strain. It | |
is an essentially tame and civilized literature, reflecting Greece and | |
Rome. Her wilderness is a green wood, her wild man a Robin Hood. There | |
is plenty of genial love of Nature, but not so much of Nature herself. | |
Her chronicles inform us when her wild animals, but not when the wild | |
man in her, became extinct. | |
The science of Humboldt is one thing, poetry is another thing. The | |
poet today, notwithstanding all the discoveries of science, and the | |
accumulated learning of mankind, enjoys no advantage over Homer. | |
Where is the literature which gives expression to Nature? He would be a | |
poet who could impress the winds and streams into his service, to speak | |
for him; who nailed words to their primitive senses, as farmers drive | |
down stakes in the spring, which the frost has heaved; who derived his | |
words as often as he used them--transplanted them to his page with earth | |
adhering to their roots; whose words were so true and fresh and natural | |
that they would appear to expand like the buds at the approach of | |
spring, though they lay half smothered between two musty leaves in a | |
library--aye, to bloom and bear fruit there, after their kind, annually, | |
for the faithful reader, in sympathy with surrounding Nature. | |
I do not know of any poetry to quote which adequately expresses this | |
yearning for the Wild. Approached from this side, the best poetry is | |
tame. I do not know where to find in any literature, ancient or modern, | |
any account which contents me of that Nature with which even I am | |
acquainted. You will perceive that I demand something which no Augustan | |
nor Elizabethan age, which no culture, in short, can give. Mythology | |
comes nearer to it than anything. How much more fertile a Nature, | |
at least, has Grecian mythology its root in than English literature! | |
Mythology is the crop which the Old World bore before its soil was | |
exhausted, before the fancy and imagination were affected with blight; | |
and which it still bears, wherever its pristine vigor is unabated. All | |
other literatures endure only as the elms which overshadow our houses; | |
but this is like the great dragon-tree of the Western Isles, as old as | |
mankind, and, whether that does or not, will endure as long; for the | |
decay of other literatures makes the soil in which it thrives. | |
The West is preparing to add its fables to those of the East. The | |
valleys of the Ganges, the Nile, and the Shine having yielded their | |
crop, it remains to be seen what the valleys of the Amazon, the Plate, | |
the Orinoco, the St. Lawrence, and the Mississippi will produce. | |
Perchance, when, in the course of ages, American liberty has become | |
a fiction of the past--as it is to some extent a fiction of the | |
present--the poets of the world will be inspired by American mythology. | |
The wildest dreams of wild men, even, are not the less true, though they | |
may not recommend themselves to the sense which is most common among | |
Englishmen and Americans today. It is not every truth that recommends | |
itself to the common sense. Nature has a place for the wild Clematis | |
as well as for the cabbage. Some expressions of truth are | |
reminiscent--others merely SENSIBLE, as the phrase is,--others | |
prophetic. Some forms of disease, even, may prophesy forms of health. | |
The geologist has discovered that the figures of serpents, griffins, | |
flying dragons, and other fanciful embellishments of heraldry, have | |
their prototypes in the forms of fossil species which were extinct | |
before man was created, and hence "indicate a faint and shadowy | |
knowledge of a previous state of organic existence." The Hindus dreamed | |
that the earth rested on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, | |
and the tortoise on a serpent; and though it may be an unimportant | |
coincidence, it will not be out of place here to state, that a fossil | |
tortoise has lately been discovered in Asia large enough to support | |
an elephant. I confess that I am partial to these wild fancies, which | |
transcend the order of time and development. They are the sublimest | |
recreation of the intellect. The partridge loves peas, but not those | |
that go with her into the pot. | |
In short, all good things are wild and free. There is something in | |
a strain of music, whether produced by an instrument or by the human | |
voice--take the sound of a bugle in a summer night, for instance--which | |
by its wildness, to speak without satire, reminds me of the cries | |
emitted by wild beasts in their native forests. It is so much of their | |
wildness as I can understand. Give me for my friends and neighbors wild | |
men, not tame ones. The wildness of the savage is but a faint symbol of | |
the awful ferity with which good men and lovers meet. | |
I love even to see the domestic animals reassert their native | |
rights--any evidence that they have not wholly lost their original wild | |
habits and vigor; as when my neighbor's cow breaks out of her pasture | |
early in the spring and boldly swims the river, a cold, gray tide, | |
twenty-five or thirty rods wide, swollen by the melted snow. It is the | |
buffalo crossing the Mississippi. This exploit confers some dignity | |
on the herd in my eyes--already dignified. The seeds of instinct are | |
preserved under the thick hides of cattle and horses, like seeds in the | |
bowels of the earth, an indefinite period. | |
