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WALDEN Or Life In The Woods

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Mindwarp
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« Reply #60 on: March 23, 2009, 02:03:16 am »

At length the winter set in good earnest, just as I had finished
plastering, and the wind began to howl around the house as if it had
not had permission to do so till then. Night after night the geese
came lumbering in the dark with a clangor and a whistling of wings,
even after the ground was covered with snow, some to alight in Walden,
and some flying low over the woods toward Fair Haven, bound for
Mexico. Several times, when returning from the village at ten or
eleven o'clock at night, I heard the tread of a flock of geese, or
else ducks, on the dry leaves in the woods by a pond-hole behind my
dwelling, where they had come up to feed, and the faint honk or
quack of their leader as they hurried off. In 1845 Walden froze
entirely over for the first time on the night of the 22d of
December, Flint's and other shallower ponds and the river having
been frozen ten days or more; in '46, the 16th; in '49, about the
31st; and in '50, about the 27th of December; in '52, the 5th of
January; in '53, the 31st of December. The snow had already covered
the ground since the 25th of November, and surrounded me suddenly with
the scenery of winter. I withdrew yet farther into my shell, and
endeavored to keep a bright fire both within my house and within my
breast. My employment out of doors now was to collect the dead wood in
the forest, bringing it in my hands or on my shoulders, or sometimes
trailing a dead pine tree under each arm to my shed. An old forest
fence which had seen its best days was a great haul for me. I
sacrificed it to Vulcan, for it was past serving the god Terminus. How
much more interesting an event is that man's supper who has just
been forth in the snow to hunt, nay, you might say, steal, the fuel to
cook it with! His bread and meat are sweet. There are enough fagots
and waste wood of all kinds in the forests of most of our towns to
support many fires, but which at present warm none, and, some think,
hinder the growth of the young wood. There was also the driftwood of
the pond. In the course of the summer I had discovered a raft of pitch
pine logs with the bark on, pinned together by the Irish when the
railroad was built. This I hauled up partly on the shore. After
soaking two years and then lying high six months it was perfectly
sound, though waterlogged past drying. I amused myself one winter
day with sliding this piecemeal across the pond, nearly half a mile,
skating behind with one end of a log fifteen feet long on my shoulder,
and the other on the ice; or I tied several logs together with a birch
withe, and then, with a longer birch or alder which had a book at
the end, dragged them across. Though completely waterlogged and almost
as heavy as lead, they not only burned long, but made a very hot fire;
nay, I thought that they burned better for the soaking, as if the
pitch, being confined by the water, burned longer, as in a lamp.

  Gilpin, in his account of the forest borderers of England, says that
"the encroachments of trespassers, and the houses and fences thus
raised on the borders of the forest," were "considered as great
nuisances by the old forest law, and were severely punished under
the name of purprestures, as tending ad terrorem ferarum- ad
nocumentum forestae, etc.," to the frightening of the game and the
detriment of the forest. But I was interested in the preservation of
the venison and the vert more than the hunters or woodchoppers, and as
much as though I had been the Lord Warden himself; and if any part was
burned, though I burned it myself by accident, I grieved with a
grief that lasted longer and was more inconsolable than that of the
proprietors; nay, I grieved when it was cut down by the proprietors
themselves. I would that our farmers when they cut down a forest
felt some of that awe which the old Romans did when they came to thin,
or let in the light to, a consecrated grove (lucum conlucare), that
is, would believe that it is sacred to some god. The Roman made an
expiatory offering, and prayed, Whatever god or goddess thou art to
whom this grove is sacred, be propitious to me, my family, and
children, etc.

  It is remarkable what a value is still put upon wood even in this
age and in this new country, a value more permanent and universal than
that of gold. After all our discoveries and inventions no man will
go by a pile of wood. It is as precious to us as it was to our Saxon
and Norman ancestors. If they made their bows of it, we make our
gun-stocks of it. Michaux, more than thirty years ago, says that the
price of wood for fuel in New York and Philadelphia "nearly equals,
and sometimes exceeds, that of the best wood in Paris, though this
immense capital annually requires more than three hundred thousand
cords, and is surrounded to the distance of three hundred miles by
cultivated plains." In this town the price of wood rises almost
steadily, and the only question is, how much higher it is to be this
year than it was the last. Mechanics and tradesmen who come in
person to the forest on no other errand, are sure to attend the wood
auction, and even pay a high price for the privilege of gleaning after
the woodchopper. It is now many years that men have resorted to the
forest for fuel and the materials of the arts: the New Englander and
the New Hollander, the Parisian and the Celt, the farmer and Robin
Hood, Goody Blake and Harry Gill; in most parts of the world the
prince and the peasant, the scholar and the savage, equally require
still a few sticks from the forest to warm them and cook their food.
Neither could I do without them.

  Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affection. I love to
have mine before my window, and the more chips the better to remind me
of my pleasing work. I had an old axe which nobody claimed, with which
by spells in winter days, on the sunny side of the house, I played
about the stumps which I had got out of my bean-field. As my driver
prophesied when I was plowing, they warmed me twice- once while I
was splitting them, and again when they were on the fire, so that no
fuel could give out more heat. As for the axe, I was advised to get
the village blacksmith to "jump" it; but I jumped him, and, putting
a hickory helve from the woods into it, made it do. If it was dull, it
was at least hung true.

  A few pieces of fat pine were a great treasure. It is interesting to
remember how much of this food for fire is still concealed in the
bowels of the earth. In previous years I had often gone prospecting
over some bare hillside, where a pitch pine wood had formerly stood,
and got out the fat pine roots. They are almost indestructible. Stumps
thirty or forty years old, at least, will still be sound at the
core, though the sapwood has all become vegetable mould, as appears by
the scales of the thick bark forming a ring level with the earth
four or five inches distant from the heart. With axe and shovel you
explore this mine, and follow the marrowy store, yellow as beef
tallow, or as if you had struck on a vein of gold, deep into the
earth. But commonly I kindled my fire with the dry leaves of the
forest, which I had stored up in my shed before the snow came. Green
hickory finely split makes the woodchopper's kindlings, when he has
a camp in the woods. Once in a while I got a little of this. When
the villagers were lighting their fires beyond the horizon, I too gave
notice to the various wild inhabitants of Walden vale, by a smoky
streamer from my chimney, that I was awake.

        Light-winged Smoke, Icarian bird,

        Melting thy pinions in thy upward flight,

        Lark without song, and messenger of dawn,

        Circling above the hamlets as thy nest;

        Or else, departing dream, and shadowy form

        Of midnight vision, gathering up thy skirts;

        By night star-veiling, and by day

        Darkening the light and blotting out the sun;

        Go thou my incense upward from this hearth,

        And ask the gods to pardon this clear flame.
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