Walking Henry David Thoreau 3869 downloads.pdf

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Walking

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will
have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using
this eBook.

Title: Walking

Author: Henry David Thoreau

Release date: August 1, 1997 [eBook #1022]
Most recently updated: October 29, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1022

Credits: Q Myers, and David Widger

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WALKING ***

Wa l k i n g

by Henry David Thoreau

I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute Freedom and Wildness, as
contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil,—to regard man as an
inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. I
wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for
there are enough champions of civilization: the minister and the school
committee and every one of you will take care of that.
I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who
understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks—who had a genius,
so to speak, for sauntering, which word is beautifully derived “from idle
people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity,
under pretense of going à la Sainte Terre,” to the Holy Land, till the
children exclaimed, “There goes a Sainte-Terrer,” a Saunterer, a Holy-
Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they
pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there
are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would
derive the word from sans terre without land or a home, which, therefore, in
the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home
everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still
in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer,
in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all
the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea. But I prefer the
first, which, indeed, is the most probable derivation. For every walk is a sort
of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and
reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels.

It is true, we are but faint-hearted crusaders, even the walkers, nowadays,
who undertake no persevering, never-ending enterprises. Our expeditions
are but tours, and come round again at evening to the old hearth-side from
which we set out. Half the walk is but retracing our steps. We should go
forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure,
never to return,—prepared to send back our embalmed hearts only as relics
to our desolate kingdoms. If you are ready to leave father and mother, and
brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again,
—if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your
affairs, and are a free man; then you are ready for a walk.
To come down to my own experience, my companion and I, for I
sometimes have a companion, take pleasure in fancying ourselves knights
of a new, or rather an old, order—not Equestrians or Chevaliers, not Ritters
or Riders, but Walkers, a still more ancient and honorable class, I trust. The
chivalric and heroic spirit which once belonged to the Rider seems now to
reside in, or perchance to have subsided into, the Walker—not the Knight,
but Walker Errant. He is a sort of fourth estate, outside of Church and State
and People.
We have felt that we almost alone hereabouts practiced this noble art;
though, to tell the truth, at least if their own assertions are to be received,
most of my townsmen would fain walk sometimes, as I do, but they cannot.
No wealth can buy the requisite leisure, freedom, and independence which
are the capital in this profession. It comes only by the grace of God. It
requires a direct dispensation from Heaven to become a walker. You must
be born into the family of the Walkers. Ambulator nascitur, non fit. Some of
my townsmen, it is true, can remember and have described to me some
walks which they took ten years ago, in which they were so blessed as to
lose themselves for half an hour in the woods; but I know very well that
they have confined themselves to the highway ever since, whatever
pretensions they may make to belong to this select class. No doubt they
were elevated for a moment as by the reminiscence of a previous state of
existence, when even they were foresters and outlaws.
“When he came to grene wode,
In a mery mornynge,
There he herde the notes small
Of byrdes mery syngynge.

“It is ferre gone, sayd Robyn,

That I was last here;
Me lyste a lytell for to shote
At the donne dere.”

I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four
hours a day at least—and it is commonly more than that—sauntering
through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all
worldly engagements. You may safely say, A penny for your thoughts, or a
thousand pounds. When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics and
shopkeepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all the
afternoon too, sitting with crossed legs, so many of them—as if the legs
were made to sit upon, and not to stand or walk upon—I think that they
deserve some credit for not having all committed suicide long ago.
I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without acquiring
some rust, and when sometimes I have stolen forth for a walk at the
eleventh hour, or four o’clock in the afternoon, too late to redeem the day,
when the shades of night were already beginning to be mingled with the
daylight, have felt as if I had committed some sin to be atoned for,—I
confess that I am astonished at the power of endurance, to say nothing of
the moral insensibility, of my neighbors who confine themselves to shops
and offices the whole day for weeks and months, aye, and years almost
together. I know not what manner of stuff they are of—sitting there now at
three o’clock in the afternoon, as if it were three o’clock in the morning.
Bonaparte may talk of the three-o’clock-in-the-morning courage, but it is
nothing to the courage which can sit down cheerfully at this hour in the
afternoon over against one’s self whom you have known all the morning, to
starve out a garrison to whom you are bound by such strong ties of
sympathy. I wonder that about this time, or say between four and five
o’clock in the afternoon, too late for the morning papers and too early for
the evening ones, there is not a general explosion heard up and down the
street, scattering a legion of antiquated and house-bred notions and whims
to the four winds for an airing—and so the evil cure itself.
How womankind, who are confined to the house still more than men,
stand it I do not know; but I have ground to suspect that most of them do
not stand it at all. When, early in a summer afternoon, we have been
shaking the dust of the village from the skirts of our garments, making haste
past those houses with purely Doric or Gothic fronts, which have such an
air of repose about them, my companion whispers that probably about these

times their occupants are all gone to bed. Then it is that I appreciate the
beauty and the glory of architecture, which itself never turns in, but forever
stands out and erect, keeping watch over the slumberers.
No doubt temperament, and, above all, age, have a good deal to do with
it. As a man grows older, his ability to sit still and follow indoor
occupations increases. He grows vespertinal in his habits as the evening of
life approaches, till at last he comes forth only just before sundown, and
gets all the walk that he requires in half an hour.
But the walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise,
as it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated hours—as the swinging of
dumb-bells or chairs; but is itself the enterprise and adventure of the day. If
you would get exercise, go in search of the springs of life. Think of a man’s
swinging dumb-bells for his health, when those springs are bubbling up in
far-off pastures unsought by him!
Moreover, you must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast
which ruminates when walking. When a traveler asked Wordsworth’s
servant to show him her master’s study, she answered, “Here is his library,
but his study is out of doors.”
Living much out of doors, in the sun and wind, will no doubt produce a
certain roughness of character—will cause a thicker cuticle to grow over
some of the finer qualities of our nature, as on the face and hands, or as
severe manual labor robs the hands of some of their delicacy of touch. So
staying in the house, on the other hand, may produce a softness and
smoothness, not to say thinness of skin, accompanied by an increased
sensibility to certain impressions. Perhaps we should be more susceptible to
some influences important to our intellectual and moral growth, if the sun
had shone and the wind blown on us a little less; and no doubt it is a nice
matter to proportion rightly the thick and thin skin. But methinks that is a
scurf that will fall off fast enough—that the natural remedy is to be found in
the proportion which the night bears to the day, the winter to the summer,
thought to experience. There will be so much the more air and sunshine in
our thoughts. The callous palms of the laborer are conversant with finer
tissues of self-respect and heroism, whose touch thrills the heart, than the
languid fingers of idleness. That is mere sentimentality that lies abed by day
and thinks itself white, far from the tan and callus of experience.

