🌲 Talking Back to Walden
February: Warmth, the Origin
Welcome to Talking Back to Walden. This is where we consider only the best passages of Thoreau’s 1854 classic, for what they might tell us about our present-day environmental woes and hopes. Last month was about ice as both companion and measure. This month reveals the true source of warmth in Thoreau’s woodpile: the stored energy of the sun. I’m shivering with synchronicity as I write this—our house has been without heat for four days as we await the landlord’s decision on whether to repair or replace the furnace. This as the mid-Atlantic experiences seasonal winter weather for a change. Nice timing. BRRRR. 🥶🧊
The Talking Back section today is a departure for me—a fictional scene that was part of my novel but is currently languishing on the back burner. It’s quite a crowded back burner, so I’m glad to release this one into the wild.
From Chapter 13: House-Warming
“The animal merely makes a bed, which he warms with his body in a sheltered place; but man, having discovered fire, boxes up some air in a spacious apartment, and warms that, instead of robbing himself, makes that his bed, in which he can move about divested of more cumbrous clothing, maintain a kind of summer in the midst of winter. . .”
As the weather grew colder, Thoreau found warmth where he could, including basking in the sun on the north side of Walden pond: “I thus warmed myself by the still glowing embers which the summer, like a departed hunter, had left.”
As the days grew shorter, he built a fireplace and chimney. He gathered salvaged bricks and spent hours knocking old mortar off with a trowel while contemplating the villages of Mesopotamia which, to his telling, were built from the ruins of Babylon. But he resisted plastering the interior boards of his cabin. Who doesn’t love the visual warmth of walls of exposed wood?
“I passed some cheerful evenings . . . surrounded by the rough brown boards full of knots, and rafters with the bark on high over-head. My house never pleased my eye so much after it was plastered, though I was obliged to confess that it was more comfortable.”
The transcript is at the end, if you prefer to read it.
Talking Back
We burn up wood and coal as renters burn up the front fence for food. We live like squatters, not as if we own the property. ~ Thomas Edison
The Boss is disappointed in James. Every time James arrives at one of his gas well sites, the Boss taunts through windshield dust to glare this warning:
You will find a better way. Or you will drill into shale to sell ancient sunlight.
You cannot do both.
James laments being a red-celled man in a green-celled world, condemned forever to consume. He longs to be the first man to create the way plants create: fueled by sunlight, air, water. For now, he keeps elaborate spreadsheets of his carbon footprint. One day he will more than repay the debt with his invention.
A yawning fit brings tears to his eyes. He has fifteen minutes to set up and get cooking before the Boss appears. After a year of calculating sun angles and slivers of space between the surrounding warehouses and his research lab, he marked his asphalt timepiece with dashes of Day-Glo orange paint, quick squirts from an inverted spray-can like those used by road crews to flag gas lines. Anyone else would dismiss the lines as random scratchings. To James, they’re a secret language of nodes on invisible ley lines.
Twice a year, James will have a clear view to the horizon for the complete sunrise. Today is the first test. The Autumnal Equinox.
He kneels in the center of his timepiece. With precision, he arranges a bow of springy juniper tied with green paracord, a small plank of cedar for a fireboard, a basswood spindle, an oval of leather for an ember pan, a flat palm-sized stone for a bearing block, and a nest of shredded bark and sawdust.
He positions his body in a crouch, bare left foot on the fireboard, right knee on the pavement. Bow-drilling delights his engineer’s mind. Each element optimized for its purpose. The slow meditation of bowing, the rotation of the spindle as it turns in the divot, the increasing downward pressure of his left hand on the stone atop the spindle, the full length of the bowstring drawing horizontally faster back and forth, the expense of energy from arm and back muscles, the physics of friction, the scent of smoking cedar, the everywhen opens into a vastness where the whole apparatus moves him and they merge into a single purpose. Kneeling on the dark cool asphalt in body-prayer, he is at peace for the first time in weeks.
