Thoreau wondered whether anything he ever wrote could be better than his journal, comparing his words in those pages to flowers that were freely growing, not transplanted or rearranged:
I do not know but thoughts written down thus in a journal might be printed in the same form with greater advantage—than if the related ones were brought together into separate essays. They are now allied to life—& are seen by the reader not to be far fetched—It is more simple—less artful—I feel that in the other case I should have no proper frame for my sketches. Mere facts & names & dates communicate more than we suspect—Whether the flower looks better in the nosegay—than in the meadow where it grew—& we had to wet our feet to get it! Is the scholastic air any advantage?
To me the answer is clear. Thoreau’s love for nature sings off his journal pages in spring. His winter writing slices right into the heart. His entries, day after day, are testimony to the power of renewal and rebirth—and to the importance of harnessing the human sense of wonder to better understand and protect the Earth. In our age of the Anthropocene, as we distance ourselves from the cyclical rhythms of nature, we are disconnecting from our planet. Thoreau’s journal is a reminder of what is at stake.
A number of writings by Henry David Thoreau appeared in The Atlantic in its early years. In this excerpt, published in the November 2017 issue, Thoreau describes his special love of swamps.
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