When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods: what would
become of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall? Even some sects of
philosophers have felt the necessity of importing the woods to themselves,
since they did not go to the woods. “They planted groves and walks of
Platanes,” where they took subdiales ambulationes in porticos open to the
air. Of course it is of no use to direct our steps to the woods, if they do not
carry us thither. I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile
into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. In my afternoon walk I
would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to
society. But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village.
The thought of some work will run in my head and I am not where my body
is—I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my senses.
What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the
woods? I suspect myself, and cannot help a shudder when I find myself so
implicated even in what are called good works—for this may sometimes
happen.
My vicinity affords many good walks; and though for so many years I
have walked almost every day, and sometimes for several days together, I
have not yet exhausted them. An absolutely new prospect is a great
happiness, and I can still get this any afternoon. Two or three hours’
walking will carry me to as strange a country as I expect ever to see. A
single farmhouse which I had not seen before is sometimes as good as the
dominions of the king of Dahomey. There is in fact a sort of harmony
discoverable between the capabilities of the landscape within a circle of ten
miles’ radius, or the limits of an afternoon walk, and the threescore years
and ten of human life. It will never become quite familiar to you.
Nowadays almost all man’s improvements, so called, as the building of
houses and the cutting down of the forest and of all large trees, simply
deform the landscape, and make it more and more tame and cheap. A people
who would begin by burning the fences and let the forest stand! I saw the
fences half consumed, their ends lost in the middle of the prairie, and some
worldly miser with a surveyor looking after his bounds, while heaven had
taken place around him, and he did not see the angels going to and fro, but
was looking for an old post-hole in the midst of paradise. I looked again,
and saw him standing in the middle of a boggy Stygian fen, surrounded by
devils, and he had found his bounds without a doubt, three little stones,

where a stake had been driven, and looking nearer, I saw that the Prince of
Darkness was his surveyor.
I can easily walk ten, fifteen, twenty, any number of miles, commencing
at my own door, without going by any house, without crossing a road
except where the fox and the mink do: first along by the river, and then the
brook, and then the meadow and the wood-side. There are square miles in
my vicinity which have no inhabitant. From many a hill I can see
civilization and the abodes of man afar. The farmers and their works are
scarcely more obvious than woodchucks and their burrows. Man and his
affairs, church and state and school, trade and commerce, and manufactures
and agriculture even politics, the most alarming of them all,—I am pleased
to see how little space they occupy in the landscape. Politics is but a narrow
field, and that still narrower highway yonder leads to it. I sometimes direct
the traveler thither. If you would go to the political world, follow the great
road,—follow that market-man, keep his dust in your eyes, and it will lead
you straight to it; for it, too, has its place merely, and does not occupy all
space. I pass from it as from a bean field into the forest, and it is forgotten.
In one half hour I can walk off to some portion of the earth’s surface where
a man does not stand from one year’s end to another, and there,
consequently, politics are not, for they are but as the cigar smoke of a man.
The village is the place to which the roads tend, a sort of expansion of the
highway, as a lake of a river. It is the body of which roads are the arms and
legs—a trivial or quadrivial place, the thoroughfare and ordinary of
travelers. The word is from the Latin villa which together with via, a way,
or more anciently ved and vella, Varro derives from veho, to carry, because
the villa is the place to and from which things are carried. They who got
their living by teaming were said vellaturam facere. Hence, too, the Latin
word vilis and our vile; also villain. This suggests what kind of degeneracy
villagers are liable to. They are wayworn by the travel that goes by and over
them, without traveling themselves.
Some do not walk at all; others walk in the highways; a few walk across
lots. Roads are made for horses and men of business. I do not travel in them
much, comparatively, because I am not in a hurry to get to any tavern or
grocery or livery-stable or depot to which they lead. I am a good horse to
travel, but not from choice a roadster. The landscape-painter uses the
figures of men to mark a road. He would not make that use of my figure. I

walk out into a nature such as the old prophets and poets, Menu, Moses,
Homer, Chaucer, walked in. You may name it America, but it is not
America: neither Americus Vespucius, nor Columbus, nor the rest were the
discoverers of it. There is a truer amount of it in mythology than in any
history of America, so called, that I have seen.
However, there are a few old roads that may be trodden with profit, as if
they led somewhere now that they are nearly discontinued. There is the Old
Marlborough Road, which does not go to Marlborough now, methinks,
unless that is Marlborough where it carries me. I am the bolder to speak of
it here, because I presume that there are one or two such roads in every
town.
THE OLD MARLBOROUGH ROAD.

Where they once dug for money,
But never found any;
Where sometimes Martial Miles
Singly files,
And Elijah Wood,
I fear for no good:
No other man,
Save Elisha Dugan—
O man of wild habits,
Partridges and rabbits,
Who hast no cares
Only to set snares,
Who liv’st all alone,
Close to the bone;
And where life is sweetest
Constantly eatest.
When the spring stirs my blood
With the instinct to travel,
I can get enough gravel
On the Old Marlborough Road.
Nobody repairs it,
For nobody wears it;
It is a living way,
As the Christians say.
Not many there be
Who enter therein,
Only the guests of the
Irishman Quin.
What is it, what is it
But a direction out there,
And the bare possibility
Of going somewhere?

Great guide boards of stone,
But travelers none;
Cenotaphs of the towns
Named on their crowns.
It is worth going to see
Where you might be.
What king
Did the thing,
I am still wondering;
Set up how or when,
By what selectmen,
Gourgas or Lee,
Clark or Darby?
They’re a great endeavor
To be something forever;
Blank tablets of stone,
Where a traveler might groan,
And in one sentence
Grave all that is known
Which another might read,
In his extreme need.
I know one or two
Lines that would do,
Literature that might stand
All over the land,
Which a man could remember
Till next December,
And read again in the spring,
After the thawing.
If with fancy unfurled
You leave your abode,
You may go round the world
By the Old Marlborough Road.

At present, in this vicinity, the best part of the land is not private
property; the landscape is not owned, and the walker enjoys comparative
freedom. But possibly the day will come when it will be partitioned off into
so-called pleasure grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and exclusive
pleasure only,—when fences shall be multiplied, and man traps and other
engines invented to confine men to the public road, and walking over the
surface of God’s earth shall be construed to mean trespassing on some
gentleman’s grounds. To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude
yourself from the true enjoyment of it. Let us improve our opportunities,
then, before the evil days come.
What is it that makes it so hard sometimes to determine whither we will
walk? I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we

unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright. It is not indifferent to us
which way we walk. There is a right way; but we are very liable from
heedlessness and stupidity to take the wrong one. We would fain take that
walk, never yet taken by us through this actual world, which is perfectly
symbolical of the path which we love to travel in the interior and ideal
world; and sometimes, no doubt, we find it difficult to choose our direction,
because it does not yet exist distinctly in our idea.
When I go out of the house for a walk, uncertain as yet whither I will
bend my steps, and submit myself to my instinct to decide for me, I find,
strange and whimsical as it may seem, that I finally and inevitably settle
southwest, toward some particular wood or meadow or deserted pasture or
hill in that direction. My needle is slow to settle—varies a few degrees, and
does not always point due southwest, it is true, and it has good authority for
this variation, but it always settles between west and south-southwest. The
future lies that way to me, and the earth seems more unexhausted and richer
on that side. The outline which would bound my walks would be, not a
circle, but a parabola, or rather like one of those cometary orbits which have
been thought to be non-returning curves, in this case opening westward, in
which my house occupies the place of the sun. I turn round and round
irresolute sometimes for a quarter of an hour, until I decide, for a
thousandth time, that I will walk into the southwest or west. Eastward I go
only by force; but westward I go free. Thither no business leads me. It is
hard for me to believe that I shall find fair landscapes or sufficient wildness
and freedom behind the eastern horizon. I am not excited by the prospect of
a walk thither; but I believe that the forest which I see in the western
horizon stretches uninterruptedly toward the setting sun, and there are no
towns nor cities in it of enough consequence to disturb me. Let me live
where I will, on this side is the city, on that the wilderness, and ever I am
leaving the city more and more, and withdrawing into the wilderness. I
should not lay so much stress on this fact, if I did not believe that something
like this is the prevailing tendency of my countrymen. I must walk toward
Oregon, and not toward Europe. And that way the nation is moving, and I
may say that mankind progress from east to west. Within a few years we
have witnessed the phenomenon of a southeastward migration, in the
settlement of Australia; but this affects us as a retrograde movement, and,
judging from the moral and physical character of the first generation of
Australians, has not yet proved a successful experiment. The eastern Tartars