Any sportiveness in cattle is unexpected. I saw one day a herd of a | |
dozen bullocks and cows running about and frisking in unwieldy sport, | |
like huge rats, even like kittens. They shook their heads, raised their | |
tails, and rushed up and down a hill, and I perceived by their horns, as | |
well as by their activity, their relation to the deer tribe. But, alas! | |
a sudden loud WHOA! would have damped their ardor at once, reduced them | |
from venison to beef, and stiffened their sides and sinews like the | |
locomotive. Who but the Evil One has cried "Whoa!" to mankind? | |
Indeed, the life of cattle, like that of many men, is but a sort of | |
locomotiveness; they move a side at a time, and man, by his machinery, | |
is meeting the horse and the ox halfway. Whatever part the whip has | |
touched is thenceforth palsied. Who would ever think of a SIDE of any of | |
the supple cat tribe, as we speak of a SIDE of beef? | |
I rejoice that horses and steers have to be broken before they can be | |
made the slaves of men, and that men themselves have some wild oats | |
still left to sow before they become submissive members of society. | |
Undoubtedly, all men are not equally fit subjects for civilization; | |
and because the majority, like dogs and sheep, are tame by inherited | |
disposition, this is no reason why the others should have their natures | |
broken that they may be reduced to the same level. Men are in the main | |
alike, but they were made several in order that they might be various. | |
If a low use is to be served, one man will do nearly or quite as well as | |
another; if a high one, individual excellence is to be regarded. Any man | |
can stop a hole to keep the wind away, but no other man could serve so | |
rare a use as the author of this illustration did. Confucius says,--"The | |
skins of the tiger and the leopard, when they are tanned, are as the | |
skins of the dog and the sheep tanned." But it is not the part of a true | |
culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious; and | |
tanning their skins for shoes is not the best use to which they can be | |
put. | |
When looking over a list of men's names in a foreign language, as | |
of military officers, or of authors who have written on a particular | |
subject, I am reminded once more that there is nothing in a name. The | |
name Menschikoff, for instance, has nothing in it to my ears more human | |
than a whisker, and it may belong to a rat. As the names of the Poles | |
and Russians are to us, so are ours to them. It is as if they had been | |
named by the child's rigmarole,--IERY FIERY ICHERY VAN, TITTLE-TOL-TAN. | |
I see in my mind a herd of wild creatures swarming over the earth, | |
and to each the herdsman has affixed some barbarous sound in his own | |
dialect. The names of men are, of course, as cheap and meaningless as | |
BOSE and TRAY, the names of dogs. | |
Methinks it would be some advantage to philosophy if men were named | |
merely in the gross, as they are known. It would be necessary only to | |
know the genus and perhaps the race or variety, to know the individual. | |
We are not prepared to believe that every private soldier in a Roman | |
army had a name of his own--because we have not supposed that he had a | |
character of his own. | |
At present our only true names are nicknames. I knew a boy who, from his | |
peculiar energy, was called "Buster" by his playmates, and this rightly | |
supplanted his Christian name. Some travelers tell us that an Indian had | |
no name given him at first, but earned it, and his name was his fame; | |
and among some tribes he acquired a new name with every new exploit. | |
It is pitiful when a man bears a name for convenience merely, who has | |
earned neither name nor fame. | |
I will not allow mere names to make distinctions for me, but still | |
see men in herds for all them. A familiar name cannot make a man less | |
strange to me. It may be given to a savage who retains in secret his | |
own wild title earned in the woods. We have a wild savage in us, and | |
a savage name is perchance somewhere recorded as ours. I see that my | |
neighbor, who bears the familiar epithet William or Edwin, takes it off | |
with his jacket. It does not adhere to him when asleep or in anger, or | |
aroused by any passion or inspiration. I seem to hear pronounced by some | |
of his kin at such a time his original wild name in some jaw-breaking or | |
else melodious tongue. | |
Here is this vast, savage, hovering mother of ours, Nature, lying all | |
around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the | |
leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to | |
that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man--a sort | |
of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, | |
a civilization destined to have a speedy limit. | |
In society, in the best institutions of men, it is easy to detect a | |
certain precocity. When we should still be growing children, we are | |
already little men. Give me a culture which imports much muck from the | |
meadows, and deepens the soil--not that which trusts to heating manures, | |
and improved implements and modes of culture only! | |
Many a poor sore-eyed student that I have heard of would grow faster, | |
both intellectually and physically, if, instead of sitting up so very | |
late, he honestly slumbered a fool's allowance. | |
There may be an excess even of informing light. Niepce, a Frenchman, | |
