A Sleep Story: Solitude By Walden

Having a difficult time getting to sleep? Join Geri Lee as she helps you to settle in, relax, and bring peace to your body as she reads from Henry D. Thoreau's timeless classic: Walden. Her smooth voice will wrap you in comfort as you relax your mind, and focus on her voice bringing the peaceful images of Walden to you. Experience peaceful rest with this chapter called Solitude. Drift off to sleep and liberate your mind, and body with this relaxing piece.

Transcript

Hi.

You can't sleep either?

It's one of those nights.

Well,

I'll read some Walden by Henry Thoreau to you and help your body relax,

Maybe turn off that mind.

So just close our eyes and get into a comfortable position and I'll begin reading the chapter on solitude.

This is a delicious evening when the whole body is one sense and imbibes delight through every pore.

I go and come with a strange liberty in nature,

A part of herself.

As I walk along the stony shore of the pond in my shirt sleeves,

Those gold as well as cloudy and windy,

And I see nothing special to attract me.

All the elements are unusually congenial to me.

The bullfrogs trump to usher in the night,

And the note of the whippoorwill is borne on the rippling wind from over the water.

Sympathy with the fluttering alder and popper leaves almost takes my breath.

Yet,

Like the lake,

My serenity is rippled,

But not ruffled.

These small waves raised by the evening wind are as remote from storm as a smooth reflecting surface.

Though it is now dark,

The wind still blows and roars in the wood.

The waves still dash,

And some creatures lull the rest with their notes.

The repose is never complete.

The wildest animals do not repose,

But seek their prey now.

The fox,

The skunk,

And rabbit now roam the fields and woods from fear.

They are nature's watchmen,

Links which connect the days of animated life.

When I return to my house,

I find that visitors have been there and left their cards,

Either a bunch of flowers or a wreath of evergreen,

Or a name in pencil on a yellow walnut leaf or a chip.

They who come rarely to the woods take some little piece of the forest into their hands to play with,

By the way,

Which they leave,

Either intentionally or accidentally.

One has peeled the willow wand,

Wooed it into a ring,

And dropped it on my table.

I could always tell if visitors had called in my absence,

Either by the bended twigs or grass or the print of their shoes,

And generally of what sex or age or quality they were by some slight trace left,

As a flower dropped,

Or as a flower fell,

As a flower dropped or a bunch of grass plucked and thrown away,

Even as far off as a railroad half a mile distance,

Or by the lingering odor of a cigar or pipe.

Nay,

I was frequently notified of the passage of a traveler along the highway,

Sixty rods off by the scent of his pipe.

There is commonly sufficient space about us.

Our rise is never quite at our elbows.

The thick wood is not just at our door nor the pond,

But somewhere is always clearing,

Familiar,

And worn by us,

Appropriated and fenced in some way and reclaimed from nature.

For what reason have I this vast range and circuit,

Some square miles of unfrequented forest for my privacy,

Abandoned to me by men,

My nearest neighbors a mile distant,

And no house is visible from any place but the hilltops within half a mile of my own.

I have my horizon bounded by woods all to myself,

A distant view of the railroad where it touches the pond on the one hand,

And of the fence which skirts the woodland road on the other.

But for the most part it is as solitary where I live as on the prairies.

It has as much Asia or Africa as New England.

I have,

As it were,

My own sun and moon and stars and a little world all to myself,

And I have a place to live.

At night there was never a traveler past my house or knocked at my door,

More than if I were the first or last man,

Unless it were in spring.

When at long intervals some came from the village,

I was always in the middle of the night,

And I was always in the middle of the night.

I was always in the middle of the night,

And I was always in the middle of the night.

When at long intervals some came from the village to fish for pouts,

They plainly fished much more in the wilden pond of their own natures and baited their hooks with darkness,

But they soon retreated,

Usually with light baskets,

And left the world to darkness and to me.

And the black kernel of the night was never profane by any human neighborhood.

I believe that men are generally still a little afraid of the dark.

The witches are all hung and Christianity and candles have been introduced.

Yet I experience sometimes that most sweet and tender,

The most innocent,

Encouraging society may be found in any natural object,

Even for a poor misanthrope and most melancholy man.

There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of nature and has his senses still.

There was never yet such a storm,

But it was ill in music to a healthy and innocent ear.

Nothing can rightly compel a simple and brave man to a vulgar sadness.

While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons,

I trust that nothing can make life a burden to me.

The gentle rain which waters my beans and keeps me warm and warm,

The gentle rain which waters my beans and keeps me in my house day to day is not drear and melancholy,

But good for me too.

Though it prevents my hoeing them and is far more worth than my hoeing,

If it should continue so long as to cause the seeds to rot in the ground and destroy the potatoes in the lowlands,

It would still be good for the grass on the uplands,

And being good for the grass,

It would be good for me.

Sometimes,

When I compare myself with other men,

It seems as if I were more favored by the gods than they beyond any deserts,

And I am conscious of as if I had a warrant and surity of their hands,

Which my fellows have not.

I were specially guided and guarded.