A puff of smoke tickles James’ nose. Sweet scent of smoldering cedar. A final few thrusts of the bow and there, in the enlarged divot on the fireboard, glows an infant coal. He gently tips the sacrificial bit into the nest of dry bark and wood shavings and blows as on a baby’s cheek. A fragile flame ignites. He feels like a disciple at Helios’ temple, coaxing the sun from his heavenly secret. A bead of sweat rolls down from his hairline to tickle his brow. His limbs buzz with wonder and amazement. He sighs satisfaction.
James transfers the fire to the kindling in the bottom of a battered tin cylinder, his old camp stove. The dry twigs accept his gift and release their own stored sunlight in flame.
He feeds more twigs into the fledgling fire. The top holds a half-cup of filtered water and a sliced banana. Not breakfast. An offering. He adds cinnamon to the warming water, closes his eyes and breathes it in. The fiery sting of hard candy mingles with the comfort of rain on packed earth and the arousal of drums around a campfire. The soil on Kilimanjaro is the red-brown of cinnamon. He knows the spice comes from tree bark, but to him it is always of the earth.
In the predawn center of his asphalt Stonehenge, James pokes more twigs under the cup and stirs the banana and cinnamon. His mouth waters. He forgot to eat last night. A pale ivory glow coats the canyon of warehouses in butter, the shadows rich violet, the first time he’s seen true beauty in this place.
A delicate cerulean washes the sky. He dares not blink now. The molten sliver of gold glints on the distant horizon, claiming his breath. His eyes water from the smoke and the intensity of the rising sun. He squints, his solar plexus tightens, his heartbeat quickens in the radiance that has traveled eight minutes through ninety-three million miles to anoint his forehead.
Yes, says the Boss, now a hovering molten disk of gold. And James sees everything in that instant:
A group of men hunts a hooved animal, red muscles pulsing with red energy. A girl forms a loaf of bread and places it in the heat of a small fire. A woman prays over her offering of dung aflame in a small dish of dough, all of it—her hands, the dung, the wheat, the clay—formed from the sun. A cart piled high with corn, its very wheels modeled on the blazing disk that daily rolls across the sky. Coal miners blink in the light after ten hours underground chipping greasy black rocks, their eyes and coveralls carrying the sun’s reluctant secrets. A geyser of petroleum, a traffic jam, a funeral pyre, a volcano, a river aflame. The images burn into James, his cells his heart his brain.
Even at the passing half-strength of a Brooklyn dawn, the eighty-seven quadrillion watts striking James’ body and the small parking lot could power fifty houses for a day. He breathes the cinnamon banana steam and rededicates himself to harness it. He will find a way as elegant and harmless as a leaf.
The Boss is fully arrived. James drinks the molten light. It burns his gullet and pierces his eyes and speaks.
There he is, puny and afraid. Staring at us for less than two minutes will melt his retinas. Staying naked in our presence will burn, blister and shred his fragile skin to a rotting corpse. How did such a supplicant style himself a warrior for our cause?
The Boss mocks effort. Everything on this earth hums to its own effortless logic. Cycles and rhythms and seasons with no planning, no forethought. They just are. James lives for such simplicity, such clarity.
The sweet earthy smell of cinnamon brings him back to his ritual. He raises his face to the sun. “Help me,” he whispers.
Greater men than you have tried and failed. You are not the first we have chosen. Nor will you be the last.
You climb a ladder of your own making, rung by painful rung, to seek answers. There is no ladder. There are no answers. There are only better questions. One side-step is worth ten thousand ladders.
Now stop wallowing. Eat the damn banana. You’re the one who needs it, not us. Eat the banana and get back to work.
Immersion
The sun’s power is incomprehensible, yet I’m so used to feeling it on my skin I hardly notice. Let’s notice. Explore the sun’s radiant generosity. You might choose to contemplate a wood fire or walk in the sun or bask indoors in a sunny window. Turn your imagination to the sun and listen.
