A Thoreauvian Spring
"No mortal is alert enough to be present at the first dawn of the spring." — Henry David Thoreau, Journal, March 17, 1857
"One attraction in coming to the woods to live was that I should have leisure and opportunity to see the spring come in." — Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Chapter XVII
I've always been a fan of Thoreau. Until recently, I owned five or six copies of Walden, including a fine hardcover version this terrific guy gave me, but my wife made me donate half of them. My interest in Thoreau began in high school, when every junior in America is required to read "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For," and while my classmates were rendered comatose by the 19th century prose, I was entranced. As a kid who had grown up in the countryside (first Maine, then rural New York), I spent ALL of my time in the woods. Finally I was reading about a guy who thoroughly embraced Nature, just like I did, and I was determined to learn more.
My interest in Thoreau was part of the reason why I decided to study philosophy and religion in college. The ideas of spirituality and harmony with nature that Thoreau touches upon in Walden excited my eager young mind. While still in school I started writing a play about him, as well as a biographical sketch for a humor book that was never published.
After college I was a reporter for my hometown newspaper, until one particularly vibrant autumn, when I once again felt the stirrings of Thoreau. I decided to quit my job so I could spend the entire season walking in the woods around Millbrook, learning the names of all the trees.
Sixteen years later, I'm still enamored of Thoreau, and I still enjoy walking in nature as much as I always did. Yesterday was the first non-winter day of the year, so I took a long walk to see what I could see. What I saw was the cusp of spring.
It was cold when I started out, and I was dressed in layers: T-shirt, Oxford shirt, heavy wool sweater and wool topcoat. A mile into my walk, the sun appeared at my back (to the southwest) and heated up my shoulders. I had to remove the coat and carry it, then remove the sweater, put the coat back on and carry the sweater.
The roads were dry—even the dirt ones I walked on—but the shoulder was a squishy mixture of mud and last fall's leaves, which actually made walking easier on the feet.
A waterfall in Glacier National Park.
I passed two waterfalls on my way out of the village, and both gushed as loudly as the ones I saw while hiking through Glacier National Park in March six years ago. Heavy, jagged icicles clung to the shaded corners of the falls, and I wondered how long they would last. The last signs of winter. Would they make it to April?
The snow has all melted, a fact that the squirrels were happy about. I observed a pair of them chasing each other around a fat oak, scolding me and each other, then racing into a knothole. Pheasants, one of the stupidest birds on the planet, strutted in the road at a nasty curve. As I approached, they flapped away and hid in the brush.
There is an alive stillness in the early spring. While crossing a meadow between two roads, I stopped, closed my eyes and listened. In winter you hear nothing but the wind or far-away traffic. But as the air begins to warm, you hear the first signs of life. If you listen really closely, you can almost make out the ground itself stretching, the grass readying itself for another growth spurt. This silence isn't clouded by the buzz of insects, which will be the case in another few weeks. It's a brief interval between the absolute nothingness of winter and the full-blown glory of spring.
I passed an old-timer who was pouring buckets of sap into a steaming vat beneath the trees, and I was carried back 25 years to when I helped my great-uncle Holland make maple syrup. The old man saw me staring and we shared a nod. It takes a hell of a lot of sap to make just a quart of syrup. I remember that well. I walked on.
Some Vermont kid back in my great-uncle's time making syrup.
The thoroughbreds in the fields were still wearing their horse blankets, and when I approached a fence, a couple of the bolder ones walked over, hoping I had a snack for them. I didn't. I patted their nuzzles and kept walking.
In the corner of a field, I spied a collection of beehives. Foolishly, I went over, squatted beside them and listened for any buzzing. It was faint, but it was there. Soon the bees would be zipping in and out of there all day long.
After a couple of hours, I reached one of my favorite spots along a nearby creek. It's a fallen log next to a bridge, where I like to sit down and eat my lunch. I had a corned beef and swiss sandwich, eating very little of the bread, as I looked out at the bare branches and the pristine sky. Spring was coming. It would be here, full-blown, within a couple of weeks. Breathing deeply of the clean, quiet air, I was glad I'd set out on this little walk, and gladder still for leaving the city behind and getting back to my Thoreauvian roots.