The Transcendentalist Method of Finding Inner Warmth in the Cold – Marginalian

“People make metaphors as naturally as bees make honey,” Adam Gopnik wrote in his wonderful love letter to winter, and no one has put honey in the air with better winter metaphors than Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817–May 6, 1862).

Long before he thought of winter cabbage as a lesson in optimism, Thoreau explored winter's exciting but surprisingly overlooked rewards, with a meditation titled “A Winter Walk,” included in his important book. A journey (free ebook | public library).

Writing in the winter of 1843, shortly after Margaret Fuller's advice made him a writer, the twenty-five-year-old Thoreau wakes up in a strange, snow-covered place and marvels at the beauty – the singular earthly splendor – of a world reborn:

The wind has softly murmured between the blinds, or has puffed with the softness of feathers at the windows, and sometimes it has murmured like a summer zephyr lifting the leaves, through the night. The street rat is sleeping in his cozy garage on the sofa, the owl is sitting in a hollow tree deep in the swamp, the rabbit, the fox, and the fox are all settled. The watchman is sleeping in the hearth, and the cows are quiet in their pens. The world itself sleeps, as if it were beginning, not its last sleep, except that some sign of the road or the door of a wooden house rings softly on its hinge, enjoying the sad nature in its midnight work, – the only sound awake is Venus and Mars, – advertising us with a distant inner warmth, divine joy and fellowship meet, where men meet, where men meet. But while the earth was dry, all the air was alive with feathers falling to the ground, as if Ceres reigned in the north, pouring her silver grain over all the fields.

We fall asleep, and finally wake up to the reality of a winter morning. The snow is as warm as cotton or down on the window; the extended sash and frosted windows allow dim and private light, enhancing the luxurious feel inside.

This stillness of the outer world, this burning of the inner hearth, is Thoreau's greatest winter reward. A century before Albert Camus took the seasons as his immortal metaphor for the human spirit – “In the depths of winter, I finally learned that inside me was an invincible summer.” — Thoreau writes:

There is a dormant underground fire that naturally does not go out, and which no cold can chill…. What fire can be equal to the sunlight in winter, when the wild mice come from the walls, and the chickadee is full of the dirt of the wood? The warmth comes directly from the sun, and is not emitted to the earth, as in summer; and when we feel his beams on our backs as we tread the snowy snow, we give thanks as a special favor, and bless the sun that has followed us to that place.

This subterranean fire has its altar in each man's breast, for on the coldest day, and on the darkest hill, the traveler appreciates the warmest fire in the hem of his cloak more than any that is kindled in the hearth. Indeed, a healthy man is a friend of the seasons, even in winter, summer is in his heart. There is in the south. Thither all the birds and insects moved, and to the warm springs in his bosom the robin and the lark gathered.

Thoreau believed that “every journey is a kind of crusade.” As he walks the white-clad plains, climbs the hills covered with snow-sharp branches, traverses the land shrouded in sweet silence and covered by “the pure and expansive sky,” he returns to the essential inner focus that winter alone invites – the silent triumph of the inner world of man. A century before Rilke painted winter as a season for tending one's inner garden, Thoreau writes:

In this lonely glen, with its brook running down the slopes, its broken snow and crystals of all hues, where spruces and hemlocks rise on either side, and the wild oats of the rivulet itself, our lives are peaceful and worthy of meditation.

[…]

In winter we live an inner life. Our hearts are warm and happy, like underwater toilets, their windows and doors are half hidden, but their chimneys go up with joy.

He also revisits the subject in a series of full-length diaries that appear The Journal of Henry David Thoreau, 1837-1861 (public library) — the course of wisdom that gave us Thoreau on writing, the sanctity of public libraries, and the creative benefits of keeping a diary. On Christmas Day 1856, he issues the main inspiration for his philosophy and daily practice:

Take long walks in stormy weather or deep snow in fields and forests, if you can keep your spirits up. Face the cruel nature. Cold, hungry and tired.

Four days later, Thoreau amplifies his point:

We must go out and reconnect with Nature every day. We have to make roots, send a little fiber at least, even every winter day. I understand that I am wasting my life when I open my mouth to the wind. Staying indoors always creates insanity. Every house is a hospital in this sense. Day and night being locked up in those wards as much as I can stand. I know that I am recovering from the mind that I lost almost when I arrived [outdoors].

The following week, as New England plunges into one of the harshest winters on record, Thoreau ponders how withdrawing from “the tiresome and unprofitable world of news” and entering the restorative world of the winter wilderness cleanses him of the filth and trifles of society:

The things I have been doing are of transitory and accidental importance, however much men have sunk into them, and bear very little precious fruit. I would pass out walking through the woods and fields and chatting with the cool snow. Thus from time to time I cut off my connection with eternal truths and go along the shallow river of human affairs, grinding on the stone of the Philistines; but when my work is finished, with infinite confidence I give myself to the infinite again.

[…]

There is nothing so pleasant, so poetic, as walking in the woods and fields even now, when I do not meet anyone abroad to be happy. In the street and in society I am almost cheap and disappear, my life is inexplicably bad. No amount of gold or dignity can redeem a little, – dining with a Governor or a member of Congress!! But I'm alone in the woods or in the fields far away, I come to myself, and I feel very connected, and that the cold and the loneliness of my friends. I think this value, in my case, is equal to what others find in going to church and praying. That's how I get rid of inappropriate things and see things as they are, big and beautiful.

[…]

I want to forget, for the most part every day, empty, small, small men (and this requires leaving and forgetting all human relationships for a long time), so I go out to these lonely places, where the problem of existence is simplified.

Complete this particular part of the timeless reward The Journal of Henry David Thoreau and Annie Dillard about how winter awakens us to life, then revisits Thoreau on the greatest gift of aging, the difference between the artist, the artist, and the intellectual, the only important definition of success, and how to use civil disobedience to advance justice.