US: American Environmental Literature Huss

HDT "Spring" Hypertext

Henry David Thoreau Walden (1854)

“SPRING”

The opening of large tracts by the ice-cutters commonly causes a pond to break up earlier; for the water, agitated by the wind, even in cold weather, wears away the surrounding ice. But such was not the effect on Walden that year, for she had soon got a thick new garment to take the place of the old. This pond never breaks up so soon as the others in this neighborhood, on account both of its greater depth and its having no stream passing through it to melt or wear away the ice. I never knew it to open in the course of a winter, not excepting that Of '52-3, which gave the ponds so severe a trial. It commonly opens about the first of April, a week or ten days later than Flint's Pond and Fair Haven, beginning to melt on the north side and in the shallower parts where it began to freeze. It indicates better than any water hereabouts the absolute progress of the season, being least affected by transient changes of temperature. A severe cold of it few days duration in March may very much retard the opening of the former ponds, while the temperature of Walden increases almost uninterruptedly.

SCIENTIFIC APPROACH TO NATURE AND METAMORPHOSIS : A thermometer thrust into the middle of Walden on the 6th of March, 1847, stood at 32', or freezing point; near the shore at 33'; in the middle of Flint's Pond, the same day, at 32 1/2'; at a dozen rods from the shore, in shallow water, under ice a foot thick, at 36'. This difference of three and it half degrees between the temperature of the deep water and the shallow in the latter pond, and the fact that a great proportion of it is comparatively shallow, show why it should break up so much sooner than Walden. The ice in the shallowest part was at this time several inches thinner than in the middle. In midwinter the middle had been the warmest and the ice thinnest there. So, also, every one who has waded about the shores of the pond in summer must have perceived how much warmer the water is close to the shore, where only three or four inches deep, than a little distance out, and on the surface where it is deep, than near the bottom. In spring the sun not only exerts an influence through the increased temperature of the air and earth, but its heat passes through ice a foot or more thick, and is reflected from the bottom in shallow water, and so also warms the water and melts the under side

of the ice, at the same time that it is melting it more directly above, making it uneven, and causing the air bubbles which it contains to extend themselves upward and downward until it is completely honeycombed, and at last disappears suddenly in a single spring rain. Ice has its grain as well as wood, and when a cake begins to rot or "comb," that is, assume the appearance of honeycomb, whatever may be its position, the air cells are at right angles with what was the water surface. Where there is a rock or a log rising near to the surface the ice over it is much thinner, and is frequently quite

dissolved by this reflected heat; and I have been told that in the experiment at Cambridge to freeze water in a shallow wooden pond, though the cold air circulated underneath, and so had access to both sides, the reflection of the sun from the bottom more than counterbalanced this advantage. When a warm rain in the middle of the winter melts off the snow ice from Walden, and leaves a hard dark or transparent ice on the middle, there will be a strip of rotten though thicker white ice, a rod or more wide, about the shores, created by this reflected heat. Also, as I have said, the bubbles

themselves within the ice operate as burning-glasses to melt the ice beneath.

The phenomena of the year take place every day in a pond on a

small scale. Every morning, generally speaking, the shallow water is

being warmed more rapidly than the deep, though it may not be made

so warm after all, and every evening it is being cooled more rapidly

until the morning, The day is an epitome of the year. The night is the

winter, the morning and evening are the spring and fall, and the

noon is the summer. The cracking and booming of the ice indicate a

change of temperature. One pleasant morning after a cold night,

February 24th, 1850, having gone to Flint's Pond to spend the day, I

noticed with surprise, that when I struck the ice with the head of

my axe, it resounded like a gong for many rods around, or as if I

had struck on a tight drum-head. The pond began to boom about an

hour after sunrise, when it felt the influence of the sun's rays

slanted upon it from over the hills; it stretched itself and yawned

like a waking man with a gradually increasing tumult, which was kept

up three or four hours. It took a short siesta at noon, and boomed

once more toward night, as the sun was withdrawing his influence. In

the right stage of the weather a pond fires its evening gun with great

regularity. But in the middle of the day, being full of cracks, and

the air also being less elastic, it had completely lost its resonance,

and probably fishes and muskrats could not then have been stunned by a

blow on it. The fishermen say that the "thundering of the pond" scares

the fishes and prevents their biting. The pond does not thunder

every evening, and I cannot tell surely when to expect its thundering;

but though I may perceive no difference in the weather, it does. Who

would have suspected so large and cold and thick-skinned a thing to be

so sensitive? Yet it has its law to which it thunders obedience when

it should as surely as the buds expand in the spring. The earth is all

alive and covered with papillae. The largest pond is as sensitive to

atmospheric changes as the globule of mercury in its tube.

