Walden - Sounds
Summary
For all the greatness of literature, there is a greater language of life, the language without metaphor. It is the language where things happen: rays of light shine through the window, the bean plants blossom in the garden, the birds flit through the house. "I love a broad margin to my life," Thoreau writes . Attention to the present moment will make life as exciting as a novel because life then becomes the entertainment. Time is no longer divided into units, but flows between past and future, pausing as we experience the present moment.
Thoreau's house was on the side of a hill, surrounded by fruit, trees pushing leaves on tender boughs, and limbs breaking from the lush weight of berries. He heard the sound of birds interrupted only by the whistle of the locomotive whirring as it made its way along the tracks. The locomotive! Shining and snorting like some new being, it made its regular appearance just like the sun. This silver machine caused people to be regular, punctual with hours and moments. Men shoveled the snow with courage so that the locomotive could rumble though, filled with commerce, bringing cloth and wood, hemp and fish. Cattle trains! Pastoral life whirled away. But he crossed the tracks, not staying to see or hear the smoke, the steam, and the hissing.
On Sundays he hears bells, the wood-nymph echo of bells from the forest. The mooing of a cow, the buzz of a whippoorwill. The screech owl cries out against the night, Oh-o-o-o-o that I never had been bor-r-r-r-n!, echoing across the lake. Or the hooting owl, Hoo hoo hoo, hoorer hoo, hooting so that men need not. Then the wagons creak in the night, and the frogs make their guttural tr-r-r-oonk into the twilight air.
In the morning he has never heard a cock-crowing, or any of the domesticated birds. His life was all nature, with bramble bushes creeping into the house. Creeping, no yard, no gate, the world.
Commentary
The image of the train i...