Throwback Thursdays” at ClimbingSky feature posts I wrote over a 15 year period for various blogs. This was first posted on November 14, 2014.

Winter has arrived in the North Country. The long darkness has begun.

For the next 12 weeks, we will see little of the sun as we hurry from our cars to the various buildings that will constitute our winter environment. Every year it is this way… and every year it still comes as a slight surprise.

Last Sunday morning on the way to church, we saw two trumpeter swans swimming along the far shore of a lake near our house. And while Sue and the band got ready for the service, I took my coffee over to a small lake and watched buffleheads and some mergansers swim for awhile in the cool November air.

That was before the snow and the cold came. Now those same lakes are beginning their winter freeze-over and the swans and buffleheads are long gone.

Last year I read Thoreau. This year I have it in my mind to read Emerson again. I am beginning by re-reading “Nature.”

A few chapters in and I am struck again by the “Americanism” of Emerson. As a writer, he remains very European, classically oriented. (I have always thought of Thoreau and Whitman as the first truly “American” writers.) But in his religious sensibilities Emerson is wholly New World.

I am also struck by the extent to which my own “religiosity” is influenced by Transcendentalism.

On the first dark Friday of year, here are some quotes from Emerson.

Enjoy!

 

If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these preachers of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.

          * * * * * * * * * *

To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood.

            * * * * * * * * * *

In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life— no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground— my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space— all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing. I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental. To be brothers, to be acquaintances— master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo (2012-03-12). Nature and Other Essays (Dover Thrift Editions) . Dover Publications. Kindle Edition.