Walden; or life in the woods - By Henry David Thoreau.

I started reading Walden, or life in the woods from Chapter 13 “House-warming”. I jumped over Chapter 14 “Former Inhabitants”, started again with Chapter 15 “Winter Animals” and plodded along Chapter 16 “The Pond in Winter”. Then I stopped, checked the length of the last two Chapters, Chapter 17 “Spring” and Chapter 18 “Conclusion”, and judiciously decided to ignore them to dash myself randomly in the previous twelve Chapters.

This book is included in the selection of authors I have to study for my Anglo-American Literature exam. At first, it seemed inviting: a report of two years and two months spent by the author in a small house he built himself, on the shore of Walden pond, in a wood close to the small town of Concord, Massachusetts. I did not suppose it to be particularly exciting or surprising, but a pleasant and fluent reading, neither discouragingly long nor excessively boring.
To my surprise, all my endeavours ended in slumbering readings quickly neglected, with faint excuses, for sudden, more important tasks.

Then, there came the snow: large, white snowflakes whirled slow and fast for an entire day, the last day of the Christmas holidays. Snowfalls are not unusual in early January in Milan. What retained my eyes was the obstinacy and the disarming energy of these snowflakes that silently were covering the town. They reminded me a passage of the book. I started turning over the pages to find it, towards the end:

“…The snow had already covered the ground…, and surrounded me suddenly with the scenery of winter. I withdrew yet farther into my shell, and endeavoured to keep a bright fire both within my house and my breast.” (chapter 13)

Winter did not surprise him: he had gathered wild apples and shiny chestnuts, had stored in his cellar potatoes, peas, a little rice and a jug of molasses. He had lathered and plastered his house, regretting …the rough brown boards full of knots … that let cool air and light in, but admitting that now his dwelling had become more comfortable and suitable for the freezing weather. He had built a chimney too, the most vital part of the house, devoting days of hard work towards the end of summer. Snow and ice confined his world for months; in the morning, he looked for water with axe and pail and collected dead wood for the fire, a trusty companion that warmed and purified his thoughts. Silence and solitude enhanced the voices of the wood. The melodious sound of different birds sketched in his words, which combine the preciseness of science to the intenseness of literature, perfect pictures of a life ...above a forest of solemn pines bent down with snow. The morning run of red squirrels over his roof, that woke him up and then amused him with their quick and crazy acts. The raged and demoniacal bark of foxes which ranged over the snow crust, in moonlight nights, in search of a partridge or other game (chapter 15). The creaking of the snow while he travelled, some eight or ten miles away, to pay a visit to an old pine, a beech-tree or a yellow-birch whose outlines had been shaped and re-design by the snow. The sound of the ice, which had turned the smooth surface of the pond in a living lesson, applies to nature and to men as well.

This is not my winter. This is a wild nature, not hostile but mysterious and unknown. Busy in a never-ending cycle that repeats itself in seasons, in days, in the life of all beings, always the same but always different and so worth to be present at it.

He went to the woods to front only the essential facts of life. Simplicity and discipline were his means to reach pure thoughts, to find an inspiration that was always more difficult to seize, to reconcile to a life that was addressed, by then, to maturity without the fruits he had hoped to pick up.
Thoreau wrote this book in 1847, when he left this house, but it was released just seven years later, eight years before his death. It took time to find the right words to express the renewal of his spirit using the imagines of Nature, to write an hymn to celebrate her infinitive and unrestrainable strength.

I have not finished the book yet. The glorious rebirth, the encouraging certainty that light and warm sun will rise again have just been skimmed. It is too early, even if days are longer and showy primroses are on sale. I still feel winter with its cold, low and grey sky. I still see its naked, twiggy and brown trees; brighten by car lights, with heaps of dry leaves squashed at their feet. They would only disappear, sink under the frozen asphalt covered with dirty snow, blend their brown-greyish shades with the dark ground. I still hear twittering from invisible and unknown birds that drown, for an instant, town noises, and I still need …the suggestive inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy of Winter… this king described as a rude and boisterous tyrant; but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of Summer (chapter 17).

Chapter 17 will wait until the snow has melted and new hopes are ready to spring.

Photos:
Travel in a garden.