I did not flatter myself,

But if it is possible they flatter me,

I would never feel lonesome or in the least depressed by a sense of solitude.

But once,

And that was a few weeks after I came to the woods,

When,

For an hour,

I doubted if the near neighborhood of man was not essential to a serene and healthy life,

To be alone was something unpleasant.

But I was at the same time conscious of a slight insanity in my mood and seemed to foresee my recovery.

In the midst of a gentle rain,

While these thoughts prevailed,

I was suddenly sensible of such sweet and beneficent society and nature,

And the very pattering of the drops,

And in every sound and sight around my house,

An infinite and unaccountable friendliness,

All at once,

Like an atmosphere sustaining me,

Has made the fancied advantages of human neighborhood insignificant,

And I have never thought of them since.

Every little pine needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and befriended me.

I was so distinctly made aware of the presence of something kindred to me,

Even in scenes which we are accustomed to call wild and dreary,

And also that the nearest of blood to me and humanist was not a person nor a villager,

That I thought no place could ever be strange to me again.

Morning untimely consumes the sad,

Few other days in the land of the living,

Beautiful daughter of Toscar.

Some of my pleasantest hours were during the long rainstorms in the spring or fall,

Which confined me to the house for the afternoon as well as the forenoon,

Soothed by their ceaseless roar and belting,

When in early twilight ushered in a long evening in which many thoughts had time to take root and unfold themselves,

And those driving northeast rains which dried the village houses so,

When the maids stood ready with the mop and pail in front entries to keep the deluge out,

I sat behind my door in my little house,

Which was all edgy and thoroughly enjoyed its protection.

In one heavy thundershower the lightning struck a large pitch pine across the pond,

Making a very conspicuous and perfectly regular spiral groove from top to bottom an inch or more deep and four or five inches wide as you would groove a walking stick.

I passed it again the other day and was struck with awe and looking up and beholding that mark,

Now more distinct than ever,

Where a terrific and resistless bolt came down out of a harmless sky eight years ago.

Men frequently say to me,

I should think you should feel lonesome down there and want to be nearer to folks rainy and snowy days and nights especially.

I am tempted to reply to such.

This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space.

How far apart thank you dwell the two most distant inhabitants of Yonustar,

The breath of whose disc cannot be appreciated by our instruments.

Why should I feel lonely?

Is not our planet in the milky way?

This which you put seems to me not to be the most important question.

What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary?

I found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another.

What do we want most to dwell near to?

Not to many men surely,

The depot,

The post office,

The barroom,

The meeting house,

The schoolhouse,

The grocery,

Beacon Hill or the five points where men most congregate,

But to the perennial source of our life.

Once in all our experience we have found that to issue as the willow stands near the water and sends out its roots in that direction.

This will vary with different natures,

But this is the place where wise men will dig a cellar.

I one evening overtook one of my townsmen who has accumulated what is called the handsome property,

Although I never got a fair view of it.

On the walls and road,

Driving a pair of cattle to market,

Who inquired of me how I could bring my mind to give so many of the comforts of life,

I answered that I was very sure I liked it passively well.

I was not joking,

And so I went home to my bed and left him to pick his way through the darkness and the mud to brighten or brighten down which place he would reach sometime in the morning.

Any prospect of awakening or coming to life to a dead man makes indifferent all times and places.

The place where that may occur is always the same and indescribably pleasant to all our senses.

For the most part we allow only outlying and transient circumstances to make occasions.

They are in fact the cause of our distraction.

Nearest to all things is the power which fashions their being.

Next to us the grandest laws are continually being executed.

Next to us is not the workmen whom we have hired with whom we love so well to talk,

But the workmen whose work we are.

How vast and profound is the influence of the subtle powers of heaven and of earth.

We seek to perceive them,

We do not see them,

We seek to hear them,

And we do not hear them.

Identified with the substance of things that cannot be separated from them.

They cause that in all the universe men purify and sanctify their hearts and clothe themselves in their holiday garments to offer sacrifices and opulations to their ancestors.

It is in an ocean of subtle intelligences.

They are everywhere above us,

On our left,

On our right.

They environ us on all sides.

We are the subjects of an experiment which is not a little interesting to me.

Can we not do without the society of our gossips a little while under these circumstances?

Have our own thoughts to cheer us?

Confucius says truly,

Virtue does not remain as an abandoned orphan.

It must of necessity have neighbors.

With thinking we may be beside ourselves in a sane sense.

By conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences and all things good and bad go by us like a torrent.

We are not wholly involved in nature.

I may be either the driftwood in the stream or Indra in the sky looking down on it.

I may be affected by a theatrical exhibition.

On the other hand,

I may not be affected by an actual event which appears to concern me much more.

I only know myself as a human entity.

The scene,

So to speak,

Of thoughts and affections.

And am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another.

However intense my experience,

I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me which,

As it were,

Is not a part of me,

But spectator.

Sharing no experience but taking note of it.

And that is no more than it is you.

When the play,

It may be the tragedy of life is over,

The spectator goes his way.

