Thoreau’s moonlight walk

At the monthly book group I belong to, each of of us talks about a book we’ve been reading, then reads aloud a paragraph from the book. I’ve been reading Thoreau’s World, a long-out-of-print collection of “miniatures” from the Journal. These are some of the longer and more self-contained passages, and they include some of my favorites: Thoreau taming a woodchuck, Thoreau setting fire to the woods, Thoreau at a party with young women, and the passage about the “gone-to-seed country” that contains what I think is the longest sentence in Thoreau’s work.

I thought of reading that sentence, which takes up more than a page in the book, but chose this passage instead, from June 18, 1853 (though the editor of Thoreau’s World gives the date as 1852). It’s a beautiful example of how Thoreau wrote about animals — nighthawk, beetle, fireflies, bullfrogs, and more — in the context of a particular mood and surroundings.

Moon not quite full. Going across Depot Field. The western sky is now a crescent of saffron inclining to salmon, a little dunnish, perhaps. The grass is wet with dew. The evening star has come out, but no other. There is no wind. I see a nighthawk in the twilight, flitting near the ground. I hear the hum of a beetle going by. The greenish fires of lightning-bugs are already seen in the meadow. I almost lay my hand on one amid the leaves as I get over the fence at the brook. I pass through Hubbardston along the side of a field of oats, which wet one leg. I perceive the smell of a burning far off by the river, which I saw smoking two days ago. The moon is laboring in a mackerel cloud, and my hopes are with her. Why do I hear no bullfrogs yet? Do they ever trump as early and as universally as on that their first evening? I hear the whip-poor-wills on different sides. White flowers alone show much at night, — white clover and white-weed. It is commonly still at night, as now. The day has gone by with its wind like the wind of a cannon-ball, and now far in the west it blows. By that dun-colored sky you may track it. There is no motion nor sound in the woods (Hubbard’s Grove) along which I am walking. The trees stand like great screens against the sky. The distant village sounds are the barking of dogs, that animal with which man has allied himself, and the rattling of wagons, for the farmers have gone into town a-shopping this Saturday night. The dog is the tamed wolf, as the villager is the tamed savage. But near, the crickets are heard in the grass, chirping from everlasting to everlasting, a mosquito sings near my ear, and the humming of a dor-bug drowns all the noise of the village, so roomy is the universe. The moon comes out of the mackerel cloud, and the traveller rejoices. How can a man write the same thoughts by the light of the moon, resting his book on a rail by the side of a remote potato-field, that he does by the light of the sun, on his study table? The light is but a luminousness. My pencil seems to move through a creamy, mystic medium. The moonlight is rich and somewhat opaque, like cream, but the daylight is thin and blue, like skimmed milk. I am less conscious than in the presence of the sun; my instincts have more influence.