Alexandersmap

    Tag: Henry David Thoreau

    • To Visit All the Celebrated Places

      “Now is the time to visit all the celebrated places in the country, and fill our heads with what we have seen, so that when we become old and bald we will have something to talk about over the teacups.” – Jippensha Ikku

      Credit to Smithsonian Magazine for the Ikku quote, for it made me smile when I read it.  Ikku lived in Japan during a fairly important period in American history (1766-1831) so its easy to overlook what might have been happening in other places in the world.  The quote reminds me that our feelings about travel and aging are timeless.  We all hope to see the world while we’re young and full of vigor, that we might have epic stories to tell over a favorite beverage when we’re older and less mobile.

      The travel list of celebrated places is ready, and all earnest travelers wait for the starting gun to set us free to explore once again.  We’re all rooting for a vaccine and some level of herd immunity, some measure of personal responsibility from society at large and perhaps stronger political leadership to set policy that makes sense.  May we see it sooner than later.  But in the meantime, I’m traveling as Thoreau traveled: exploring the place where I am in ways that I hadn’t before.  Walking fully aware in the woods, or the mountains and shores of New Hampshire, stopping at local landmarks previously unknown to me, and exploring space  while looking up at the stars to pick out planets and constellations.  For the adventurous spirit, there’s no shortage of opportunities to explore, even in a pandemic.

      “Travel spins us round in two ways at once: It shows us the sights and values and issues that we might ordinarily ignore; but it also, and more deeply, shows us all the parts of ourselves that might otherwise grow rusty. For in traveling to a truly foreign place, we inevitably travel to moods and states of mind and hidden inward passages that we’d otherwise seldom have cause to visit.

      All [great travel writers]… believed in “being moved” as one of the points of taking trips, and “being transported” by private as well as public means; all saw that “ecstasy” (“ex-stasis”) tells us that our highest moments come when we’re not stationary, and that epiphany can follow movement as much as it precipitates it.

      Travel, then, is a voyage into that famously subjective zone, the imagination, and what the traveler brings back is — and has to be — an ineffable compound of himself and the place, what’s really there and what’s only in him.” – Pico Iyer, Why We Travel

      While nice on the surface, I chafe when spending too much time at resorts because I’m not looking for pampering or losing myself in a cartoon world.  Travel at its best isn’t distraction, but exploration.  It isn’t running away from ourselves, but finding ourselves.  And that can happen anywhere if we let it.  Our highest moments come when we’re not stationary…  and so we hear the call to explore.  I’m conspiring to travel locally over the next couple of weeks to places near, while foregoing far.  At least for now.  For there’s so much to see right in our own backyards that we rarely celebrate.  Over the next few weeks I’ll explore some of those places in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.  And as you might expect having read any of this blog, explore hidden inward passages too.

    • Setting the Tone

      I had a professor in college who pointed out that the greatest books in history had great opening lines that set the tone for the everything that followed.  He pointed out the Bible as the most unambiguous example of setting the tone for everything else that follows, but you can’t forget the brilliance of Homer or Dickens or Melville.  Consider:

      “In the beginning, God created heaven, and earth.” – The Book of Genesis, Holy Bible

      “Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story” – Homer, The Odyssey

      “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” – Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

      “Call me Ishmael” – Herman Melville, Moby Dick

      I’d humbly point out that great songs have a similar tendency.  And since most people seem to have shelved their discipline of reading the classics after graduation, it may be an easier example to illustrate.  Consider the following immortal songs and how the opening line sets the tone for all that comes after:

      “Mother, mother ocean, I have heard you call” – Jimmy Buffett, A Pirate Looks at Forty

      “If you could read my mind love” – Gordon Lightfoot, If You Could Read My Mind

      “Something in the way she moves” – The Beatles, Something

      “Out of the tree of life I just picked me a plum” – Carolyn Leigh, The Best is Yet To Come