One attraction in coming to the woods to live was that I should have leisure and opportunity to see the Spring come in. The ice in the pond at length begins to be honeycombed, and I can set my heel in it as I walk. Fogs and rains and warmer suns are gradually melting the snow; the days have grown sensibly longer; and I see how I shall get through the winter without adding to my woodpile, for large fires are no longer necessary. I am on the alert for the first signs of spring, to hear the chance note of some arriving bird, or the striped squirrel's chirp, for his stores must be now nearly exhausted, or see the woodchuck venture out of his winter quarters. On the 13th of

March, after I had heard the bluebird, song sparrow, and red-wing, the ice was still nearly a foot thick. As the weather grew warmer it was not sensibly worn away by the water, nor broken up and floated off as in rivers, but, though it was completely melted for half a rod in width about the shore, the middle was merely honeycombed and saturated with water, so that you could put your foot through it when six inches thick; but by the next day evening, perhaps, after a warm rain followed by fog, it would have wholly disappeared, all gone off with the fog, spirited away. One year I went across the middle only five days before it disappeared entirely. In 1845 Walden was first

completely open on the 1st of April; in '46, the 25th of March; in '47, the 8th of April; in '51, the 28th of March; in '52, the 18th of April; in '53, the 23d of March; in '54, about the 7th of April.

Every incident connected with the breaking up of the rivers and

ponds and the settling of the weather is particularly interesting to

us who live in a climate of so great extremes. When the warmer days

come, they who dwell near the river hear the ice crack at night with a

startling whoop as loud as artillery, as if its icy fetters were

rent from end to end, and within a few days see it rapidly going

out. So the alligator comes out of the mud with quakings of the earth.

One old man, who has been a close observer of Nature, and seems as

thoroughly wise in regard to all her operations as if she had been put

upon the stocks when he was a boy, and he had helped to lay her

keel- who has come to his growth, and can hardly acquire more of

natural lore if he should live to the age of Methuselah- told me-

and I was surprised to hear him express wonder at any of Nature's

operations, for I thought that there were no secrets between them-

that one spring day he took his gun and boat, and thought that he

would have a little sport with the ducks. There was ice still on the

meadows, but it was all gone out of the river, and he dropped down

without obstruction from Sudbury, where he lived, to Fair Haven

Pond, which he found, unexpectedly, covered for the most part with a

firm field of ice. It was a warm day, and he was surprised to see so

great a body of ice remaining. Not seeing any ducks, he hid his boat

on the north or back side of an island in the pond, and then concealed

himself in the bushes on the south side, to await them. The ice was

melted for three or four rods from the shore, and there was a smooth

and warm sheet of water, with a muddy bottom, such as the ducks

love, within, and he thought it likely that some would be along pretty

soon. After he had lain still there about an hour he heard a low and

seemingly very distant sound, but singularly grand and impressive,

unlike anything he had ever heard, gradually swelling and increasing

as if it would have a universal and memorable ending, a sullen rush

and roar, which seemed to him all at once like the sound of a vast

body of fowl coming in to settle there, and, seizing his gun, he

started up in haste and excited; but he found, to his surprise, that

the whole body of the ice had started while he lay there, and

drifted in to the shore, and the sound he had heard was made by its

edge grating on the shore- at first gently nibbled and crumbled off,

but at length heaving up and scattering its wrecks along the island to

a considerable height before it came to a standstill.

At length the sun's rays have attained the right angle, and warm winds blow up mist and rain and melt the snowbanks, and the sun, dispersing the mist, smiles on a checkered landscape of russet and white smoking with incense, through which the traveller picks his way from islet to islet, cheered by the music of a thousand tinkling rills and rivulets whose veins are filled with the blood of winter which they are bearing off.