It was a kind of fiction.

A work of the imagination only,

So far as he was concerned.

This doubleness may easily make us poor neighbors and friends sometimes.

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time.

To be in company,

Even with the best,

As soon as we're some anticipating.

I love to be alone.

I never found the companion that was so compatible as solitude.

We are,

For the most part,

More lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers.

A man thinking or working is always alone.

Let him be where he will.

Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows.

The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as solitary as a Jewish in the desert.

The farmer can work alone in a field or the woods all day hoeing or chopping,

And not feel lonesome because he is employed.

But when he comes home at night,

He cannot sit down in a room alone at the mercy of his thoughts,

But must be where he can see the folks and recreate and as he thinks,

Renumerate himself for the day of solitude.

And hence he wonders how the student can sit alone in the house all night and most of the day without NUI and the blues.

But he does not realize that the student,

Though in the house,

Is still at work in his field and chopping in his woods as the farmer in his,

And in turn seeks the same recreation in society that the latter does,

Though it may be a more condensed form of it.

Society is commonly too cheap.

We meet at very short intervals,

Not having had time to acquire any new value for each other.

We meet at meals three times a day and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are.

We've had to agree on a certain set of rules called etiquette and politeness to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open war.

We meet at the post office and at the social bowl and at the fireside every night.

We live thick and are in each other's way and stumble over one another.

And I think that we thus lose some respect for one another.

Certainly less frequency would suffice for all important and hearty communications.

Consider the girls in a factory,

Never alone,

Hardly in their dreams.

It would be better if there were but one inhabitant to a square mile as where I live.

The value of a man is not in his skin that we should touch him.

I've heard of a man lost in the woods and dying of famine and exhaustion at the foot of a tree whose loneliness was relieved by the grotesque visions with which,

Owing to bodily weakness,

His disease imagination surrounded him and which he believed to be real.

So also,

Owing to bodily and mental health and strength,

We may be continually cheered by a like but more normal and natural society and come to know that we are never alone.

I have a great deal of company in my house,

Especially in the morning when nobody calls.

Let me suggest a few comparisons that someone may convey an idea of my situation.

I am no more lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud or the wilden pond itself.

What company has that lonely lake,

I pray?

And yet it is not the blue devils but the blue angels in it and the azure tint of its waters.

The sun is alone except in thick weather when there sometimes appear to be two,

But one is a mock sun.

God is alone but the devil is far from being alone.

He sees a great deal of company.

He is legion.

I am no more lonely than a single mullion or dandelion in a pasture or a bean leaf or sorrel or a horsefly or a humble bee.

I am no more lonely than the mill brook or a weather cock or the north star or the south wind or an April shower or a January thaw or the first spider in a new house.

I have occasional visits in the long winter evenings when the snow falls fast and the wind howls in the wood.

From an old settler and original proprietor who was reported to have dug wilden pond and stoned it and fringed it with pine woods who tells me stories of old time and of new eternity and between us we managed to pass a cheerful evening with social mirth and pleasant views of things even without apples or cider.

A most wise and humorous friend whom I love much who keeps himself more secret than ever did gawf or wally and though he is thought to be dead none can show where he is buried.

An elderly dame too dwells in my neighborhood invisible to most persons whose odor is herb garden I love to stroll sometimes gathering simples and listening to her fables for she has a genius of unequaled fertility and her memory runs back farther than mythology and she can tell me the origin of every fable and on what fact everyone was founded for the incidents occurred when she was young a ruddy and lusty old dame who delights in all weathers and seasons and is likely to outlive all her children yet the indescribable innocence and beneficence of nature of sun and wind and rain of summer and winter such health such cheer they afford forever and such sympathy they have ever with our race that all nature would be affected and the sun's brightness fade and the woods would sigh humanely and the clouds rain tears and the wood shed their leaves and put on mourning in mid-summer if any man should ever for just cause grief shall I not have intelligence with the earth am I not partly leaves and vegetable mold myself what is the pill which will keep us well serene contented not my or thy grandfather's but our great grandmother nature's universal vegetable botanic medicines by which she has kept herself young always outlived so many old parts in a day and fed her health with her decaying fatness for my panacea instead of one of those quack vials of a mixture dip from acheron and the dead sea which come out of those long shallow black schooner looking like wagons which we sometimes see made to carry bottles that may have a drought of undiluted morning air morning air if men will not drink of this at the fountain head of the day why then we must even bottle up some and sell it in the shops for the benefit of those who lost their subscription ticket to morning time in this world but remember you will not keep quiet till noonday even in the coolest cellar but drive out the stop of the long air that and follow westward the steps of aurora i am no worshiper of hygiena who is the daughter of the old herb doctor yacaspias and who is represented on monuments holding a serpent in one hand and in the other a cup out of which the serpent sometimes drinks but rather of hebe cupbearer to jupiter who's the daughter of juno and wild lettuce and who had the power of restoring gods and men to the figure of youth she was probably the only thoroughly sound conditioned healthy and robust young lady that ever walked the globe and wherever she came it was felt You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You