      “Don’t worry about a thing” – Bob Marley, Three Little Birds

      “Imagine there’s no heaven” – John Lennon, Imagine

      “There must be some way out of here” – Bob Dylan, All Along the Watchtower

      And so it is that I think about the words that set the tone for this blog, and took the immortal words of Henry David Thoreau that grace the home page of this site and made them more prominent.  For his call to action is also my own, and set the tone for all that this blog aims to be:

      “Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures.” – Henry David Thoreau

      I realized somewhere along the way that this is exactly the way I try to live; rising early, seeking adventure in this day, writing about it when it deserves consideration (and perhaps sometimes when it doesn’t), savoring the day and then putting it behind me, that I might rise from care once again tomorrow.  This isn’t head-in-the-sand optimism, it’s a calling, and some days are more adventurous and free from care than others.  But string them together and you set the tone for a life more interesting.  What sets the tone for your life?  Be bold in your selection.

    • The Compass and the Torch

      “Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
      With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
      Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
      A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
      Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
      Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
      Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
      The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

      “Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
      With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
      Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
      The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
      Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
      I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
      – Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus 

      There’s an interesting connection between Emma Lazarus and Henry David Thoreau.  It seems that Emma visited Ralph Waldo Emerson at his home in Concord, Massachusetts in 1876, and met the poet William Ellery Channing while visiting.  Channing was a close friend of Thoreau, and apparently never really got over the death of Thoreau 14 years prior to Lazarus’ visit to Concord.  He proved to be a tough nut to crack, but succumbed to Lazarus as he learned she was an admirer of Thoreau’s.  Channing gave her a personal tour of Thoreau’s Concord, from Walden Pond to the place he was born, and when she was leaving Concord he gave her an incredible gift; Thoreau’s compass.  I admit, that’s a breathtaking gift to me, the compass of Henry David Thoreau, the surveyor of lands and spiritual guide to generations.

      Lazarus, like Thoreau, would live a short life, succumbing to what is believed to be lymphoma at the age of 38.  But like Thoreau she lives on in words of significance created during her short tenure on earth.  Her most famous poem is The New Colossus, which was written to raise funds for the base of the Statue of Liberty, and is forever associated with Lady Liberty.  I’ve read it many times, but find new meaning in it with each reading.

      A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
      Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
      Mother of Exiles.

      When you absorb The New Colossus, you recognize the folly of Trump, the Tea Party and the undercurrent of white privilege that’s always been there but is recoiling under an uncomfortable spotlight.  The Founding Fathers might have been complicated in how they lived their own lives, but the ideas behind the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were bigger than their lives.  The century after would see a nation boiling inside, putting the words to the ultimate test again and again culminating in the Civil War and Reconstruction, the settlement of the continent and the sweeping aside of Native Americans, much of the wildlife and the very land itself.  Set against this was the rise of Transcendentalism, conservation and preservation.  And all the while the immigrants kept flooding in, fleeing desperation and seeking a new hope in America.  Lazarus represents the open arms of Lady Liberty and America, with no restriction in who might be welcomed when they arrive:

      Give me your tired, your poor,
      Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free

      I know people who despair at Trump and the rise of hatred in America.  I take no pleasure in the vile and ugly amongst us.  But I also take the long view, and recognize that American is shifting once again, and the undercurrent of hatred, racism and greed is unwelcome by the vast majority in this country.  I have faith in the process and believe we’ll come out of this year like no other better for having endured.  America is a land of hope, transcendentalism is founded on the belief in the inherent goodness of people.  Emma Lazarus corresponding with Ralph Waldo Emerson and eventually visiting him shows her own interest in his thoughts and opinions.  When I read The New Colossus I think of Thoreau’s compass that was handed to Lazarus by Channing and the direct link that created between them.  I wonder if she glanced at the compass while writing The New Colossus and found the right words to say.  Words that still show us the way forward, towards our true north as a country.