Few phenomena gave me more delight than to observe the forms which thawing sand and clay assume in flowing down the sides of a deep cut on the railroad through which I passed on my way to the village, a phenomenon not very common on so large a scale, though the number of freshly exposed banks of the right material must have been greatly multiplied since railroads were invented. The material was sand of every degree of fineness and of various rich colors, commonly mixed with a little clay.

1 CONCEPT: INVIOLABLE ORDER OF NATURE / Nature reclaims the railroad: 544-545 “there is an indemnity (protection against loss) in the inviolable order for the world” (Emerson)

When the frost comes out in the spring, and even in a thawing day in the winter, the sand begins to flow down the slopes like lava, sometimes bursting out through the snow and overflowing it where no sand was to be seen before. Innumerable little streams overlap and interlace one with another, exhibiting a sort of hybrid product, which obeys half way the law of currents, and half way that of vegetation. As it flows it takes the forms of sappy leaves or vines, making heaps of pulpy sprays a foot or more in depth, and resembling, as you look down on them, the laciniated, lobed, and imbricated thalluses of some lichens; or you are reminded of coral, of leopard's paws or birds' feet, of brains or lungs or bowels, and excrements of all kinds. It is a truly grotesque vegetation, whose forms and color we see imitated in bronze, a sort of architectural foliage more ancient and typical than acanthus, chiccory, ivy, vine, or any vegetable leaves; destined perhaps, under some circumstances, to become a puzzle to future geologists.

2 CONCEPTS: Ecological Interconnectivity of nature

microcosm-macrocosm: ecologically 548 “one hillside illustrated the principle of all of nature”

The whole cut impressed me as if it were a cave with its stalactites laid open to the light. The various shades of the sand are singularly rich and agreeable, embracing the different iron colors, brown, gray, yellowish, and reddish. When the flowing mass reaches the drain at the foot of the bank it spreads out flatter into strands, the separate streams losing their semicylindrical form and gradually becoming more flat and broad, running together as they are more moist, till they form an almost flat sand, still variously and beautifully shaded, but in which you call trace the original forms of vegetation; till at length, in the water itself, they are converted into banks, like those formed off the mouths of rivers, and the forms of vegetation are lost in the ripple- marks on the bottom.

The whole bank, which is from twenty to forty feet high, is sometimes overlaid with a mass of this kind of foliage, or sandy rupture, for a quarter of a mile on one or both sides, the produce of one spring day. What makes this sand foliage remarkable is its springing into existence thus suddenly. When I see on the one side the inert bank- for the sun acts on one side first- and on the other this luxuriant foliage, the creation of an hour, I am affected as if in a peculiar sense I stood in the laboratory of the Artist who made the world and me- had come to where he was still at work, sporting on this bank, and with excess of energy strewing his fresh designs about. I feel as if I were nearer to the vitals of the globe, for this sandy overflow is something such a foliaceous mass as the vitals of the animal body. You find thus in the very sands an anticipation of the vegetable leaf. No wonder that the earth expresses itself outwardly in leaves, it so labors with the idea inwardly. The atoms have already learned this law, and are pregnant by it.

3 CONCEPT: SPIRITUAL INTERCONNECTIVITY OF MAN AND NATURE: God / Eternity culminates in the present moment:

Man and Nature are connected by Divine Origins: spiritual interconnectivity

The overhanging leaf sees here its prototype. Internally, whether in the globe or animal body, it is a moist thick lobe, a word especially applicable to the liver and lungs and the leaves of fat (leibo, labor, lapsus, to flow or slip downward, a lapsing; lobos, globus, lobe, globe; also lap, flap, and many other words); externally a dry thin leaf, even as the f and v are a pressed and dried b. The radicals of lobe are lb, the soft mass of the b (single-lobed, or B, double-lobed), with the liquid l behind it pressing it forward. In globe, glb, the guttural g adds to the meaning the capacity of the throat. The feathers and wings of birds are still drier and thinner leaves. Thus, also, you pass from the lumpish grub in the earth to the airy and fluttering butterfly. The very globe continually transcends and translates itself, and becomes winged in its orbit. Even ice begins with delicate crystal leaves, as if it had flowed into moulds which the fronds of waterplants have impressed on the watery mirror.

The whole tree itself is but one leaf, and rivers are still vaster leaves whose pulp is intervening earth, and towns and cities are the ova of insects in their axils.

4 CONCEPT: Gaia Theory: earth as an ecosystem:

Microcosm-Macrocosm: small world reflect laws that govern the larger world. "Nature follows a very few universal laws."