think that there is nothing west beyond Thibet. “The world ends there,” say
they; “beyond there is nothing but a shoreless sea.” It is unmitigated East
where they live.
We go eastward to realize history and study the works of art and
literature, retracing the steps of the race; we go westward as into the future,
with a spirit of enterprise and adventure. The Atlantic is a Lethean stream,
in our passage over which we have had an opportunity to forget the Old
World and its institutions. If we do not succeed this time, there is perhaps
one more chance for the race left before it arrives on the banks of the Styx;
and that is in the Lethe of the Pacific, which is three times as wide.
I know not how significant it is, or how far it is an evidence of
singularity, that an individual should thus consent in his pettiest walk with
the general movement of the race; but I know that something akin to the
migratory instinct in birds and quadrupeds,—which, in some instances, is
known to have affected the squirrel tribe, impelling them to a general and
mysterious movement, in which they were seen, say some, crossing the
broadest rivers, each on its particular chip, with its tail raised for a sail, and
bridging narrower streams with their dead,—that something like the furor
which affects the domestic cattle in the spring, and which is referred to a
worm in their tails,—affects both nations and individuals, either perennially
or from time to time. Not a flock of wild geese cackles over our town, but it
to some extent unsettles the value of real estate here, and, if I were a broker,
I should probably take that disturbance into account.
“Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken strange strondes.”

Every sunset which I witness inspires me with the desire to go to a West
as distant and as fair as that into which the sun goes down. He appears to
migrate westward daily, and tempt us to follow him. He is the Great
Western Pioneer whom the nations follow. We dream all night of those
mountain ridges in the horizon, though they may be of vapor only, which
were last gilded by his rays. The island of Atlantis, and the islands and
gardens of the Hesperides, a sort of terrestrial paradise, appear to have been
the Great West of the ancients, enveloped in mystery and poetry. Who has
not seen in imagination, when looking into the sunset sky, the gardens of
the Hesperides, and the foundation of all those fables?

Columbus felt the westward tendency more strongly than any before. He
obeyed it, and found a New World for Castile and Leon. The herd of men in
those days scented fresh pastures from afar.
“And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,
And now was dropped into the western bay;
At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue;
To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.”

Where on the globe can there be found an area of equal extent with that
occupied by the bulk of our States, so fertile and so rich and varied in its
productions, and at the same time so habitable by the European, as this is?
Michaux, who knew but part of them, says that “the species of large trees
are much more numerous in North America than in Europe; in the United
States there are more than one hundred and forty species that exceed thirty
feet in height; in France there are but thirty that attain this size.” Later
botanists more than confirm his observations. Humboldt came to America
to realize his youthful dreams of a tropical vegetation, and he beheld it in its
greatest perfection in the primitive forests of the Amazon, the most gigantic
wilderness on the earth, which he has so eloquently described. The
geographer Guyot, himself a European, goes further—further than I am
ready to follow him; yet not when he says: “As the plant is made for the
animal, as the vegetable world is made for the animal world, America is
made for the man of the Old World.... The man of the Old World sets out
upon his way. Leaving the highlands of Asia, he descends from station to
station towards Europe. Each of his steps is marked by a new civilization
superior to the preceding, by a greater power of development. Arrived at the
Atlantic, he pauses on the shore of this unknown ocean, the bounds of
which he knows not, and turns upon his footprints for an instant.” When he
has exhausted the rich soil of Europe, and reinvigorated himself, “then
recommences his adventurous career westward as in the earliest ages.” So
far Guyot.
From this western impulse coming in contact with the barrier of the
Atlantic sprang the commerce and enterprise of modern times. The younger
Michaux, in his Travels West of the Alleghanies in 1802, says that the
common inquiry in the newly settled West was, “‘From what part of the
world have you come?’ As if these vast and fertile regions would naturally
be the place of meeting and common country of all the inhabitants of the
globe.”

To use an obsolete Latin word, I might say, Ex oriente lux; ex occidente
FRUX. From the East light; from the West fruit.
Sir Francis Head, an English traveler and a Governor-General of Canada,
tells us that “in both the northern and southern hemispheres of the New
World, Nature has not only outlined her works on a larger scale, but has
painted the whole picture with brighter and more costly colors than she
used in delineating and in beautifying the Old World.... The heavens of
America appear infinitely higher, the sky is bluer, the air is fresher, the cold
is intenser, the moon looks larger, the stars are brighter the thunder is
louder, the lightning is vivider, the wind is stronger, the rain is heavier, the
mountains are higher, the rivers longer, the forests bigger, the plains
broader.” This statement will do at least to set against Buffon’s account of
this part of the world and its productions.
Linnæus said long ago, “Nescio quæ facies læta, glabra plantis
Americanis” (I know not what there is of joyous and smooth in the aspect
of American plants); and I think that in this country there are no, or at most
very few, Africanæ bestiæ, African beasts, as the Romans called them, and
that in this respect also it is peculiarly fitted for the habitation of man. We
are told that within three miles of the center of the East Indian city of
Singapore, some of the inhabitants are annually carried off by tigers; but the
traveler can lie down in the woods at night almost anywhere in North
America without fear of wild beasts.
These are encouraging testimonies. If the moon looks larger here than in
Europe, probably the sun looks larger also. If the heavens of America
appear infinitely higher, and the stars brighter, I trust that these facts are
symbolical of the height to which the philosophy and poetry and religion of
her inhabitants may one day soar. At length, perchance, the immaterial
heaven will appear as much higher to the American mind, and the
intimations that star it as much brighter. For I believe that climate does thus
react on man—as there is something in the mountain air that feeds the spirit
and inspires. Will not man grow to greater perfection intellectually as well
as physically under these influences? Or is it unimportant how many foggy
days there are in his life? I trust that we shall be more imaginative, that our
thoughts will be clearer, fresher, and more ethereal, as our sky—our
understanding more comprehensive and broader, like our plains—our
intellect generally on a grander scale, like our thunder and lightning, our

rivers and mountains and forests,—and our hearts shall even correspond in
breadth and depth and grandeur to our inland seas. Perchance there will
appear to the traveler something, he knows not what, of læta and glabra, of
joyous and serene, in our very faces. Else to what end does the world go on,
and why was America discovered?
To Americans I hardly need to say—
“Westward the star of empire takes its way.”