    • Getting Lost is Not a Waste of Time

      “We can park the van and walk to town
      Find the cheapest bottle of wine that we could find
      And talk about the road behind
      How getting lost is not a waste of time
      Le Bois d’Amour will take us home
      And in a moment we will sing as the forest sleeps”
      – Jack Johnson, What You Thought You Need

      I was thinking about getting lost, and how it never really turns out that badly.  There are different ways to get lost, of course.  Getting lost on the road used to be common until we put global positioning services in our pockets.  Shame really, in most cases when I wasn’t in a particular hurry, I used to love pulling the atlas out and looking up the street name I was looking at to figure what the heck went wrong on my drive.  There’s magic in maps, and the whole world would open up for you in that moment of realization of where you were.  Now people just follow directions from a phone.

      I see a generation of students graduating with degrees that don’t really tell them what the directions are.  You get a degree in Electrical Engineering you generally know the first step on the path after that.  But what of the Philosophy or the Business major?  What shall they do as a first step out into the world?  Suddenly lost in a world that seemed to offer clear steps to take every moment until this one.  And to double down we’ll throw a pandemic at you.  Enjoy!  So it’s no surprise that so many are looking around saying What next? and hoping for an answer.  The answer lies within, friend.  You’ve been told what to do for your entire life, now it’s your turn to tell us what you want to do.  Don’t know?  Welcome to adulthood.  Take the time to listen.  Do things that pull you in different directions.  Uncertainty is a gift should you use it wisely.  Most don’t use it wisely. Life is full of transition moments where you need to sort through things to find your way.  Not what you “have to do” but what you wish to experience.  What is the path that brings you there?  Be patient, you’ll find the way.

      “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
      – Ralph Waldo Emerson

      Closely related is being lost in your mind.  Not losing your mind in a road rage sort of way, but lost in your thoughts.  Driving an hour and realizing you’re already there and not quite sure where you were for the duration.  Where did the time go? Getting lost is a gift.  It’s the soul’s way of gently steering you towards another track.  I find I’m spending less time lost in my mind as I write more and as I’m more present in the moment.  I take long walks trying to get lost in my mind and realizing that I’m present the entire time.

      “To be awake is to be alive.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      Thoreau was awake, but he was restless and lost until he had time to sort through things.  Walden was a great example of sorting through things and putting it on paper to help the rest of us find our own way.  I think of the moment before he went into the woods, when he was living a life of quiet desperation and lost on the path.  He found it in writing and contemplation and conversation with great thinkers like Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne.  I should think there might be no better place to find your way than getting lost in conversation amongst great thinkers.  That might not be possible with that cast of characters, but we can still tap into their thoughts, conveniently downloadable right onto that magic computer in your pocket.

      “Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne

      And here I think of the scene from Dead Poet’s Society where the boys find the cave and reveal the great works of time to each other.  The magic is in discovery and sharing and lifting each other up.  Conspiring with some fellow soul and realizing that hours have gone by like minutes.  Helping lost souls find their way, together.  Until the adults get in the way anyway.  Rejoice in getting lost in conversation and in reflection, for getting lost is not a waste of time.  It’s a pivot point in our lives and a chance to find a new direction.  If you’ll just stop listening to the adults telling you where to go and listen to yourself.

      “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” –  Ralph Waldo Emerson

      It’s easy to get lost in this mad world.  Billions of souls all trying to find their way – how do we figure out our place in all of this?  The world sparkles in light and breathless magic.  The world also grinds down dreams into dust and feeds it back to you as cake if you let it.  Who says everyone else has it figured out anyway?  I can assure you they don’t.  Celebrate being lost.  It’s far more interesting than knowing every step laid out in order like those cars in amusement parks that ride on tracks.  Remember how boring that got as you realized you weren’t really going anywhere special?  Suddenly the only interesting part was crashing into the car in front of you or getting bumped from behind.  I’ve seen many career paths that look just like that.  There’s nothing wrong with finding yourself off the track.  You’ll be amazed at the view as new paths open up ahead of you.