Measure
“It is remarkable what a value is still put upon wood even in this age and in this new country, a value more permanent and universal than that of gold. After all our discoveries and inventions no man will go by a pile of wood. It is as precious to us as it was to our Saxon and Norman ancestors.” ~ Walden, Ch.13
Walden was first published in 1854. Back then, wood was still the primary source of heat, as it had been since Prometheus defied the gods to give fire to humans. Just five years later, Edwin Drake struck oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania— on August 27, 1859, 45 miles from the southern shore of Lake Erie. Fossil fuels are so central to our lives now that it’s almost shocking to contemplate: the Titusville discovery was only 165 years ago. On the eve of Civil War, oil gushed into American lives and changed everything forever.
But must it be forever? 165 years is only six generations—a mere tick in the history of earth.
A barrel of oil provides the equivalent energy of 5.8 million British thermal units (MBtus) or 1,700 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy—enough to power the typical American house for two months.1 2 Burning it releases 426.10 kg (940 lbs) CO2, about 37 days of emissions for an average passenger vehicle.3 Are these meaningful numbers? I have no idea. I’m left wondering why our world revolves around such calculations when, by comparison, 173,000 terawatts of energy from the sun reaches earth continuously. That’s more than 10,000 times the world’s total energy use.4
Maybe we’re like Thoreau was back then—on the eve of another radical energy leap, unable to imagine how it will change everything. Nobody puts this into better perspective than
in his brilliant newsletter, The Crucial Years. Here’s one: Energy from Heaven.It’s a cosmic joke that this one’s been squinching our eyes ever since we climbed down out of trees to walk upright.
Wisdom
In Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer tells the story of the People of the Seventh Fire. Here’s a small taste of that story, which is both prophecy and metaphor:
From their origins in the “dawn lands” of the Atlantic shore, the Anishinaabe people made several relocations westward to the place “where the food grows on the water.” Always, when they traveled, they carried sacred fire with them in bowls of a grainy black fungus that grows only on the bark of paper birch and yellow birch trees. When cut open, the body of the conk is banded in glowing shades of gold and bronze, with the texture of spongy wood, all constructed of tiny threads and air-filled pores. Some say this being spoke its use to the ancestors through its burnt exterior and golden heart. In addition to its valuable medicinal uses, it is a tinder fungus, a firekeeper, and a good friend to the People of the Fire. They call it shkitagen. It is also known as Inonotus obliquus or, more commonly, chaga. Even the smallest spark, so fleeting and easily lost, will be held and nurtured if kept in a cube of shkitagen.
After each move, the people resettled and established new homelands. The history of another people eventually came to braided into the Anishinaabe’s history. Two prophets foretold of light-skinned people coming in ships from the east. One said that if the offshore people came in brotherhood, they would bring great knowledge that, combined with the People of the Fire, would form a great new nation. The other warned that what looks like the face of brotherhood might be the face of death. They might come in greed for the riches of the land.
The face they wore became apparent as the fish became poisoned and the water unfit to drink. By the actions of the people from the east, the People of the Fire were scattered. They were separated from their land, from their ancestors, and from each other. Their old ways blew in the wind. Even the plants and animals began to turn their faces away. The people had lost their way and their purpose in life.
A young man came to the people with the message that in the time of the Seventh Fire, a new people would emerge with a sacred purpose. It would not be easy for them. They would have to be strong and determined in their work, for they stood at a crossroads. In this time, the young would turn back to the elders for teachings and find that many had nothing to give.
The people of the Seventh Fire do not yet walk forward. They are told to turn around and retrace the steps of the ones who came before. Their sacred purpose is to walk back along the road of the ancestors’ path, to gather up all the fragments that lay scattered along the trail. Fragments of land, tatters of language, bits of songs, stories, sacred teachings. All that was dropped along the way. Kimmerer closes her chapter with this:
“In seeking the shkitagen of the forest and the shkitagen of the spirit, we ask for open eyes and open minds, hearts open enough to embrace our more-than-human kin, a willingness to engage intelligences not our own. We’ll need trust in the generosity of the good green earth to provide this gift and trust in human people to reciprocate. I don’t know how the eighth fire will be lit. But I do know we can gather the tinder that will nurture the flame, that we can be shkitagen to carry the fire, as it was carried to us. Is t his not a holy thing, the kindling of this fire? So much depends on the spark.” (p.373)
Talking back to Walden together
In January, we shared discoveries of winter’s spareness, the suspended state of frozenness, and listening for secrets. This month, what messages does the sun bring to you? In any form. Share them in the chat.
