The Samarae of Thought: Thoreau’s Gathered Timescapes

Abstract

Thoreau’s late works are filled with samarae, the winged seeds of elms, maples, and pitch pines: “winged seeds of truth” collected by the poet and “tinged with his expectation.” In this material metaphor, wings give agency to seeds; wings and seeds act together, like words and paper, to carry life outward on the wind. Thoreau notices how, deep in the closed pinecone, seed and wing clasp together tight as a watch crystal, anticipating the opening winds that will set them free. Time is thus gathered, in expectation of the future. For Thoreau, time was shattered upon the death of his brother John; the arc of regeneration taught him how to regather time, to pack history and futurity into the present moment like a seed. While he struggles to realize this insight in A Week, his later work fuses time seamlessly, coiled tight as a pinecone anticipating wind and sun – not as a continuation of the present, but as advent, avenir, a revolution, as of the seasons or an emancipation to come. Thus to anticipate is to inflect the future, help it to realize itself. Thoreau’s gathered time is thus kairotic, gathered toward a future that cannot be merely awaited but must be seized and acted upon. It is in this sense he can say it was “of the last importance” to be present at the rising of the sun: the sun will be a morning star only to those who, awake, can realize the dawn.