As a true patriot, I should be ashamed to think that Adam in paradise was
more favorably situated on the whole than the backwoodsman in this
country.
Our sympathies in Massachusetts are not confined to New England;
though we may be estranged from the South, we sympathize with the West.
There is the home of the younger sons, as among the Scandinavians they
took to the sea for their inheritance. It is too late to be studying Hebrew; it
is more important to understand even the slang of today.
Some months ago I went to see a panorama of the Rhine. It was like a
dream of the Middle Ages. I floated down its historic stream in something
more than imagination, under bridges built by the Romans, and repaired by
later heroes, past cities and castles whose very names were music to my
ears, and each of which was the subject of a legend. There were
Ehrenbreitstein and Rolandseck and Coblentz, which I knew only in history.
They were ruins that interested me chiefly. There seemed to come up from
its waters and its vine-clad hills and valleys a hushed music as of crusaders
departing for the Holy Land. I floated along under the spell of enchantment,
as if I had been transported to an heroic age, and breathed an atmosphere of
chivalry.
Soon after, I went to see a panorama of the Mississippi, and as I worked
my way up the river in the light of to-day, and saw the steamboats wooding
up, counted the rising cities, gazed on the fresh ruins of Nauvoo, beheld the
Indians moving west across the stream, and, as before I had looked up the
Moselle, now looked up the Ohio and the Missouri and heard the legends of
Dubuque and of Wenona’s Cliff—still thinking more of the future than of
the past or present—I saw that this was a Rhine stream of a different kind;
that the foundations of castles were yet to be laid, and the famous bridges
were yet to be thrown over the river; and I felt that this was the heroic age

itself, though we know it not, for the hero is commonly the simplest and
obscurest of men.
The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and what I
have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the
World. Every tree sends its fibers forth in search of the Wild. The cities
import it at any price. Men plow and sail for it. From the forest and
wilderness come the tonics and barks which brace mankind. Our ancestors
were savages. The story of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a wolf is
not a meaningless fable. The founders of every state which has risen to
eminence have drawn their nourishment and vigor from a similar wild
source. It was because the children of the Empire were not suckled by the
wolf that they were conquered and displaced by the children of the northern
forests who were.
I believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the night in which the
corn grows. We require an infusion of hemlock spruce or arbor vitæ in our
tea. There is a difference between eating and drinking for strength and from
mere gluttony. The Hottentots eagerly devour the marrow of the koodoo and
other antelopes raw, as a matter of course. Some of our northern Indians eat
raw the marrow of the Arctic reindeer, as well as various other parts,
including the summits of the antlers, as long as they are soft. And herein,
perchance, they have stolen a march on the cooks of Paris. They get what
usually goes to feed the fire. This is probably better than stall-fed beef and
slaughterhouse pork to make a man of. Give me a wildness whose glance
no civilization can endure,—as if we lived on the marrow of koodoos
devoured raw.
There are some intervals which border the strain of the wood-thrush, to
which I would migrate—wild lands where no settler has squatted; to which,
methinks, I am already acclimated.
The African hunter Cumming tells us that the skin of the eland, as well as
that of most other antelopes just killed, emits the most delicious perfume of
trees and grass. I would have every man so much like a wild antelope, so
much a part and parcel of Nature, that his very person should thus sweetly
advertise our senses of his presence, and remind us of those parts of nature
which he most haunts. I feel no disposition to be satirical, when the
trapper’s coat emits the odor of musquash even; it is a sweeter scent to me
than that which commonly exhales from the merchant’s or the scholar’s

garments. When I go into their wardrobes and handle their vestments, I am
reminded of no grassy plains and flowery meads which they have
frequented, but of dusty merchants’ exchanges and libraries rather.
A tanned skin is something more than respectable, and perhaps olive is a
fitter color than white for a man—a denizen of the woods. “The pale white
man!” I do not wonder that the African pitied him. Darwin the naturalist
says, “A white man bathing by the side of a Tahitian was like a plant
bleached by the gardener’s art, compared with a fine, dark green one,
growing vigorously in the open fields.”
Ben Jonson exclaims,—
“How near to good is what is fair!”

So I would say,—
“How near to good is what is wild!”

Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued
to man, its presence refreshes him. One who pressed forward incessantly
and never rested from his labors, who grew fast and made infinite demands
on life, would always find himself in a new country or wilderness, and
surrounded by the raw material of life. He would be climbing over the
prostrate stems of primitive forest trees.
Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in
towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps. When,
formerly, I have analyzed my partiality for some farm which I had
contemplated purchasing, I have frequently found that I was attracted solely
by a few square rods of impermeable and unfathomable bog—a natural sink
in one corner of it. That was the jewel which dazzled me. I derive more of
my subsistence from the swamps which surround my native town than from
the cultivated gardens in the village. There are no richer parterres to my
eyes than the dense beds of dwarf andromeda (Cassandra calyculata)
which cover these tender places on the earth’s surface. Botany cannot go
farther than tell me the names of the shrubs which grow there—the high-
blueberry, panicled andromeda, lamb-kill, azalea, and rhodora—all standing
in the quaking sphagnum. I often think that I should like to have my house
front on this mass of dull red bushes, omitting other flower plots and
borders, transplanted spruce and trim box, even graveled walks—to have

this fertile spot under my windows, not a few imported barrow-fuls of soil
only to cover the sand which was thrown out in digging the cellar. Why not
put my house, my parlor, behind this plot, instead of behind that meager
assemblage of curiosities, that poor apology for a Nature and art, which I
call my front yard? It is an effort to clear up and make a decent appearance
when the carpenter and mason have departed, though done as much for the
passer-by as the dweller within. The most tasteful front-yard fence was
never an agreeable object of study to me; the most elaborate ornaments,
acorn tops, or what not, soon wearied and disgusted me. Bring your sills up
to the very edge of the swamp, then (though it may not be the best place for
a dry cellar,) so that there be no access on that side to citizens. Front yards
are not made to walk in, but, at most, through, and you could go in the back
way.
Yes, though you may think me perverse, if it were proposed to me to
dwell in the neighborhood of the most beautiful garden that ever human art
contrived, or else of a dismal swamp, I should certainly decide for the
swamp. How vain, then, have been all your labors, citizens, for me!
My spirits infallibly rise in proportion to the outward dreariness. Give me
the ocean, the desert, or the wilderness! In the desert, pure air and solitude
compensate for want of moisture and fertility. The traveler Burton says of it
—“Your morale improves; you become frank and cordial, hospitable and
single-minded.... In the desert, spirituous liquors excite only disgust. There
is a keen enjoyment in a mere animal existence.” They who have been
traveling long on the steppes of Tartary say, “On reentering cultivated lands,
the agitation, perplexity, and turmoil of civilization oppressed and
suffocated us; the air seemed to fail us, and we felt every moment as if
about to die of asphyxia.” When I would recreate myself, I seek the darkest
wood, the thickest and most interminable and, to the citizen, most dismal,
swamp. I enter a swamp as a sacred place,—a sanctum sanctorum. There is
the strength, the marrow, of Nature. The wild wood covers the virgin
mould,—and the same soil is good for men and for trees. A man’s health
requires as many acres of meadow to his prospect as his farm does loads of
muck. There are the strong meats on which he feeds. A town is saved, not
more by the righteous men in it than by the woods and swamps that
surround it. A township where one primitive forest waves above while
another primitive forest rots below—such a town is fitted to raise not only
corn and potatoes, but poets and philosophers for the coming ages. In such a