discovered "actinism," that power in the sun's rays which produces a | |
chemical effect; that granite rocks, and stone structures, and statues | |
of metal "are all alike destructively acted upon during the hours of | |
sunshine, and, but for provisions of Nature no less wonderful, would | |
soon perish under the delicate touch of the most subtle of the agencies | |
of the universe." But he observed that "those bodies which underwent | |
this change during the daylight possessed the power of restoring | |
themselves to their original conditions during the hours of night, | |
when this excitement was no longer influencing them." Hence it has been | |
inferred that "the hours of darkness are as necessary to the inorganic | |
creation as we know night and sleep are to the organic kingdom." Not | |
even does the moon shine every night, but gives place to darkness. | |
I would not have every man nor every part of a man cultivated, any more | |
than I would have every acre of earth cultivated: part will be tillage, | |
but the greater part will be meadow and forest, not only serving an | |
immediate use, but preparing a mould against a distant future, by the | |
annual decay of the vegetation which it supports. | |
There are other letters for the child to learn than those which Cadmus | |
invented. The Spaniards have a good term to express this wild and dusky | |
knowledge--Gramatica parda--tawny grammar, a kind of mother-wit derived | |
from that same leopard to which I have referred. | |
We have heard of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. It is | |
said that knowledge is power, and the like. Methinks there is equal need | |
of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Ignorance, what we will call | |
Beautiful Knowledge, a knowledge useful in a higher sense: for what | |
is most of our boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit that we know | |
something, which robs us of the advantage of our actual ignorance? | |
What we call knowledge is often our positive ignorance; ignorance our | |
negative knowledge. By long years of patient industry and reading of | |
the newspapers--for what are the libraries of science but files of | |
newspapers--a man accumulates a myriad facts, lays them up in his | |
memory, and then when in some spring of his life he saunters abroad into | |
the Great Fields of thought, he, as it were, goes to grass like a horse | |
and leaves all his harness behind in the stable. I would say to the | |
Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, sometimes,--Go to grass. | |
You have eaten hay long enough. The spring has come with its green crop. | |
The very cows are driven to their country pastures before the end of | |
May; though I have heard of one unnatural farmer who kept his cow in the | |
barn and fed her on hay all the year round. So, frequently, the Society | |
for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge treats its cattle. | |
A man's ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beautiful--while his | |
knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless, besides being | |
ugly. Which is the best man to deal with--he who knows nothing about a | |
subject, and, what is extremely rare, knows that he knows nothing, or he | |
who really knows something about it, but thinks that he knows all? | |
My desire for knowledge is intermittent, but my desire to bathe my head | |
in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant. The highest | |
that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence. | |
I do not know that this higher knowledge amounts to anything more | |
definite than a novel and grand surprise on a sudden revelation of the | |
insufficiency of all that we called Knowledge before--a discovery that | |
there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our | |
philosophy. It is the lighting up of the mist by the sun. Man cannot | |
KNOW in any higher sense than this, any more than he can look serenely | |
and with impunity in the face of the sun: "You will not perceive that, | |
as perceiving a particular thing," say the Chaldean Oracles. | |
There is something servile in the habit of seeking after a law which we | |
may obey. We may study the laws of matter at and for our convenience, | |
but a successful life knows no law. It is an unfortunate discovery | |
certainly, that of a law which binds us where we did not know before | |
that we were bound. Live free, child of the mist--and with respect to | |
knowledge we are all children of the mist. The man who takes the liberty | |
to live is superior to all the laws, by virtue of his relation to the | |
lawmaker. "That is active duty," says the Vishnu Purana, "which is not | |
for our bondage; that is knowledge which is for our liberation: all | |
other duty is good only unto weariness; all other knowledge is only the | |
cleverness of an artist." | |
It is remarkable how few events or crises there are in our histories, | |
how little exercised we have been in our minds, how few experiences we | |
have had. I would fain be assured that I am growing apace and rankly, | |
though my very growth disturb this dull equanimity--though it be with | |
struggle through long, dark, muggy nights or seasons of gloom. It would | |
be well if all our lives were a divine tragedy even, instead of this | |
trivial comedy or farce. Dante, Bunyan, and others appear to have been | |
exercised in their minds more than we: they were subjected to a kind of | |