    • Recently Collected Quotes

      My mind’s distracted by work and projects. I need to write them all down and get them out of my head. Prioritize and tackle the list. First on the list is writing, and in writing I’m tackling another distraction: I’ve noticed my quote collection piling up again, which means I’m not sharing enough of them. I save quotes for blogs, for inspiration, for reflection… or simply to remind myself that others thought deeply before my attempts to do so, so get out of your head and do something. I was raised to share, so here are some favorite recent acquisitions to the collection:

      “Don’t do things that you know are morally wrong. Not because someone is watching, but because you are. Self-esteem is just the reputation that you have with yourself. You’ll always know.” – Naval

      “Wild success requires aggressive elimination. You can’t be great at everything.” – James Clear

      “Every great thing is done in a quiet, humble, simple way; to plow the land, to build houses, to breed cattle, even to think—you cannot do such things when there are thunder and lightning around you. Great and true things are always simple and humble.” – Leo Tolstoy

      “Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.” – Marcus Aurelius

      “Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.” – Mortimer J. Adler

      “Write in recollection and amazement for yourself.” – Jack Kerouac

      “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” – Henry David Thoreau

      “Nothing is so certain as that the evils of idleness can be shaken off by hard work.” —Seneca

      Until tomorrow then…

    • A Bit of Thoreau and Sagan on Earth Day

      I toyed with the idea of a long blog post about Earth Day. Instead I’ll drop these two quotes. I think Thoreau and Sagan would have gotten along quite well. I’d hardly keep pace, but would love to sit in on that conversation:

      “This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments? Why should I feel lonely? is not our planet in the Milky Way?” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      “Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” – Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot

    • An Infinite Expectation of the Dawn

      In the dimmest of early morning light I watched a deer slowly work its way through the fallen branches, stones and muck out beyond the fence. White tail flickered and drew attention, just as a squirrel’s tail does, and I wondered at the similarities of these mammals who coexist in these woods. Each are seeking the same food – an abundance of acorns that relentlessly fell last fall. Each are prey for carnivores. The tail draws attention, but you could also say it distracts a carnivore long enough that perhaps the prey might get away. The deer feels my presence just as I felt hers. We coexist in these woods too, and I silently nod and leave her to her travels.

      “The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour.  Then there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes which slumbers the rest of the day and night…. To be awake is to be alive.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      How quickly the morning progresses now. The birds erupt early, filling the woods with their chorus of song. New voices appear frequently now as the migration continues in earnest. At least the birds can travel. Were this a normal time I might be traveling now too. But then I wouldn’t be here rapt in the audience listening to the symphony. There’s a silver lining in everything, should we look for it.

      “We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep.  I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      In a few weeks the trees will start blooming in earnest while the perennials slowly climb from the cold earth to the sky. I welcome the time of year, even as I dread the pollen that accompanies it. Small price to pay for flowers and fresh herbs growing in the garden and the return of the bees and hummingbirds. I think about these things as I walk in the cold early spring garden. I’ll be barefoot out here then without the creeping cold that prods me back inside. Warm days and cold nights. Sap weather. I glance at the maple trees and down at the red buds they’ve shed on the yard. I ought to charge them a toll of syrup for their messy habit, but I realize the folly of me boiling sap for a few ounces of maple syrup. No, the trees remain untapped.

      I remain transfixed by the world around me, and the writing helps draw it out of me like cold sap boiled to something sweet and digestible. Well, you’ll be the judge of that. But I’m the better for the process, and for these journeys out into the awakening hour. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor… these words echo in my mind, as they have for years. And maybe my time out here in the earliest moments of the day spark something deeper inside me than I previously realized.

    • How Rarely We Mount

      “Our winged thoughts are turned to poultry.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walking

      When you dig deep into Thoreau’s work you mine these little gems. It’s his reward for sticking with him as he crams his every thought onto the page. Every great book gets richer and more meaningful when re-read a second or third time. Lately I’ve been revisiting some old classics even as the stack of new calls to me, offended at my slight. Everything has its time, I say of the stack and of myself too. Be patient, work hard, reach higher… keep flapping those wings. The pace of my progress rarely reaches the level of the grandness of my plans. We aim to soar, but sometimes we find ourselves stuck on the ground with all the other turkeys and chickens, pecking away at the ground. Do they have aspirations too?