soil grew Homer and Confucius and the rest, and out of such a wilderness
comes the reformer eating locusts and wild honey.
To preserve wild animals implies generally the creation of a forest for
them to dwell in or resort to. So it is with man. A hundred years ago they
sold bark in our streets peeled from our own woods. In the very aspect of
those primitive and rugged trees there was, methinks, a tanning principle
which hardened and consolidated the fibers of men’s thoughts. Ah! already
I shudder for these comparatively degenerate days of my native village,
when you cannot collect a load of bark of good thickness, and we no longer
produce tar and turpentine.
The civilized nations—Greece, Rome, England—have been sustained by
the primitive forests which anciently rotted where they stand. They survive
as long as the soil is not exhausted. Alas for human culture! little is to be
expected of a nation, when the vegetable mould is exhausted, and it is
compelled to make manure of the bones of its fathers. There the poet
sustains himself merely by his own superfluous fat, and the philosopher
comes down on his marrow bones.
It is said to be the task of the American “to work the virgin soil,” and that
“agriculture here already assumes proportions unknown everywhere else.” I
think that the farmer displaces the Indian even because he redeems the
meadow, and so makes himself stronger and in some respects more natural.
I was surveying for a man the other day a single straight line one hundred
and thirty-two rods long, through a swamp at whose entrance might have
been written the words which Dante read over the entrance to the infernal
regions,—“Leave all hope, ye that enter”—that is, of ever getting out again;
where at one time I saw my employer actually up to his neck and swimming
for his life in his property, though it was still winter. He had another similar
swamp which I could not survey at all, because it was completely under
water, and nevertheless, with regard to a third swamp, which I did survey
from a distance, he remarked to me, true to his instincts, that he would not
part with it for any consideration, on account of the mud which it contained.
And that man intends to put a girdling ditch round the whole in the course
of forty months, and so redeem it by the magic of his spade. I refer to him
only as the type of a class.
The weapons with which we have gained our most important victories,
which should be handed down as heirlooms from father to son, are not the

sword and the lance, but the bushwhack, the turf-cutter, the spade, and the
bog hoe, rusted with the blood of many a meadow, and begrimed with the
dust of many a hard-fought field. The very winds blew the Indian’s
cornfield into the meadow, and pointed out the way which he had not the
skill to follow. He had no better implement with which to intrench himself
in the land than a clam-shell. But the farmer is armed with plow and spade.
In literature it is only the wild that attracts us. Dullness is but another
name for tameness. It is the uncivilized free and wild thinking in Hamlet
and the Iliad, in all the scriptures and mythologies, not learned in the
schools, that delights us. As the wild duck is more swift and beautiful than
the tame, so is the wild—the mallard—thought, which ’mid falling dews
wings its way above the fens. A truly good book is something as natural,
and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild flower
discovered on the prairies of the west or in the jungles of the east. Genius is
a light which makes the darkness visible, like the lightning’s flash, which
perchance shatters the temple of knowledge itself—and not a taper lighted
at the hearthstone of the race, which pales before the light of common day.
English literature, from the days of the minstrels to the Lake Poets—
Chaucer and Spenser and Milton, and even Shakespeare included—breathes
no quite fresh and in this sense wild strain. It is an essentially tame and
civilized literature, reflecting Greece and Rome. Her wilderness is a green
wood, her wild man a Robin Hood. There is plenty of genial love of Nature,
but not so much of Nature herself. Her chronicles inform us when her wild
animals, but not when the wild man in her, became extinct.
The science of Humboldt is one thing, poetry is another thing. The poet
today, notwithstanding all the discoveries of science, and the accumulated
learning of mankind, enjoys no advantage over Homer.
Where is the literature which gives expression to Nature? He would be a
poet who could impress the winds and streams into his service, to speak for
him; who nailed words to their primitive senses, as farmers drive down
stakes in the spring, which the frost has heaved; who derived his words as
often as he used them—transplanted them to his page with earth adhering to
their roots; whose words were so true and fresh and natural that they would
appear to expand like the buds at the approach of spring, though they lay
half smothered between two musty leaves in a library,—aye, to bloom and

bear fruit there, after their kind, annually, for the faithful reader, in
sympathy with surrounding Nature.
I do not know of any poetry to quote which adequately expresses this
yearning for the Wild. Approached from this side, the best poetry is tame. I
do not know where to find in any literature, ancient or modern, any account
which contents me of that Nature with which even I am acquainted. You
will perceive that I demand something which no Augustan nor Elizabethan
age, which no culture, in short, can give. Mythology comes nearer to it than
anything. How much more fertile a Nature, at least, has Grecian mythology
its root in than English literature! Mythology is the crop which the Old
World bore before its soil was exhausted, before the fancy and imagination
were affected with blight; and which it still bears, wherever its pristine
vigor is unabated. All other literatures endure only as the elms which
overshadow our houses; but this is like the great dragon-tree of the Western
Isles, as old as mankind, and, whether that does or not, will endure as long;
for the decay of other literatures makes the soil in which it thrives.
The West is preparing to add its fables to those of the East. The valleys of
the Ganges, the Nile, and the Rhine, having yielded their crop, it remains to
be seen what the valleys of the Amazon, the Plate, the Orinoco, the St.
Lawrence, and the Mississippi will produce. Perchance, when, in the course
of ages, American liberty has become a fiction of the past,—as it is to some
extent a fiction of the present,—the poets of the world will be inspired by
American mythology.
The wildest dreams of wild men, even, are not the less true, though they
may not recommend themselves to the sense which is most common among
Englishmen and Americans to-day. It is not every truth that recommends
itself to the common sense. Nature has a place for the wild clematis as well
as for the cabbage. Some expressions of truth are reminiscent,—others
merely sensible, as the phrase is,—others prophetic. Some forms of disease,
even, may prophesy forms of health. The geologist has discovered that the
figures of serpents, griffins, flying dragons, and other fanciful
embellishments of heraldry, have their prototypes in the forms of fossil
species which were extinct before man was created, and hence “indicate a
faint and shadowy knowledge of a previous state of organic existence.” The
Hindoos dreamed that the earth rested on an elephant, and the elephant on a
tortoise, and the tortoise on a serpent; and though it may be an unimportant

coincidence, it will not be out of place here to state, that a fossil tortoise has
lately been discovered in Asia large enough to support an elephant. I
confess that I am partial to these wild fancies, which transcend the order of
time and development. They are the sublimest recreation of the intellect.
The partridge loves peas, but not those that go with her into the pot.
In short, all good things are wild and free. There is something in a strain
of music, whether produced by an instrument or by the human voice—take
the sound of a bugle in a summer night, for instance,—which by its
wildness, to speak without satire, reminds me of the cries emitted by wild
beasts in their native forests. It is so much of their wildness as I can
understand. Give me for my friends and neighbors wild men, not tame ones.
The wildness of the savage is but a faint symbol of the awful ferity with
which good men and lovers meet.
I love even to see the domestic animals reassert their native rights—any
evidence that they have not wholly lost their original wild habits and vigor;
as when my neighbor’s cow breaks out of her pasture early in the spring and
boldly swims the river, a cold, gray tide, twenty-five or thirty rods wide,
swollen by the melted snow. It is the buffalo crossing the Mississippi. This
exploit confers some dignity on the herd in my eyes—already dignified.
The seeds of instinct are preserved under the thick hides of cattle and
horses, like seeds in the bowels of the earth, an indefinite period.
Any sportiveness in cattle is unexpected. I saw one day a herd of a dozen
bullocks and cows running about and frisking in unwieldy sport, like huge
rats, even like kittens. They shook their heads, raised their tails, and rushed
up and down a hill, and I perceived by their horns, as well as by their
activity, their relation to the deer tribe. But, alas! a sudden loud Whoa!
would have damped their ardor at once, reduced them from venison to beef,
and stiffened their sides and sinews like the locomotive. Who but the Evil
One has cried “Whoa!” to mankind? Indeed, the life of cattle, like that of
many men, is but a sort of locomotiveness; they move a side at a time, and
man, by his machinery, is meeting the horse and the ox half way. Whatever
part the whip has touched is thenceforth palsied. Who would ever think of a
side of any of the supple cat tribe, as we speak of a side of beef?
I rejoice that horses and steers have to be broken before they can be made
the slaves of men, and that men themselves have some wild oats still left to
sow before they become submissive members of society. Undoubtedly, all