When the sun withdraws the sand ceases to flow, but in the morning the streams will start once more and branch and branch again into a myriad of others. You here see perchance how blood-vessels are formed.If you look closely you observe that first there pushes forward from

the thawing mass a stream of softened sand with a drop-like point,

like the ball of the finger, feeling its way slowly and blindly

downward, until at last with more heat and moisture, as the sun gets

higher, the most fluid portion, in its effort to obey the law to which

the most inert also yields, separates from the latter and forms for

itself a meandering channel or artery within that, in which is seen

a little silvery stream glancing like lightning from one stage of

pulpy leaves or branches to another, and ever and anon swallowed up in

the sand. It is wonderful how rapidly yet perfectly the sand organizes

itself as it flows, using the best material its mass affords to form

the sharp edges of its channel.

Such are the sources of rivers. In the silicious matter which the water deposits is perhaps the bony system, and in the still finer soil and organic matter the fleshy fibre or cellular tissue. What is man but a mass of thawing clay? The ball of the human finger is but a drop congealed. The fingers and toes flow to their extent from the thawing mass of the body. Who knows what the human body would expand and flow out to under a more genial heaven? Is not the hand a spreading palm leaf with its lobes and veins? The ear may be regarded, fancifully, as a lichen, Umbilicaria, on the side of the head, with its lobe or drop. The lip-labium, from labor (?)- laps or lapses from the sides of the cavernous mouth. The nose is a manifest congealed drop or stalactite. The chin is a still larger drop, the confluent dripping of the face. The cheeks are a slide from the brows into the valley of the face, opposed and diffused by the cheek bones. Each rounded lobe of the vegetable leaf, too, is a thick and now loitering drop, larger or smaller; the lobes are the fingers of the leaf; and as many lobes as it has, in so many directions it tends to flow, and more heat or other genial influences would have caused it to flow yet farther.

5 CONCEPT: Organic Transcendence: perceiving the self as apart of and not separate from the natural ecosystem.

Thus it seemed that this one hillside illustrated the principle of all the operations of Nature. The Maker of this earth but patented a leaf. What Champollion will decipher this hieroglyphic for us, that we may turn over a new leaf at last? This phenomenon is more exhilarating to me than the luxuriance and fertility of vineyards. True, it is somewhat excrementitious in its character, and there is no end to

the heaps of liver, lights, and bowels, as if the globe were turned

wrong side outward; but this suggests at least that Nature has some

bowels, and there again is mother of humanity. This is the frost

coming out of the ground; this is Spring. It precedes the green and

flowery spring, as mythology precedes regular poetry. I know of

nothing more purgative of winter fumes and indigestions. It

convinces me that Earth is still in her swaddling-clothes, and

stretches forth baby fingers on every side. Fresh curls spring from

the baldest brow.

There is nothing inorganic. These foliaceous heaps lie along the bank like the slag of a furnace, showing that Nature is "in full blast" within.

The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit- not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic. Its throes will heave our exuviae from their graves. You may melt your metals and cast them into the most beautiful moulds you can; they will never excite me like the forms which this molten earth flows out into. And not only it, but the institutions upon it are plastic like clay in the hands of the potter.

Ere long, not only on these banks, but on every hill and plain and

in every hollow, the frost comes out of the ground like a dormant

quadruped from its burrow, and seeks the sea with music, or migrates

to other climes in clouds. Thaw with his gentle persuasion is more

powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other but

breaks in pieces.

When the ground was partially bare of snow, and a few warm days

had dried its surface somewhat, it was pleasant to compare the first

tender signs of the infant year just peeping forth with the stately

beauty of the withered vegetation which had withstood the winter-life-

everlasting, goldenrods, pinweeds, and graceful wild grasses, more

obvious and interesting frequently than in summer even, as if their

beauty was not ripe till then; even cotton-grass, cat-tails, mulleins,

johnswort, hardhack, meadowsweet, and other strong-stemmed plants,

those unexhausted granaries which entertain the earliest birds- decent

weeds, at least, which widowed Nature wears. I am particularly

attracted by the arching and sheaf- like top of the wool-grass; it

brings back the summer to our winter memories, and is among the

forms which art loves to copy, and which, in the vegetable kingdom,

have the same relation to types already in the mind of man that

astronomy has. It is an antique style, older than Greek or Egyptian.

