April 7, 1930

Today, I could stand it no longer, noise and confusion and irritating details conquered at last and acting upon the impulse of the moment, I found myself bound for the woods and solitude. It is one of those balmy days when you know all life is beginning to stir. I am sitting in a rocky crevice high upon a ridge overlooking miles of wilderness to the south of me.

A soft maple before me is swelling red with buds. A tuft of withered brown grass at my feet is showing spears of pale green. Just now a tiny black and orange butterfly fluttered and drifted before me in the wind. It is the second I have seen this season. I do not know its name nor do I care. It is enough that it is a butterfly and the first of the season. Like Thoreau I am no taxonomist. My joy comes from the sense of comradeship in all life, the joy of seeing not from dry classification.

When I think of the Moose Book, I shudder. Now there are two butterflies and now three. How they drift before the light wind, the glory of new life in every movement of their flower-like bodies.

Far off across the hills on the northerly slopes, I can see patches of snow. It will be weeks before it is all gone. The tips of the poplar in the sheltered sunny places are turning pale green, just the faintest hint of green. The trees on the north sides are still cold and wintry gray and the spruces are starved and cold in the swamps.

I hear a crow and the call of a woodpecker and the rustle of many dry leaves and ribbons of birchbark in the breeze. I am glad I came. I have recaptured again the peace and joy that has so often been mine. This day has also been worth while.

The air is somewhat hazy and the blue strips of sky are covered with long fleecy blankets of mackerel.

How much I am like Thoreau and how near I sometimes feel his presence. I know he sat with me this afternoon. I can hear him say speaking of the cutting of his beloved forests and looking at the clouds, "At least they cannot cutthem down."

Life is beautiful if one can live as one wants. Beauty is all, beauty of living, thought and creation. I must go, come back to earth. I am more at peace now and calmer than I was.