Tag Archives: Literature

This, Too, Is Heaven

It’s snowing here again in Connecticut. We seem to have had a major storm every week for the past five (is it five?) weeks. Yesterday I went to fill the bird feeders, and had a hard time tramping in the snow that went past my knees. I fell over a couple of times. Of course, not having have boots on could have attributed to this. Later in the day, Shadow (our cat, who has found a nice perch at the window to watch the squirrels and birds close-up), flipped out. Not knowing what spooked her, we looked up to see a deer climbing the pile of snow at the window to feed. Guess we should get a salt lick.

Every day I get a meditation from Inward, Outward. Today’s was especially appropriate as I look out my office window with more white stuff coming down from the sky.

Henry David Thoreau‘s, “This, Too, Is Heaven

Every winter the liquid and trembling surface of the pond, which was so sensitive to every breath, and reflected every light and shadow, becomes solid to the depth of a foot or a foot and a half…and it is not to be distinguished from any level field. Like the marmots in the surrounding hills, it closes its eyelids and becomes dormant for three months or more.

Standing on the snow-covered plain, as if in a pasture amid the hills, I cut my way first through a foot of snow, and then a foot of ice, and open a window under my feet, where, kneeling to drink, I look down into the quiet parlor of the fishes, pervaded by a softened light as through a window of ground glass, with its bright sanded floor the same as in summer; there a perennial waveless serenity reigns as in the amber twilight sky, corresponding to the cool and even temperament of the inhabitants. Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

Source: Walden