culture such as our district schools and colleges do not contemplate. | |
Even Mahomet, though many may scream at his name, had a good deal more | |
to live for, aye, and to die for, than they have commonly. | |
When, at rare intervals, some thought visits one, as perchance he is | |
walking on a railroad, then, indeed, the cars go by without his hearing | |
them. But soon, by some inexorable law, our life goes by and the cars | |
return. | |
"Gentle breeze, that wanderest unseen, | |
And bendest the thistles round Loira of storms, | |
Traveler of the windy glens, | |
Why hast thou left my ear so soon?" | |
While almost all men feel an attraction drawing them to society, few are | |
attracted strongly to Nature. In their reaction to Nature men appear | |
to me for the most part, notwithstanding their arts, lower than the | |
animals. It is not often a beautiful relation, as in the case of the | |
animals. How little appreciation of the beauty of the land-scape there | |
is among us! We have to be told that the Greeks called the world Beauty, | |
or Order, but we do not see clearly why they did so, and we esteem it at | |
best only a curious philological fact. | |
For my part, I feel that with regard to Nature I live a sort of border | |
life, on the confines of a world into which I make occasional and | |
transient forays only, and my patriotism and allegiance to the state | |
into whose territories I seem to retreat are those of a moss-trooper. | |
Unto a life which I call natural I would gladly follow even a | |
will-o'-the-wisp through bogs and sloughs unimaginable, but no moon nor | |
firefly has shown me the causeway to it. Nature is a personality so vast | |
and universal that we have never seen one of her features. The walker in | |
the familiar fields which stretch around my native town sometimes finds | |
himself in another land than is described in their owners' deeds, as it | |
were in some faraway field on the confines of the actual Concord, where | |
her jurisdiction ceases, and the idea which the word Concord suggests | |
ceases to be suggested. These farms which I have myself surveyed, these | |
bounds which I have set up, appear dimly still as through a mist; but | |
they have no chemistry to fix them; they fade from the surface of the | |
glass, and the picture which the painter painted stands out dimly from | |
beneath. The world with which we are commonly acquainted leaves no | |
trace, and it will have no anniversary. | |
I took a walk on Spaulding's Farm the other afternoon. I saw the setting | |
sun lighting up the opposite side of a stately pine wood. Its golden | |
rays straggled into the aisles of the wood as into some noble hall. I | |
was impressed as if some ancient and altogether admirable and shining | |
family had settled there in that part of the land called Concord, | |
unknown to me--to whom the sun was servant--who had not gone into | |
society in the village--who had not been called on. I saw their | |
park, their pleasure-ground, beyond through the wood, in Spaulding's | |
cranberry-meadow. The pines furnished them with gables as they grew. | |
Their house was not obvious to vision; the trees grew through it. I do | |
not know whether I heard the sounds of a suppressed hilarity or not. | |
They seemed to recline on the sunbeams. They have sons and daughters. | |
They are quite well. The farmer's cart-path, which leads directly | |
through their hall, does not in the least put them out, as the muddy | |
bottom of a pool is sometimes seen through the reflected skies. | |
They never heard of Spaulding, and do not know that he is their | |
neighbor--notwithstanding I heard him whistle as he drove his team | |
through the house. Nothing can equal the serenity of their lives. Their | |
coat-of-arms is simply a lichen. I saw it painted on the pines and oaks. | |
Their attics were in the tops of the trees. They are of no politics. | |
There was no noise of labor. I did not perceive that they were weaving | |
or spinning. Yet I did detect, when the wind lulled and hearing was done | |
away, the finest imaginable sweet musical hum,--as of a distant hive in | |
May, which perchance was the sound of their thinking. They had no idle | |
thoughts, and no one without could see their work, for their industry | |
was not as in knots and excrescences embayed. | |
But I find it difficult to remember them. They fade irrevocably out | |
of my mind even now while I speak, and endeavor to recall them and | |
recollect myself. It is only after a long and serious effort to | |
recollect my best thoughts that I become again aware of their | |
cohabitancy. If it were not for such families as this, I think I should | |
move out of Concord. | |
We are accustomed to say in New England that few and fewer pigeons visit | |
us every year. Our forests furnish no mast for them. So, it would seem, | |
few and fewer thoughts visit each growing man from year to year, for | |
the grove in our minds is laid waste--sold to feed unnecessary fires of | |
ambition, or sent to mill--and there is scarcely a twig left for them | |
to perch on. They no longer build nor breed with us. In some more genial | |
season, perchance, a faint shadow flits across the landscape of the | |
mind, cast by the WINGS of some thought in its vernal or autumnal | |
migration, but, looking up, we are unable to detect the substance of | |
the thought itself. Our winged thoughts are turned to poultry. They | |
no longer soar, and they attain only to a Shanghai and Cochin-China | |
grandeur. Those GRA-A-ATE THOUGHTS, those GRA-A-ATE men you hear of! | |
We hug the earth--how rarely we mount! Methinks we might elevate | |
ourselves a little more. We might climb a tree, at least. I found my | |
account in climbing a tree once. It was a tall white pine, on the top | |
of a hill; and though I got well pitched, I was well paid for it, for | |
I discovered new mountains in the horizon which I had never seen | |
before--so much more of the earth and the heavens. I might have walked | |
about the foot of the tree for threescore years and ten, and yet I | |
certainly should never have seen them. But, above all, I discovered | |
around me--it was near the end of June--on the ends of the topmost | |
branches only, a few minute and delicate red conelike blossoms, | |
the fertile flower of the white pine looking heavenward. I carried | |
straightway to the village the topmost spire, and showed it to stranger | |
jurymen who walked the streets--for it was court week--and to farmers | |
and lumber-dealers and woodchoppers and hunters, and not one had ever | |
seen the like before, but they wondered as at a star dropped down. Tell | |
of ancient architects finishing their works on the tops of columns as | |
perfectly as on the lower and more visible parts! Nature has from | |
the first expanded the minute blossoms of the forest only toward the | |
heavens, above men's heads and unobserved by them. We see only the | |
flowers that are under our feet in the meadows. The pines have developed | |
their delicate blossoms on the highest twigs of the wood every summer | |
for ages, as well over the heads of Nature's red children as of her | |
white ones; yet scarcely a farmer or hunter in the land has ever seen | |
them. | |
Above all, we cannot afford not to live in the present. He is blessed | |
over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life in remembering | |
the past. Unless our philosophy hears the cock crow in every barnyard | |
within our horizon, it is belated. That sound commonly reminds us | |
that we are growing rusty and antique in our employments and habits of | |
thoughts. His philosophy comes down to a more recent time than ours. | |
There is something suggested by it that is a newer testament,--the | |
gospel according to this moment. He has not fallen astern; he has got | |
up early and kept up early, and to be where he is is to be in season, | |
in the foremost rank of time. It is an expression of the health and | |
soundness of Nature, a brag for all the world,--healthiness as of a | |
spring burst forth, a new fountain of the Muses, to celebrate this last | |
instant of time. Where he lives no fugitive slave laws are passed. Who | |
has not betrayed his master many times since last he heard that note? | |
The merit of this bird's strain is in its freedom from all | |
plaintiveness. The singer can easily move us to tears or to laughter, | |
but where is he who can excite in us a pure morning joy? When, in | |
doleful dumps, breaking the awful stillness of our wooden sidewalk on | |
a Sunday, or, perchance, a watcher in the house of mourning, I hear a | |
cockerel crow far or near, I think to myself, "There is one of us well, | |
at any rate,"--and with a sudden gush return to my senses. | |
We had a remarkable sunset one day last November. I was walking in a | |
meadow, the source of a small brook, when the sun at last, just before | |
setting, after a cold, gray day, reached a clear stratum in the horizon, | |
and the softest, brightest morning sunlight fell on the dry grass and on | |
the stems of the trees in the opposite horizon and on the leaves of the | |
shrub oaks on the hillside, while our shadows stretched long over the | |
meadow east-ward, as if we were the only motes in its beams. It was such | |
a light as we could not have imagined a moment before, and the air also | |
was so warm and serene that nothing was wanting to make a paradise of | |
that meadow. When we reflected that this was not a solitary phenomenon, | |
never to happen again, but that it would happen forever and ever, an | |
infinite number of evenings, and cheer and reassure the latest child | |
that walked there, it was more glorious still. | |
The sun sets on some retired meadow, where no house is visible, with all | |
the glory and splendor that it lavishes on cities, and perchance as it | |
has never set before--where there is but a solitary marsh hawk to have | |
his wings gilded by it, or only a musquash looks out from his cabin, and | |
there is some little black-veined brook in the midst of the marsh, just | |
beginning to meander, winding slowly round a decaying stump. We walked | |
in so pure and bright a light, gilding the withered grass and leaves, | |
so softly and serenely bright, I thought I had never bathed in such a | |
golden flood, without a ripple or a murmur to it. The west side of every | |
wood and rising ground gleamed like the boundary of Elysium, and the sun | |
on our backs seemed like a gentle herdsman driving us home at evening. | |
So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine | |
more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our | |
minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening | |
light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bankside in autumn. | |
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Walking, by Henry David Thoreau | |
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