      “We hug the earth—how rarely we mount! Methinks we might elevate ourselves a little more.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walking

      Writing every day, chipping away at it, means something to me. It’s the climb, the aspiration for higher ground, that both challenges and drives me. We all hug the earth – our daily routines and comfortable life and the assurance that this is enough. Nothing shakes up the normal like a global event, but shouldn’t we shake up our own snow globe once in a while just to see the magic that was just sitting there all along? How rarely we mount: Shouldn’t we use this tragic circumstance as a catalyst for more? Or shall we return, should this ever end, once again to poultry? Methinks we might elevate ourselves a little more.

    • Bigger Than the Current Small

      “You have treasures hidden within you—extraordinary treasures—and so do I, and so does everyone around us. And bringing those treasures to light takes work and faith and focus and courage and hours of devotion, and the clock is ticking, and the world is spinning, and we simply do not have time anymore to think so small.” – Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic

      I’m cranking away at my work, building as much momentum as I can to carry this ship as far as possible across the chasm of our current reality. The harder I work, the less I worry about pandemics and the economy and things out of my control. All we control is what we do today, how we react to the larger world swirling madly around us, and who and how we interact with others.  On the whole things are going okay at the moment.  We’ll see how the next moment goes when we get there.

      Still, there’s this underlying restlessness to get going already.  More to write than I’m writing.  I can’t travel far to see the world in its present state, but surely I can write more.  We can all create something bigger of ourselves, can’t we?  I believe it starts with thinking bigger than the current small, pushing beyond the borders around our day.  Holding yourself to a higher standard.  And so that’s where I’m focused.  I’m producing thousands of words every week in this blog, but I can do much more than this.  We all have these treasures that need to be brought to light, as Gilbert writes in her call to action.  I’m not at all unconvinced that there’s more there, my challenge is getting myself to bring it to light.

      “I wish I could show you,
      When you are lonely or in darkness,
      The Astonishing Light
      Of your own Being!”
      – Hafiz, My Brilliant Image

      I’ve been aware of the time going by, as Jackson Browne put it. And I’ve been too patient with my use of that time, certainly more than I should be.  There’s only now, so why are you waiting to use this time for anything else?  Well, because the home renovations need to get completed, and your customers need support, and your family needs your focus, and the cat just threw up on the carpet and it needs to be cleaned up, and on and on.  It’s not easy to bring your astonishing light out when you’re cleaning up cat puke.  But still, it’s there, bursting at the seams, frustrated and slowly dimming as you passed it over yesterday and maybe today and tomorrow too.  Light doesn’t need your excuses, it needs to get out and shine on the rest of the world.

      To be fair, that light in us comes out in the interactions with others, in our careers and parenting and even in those home renovations. Light has a way of shining through when you open yourself up to the world. I’m not diminishing that particular light, but you and I both know when we leave something on the table. There’s work left undone and it’s light fades with every moment. So I’m doubling down on the writing, the writing not yet seen by the world or in this blog, working to get it out. Shouldn’t we all make the most of our time?

      “In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

       

    • Simplify, Now Seems A Good Time

      “In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds.  Simplify, simplify.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      Thoreau would be shocked at the busy-ness of 2020 versus compared to the thousand-and-one items in the middle of the 19th century. The world has other plans for us every year, but especially this year. The gods (or God if you will) laugh(s) at plans we make, no matter how well-intentioned, and we all learn to adjust on the fly. That’s life in a normal year, amplified by the madness that is 2020. With apologies to all the experts on Twitter and talking heads everywhere, in this madness, I look to poetry, to stoic philosophy, and to Thoreau for a level-set. Thoreau’s advice to simplify resonates. Granted, it’s a bit late in the game for a cabin in the woods, but to step back a bit and re-assess. Simplify. Now more than ever.

      “The overwhelming reality is: we live in a world where almost everything is worthless and a very few things are exceptionally valuable. As John Maxwell has written, “You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.” – Greg McKeown, Essentialism