Thoreau: Listen For New Species
Posted by: Loren Coleman on April 9th, 2007
I understand he wasn’t talking about “new species” in the same way that cryptozoologists do, but this thoughtful quote for the day speaks to how we have to “listen” as well as “look.”
The air is full of birds, and as I go down the causeway, I distinguish the seringo note. You have only to come forth each morning to be surely advertised of each newcomer into these broad meadows. Many a larger animal might be concealed, but a cunning ear detects the arrival of each new species of bird. These birds give evidence that they prefer the fields of New England to all other climes, deserting for them the warm and fertile south. Here is their paradise. It is here they express the most happiness by song and action. Though these spring mornings may often be frosty and rude, they are exactly tempered to their constitutions, and call forth the sweetest strains. Henry David Thoreau, 7 A. M. – To Trillium Woods, April 9, 1856.
Listen, my cryptos,
and you might hear…
a gurgle of turtles,
the laugh of a deer…
The puff of a wingbeat,
the squeak of a mouse…
a rustle of insects,
from under the house!
Thanks for the great Thoreau quote! I re-read Walden every spring just to keep focused on what’s important. (Seriously, I really do.)
I wonder what he would have thought about bigfoot? But I suspect he probably would have told us to leave it alone.
Wish I had the quote in front of me, but Thoreau also writes of how the otter – the size of a small boy – lives his entire life near habitations without a human ever catching sight of him.
Yes, Thoreau says it better than that.
And I see today that a new raft of sighting reports is on the BFRO site. Talking about needing to listen. Listen to these, and you wonder whether many more people are seeing the sas than see otters! To say nothing of a number of other species whose existence we accept.