Transcript of excerpt from Chapter 13: House-Warming
. . . At length the winter set in in good earnest, just as I had finished plastering, and the wind began to howl around the house as if it had not had permission to do so till then. Night after night the geese came lumbering in in the dark with a clangor and a whistling of wings, even after the ground was covered with snow, some to alight in Walden, and some flying low over the woods toward Fair Haven, bound for Mexico.
. . . I withdrew yet farther into my shell, and endeavored to keep a bright fire both within my house and within my breast. My employment out of doors now was to collect the dead wood in the forest, bringing it in my hands or on my shoulders, or sometimes trailing a dead pine tree under each arm to my shed. An old forest fence which had seen its best days was a great haul for me. I sacrificed it to Vulcan, for it was past serving the god Terminus. How much more interesting an event is that man’s supper who has just been forth in the snow to hunt, nay, you might say, steal, the fuel to cook it with! His bread and meat are sweet. There are enough fagots and waste wood of all kinds in the forests of most of our towns to support many fires, but which at present warm none, and, some think, hinder the growth of the young wood.
. . . It is remarkable what a value is still put upon wood even in this age and in this new country, a value more permanent and universal than that of gold. After all our discoveries and inventions no man will go by a pile of wood. It is as precious to us as it was to our Saxon and Norman ancestors. If they made their bows of it, we make our gun-stocks of it. Michaux, more than thirty years ago, says that the price of wood for fuel in New York and Philadelphia “nearly equals, and sometimes exceeds, that of the best wood in Paris, though this immense capital annually requires more than three hundred thousand cords, and is surrounded to the distance of three hundred miles by cultivated plains.” In this town the price of wood rises almost steadily, and the only question is, how much higher it is to be this year than it was the last. Mechanics and tradesmen who come in person to the forest on no other errand, are sure to attend the wood auction, and even pay a high price for the privilege of gleaning after the wood-chopper. It is now many years that men have resorted to the forest for fuel and the materials of the arts; the New Englander and the New Hollander, the Parisian and the Celt, the farmer and Robinhood, Goody Blake and Harry Gill, in most parts of the world the prince and the peasant, the scholar and the savage, equally require still a few sticks from the forest to warm them and cook their food. Neither could I do without them.
Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affection. I loved to have mine before my window, and the more chips the better to remind me of my pleasing work.
. . . I sometimes left a good fire when I went to take a walk in a winter afternoon; and when I returned, three or four hours afterward, it would be still alive and glowing. My house was not empty though I was gone. It was as if I had left a cheerful housekeeper behind. It was I and Fire that lived there; and commonly my housekeeper proved trustworthy.
. . . Some of my friends spoke as if I was coming to the woods on purpose to freeze myself. The animal merely makes a bed, which he warms with his body in a sheltered place; but man, having discovered fire, boxes up some air in a spacious apartment, and warms that, instead of robbing himself, makes that his bed, in which he can move about divested of more cumbrous clothing, maintain a kind of summer in the midst of winter, and by means of windows even admit the light, and with a lamp lengthen out the day. Thus he goes a step or two beyond instinct, and saves a little time for the fine arts.
Thanks for reading Talking Back to Walden. Read previous months here: September, October, November, December, January. If you enjoyed this, please share. For more like it and for my regular weekly posts, please consider becoming a free or upgrading to paid subscriber.
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https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/electricity-use-in-homes.php
This post is a satisfying feast, and for me, the most nourishing course is the excerpt from your novel. You have a rare ability to render poetic prose and ground it in tangible, tactile details that create a world that is both magical and believable. I would love to see you unleash more of your fiction, promoting it from the back burner to the dining room table. Thanks for sharing it. Keep going!
Julie, I read this twice to let it all soak in, and intend to read it again along with your December and January Walden stories. Incredible! I love how you intertwined your fiction, beautifully done! I'm excited to subscribe and begin practicing hope. Thank you!