“P.M.
To E. Hosmer Spring. Down Turnpike and back by E. Hubbard’s Close. We stood
still a few moments on the Turnpike below Wright’s (the Turnpike, which had no
wheel-track beyond Tuttle’s and no track at all beyond Wright’s), and listened
to hear a spring bird. We heard only the jay screaming in the distance and the
cawing of a crow. What a perfectly New England sound is this voice of the crow!
If you stand perfectly still anywhere in the outskirts of the town and listen,
stilling the almost incessant hum of your own personal factory, this is perhaps
the sound which you will be most sure to hear rising above all sounds of human
industry and leading your thoughts to some far bay in the woods where the crow
is venting his disgust. This bird sees the white man come and the Indian
withdraw, but it withdraws not. Its untamed voice is still heard above the
tinkling of the forge. It sees a race pass away, but it passes not away. It
remains to remind us of aboriginal nature.”
—From the Journal of
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), March 4, 1859.
Hosmer and Tuttle are names I remember from childhood. I grew up just a few
towns away from where Thoreau lived and wrote. Our blacksmith was Mr Hosmer,
and Tuttles had married into our family generations back.Photo by Quodlibet © in perpetuity. All rights reserved.