men are not equally fit subjects for civilization; and because the majority,
like dogs and sheep, are tame by inherited disposition, this is no reason why
the others should have their natures broken that they may be reduced to the
same level. Men are in the main alike, but they were made several in order
that they might be various. If a low use is to be served, one man will do
nearly or quite as well as another; if a high one, individual excellence is to
be regarded. Any man can stop a hole to keep the wind away, but no other
man could serve so rare a use as the author of this illustration did.
Confucius says,—“The skins of the tiger and the leopard, when they are
tanned, are as the skins of the dog and the sheep tanned.” But it is not the
part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep
ferocious; and tanning their skins for shoes is not the best use to which they
can be put.
When looking over a list of men’s names in a foreign language, as of
military officers, or of authors who have written on a particular subject, I
am reminded once more that there is nothing in a name. The name
Menschikoff, for instance, has nothing in it to my ears more human than a
whisker, and it may belong to a rat. As the names of the Poles and Russians
are to us, so are ours to them. It is as if they had been named by the child’s
rigmarole—Iery-wiery ichery van, tittle-tol-tan. I see in my mind a herd of
wild creatures swarming over the earth, and to each the herdsman has
affixed some barbarous sound in his own dialect. The names of men are, of
course, as cheap and meaningless as Bose and Tray, the names of dogs.
Methinks it would be some advantage to philosophy if men were named
merely in the gross, as they are known. It would be necessary only to know
the genus and perhaps the race or variety, to know the individual. We are
not prepared to believe that every private soldier in a Roman army had a
name of his own—because we have not supposed that he had a character of
his own. At present our only true names are nicknames. I knew a boy who,
from his peculiar energy, was called “Buster” by his playmates, and this
rightly supplanted his Christian name. Some travellers tell us that an Indian
had no name given him at first, but earned it, and his name was his fame;
and among some tribes he acquired a new name with every new exploit. It
is pitiful when a man bears a name for convenience merely, who has earned
neither name nor fame.

I will not allow mere names to make distinctions for me, but still see men
in herds for all them. A familiar name cannot make a man less strange to
me. It may be given to a savage who retains in secret his own wild title
earned in the woods. We have a wild savage in us, and a savage name is
perchance somewhere recorded as ours. I see that my neighbor, who bears
the familiar epithet William or Edwin, takes it off with his jacket. It does
not adhere to him when asleep or in anger, or aroused by any passion or
inspiration. I seem to hear pronounced by some of his kin at such a time his
original wild name in some jaw-breaking or else melodious tongue.
Here is this vast, savage, hovering mother of ours, Nature, lying all
around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the
leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that
culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man,—a sort of
breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, a
civilization destined to have a speedy limit.
In society, in the best institutions of men, it is easy to detect a certain
precocity. When we should still be growing children, we are already little
men. Give me a culture which imports much muck from the meadows, and
deepens the soil—not that which trusts to heating manures, and improved
implements and modes of culture only!
Many a poor sore-eyed student that I have heard of would grow faster,
both intellectually and physically, if, instead of sitting up so very late, he
honestly slumbered a fool’s allowance.
There may be an excess even of informing light. Niepce, a Frenchman,
discovered “actinism,” that power in the sun’s rays which produces a
chemical effect; that granite rocks, and stone structures, and statues of metal
“are all alike destructively acted upon during the hours of sunshine, and, but
for provisions of Nature no less wonderful, would soon perish under the
delicate touch of the most subtle of the agencies of the universe.” But he
observed that “those bodies which underwent this change during the
daylight possessed the power of restoring themselves to their original
conditions during the hours of night, when this excitement was no longer
influencing them.” Hence it has been inferred that “the hours of darkness
are as necessary to the inorganic creation as we know night and sleep are to
the organic kingdom.” Not even does the moon shine every night, but gives
place to darkness.

I would not have every man nor every part of a man cultivated, any more
than I would have every acre of earth cultivated: part will be tillage, but the
greater part will be meadow and forest, not only serving an immediate use,
but preparing a mould against a distant future, by the annual decay of the
vegetation which it supports.
There are other letters for the child to learn than those which Cadmus
invented. The Spaniards have a good term to express this wild and dusky
knowledge—Gramatica parda—tawny grammar, a kind of mother-wit
derived from that same leopard to which I have referred.
We have heard of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. It is
said that knowledge is power, and the like. Methinks there is equal need of
a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Ignorance, what we will call Beautiful
Knowledge, a knowledge useful in a higher sense: for what is most of our
boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit that we know something, which
robs us of the advantage of our actual ignorance? What we call knowledge
is often our positive ignorance; ignorance our negative knowledge. By long
years of patient industry and reading of the newspapers—for what are the
libraries of science but files of newspapers—a man accumulates a myriad
facts, lays them up in his memory, and then when in some spring of his life
he saunters abroad into the Great Fields of thought, he, as it were, goes to
grass like a horse and leaves all his harness behind in the stable. I would say
to the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, sometimes,—Go to
grass. You have eaten hay long enough. The spring has come with its green
crop. The very cows are driven to their country pastures before the end of
May; though I have heard of one unnatural farmer who kept his cow in the
barn and fed her on hay all the year round. So, frequently, the Society for
the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge treats its cattle.
A man’s ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beautiful—while his
knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless, besides being ugly.
Which is the best man to deal with—he who knows nothing about a subject,
and, what is extremely rare, knows that he knows nothing, or he who really
knows something about it, but thinks that he knows all?
My desire for knowledge is intermittent, but my desire to bathe my head
in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant. The highest
that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence. I do
not know that this higher knowledge amounts to anything more definite

than a novel and grand surprise on a sudden revelation of the insufficiency
of all that we called Knowledge before—a discovery that there are more
things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy. It is the
lighting up of the mist by the sun. Man cannot know in any higher sense
than this, any more than he can look serenely and with impunity in the face
of the sun: Ὁς τὶ νοῶν, οὐ κεῖνον νοήσεις,—“You will not perceive that, as
perceiving a particular thing,” say the Chaldean Oracles.
There is something servile in the habit of seeking after a law which we
may obey. We may study the laws of matter at and for our convenience, but
a successful life knows no law. It is an unfortunate discovery certainly, that
of a law which binds us where we did not know before that we were bound.
Live free, child of the mist—and with respect to knowledge we are all
children of the mist. The man who takes the liberty to live is superior to all
the laws, by virtue of his relation to the law-maker. “That is active duty,”
says the Vishnu Purana, “which is not for our bondage; that is knowledge
which is for our liberation: all other duty is good only unto weariness; all
other knowledge is only the cleverness of an artist.”
It is remarkable how few events or crises there are in our histories, how
little exercised we have been in our minds, how few experiences we have
had. I would fain be assured that I am growing apace and rankly, though my
very growth disturb this dull equanimity—though it be with struggle
through long, dark, muggy nights or seasons of gloom. It would be well if
all our lives were a divine tragedy even, instead of this trivial comedy or
farce. Dante, Bunyan, and others appear to have been exercised in their
minds more than we: they were subjected to a kind of culture such as our
district schools and colleges do not contemplate. Even Mahomet, though
many may scream at his name, had a good deal more to live for, aye, and to
die for, than they have commonly.
When, at rare intervals, some thought visits one, as perchance he is
walking on a railroad, then, indeed, the cars go by without his hearing them.
But soon, by some inexorable law, our life goes by and the cars return.
“Gentle breeze, that wanderest unseen,
And bendest the thistles round Loira of storms,
Traveler of the windy glens,
Why hast thou left my ear so soon?”