Many of the phenomena of Winter are suggestive of an inexpressible

tenderness and fragile delicacy. We are accustomed to hear this king

described as a rude and boisterous tyrant; but with the gentleness

of a lover he adorns the tresses of Summer.

...In the morning I watched the geese from the door through the mist,

sailing in the middle of the pond, fifty rods off, so large and

tumultuous that Walden appeared like an artificial pond for their

amusement. But when I stood on the shore they at once rose up with a

great flapping of wings at the signal of their commander, and when

they had got into rank circled about over my head, twenty-nine of

them, and then steered straight to Canada, with a regular honk from

the leader at intervals, trusting to break their fast in muddier

pools. A "plump" of ducks rose at the same time and took the route

to the north in the wake of their noisier cousins.

For a week I heard the circling, groping clangor of some solitary

goose in the foggy mornings, seeking its companion, and still peopling

the woods with the sound of a larger life than they could sustain.

In April the pigeons were seen again flying express in small flocks,

and in due time I heard the martins twittering over my clearing,

though it had not seemed that the township contained so many that it

could afford me any, and I fancied that they were peculiarly of the

ancient race that dwelt in hollow trees ere white men came. In

almost all climes the tortoise and the frog are among the precursors

and heralds of this season, and birds fly with song and glancing

plumage, and plants spring and bloom, and winds blow, to correct

this slight oscillation of the poles and preserve the equilibrium of

nature.

As every season seems best to us in its turn, so the coming in of

spring is like the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos and the realization

of the Golden Age.

"Eurus ad Auroram Nabathaeaque regna recessit,

Persidaque, et radiis juga subdita matutinis."

"The East-Wind withdrew to Aurora and the Nabathean kingdom,

And the Persian, and the ridges placed under the morning rays.

Man was born. Whether that Artificer of things,

The origin of a better world, made him from the divine seed;

Or the earth, being recent and lately sundered from the high

Ether, retained some seeds of cognate heaven."

A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts. We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty. We loiter in winter while it is already spring. In a pleasant spring morning all men's sins are forgiven. Such a day is a truce to vice. While such a sun holds out to burn, the vilest sinner may return. Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.

6 CONCEPT: NATURE AS EQUALIZER: all can appreciate nature:

You may have known your neighbor yesterday for a thief, a drunkard, or a sensualist, and merely pitied or despised him, and despaired of the world; but the sun shines bright and warm this first spring morning, re-creating the world, and you meet him at some serene work, and see how it is exhausted and debauched veins expand with still joy and bless the new day, feel the spring influence with the innocence of infancy, and all his faults are forgotten. There is not only an atmosphere of good will about him, but even a savor of holiness groping for expression, blindly and ineffectually perhaps, like a new-born instinct, and for a short hour the south hillside echoes to no vulgar jest. You see some innocent fair shoots preparing to burst from his gnarled rind and try another year's life, tender and fresh as the youngest plant. Even he has entered into the joy of his Lord. Why the jailer does

not leave open his prison doors- why the judge does not dismiss his case- why the preacher does not dismiss his congregation! It is because they do not obey the hint which God gives them, nor accept the pardon which he freely offers to all.

7 CONCEPT: NEED FOR WILDERNESS FOR HUMAN FLOURISHING: Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it. We need the tonic of wildness- to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground. At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder-cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander. We are cheered when we observe the vulture feeding on the carrion which disgusts and disheartens us, and deriving health and strength from the repast. There was a dead horse in the hollow by the path to my house, which compelled me sometimes to go out of my way, especially in the night when the air was heavy, but the assurance it gave me of the strong appetite and inviolable health of Nature was my compensation for this.

THEORY OF ACTION: Perception--> Understanding--> Action: 557 “land and sea must be infinitely wild, unsurveyed, and unfathomed by us because unfathomable”

CONCEPT: Wilderness Preservation: must have “unexplored forests and meadows” surrounding our “villages” 557

Wilderness Act of 1964: “A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”

I love to see that Nature is so rife with life that myriads can be afforded to be sacrificed and suffered to prey on one another; that tender organizations can be so serenely squashed out of existence like pulp-tadpoles which herons gobble up, and tortoises and toads run over in the road; and that sometimes it has rained flesh and blood! With the liability to accident, we must see how little account is to be made of it. The impression made on a wise man is that of universal innocence. Poison is not poisonous after all, nor are any wounds fatal.

