Sometimes I rambled to pine groves,standing like temples,or like fleets at sea,full-rigged,with wavy boughs,and rippling with light,so soft and green and shady that the Druids would have forsaken their oaks to worship in them;or to the cedar wood beyond Flint's Pond,where the trees,covered with hoary blue berries,spiring higher and higher,are fit to stand before Valhalla,and the creeping juniper covers the ground with wreaths full of fruit;or to swamps where the usnea lichen hangs in festoons from the white spruce trees,and toadstools,round tables of the swamp gods,cover the ground,and more beautiful fungi adorn the stumps,like butterflies or shells,vegetable winkles;where the swamp-pink and dogwood grow,the red alder berry glows like eyes of imps,the waxwork grooves and crushes the hardest woods in its folds,and the wild holly berries make the beholder forget his home with their beauty,and he is dazzled and tempted by nameless other wild forbidden fruits,too fair for mortal taste.Instead of calling on some scholar,I paid many a visit to particular trees,of kinds which are rare in this neighborhood,standing far away in the middle of some pasture,or in the depths of a wood or swamp,or on a hilltop;such as the black birch,of which we have some handsome specimens two feet in diameter;its cousin,the yellow birch,with its loose golden vest,perfumed like the first;the beech,which has so neat a bole and beautifully lichen-painted,perfect in all its details,of which,excepting scattered specimens,I know but one small grove of sizable trees left in the township,supposed by some to have been planted by the pigeons that were once baited with beechnuts near by;it is worth the while to see the silver grain sparkle when you split this wood;the bass;the hornbeam;the Celtis occidentalis,or false elm,of which we have but one well-grown;some taller mast of a pine,a shingle tree,or a more perfect hemlock than usual,standing like a pagoda in the midst of the woods;and many others I could mention.These were the shrines I visited both summer and winter.
Once it chanced that I stood in the very abutment of a rainbow's arch,which filled the lower stratum of the atmosphere,tingeing the grass and leaves around,and dazzling me as if I looked through colored crystal.It was a lake of rainbow light,in which,for a short while,I lived like a dolphin.If it had lasted longer it might have tinged my employments and life.As I walked on the railroad causeway,I used to wonder at the halo of light around my shadow,and would fain fancy myself one of the elect.One who visited me declared that the shadows of some Irishmen before him had no halo about them,that it was only natives that were so distinguished.Benvenuto Cellini tells us in his memoirs,that,after a certain terrible dream or vision which he had during his confinement in the castle of St.Angelo a resplendent light appeared over the shadow of his head at morning and evening,whether he was in Italy or France,and it was particularly conspicuous when the grass was moist with dew.This was probably the same phenomenon to which I have referred,which is especially observed in the morning,but also at other times,and even by moonlight.Though a constant one,it is not commonly noticed,and,in the case of an excitable imagination like Cellini's it would be basis enough for superstition.Beside,he tells us that he showed it to very few.But are they not indeed distinguished who are conscious that they are regarded at all?
I set out one afternoon to go a-fishing to Fair Haven,through the woods,to eke out my scanty fare of vegetables.My way led through Pleasant Meadow,an adjunct of the Baker Farm,that retreat of which a poet has since sung,beginning,-
“Thy entry is a pleasant field,
Which some mossy fruit trees yield
Partly to a ruddy brook,
By gliding musquash undertook,
And mercurial trout,
Darting about.”
I thought of living there before I went to Walden.I “hooked”the apples,leaped the brook,and scared the musquash and the trout.It was one of those afternoons which seem indefinitely long before one,in which many events may happen,a large portion of our natural life,though it was already half spent when I started.By the way there came up a shower,which compelled me to stand half an hour under a pine,piling boughs over my head,and wearing my handkerchief for a shed;and when at length I had made one cast over the pickerel-weed,standing up to my middle in water,I found myself suddenly in the shadow of a cloud,and the thunder began to rumble with such emphasis that I could do no more than listen to it.The gods must be proud,thought I,with such forked flashes to rout a poor unarmed fisherman.So I made haste for shelter to the nearest hut,which stood half a mile from any road,but so much the nearer to the pond,and had long been uninhabited:-
“And here a poet builded,
In the completed years,
For behold a trivial cabin
That to destruction steers.”