While almost all men feel an attraction drawing them to society, few are
attracted strongly to Nature. In their relation to Nature men appear to me for
the most part, notwithstanding their arts, lower than the animals. It is not
often a beautiful relation, as in the case of the animals. How little
appreciation of the beauty of the landscape there is among us! We have to
be told that the Greeks called the world Κόσμος Beauty, or Order, but we do
not see clearly why they did so, and we esteem it at best only a curious
philological fact.
For my part, I feel that with regard to Nature I live a sort of border life,
on the confines of a world into which I make occasional and transient
forays only, and my patriotism and allegiance to the state into whose
territories I seem to retreat are those of a moss-trooper. Unto a life which I
call natural I would gladly follow even a will-o’-the-wisp through bogs and
sloughs unimaginable, but no moon nor firefly has shown me the causeway
to it. Nature is a personality so vast and universal that we have never seen
one of her features. The walker in the familiar fields which stretch around
my native town sometimes finds himself in another land than is described in
their owners’ deeds, as it were in some faraway field on the confines of the
actual Concord, where her jurisdiction ceases, and the idea which the word
Concord suggests ceases to be suggested. These farms which I have myself
surveyed, these bounds which I have set up, appear dimly still as through a
mist; but they have no chemistry to fix them; they fade from the surface of
the glass, and the picture which the painter painted stands out dimly from
beneath. The world with which we are commonly acquainted leaves no
trace, and it will have no anniversary.
I took a walk on Spaulding’s Farm the other afternoon. I saw the setting
sun lighting up the opposite side of a stately pine wood. Its golden rays
straggled into the aisles of the wood as into some noble hall. I was
impressed as if some ancient and altogether admirable and shining family
had settled there in that part of the land called Concord, unknown to me—to
whom the sun was servant—who had not gone into society in the village—
who had not been called on. I saw their park, their pleasure-ground, beyond
through the wood, in Spaulding’s cranberry-meadow. The pines furnished
them with gables as they grew. Their house was not obvious to vision; the
trees grew through it. I do not know whether I heard the sounds of a
suppressed hilarity or not. They seemed to recline on the sunbeams. They
have sons and daughters. They are quite well. The farmer’s cart-path, which

leads directly through their hall, does not in the least put them out, as the
muddy bottom of a pool is sometimes seen through the reflected skies. They
never heard of Spaulding, and do not know that he is their neighbor,—
notwithstanding I heard him whistle as he drove his team through the house.
Nothing can equal the serenity of their lives. Their coat-of-arms is simply a
lichen. I saw it painted on the pines and oaks. Their attics were in the tops
of the trees. They are of no politics. There was no noise of labor. I did not
perceive that they were weaving or spinning. Yet I did detect, when the
wind lulled and hearing was done away, the finest imaginable sweet
musical hum,—as of a distant hive in May, which perchance was the sound
of their thinking. They had no idle thoughts, and no one without could see
their work, for their industry was not as in knots and excrescences
embayed.
But I find it difficult to remember them. They fade irrevocably out of my
mind even now while I speak and endeavor to recall them, and recollect
myself. It is only after a long and serious effort to recollect my best
thoughts that I become again aware of their cohabitancy. If it were not for
such families as this, I think I should move out of Concord.
We are accustomed to say in New England that few and fewer pigeons
visit us every year. Our forests furnish no mast for them. So, it would seem,
few and fewer thoughts visit each growing man from year to year, for the
grove in our minds is laid waste,—sold to feed unnecessary fires of
ambition, or sent to mill, and there is scarcely a twig left for them to perch
on. They no longer build nor breed with us. In some more genial season,
perchance, a faint shadow flits across the landscape of the mind, cast by the
wings of some thought in its vernal or autumnal migration, but, looking up,
we are unable to detect the substance of the thought itself. Our winged
thoughts are turned to poultry. They no longer soar, and they attain only to a
Shanghai and Cochin China grandeur. Those gra-a-ate thoughts, those gra-
a-ate men you hear of!
We hug the earth—how rarely we mount! Methinks we might elevate
ourselves a little more. We might climb a tree, at least. I found my account
in climbing a tree once. It was a tall white pine, on the top of a hill; and
though I got well pitched, I was well paid for it, for I discovered new
mountains in the horizon which I had never seen before,—so much more of
the earth and the heavens. I might have walked about the foot of the tree for

threescore years and ten, and yet I certainly should never have seen them.
But, above all, I discovered around me,—it was near the end of June,—on
the ends of the topmost branches only, a few minute and delicate red
conelike blossoms, the fertile flower of the white pine looking heavenward.
I carried straightway to the village the topmost spire, and showed it to
stranger jurymen who walked the streets,—for it was court week—and to
farmers and lumber-dealers and wood-choppers and hunters, and not one
had ever seen the like before, but they wondered as at a star dropped down.
Tell of ancient architects finishing their works on the tops of columns as
perfectly as on the lower and more visible parts! Nature has from the first
expanded the minute blossoms of the forest only toward the heavens, above
men’s heads and unobserved by them. We see only the flowers that are
under our feet in the meadows. The pines have developed their delicate
blossoms on the highest twigs of the wood every summer for ages, as well
over the heads of Nature’s red children as of her white ones; yet scarcely a
farmer or hunter in the land has ever seen them.
Above all, we cannot afford not to live in the present. He is blessed over
all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life in remembering the
past. Unless our philosophy hears the cock crow in every barn-yard within
our horizon, it is belated. That sound commonly reminds us that we are
growing rusty and antique in our employments and habits of thoughts. His
philosophy comes down to a more recent time than ours. There is
something suggested by it that is a newer testament,—the gospel according
to this moment. He has not fallen astern; he has got up early and kept up
early, and to be where he is, is to be in season, in the foremost rank of time.
It is an expression of the health and soundness of Nature, a brag for all the
world,—healthiness as of a spring burst forth, a new fountain of the Muses,
to celebrate this last instant of time. Where he lives no fugitive slave laws
are passed. Who has not betrayed his master many times since last he heard
that note?
The merit of this bird’s strain is in its freedom from all plaintiveness. The
singer can easily move us to tears or to laughter, but where is he who can
excite in us a pure morning joy? When, in doleful dumps, breaking the
awful stillness of our wooden sidewalk on a Sunday, or, perchance, a
watcher in the house of mourning, I hear a cockerel crow far or near, I think
to myself, “There is one of us well, at any rate,”—and with a sudden gush
return to my senses.