8 CONCEPT: Ecocentric view of predator---> prey relationship:

Compassion is a very untenable ground. It must be expeditious. Its pleadings will not bear to be stereotyped.

Early in May, the oaks, hickories, maples, and other trees, just

putting out amidst the pine woods around the pond, imparted a

brightness like sunshine to the landscape, especially in cloudy

days, as if the sun were breaking through mists and shining faintly on

the hillsides here and there. On the third or fourth of May I saw a

loon in the pond, and during the first week of the month I heard the

whip-poor-will, the brown thrasher, the veery, the wood pewee, the

chewink, and other birds. I had heard the wood thrush long before. The

phoebe had already come once more and looked in at my door and window,

to see if my house was cavern-like enough for her, sustaining

herself on humming winds with clinched talons, as if she held by the

air, while she surveyed the premises. The sulphur-like pollen of the

pitch pine soon covered the pond and the stones and rotten wood

along the shore, so that you could have collected a barrelful. This is

the "sulphur showers" we bear of. Even in Calidas' drama of Sacontala,

we read of "rills dyed yellow with the golden dust of the lotus."

And so the seasons went rolling on into summer, as one rambles into

higher and higher grass.

Thus was my first year's life in the woods completed; and the second

year was similar to it. I finally left Walden September 6th, 1847.

.Annotations..ˇˇˇˇˇˇc..P.v3. This is the beginning of the famous thawing sandbank passage. It is important to remember that Thoreau has this moment of epiphany in nature while looking at a sandbank created by a railroad, that is, nature altered by man' hands. He is not overwhelmed by the creative, primal forces of nature alone, but the ability of these forces to make a part of nature that humans have altered still retain its power to overwhelm him. This coincides with Emerson's philosophical definition of nature in the essay "Nature" and reinforces the theme that nature will endure man's alterations of it.

Spring has obvious connotations of rebirth or renewal and in this chapter Thoreau explores the recreation of natural life and his spiritual life. The process of recreation figures prominently in the book: from impurity to purity, animalistic to spiritual, ice to thaw, seed to flower, and larva to butterfly........∑∑..h`...M.x.F ..2.0b..¸¸ÛÛ..c..ü∆1. Thoreau is exploring the scientific approach to Walden Pond in order to know what is really measurable before he explores the immesurable (the spiritual).

.....¸¸ÛÛ..`

K.l.x.n ..3oxc..››....c..«Ó2. Thoreau finds the ability to watch the signs of Spring develop to be an inspiration and well worth his time. His watchings prove more productive than any day spent furthering a life in society. .......´´ÍÍh`.p.ë.x.ˆ ..4oxd..››....c..P.v3. This is the beginning of the famous thawing sandbank passage. It is important to remember that Thoreau has this moment of epiphany in nature while looking at a sandbank created by a railroad, that is, nature altered by man' hands. He is not overwhelmed by the creative, primal forces of nature alone, but the ability of these forces to make a part of nature that humans have altered still retain its power to overwhelm him. This coincides with Emerson's philosophical definition of nature in the essay "Nature" and reinforces the theme that nature will endure man's alterations of it.

.....››....`.ì.¥.x.. ..5oxe..ˇˇdd..c..B.ê4. Here Thoreau expands upon Emerson's theory that humans help create the beauty in nature by coloring it with their imaginations. Through his imagination, the thawing sand bank reminds him of coral, leapord's paws, birds feet, lungs, brains, and bowels. He sees the origins of all creation in this thawing sand bank.

.....¸¸ÛÛ..É....››....Ñ....¸¸ÛÛ..`.∂.◊.x.V ..6oxf..‘‘c...õ.÷5. This thawing of the ice and the overflowing of groundwater allows Thoreau to perceive the creative force of the great Artist (God) who is still creating the world. So Thoreau becomes Adamic (like Adam in the Garden of Eden) here-participating in the newly formed world fresh from the hands of God. Thoreau also sees the anticipation of the vegetable world in these globes of thawing clay and sand. He recognizes that the great Artist labors inwardly about this creation and thus we walk in his masterpiece. Here we have a concrete experience in nature which shows how the combination of perception and imagination can connect man with the spiritual world.

