"Sometimes, in a summer morning...I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance....As the sparrow had its trill, sitting on the hickory before my door, so had I my chuckle or suppressed warble which he might hear out of my nest. My days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock..."
Thoreau's little house in Concord, Mass., or his "nest" as he refers to it, was a place that allowed him to live by nature's standards which aren't confined to days, weeks and years, but rather go on in one continuous moment. I can see myself getting lost in this too if it were possible to forget about all the burdens of the "civilized" world. I'm pretty sure Thoreau would be spinning in his grave at the way we live today. He thought his world was fast-paced and disconnected...I wish I could send him a text message saying it has only gotten worse.
