- 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 Kingdom of Primitive Oaks
A Kingdom of Primitive Oaks
- Chapter:
- (p.148) (p.149) 8 A Kingdom of Primitive Oaks
- Source:
- Thoreau and the Language of Trees
- Author(s):
Richard Higgins
Richard Higgins
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
In 1860, Thoreau’s life was focused on trees. In October, he surveyed Concord’s woods and concluded it had no old-growth trees. In November he was amazed to find a forest of old-growth oaks “waving and creaking in the wind” only eight miles away in Boxborough. It was Inches Wood, a forest that had not been cut. He saw the ancient oaks as vestiges of how nature looked in pre-colonial New England and he portrayed them as symbols of hidden riches that we do not value. The oaks elicited some of Thoreau’s strongest calls to preserve trees. But his prediction they would be cut down proved true. They were made into ships timbers for the Union Navy in the Civil War.
Keywords: 1860, November, focused, trees, woods, old-growth, oak, oaks, waving, creaking, Boxborough, Henderson Inches, Inches Wood, ancient, primitive, riches, preserve, preservation
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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