Running a Line

[Fiona Shnapple]

The greatest line the surveyor and author ever set was not on or even
of the land exactly, but of the depths of the pond at Walden. Not an
easy thing to do. It, as much as his writing, I suspect, made his
reputation in the business. He needed the work. An American in the
Romantic Tradition, he is, as is Emerson, an early pragmatist too.

I think I would have got on well with him.

On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 8:22 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://blogthoreau.blogspot.com/?m=1
>
> ...Thoreau's Journal: 17-Dec-1856
>
> Yesterday afternoon I was running a line through the woods. How many days
> have I spent thus, sighting my way in direct lines through dense woods,
> through cat-briar and viburnum in New Jersey, through shrub oak in New
> England, requiring my axeman to shear off twigs and bushes and dead limbs
> and masses of withered leaves that obstruct the view, and then set up a
> freshly barked stake exactly on the line; looking at these barked stakes
> from far and near as if I loved them; not knowing where I shall come out; my
> duty then and there perhaps merely to locate a straight line between two
> points.
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