I An Eye for Trees

Thoreau observed trees daily on his walks and as a surveyor and nat-

uralist. He loved majestic elms and oaks—but also common or

small trees and their smallest parts. He

took in their shapes, colors, and textures—

root, trunk, crown, leaf, blossom and cone.

Thoreau’s disciplined observation of trees, and his desire to see them, deep-ened his creative response to them.

‘The fine tops of the trees are so relieved against the sky that I never cease to admire the minute subdivisions.’

‘A tree seen against other trees is a mere dark mass, but against the sky it has parts, symmetry and expression.’

Thoreau’s sketches

The lecture has three parts. It explores Thoreau’s keen observation of trees, his creative response to them as a writer and trees as his spiritual companions.

The limbs of Minot Pratt’s “stupendous

elm” looked to Thoreau like“vast thunderbolts

stereographed against the sky.’

Henry Thoreau loved trees and saw and wrote about them as few others have. He admired their beauty and found poetic forms and mythic meaning in them. Thoreau studied how trees grew, and he also took them as his spiritual companions. He knew trees so well he could discern their individual character. In short, he spoke their language.

Pairing selections from Thoreau’s writing with photographs of trees, “Thoreau and the Language of Trees” explores the writer’s passion for trees, how he saw them and his imag-inative response to them.

Thoreau and the

Language of Trees

An Illustrated Lecture by Richard Higgins

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II A Poet’s Trees

III The Spirits of Trees

Thoreau called the woods his “holy of

holies,” where he renewed his soul.

Trees taught him spiritual lessons about

patience, perserverance and reaching for

light. The autumn leaves that fall so

gracefully and without worry to the forest

floor, he wrote, “teach us how to die.”

Trees spoke to all that was evergreen in

Thoreau. When he felt despair, the mere

scent of pine could revive his spirits.

ILLUSTRATION: Most of the photographs

are my own. The talk also includes images

by the landscape photographer Herbert

Wendell Gleason, as well as Thoreau’s own

sketches of trees.

AUDIENCE: “Thoreau and the Language

of Trees” is about 45 minutes long. It can

be enjoyed by a general audience as well as

by foresters, conservationists, landscape

designers and anyone who loves trees.

‘Their secret is where you are not and where your feet can never carry you.’

Trees stirred Thor-

eau’s poet’s soul

and his creative

genius as writer. He

called the trees

around Walden the

slender eyelashes

fringing earth’s

liquid eye. With his

pen, he turned

trees into ships,

maples into ministers and pines into

pagodas.

Thoreau saw trees as nature’s poetic

language. As a writer, he drew verbal

images, puns and metaphors from the

forest. The poet, he wrote, loves the

pine tree as his “own shadow in the

air.”

‘The tree is full of poetry.’

RICHARD HIGGINS is a writer and editor

who has explored Thoreau and trees in

depth. He was a writer at The Boston Globe

for 25 years, is the co-author of Portfolio

Life (Wiley) and the editor of four books,

including Taking Faith Seriously (Harvard

University Press). His writing has appeared

in The New York Times, Atlantic Monthly,

Smithsonian, Esquire, The International

Herald Tribune, Yankee and NPR. Higgins

is a graduate of Holy Cross College, Colum-

bia Journalism School and Harvard Divin-

ity School. He lives in Concord, Mass.

To host this talk, contact Richard Higgins

rihiggins@comcast.net 978.369.1895

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