3.19.2007
Thoreau's Journal: 19-Mar-1858
Another pleasant and warm day. Painted my boat this afternoon. These spring impressions (as of the apparent waking up of the meadow described day before yesterday) are not repeated the same year, at least not with the same force, for the next day the same phenomenon does not surprise us. Our appetitive has lost its edge. The other day the face of the meadows wore a peculiar appearance, as if it were beginning to wake up under the influence of the south-west wind and the warm sun, but it cannot again this year present precisely that appearance to me. I have taken a step forward to a new position and must see something else. You perceive, and are affected by, changes too subtle to be described.
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3 comments:
A little off topic, I guess, but the first thing that hit me when I read this entry is the question - where did he get paint? No Lowes or Home Depot. What was paint in those days? What was a brush? How did he get or make all of this? Just wondering.
Thoreau was not very far from the town of Concord, only a mile or two, I think. He never claimed to be living in the wilderness or to be completely isolated from society. His main intention was, I believe, to "Simplify, simplify" and to exerience and observe life as fully and honestly as he could and to record those exeriences and observations.
from the Chapter entitled "The Village" from Walden:
Every day or two I strolled to the village to hear some of the gossip which is incessantly going on there, circulating either from mouth to mouth, or from newspaper to newspaper, and which, taken in homoeopathic doses, was really as refreshing in its way as the rustle of leaves and the peeping of frogs. As I walked in the woods to see the birds and squirrels, so I walked in the village to see the men and boys; instead of the wind among the pines I heard the carts rattle.
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