Essex on Lake Champlain
\"Essex
  • About
    • Essex, New York (Town)
      • Essex Maps
      • Essex, New York Weather
      • Town of Essex Government
      • Close
    • Essex on Lake Champlain (Blog)
      • Contributors
      • Sponsors
      • Testimonials
      • Get Involved
      • Close
    • Close
  • Books
  • Blog
  • Calendar
    • Add an Event
    • Upcoming Events
    • Close
  • Essex on Lake Champlain
  • Connect
    • Social Media
      • Facebook
      • