tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-76098302009-11-25T15:21:25.327Zmethinks I should hear with indifference if a trustworthy messenger were to inform me that the sun drowned himself last nightson rivershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08737522883393951466noreply@blogger.comBlogger1645125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609830.post-67230681808726460872009-11-25T00:38:00.001Z2009-11-25T00:38:00.877Z

I feel a little alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. I would fain forget all my morning’s occupation, my obligations to society. But sometimes it happens that I cannot easily shake off the village; the thought of some work, some surveying, will run in my head, and I am not where my body is, I am out of my senses. In my walks I

son rivershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08737522883393951466noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609830.post-13648932615118020462009-11-24T00:34:00.001Z2009-11-24T00:34:00.345Z

The first spitting of snow—a flurry or squall—from out a gray or slate-colored cloud that came up from the west. This consisted almost entirely of pellets an eighth of an inch or less in diameter. These drove along almost horizontally, or curving upward like the outline of a breaker, before the strong and chilling wind. The plowed fields were for a short time whitened with them. The green moss

son rivershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08737522883393951466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609830.post-81008499495235248022009-11-24T00:13:00.000Z2009-11-24T15:59:44.976Z

The Blog is still being updated, but I am reposting from last year's post (just changing the date in editing posts). But this results in the RSS feed not being updated (I guess because the post is not actually new). But if you wish to continue to read Henry daily, you still can, but you'll have to visit the actual website. Again, I'm sorry for this. But it's just more efficient for me, like

son rivershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08737522883393951466noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609830.post-24713443954344356112009-11-23T00:33:00.001Z2009-11-23T00:33:00.095Z

Most of us are still related to our native fields as the navigator to undiscovered islands in the sea. We can any autumn discover a new fruit there which will surprise us by its beauty or sweetness. So long as I saw one or two kinds of berries in my walks whose names I did not know, the proportion of the unknown seemed indefinitely if not infinitely great.

son rivershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08737522883393951466noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609830.post-63735383247753473542009-11-22T01:45:00.000Z2009-11-24T01:48:26.159Z

I'm simply reposting from last year, resulting in no RSS feed, sorry.

son rivershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08737522883393951466noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609830.post-17606187000726265562009-11-22T00:30:00.001Z2009-11-22T00:30:00.831Z

You walk fast and far, and every apple left out is grateful to your invigorated taste. You enjoy not only the bracing coolness, but all the heat and sunlight that there is, reflected back to you from earth. The sandy road itself, lit by the November sun, is beautiful. Shrub oaks and young oaks generally, and hazel bushed and other hardy shrubs, now more or less bare, are your companions, as if it

son rivershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08737522883393951466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609830.post-59983804742174337432009-11-21T01:34:00.001Z2009-11-21T13:07:58.798Z

I saw Fair Haven Pond with its island, and meadow between the island and the shore, and a strip of perfectly still and smooth water in the lee of the island, and two hawks, fish hawks perhaps, sailing over it. I did not see how it could be improved. Yet I do not see what these things can be. I begin to see such an object when I cease to understand it and see that I did not realize or appreciate

son rivershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08737522883393951466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609830.post-10034316714272161832009-11-20T01:33:00.001Z2009-11-20T01:33:00.107Z

I once came near speculating in cranberries. Being put to it to raise the wind to pay for “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers,” and having occasion to go to New York to peddle some pencils which I had made, as I passed through Boston I went to Quincy Market and inquired the price of cranberries. The dealers took me down cellar, asked if I wanted wet or dry, and showed me them. I gave them

son rivershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08737522883393951466noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609830.post-47733919525270098682009-11-19T01:30:00.001Z2009-11-19T01:30:00.687Z

Old Mr. Joseph Hosmer, who helped me to-day, said that he used to know all about the lots, but since they’ve chopped off so much, and the woods have grown up, he finds himself lost. Thirty of forty years ago, when he went to meeting, he knew every face in the meeting-house, even the boys and girls, they looked so much like their parents; but after ten or twelve years they would have outgrown his

son rivershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08737522883393951466noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609830.post-11177871053722824702009-11-18T01:28:00.001Z2009-11-18T01:28:00.344Z

In one light, these are old and worn-out fields that I ramble over, and men have gone to law about them long before I was born, but I trust that I ramble over them in a new fashion and redeem them.

son rivershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08737522883393951466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609830.post-16712080485018908552009-11-17T01:25:00.002Z2009-11-17T01:25:00.293Z

Are not more birds crushed under the feet of oxen than of horses?

son rivershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08737522883393951466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609830.post-78069409802467613562009-11-16T01:23:00.001Z2009-11-16T01:23:00.509Z

The era of wild apples will soon be over. I wander through old orchards of great extent, now all gone to decay, all of native fruit which for the most part went to the cider-mill. But since the temperance reform and the general introduction of grafted fruit, no wild apples, such as I see everywhere in deserted pastures, and where the woods have grown up among them, are set out. I fear that he who

son rivershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08737522883393951466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609830.post-35409669203362368082009-11-15T01:11:00.002Z2009-11-15T01:11:00.407Z

