7.06.2006

Thoreau's Journal: 05-Jul-1845

Saturday. Walden.—Yesterday I came here to live. My house makes me think of some mountain houses I have seen, which seemed to have a fresher auroral atmosphere about them, as I fancy of the halls of Olympus. I lodged at the house of a saw-miller last summer, on the Caatskill Mountains, high up as Pine Orchard, in the blueberry and raspberry region, where the quiet and cleanliness and coolness seemed to be all one,—which had their ambrosial character. He was the miller of the Kaaterskill Falls. They were a clean and wholesome family, inside and out, like their house. The latter was not plastered, only lathed, and the inner doors were not hung. The house seemed high-placed, airy, and perfumed, fit to entertain a traveling god. It was so high, indeed, that all the music, the broken strains, the waifs and accompaniments of tunes, that swept over the Caatskills, passed through its aisles. Could not man be man in such an abode? And would he ever find out this groveling life. It was the very light and atmosphere in which the works of Grecian art were composed, and in which they rest. They have appropriated to themselves a loftier hall than mortals ever occupy, at least on a level with the mountain-brows of the world. There was wanting a little of the glare of the lower vales, and in its place a pure twilight as became the precincts of heaven. Yet so equable and calm was the season there that you could not tell whether it was morning or noon or evening. Always there was the sound of the morning cricket.

2 comments:

paddington said...

What a wonderful idea for a blog! I shall add you to my daily listings...

I can't boast of posting daily, but I have a novel I am hoping to serialise chapter-by-chapter, perhaps a week or a fortnight at a time.

So, Mr T, as you drift around Walden Pond, do stop by at drift-the-novel.blogspot.com, where an altogether different sort of drift is taking place.

Bruce -- Harper Blue said...

The way things are going these days, we all will be learning to take a page from the thoughts of Mr. Thoreau -- perforce. Simplification may become the watchword of the day, out of pure necessity rather than a quest for the true path of mankind in the world.

We should all keep Henry's words in mind....