- Title Pages
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Foreword
- A Note on Sources
- Introduction
-
1 An Eye for Trees - Against the Sky a Tree has Parts
-
2 A Heart for Trees - Heartwood
-
3 A Poet’s Trees - Woodplay
-
4 A Mind for Trees - Forest Lessons
-
5 A Soul for Trees - As High a Heaven
-
6 My Emblem, The Pine - Paeans to the Pine
-
7 Knighting Elms - Death of a Concord Kingpost
-
8 A Kingdom of Primitive Oaks - Boxborough’s Ancient Oaks
-
9 Transformed by Snow - A World Made New
-
10 In a Barque of Bark - Sailing a Sea of Green
- Acknowledgments
- Bibliography
- List of Thoreau Excerpts
- Illustration Credits
- Index
- Index
A Mind for Trees
A Mind for Trees
- Chapter:
- (p.74) (p.75) 4 A Mind for Trees
- Source:
- Thoreau and the Language of Trees
- Author(s):
Richard Higgins
Richard Higgins
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
Thoreau began studying trees as naturalist in 1851, He noting when they leaf out and turn color in fall. Botany gave him a way to see the invisible energies of trees and new words to describe them. Through close observation, he learned how trees disperse their seeds and regenerate the forest. He dated trees by their rings and calculated their rates of growth. Thoreau never shed his idealism about trees. They were parable and fact to him. A tree’s trunk, root, branch and leaf were universal templates that he found everywhere in nature. Thoreau merged these lenses in “Autumnal Tints.” A tree-by-tree kaleidoscope of the shifting hues in autumn, it is also a meditation on death in nature and it affirms nature’s impulse for renewal.
Keywords: studying, leaf, leaf out, leaves, botany, disperse, seeds, planted, regenerate, tree rings, succession, idealism, analogy, parable, templates, Autumnal Tints, death, renewal
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- Title Pages
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Foreword
- A Note on Sources
- Introduction
-
1 An Eye for Trees - Against the Sky a Tree has Parts
-
2 A Heart for Trees - Heartwood
-
3 A Poet’s Trees - Woodplay
-
4 A Mind for Trees - Forest Lessons
-
5 A Soul for Trees - As High a Heaven
-
6 My Emblem, The Pine - Paeans to the Pine
-
7 Knighting Elms - Death of a Concord Kingpost
-
8 A Kingdom of Primitive Oaks - Boxborough’s Ancient Oaks
-
9 Transformed by Snow - A World Made New
-
10 In a Barque of Bark - Sailing a Sea of Green
- Acknowledgments
- Bibliography
- List of Thoreau Excerpts
- Illustration Credits
- Index
- Index