After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined, and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance. I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard, and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken

son rivershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08737522883393951466noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609830.post-64167017092991598932009-11-14T01:35:00.003Z2009-11-14T03:57:52.753Z

Still yarrow, tall buttercup, and tansy.

son rivershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08737522883393951466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609830.post-53218117111883643132009-11-13T08:12:00.000Z2009-11-13T08:12:00.181Z

A cold and dark afternoon, the sun being behind clouds in the west. The landscape is barren of objects, the trees being leafless, and so little light in the sky for variety. Such a day as will almost oblige a man to eat his own heart. A day in which you must hold on to life by your teeth. You can hardly ruck up any skin on Nature’s bones. The sap is down; she won’t peel. Now is the time to cut

son rivershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08737522883393951466noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609830.post-10210695485520194092009-11-12T08:10:00.000Z2009-11-12T08:10:00.164Z

I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?

son rivershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08737522883393951466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609830.post-13138413510627533702009-11-11T08:06:00.000Z2009-11-11T08:06:00.067Z

“Says I to myself” should be the motto of my journal.It is fatal to the writer to be too much possessed by his thought. Things must lie a little remote to be described.

son rivershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08737522883393951466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609830.post-87254351838874916912009-11-10T08:05:00.000Z2009-11-10T08:05:00.187Z

From Fair Haven Hill, using my glass, I think that I can see some of the snow of the 7th still left on the brow of Uncannuc. It is a light line, lying close along under the edge of a wood which covers the summit, which has protected it. I can understand how much nearer they must feel to winter who live in plain sight of that than we do. I think that I could not have detected the edge of the

son rivershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08737522883393951466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609830.post-44992134127998479722009-11-09T08:03:00.000Z2009-11-09T08:03:00.383Z

The newspaper tells me that Uncannunuc was white with snow for a short time on the morning of the 7th. Thus steadily but unobserved the winter steals down from the north, till from our highest hills we can discern its vanguard. Next week, perchance, our own hills will be white. Little did we think how near the winter was. It is as if a scout had brought in word that an enemy were approaching in

son rivershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08737522883393951466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609830.post-70040396266482744892009-11-08T08:01:00.000Z2009-11-08T08:01:00.114Z

When the air is thick and the sky overcast, we need not walk so far. We give our attention to nearer objects, being less distracted from them. I take occasion to explore some near wood which my walks commonly overshoot.What a difference it makes between two ravines in other respects exactly similar that in the one there is a stream which drains it, while the other is dry!I see nowadays in various

son rivershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08737522883393951466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609830.post-22285247425095454682009-11-07T08:57:00.000Z2009-11-07T08:57:00.170Z

The notes of one or two small birds, this cold morning, in the now comparatively leafless woods, sound like a nail dropped on an anvil, or a glass pendant tinkling against its neighbor.The sun now rises far southward. I see westward the earliest sunlight on the reddish oak leaves and the pines. The former appear to get more than their share. How soon the sun gets above the hills, as if he would

son rivershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08737522883393951466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609830.post-67834613222782997752009-11-06T00:01:00.000Z2009-11-07T00:02:29.233Z

I guessed at Goodwin’s age on the 1st. He is hale and stout and looks younger than he is, and I took care to set him high enough. I guessed he was fifty-five, and he said that if he lived two or three months longer he would be fifty-six. He then guess at my age, thought I was forty. He thought Emerson was a very young-looking man for his age. “But,” said he, “he has not been out ‘o nights as much

son rivershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08737522883393951466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609830.post-71175601738573318272009-11-05T12:02:00.001Z2009-11-05T12:05:01.913Z

For a man to pride himself on this kind of wealth, as if it enriched him, is as ridiculous as if one struggling in the ocean with a bag of gold on his back should gasp out, “I am worth a hundred thousand dollars!” I see his ineffectual struggles just as plainly, and what it is that sinks him.

son rivershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08737522883393951466noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609830.post-88006074745461810062009-11-04T13:16:00.001Z2009-11-04T13:17:30.219Z

Must be out-of-doors enough to get experience of wholesome reality, as a ballast to thought and sentiment. Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life. This life in the present. Let a man have thought what he will of Nature in the house, she will still be novel outdoors. I keep out of doors for the sake of the mineral, vegetable, and animal in me.

son rivershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08737522883393951466noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609830.post-44688813437002668732009-11-03T04:02:00.001Z2009-11-03T04:04:37.706Z

After a violent easterly storm in the night, which clears up at noon, I notice that the surface of the railroad causeway, composed of gravel, is singularly marked, as if stratified like some slate rocks, on their edges, so that I can tell within a small fraction of a degree from what quarter the rain came. These lines, as it were of stratification, are perfectly parallel, and straight as a ruler,

son rivershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08737522883393951466noreply@blogger.com0