We had a remarkable sunset one day last November. I was walking in a
meadow, the source of a small brook, when the sun at last, just before
setting, after a cold grey day, reached a clear stratum in the horizon, and the
softest, brightest morning sunlight fell on the dry grass and on the stems of
the trees in the opposite horizon and on the leaves of the shrub-oaks on the
hillside, while our shadows stretched long over the meadow eastward, as if
we were the only motes in its beams. It was such a light as we could not
have imagined a moment before, and the air also was so warm and serene
that nothing was wanting to make a paradise of that meadow. When we
reflected that this was not a solitary phenomenon, never to happen again,
but that it would happen forever and ever, an infinite number of evenings,
and cheer and reassure the latest child that walked there, it was more
glorious still.
The sun sets on some retired meadow, where no house is visible, with all
the glory and splendor that it lavishes on cities, and perchance as it has
never set before,—where there is but a solitary marsh hawk to have his
wings gilded by it, or only a musquash looks out from his cabin, and there
is some little black-veined brook in the midst of the marsh, just beginning
to meander, winding slowly round a decaying stump. We walked in so pure
and bright a light, gilding the withered grass and leaves, so softly and
serenely bright, I thought I had never bathed in such a golden flood, without
a ripple or a murmur to it. The west side of every wood and rising ground
gleamed like the boundary of Elysium, and the sun on our backs seemed
like a gentle herdsman driving us home at evening.
So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine
more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds
and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as
warm and serene and golden as on a bank-side in Autumn.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WALKING ***

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be
renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright law
means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the
Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States
without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying
and distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the
PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a
registered trademark, and may not be used if you charge for an eBook,
except by following the terms of the trademark license, including paying
royalties for use of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge
anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is
very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project Gutenberg
eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may do
practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected by
U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark license,
especially commercial redistribution.

START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work (or any
other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project Gutenberg”), you
agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project Gutenberg License
available with this file or online at www.gutenberg.org/license.

Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing
Project Gutenberg electronic works

1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg electronic work,
you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to and accept all the
terms of this license and intellectual property (trademark/copyright)
agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all the terms of this agreement,
you must cease using and return or destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg
electronic works in your possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy
of or access to a Project Gutenberg electronic work and you do not agree to
be bound by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the
person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be used on
or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who agree to be
bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few things that you can
do with most Project Gutenberg electronic works even without complying
with the full terms of this agreement. See paragraph 1.C below. There are a
lot of things you can do with Project Gutenberg electronic works if you
follow the terms of this agreement and help preserve free future access to
Project Gutenberg electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.

1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the Foundation”
or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
Gutenberg electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the
collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an individual
work is unprotected by copyright law in the United States and you are

located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative works
based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg are
removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project Gutenberg
mission of promoting free access to electronic works by freely sharing
Project Gutenberg works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for
keeping the Project Gutenberg name associated with the work. You can
easily comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg License when you
share it without charge with others.

1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in a
constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check the
laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement before
downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or creating
derivative works based on this work or any other Project Gutenberg work.
The Foundation makes no representations concerning the copyright status
of any work in any country other than the United States.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
access to, the full Project Gutenberg License must appear prominently
whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg work (any work on which the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, copied
or distributed:

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg™ License included with
this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in
the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country
where you are located before using this eBook.

1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg electronic work is derived from
texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not contain a notice
indicating that it is posted with permission of the copyright holder), the
work can be copied and distributed to anyone in the United States without
paying any fees or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a
work with the phrase “Project Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on
the work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs
1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
Project Gutenberg trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg electronic work is posted with the
permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution must comply
with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional terms imposed
by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked to the Project
Gutenberg License for all works posted with the permission of the
copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg License
terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this work or any
other work associated with Project Gutenberg.

1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without prominently
displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with active links or
immediate access to the full terms of the Project Gutenberg License.

1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or
distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg work in a format other than “Plain
Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official version posted on the
official Project Gutenberg website (www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no
additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a copy, a means of
exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work
in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format
must include the full Project Gutenberg License as specified in paragraph
1.E.1.

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, performing,
copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg works unless you comply
with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing access to
or distributing Project Gutenberg electronic works provided that:

• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from the
use of Project Gutenberg works calculated using the method you
already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed to the
owner of the Project Gutenberg trademark, but he has agreed to donate
royalties under this paragraph to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid within 60 days
following each date on which you prepare (or are legally required to
prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly
marked as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, “Information about
donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.”

• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he does
not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™ License. You
must require such a user to return or destroy all copies of the works
possessed in a physical medium and discontinue all use of and all
access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™ works.

• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
receipt of the work.

• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free distribution
of Project Gutenberg™ works.

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg™
electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set forth in
this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of the Project

Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3
below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread works
not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project Gutenberg™
collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, and
the medium on which they may be stored, may contain “Defects,” such as,
but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt data, transcription
errors, a copyright or other intellectual property infringement, a defective or
damaged disk or other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that
damage or cannot be read by your equipment.

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except
for the “Right of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all liability to
you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal fees. YOU AGREE
THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT
EXCEPT THOSE PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE
THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY
DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE LIABLE
TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL,
PUNITIVE OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE
NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you
discover a defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you
can receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with the
defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a refund.
If you received the work electronically, the person or entity providing it to

you may choose to give you a second opportunity to receive the work
electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy is also defective, you
may demand a refund in writing without further opportunities to fix the
problem.

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth in
paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR
FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied warranties or
the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. If any disclaimer or
limitation set forth in this agreement violates the law of the state applicable
to this agreement, the agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum
disclaimer or limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity
or unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
remaining provisions.

1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in accordance
with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works,
harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, that
arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do or cause
to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg work, (b)
alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg
work, and (c) any Defect you cause.

Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project
Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg is synonymous with the free distribution of electronic
works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers including
obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists because of the

efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from people in all walks of
life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the assistance
they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg’s goals and ensuring
that the Project Gutenberg collection will remain freely available for
generations to come. In 2001, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation was created to provide a secure and permanent future for
Project Gutenberg and future generations. To learn more about the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations
can help, see Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at
www.gutenberg.org.

Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)
(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the state of
Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service.
The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification number is 64-6221541.
Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation are tax
deductible to the full extent permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state’s
laws.

The Foundation’s business office is located at 41 Watchung Plaza #516,
Montclair NJ 07042, USA, +1 (862) 621-9288. Email contact links and up
to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website and
official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact

Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread
public support and donations to carry out its mission of increasing the
number of public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
in machine-readable form accessible by the widest array of equipment

including outdated equipment. Many small donations ($1 to $5,000) are
particularly important to maintaining tax exempt status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United States.
Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a considerable effort,
much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up with these
requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations where we have not
received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND DONATIONS or
determine the status of compliance for any particular state visit
www.gutenberg.org/donate.

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we have
not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition against
accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who approach us
with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make any
statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from outside the
United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation methods
and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other ways including
checks, online payments and credit card donations. To donate, please visit:
www.gutenberg.org/donate.

Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg
electronic works

Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg
concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared with
anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project Gutenberg
eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.

Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed editions,
all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in the U.S. unless a

copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily keep eBooks in
compliance with any particular paper edition.

Most people start at our website which has the main PG search facility:
www.gutenberg.org.

This website includes information about Project Gutenberg, including how
to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation,
how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email
newsletter to hear about new eBooks.