.......∑∑...ô....¸¸ÛÛ..r`.⁄.˙.x.8 ..7oxg..¸¸ÛÛ..c..í.∏6. Like Adam, who named all of the natural and animal forms in Eden,

Thoreau is seeing this new life of nature for the first time and thus explores the origins of words. He claims that the sounds of the words themselves imitate the sounds in nature and are thus nature themselves. "Globe" sounds like what it means and thus this word is closer to the natural object itself and is natural itself.

.......´´ÍÍ`.¸ ...y.™ ..8oxh....´´ÍÍc....*7. The metaphor of the whole earth being one leaf with towns and cities as ovas (mature germ cells) on the axils (upper part of a leaf) of leaves suggests that human existence is insiginificant in proportion to the size and duration of the natural world.

.....¢hıs2`.. ..@.x.ÿ ..9oxi..››....c...1.X8. Thoreau sees the origin of the human form in the thawing sand bank. The lobed forms of the nose, shin, lips, fingers and toes are

all advanced stages of the thawing sandbank. Everything comes from the same creative force, therefore, there should be no distinction between the natural and the human......¸¸ÛÛ..`..C..d.x.ä ..10xj....∑∑..c...„.

9. Thoreau's claim that there is nothing inorganic is based upon the ability of Spring to overtake the humanly constructed railroad sand bank and Emerson's definition of nature as including both the artificial and the natural.

Also, there is a strong emphasis on using industrial imagery to convey the power of nature here. He is indicating that the creative force of nature is a furnace "in full blast." What is ironic about this use of industrial imagery to describe nature?.....››....`..g..à.x.í ..11xk....´´ÍÍc.Ï..10. Although Thoreau begins the chapter pursuing the pond scientifically through measurements of temperature, he claims that the earth needs to be explored as "living poetry" as well in order to have a complete relationship with it. .......´´ÍÍ`..Ä..î.x.. ..12titled..ˇˇˇˇˇˇc..eå11. Man would do well to imitate nature and take advantage of all that is given to us gratuitously.

Í12. Seeing the natural world recreate itself in Spring allows man to be more forgiving and returns him to a state of innocence. Our human natures are improved by observing the beauty of Spring......ˇˇdd..`.U.ü.|.ò ..14...∑∑..c..Ú..13. This is the famous passage in which Thoreau advocates the formation of natural preserves and parks in order to benefit both nature's and man's health. And as we learned before, Thoreau does not find much distinction between the two. However, there is a paradox here: in order to sustan our desire to know all things, nature must remain wholly unkowable. There is value in standing in awe at the incomprehensibility of nature-it helps us devalue our lives and live respectfully and ascetically within a world that is beyond our control or understanding. Even the idea of wilderness helps us temper our arrogance and egocentrism. We need these areas for nature itself to surive and for humans to develop a more ecocentric perspective of nature. .....¸¸ÛÛ..`.§.Ì.}.( ..15..››....c..Å®14. Unlike Robert Frost in "Design," Thoreau finds pleasure in the proliferation of life and the ubiquity of death in nature.

SPRING (Continued)

...Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it. We need the tonic of

wildness- to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the

meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the

whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl

builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the

ground. At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn

all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable,

that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by

us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature. We must

be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic

features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its

living and its decaying trees, the thunder-cloud, and the rain which

lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own

limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never

wander. We are cheered when we observe the vulture feeding on the

carrion which disgusts and disheartens us, and deriving health and

strength from the repast. There was a dead horse in the hollow by

the path to my house, which compelled me sometimes to go out of my

way, especially in the night when the air was heavy, but the assurance

it gave me of the strong appetite and inviolable health of Nature

was my compensation for this. I love to see that Nature is so rife

with life that myriads can be afforded to be sacrificed and suffered

to prey on one another; that tender organizations can be so serenely

squashed out of existence like pulp-tadpoles which herons gobble up,

and tortoises and toads run over in the road; and that sometimes it

has rained flesh and blood! With the liability to accident, we must

see how little account is to be made of it. The impression made on a

wise man is that of universal innocence. Poison is not poisonous after

all, nor are any wounds fatal. Compassion is a very untenable

ground. It must be expeditious. Its pleadings will not bear to be

stereotyped.