Walden cabin - sounds

At the heart of ‘Walden’ is Thoreau’s discovery of how in this secluded spot he had the time to enjoy what he called the ‘bloom’ of the present moment”

“Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in the revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, which the birds sang around or fitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some travelling wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time”

For Thoreau, peace and quiet was absolutely essential to this experience. It’s what allowed him to noice the rich, subtle layering of nature’s own sounds as he sat at his cabon doorstep:

“……a whippoorwill on the ridge pole, a blue jay screaming beneath the window, a hare or woodchuck under the house, a screech own or a cat-owl behind it, a flock of wild geese or a laughing loon on he pond, and a fox to bark in the night…Sturdy pitch pines rubbing and creaking against the shingles for want of room….”

If he walked a few yards towards Walden Pond’s shoreline, he would hear it ringing with the ‘trump of bullfrogs’. If he walked into the woods, he would hear he ‘sweet and melodious’ lowing of ‘some cow in the horizon beyond’, and, on a Sunday, catch the ‘faint, sweet’ peal of bells from Concord’s churches. As each peal drifted through the woods, Thoreau felt it acquired ‘a certain vibratory hum, as if the pine needles in the horizon were the strings of a harp which is swept.’ Woven together, these layers created a colourful vernacular of Walden Soundscape. But Thoreau’s lakeside meditation was also, at least in part, an elegy. He senses this precious place was under threat. ‘The whistle of the locomotive penetrates my woods summer and winter,’ he wrote, ‘sounding like the scream of a hawk sailing over some farmer’s yard…. I hear the iron horse make the hills echo with his snort like thunder, shaking the earth with his feet … and I am awakened….’ ~ Page 215