2.09.2014
an inhabitant of nature
...Thoreau's Journal: 9-Feb-1852
Met Sudbury Haines on the river before the Cliffs, come a-fishing. Wearing an old coat, much patched, with many colors. He represents the Indian still. The very patches in his coat and his improvident life do so. I feel that he is as essential a part, nevertheless, of our community as the lawyer in the village. He tells me that he caught three pickerel here the other day that weighed seven pounds altogether. It is the old story. The fisherman is a natural story-teller. No man’s imagination plays more pranks than his, while he is tending his reels and trotting from one to another, or watching his cork in summer. He is ever waiting for the sky to fall. He has sent out a venture. He has a ticket in the lottery of fate, and who knows what it may draw? He ever expects to catch a bigger fish yet. He is the most patient and believing of men. Who else will stand so long in wet places? When the haymaker runs to shelter, he takes down his pole and bends his steps to the river, glad to have a leisure day. He is more like an inhabitant of nature.
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4 comments:
we are all inhabitants of nature,the native people are friends to nature,they do not change it, taking what they need,adjusting life to the seasons,having a patience of life and a child like faith and enjoying humor, like ourselves just as barbaric but we have labeled ourselves as civilized,they take great pleasure in simplicity.where we need complication,they have more reason to be proud then we do!.
The segment on the fisherman stories is so true. Never have I met a better story teller than a fisherman. Is that not why we fish in the first place? To tell all of our friends about the big catch afterwards. The only time this wouldn't be true would be with a native person who would depend on fish to eat in the first place. An example would be the native tribes along the Congo who feed their villages with the day's catch.
"He represents the Indian still. The very patches in his coat and his improvident life do so." Much has been lost but survives in another way. Those of us who have a trace of Indian blood have less connection than those who let the improvident life rise in them. That's what I get out of it, and Thoreau has raised a tremendously optimistic point.
Have not been checking on blogs for eons. Am so glad to see you are still there, still putting up gems for all to enjoy.
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