Thus each wind is self-registering

One hundred forty-seven years ago today, Henry David Thoreau posted the final entry in his journal, completing the major work of his lifetime. After going out to count the rings of tree stumps during a rainstorm, he had contracted bronchitis, and his health gradually declined until his death on May 6, 1862. His last words were “moose” and “Indian.” Though he is not remembered as one of those great writers who died unusually young, he was only 44.

It gives me a melancholy feeling to read this entry again, though its exact observation and its message that nature is an open book make it thoroughly characteristic. Better to look back on what he wrote three years and two days before, when he compared the turn of the seasons to one of the enormous panoramic scrolls that were popular in his day, where a viewer could sit and watch the length of the Mississippi or the Nile pass by on painted canvas.

I seemed to recognize the November evening as a familiar thing come round again, and yet I could hardly tell whether I had ever known it or only divined it. The November twilights just begun! It appeared like part of a panorama at which I sat spectator, a part with which I was perfectly familiar just coming into view, and I foresaw how it would look and roll along, and prepared to be pleased. Just such a piece of art merely, though infinitely sweet and grand, did it appear to me, and just as little were any active duties required of me.