6.05.2014

cohabitants with me
...Thoreau's Journal: 05-Jun-1857

I am interested in each contemporary plant in my vicinity, and have attained to a certain acquaintance with the larger ones. They are cohabitants with me of this part of the planet, and they bear familiar names. Yet how essentially wild they are! as wild, really, as those strange fossil plants whose impressions I see on my coal. Yet I can imagine that some race gathered those too with as much admiration, and knew them as intimately as I do these, that even they served for a language of the sentiments. Stigmariae stood for a human sentiment in that race’s flower language. Chickweed, or a pine tree, is but little less wild. I assume to be acquainted with these, but what ages between me and the tree whose shade I enjoy! It is as if it stood substantially in a remote geographical period.

1 comment:

michael jameson said...

few take any notice of the wild greenery,as the years pass on it is of little value for us to know! the herbs that heal is all but lost,we buy from stores and go to doctors,we seem to care if it has pretty flowers or a weed invading our yards,yet take a walk in the woods and name the plants and trees?,why should you know it why should you care, and this is how we think now?.michael jameson oldantiqueguy@hotmail.com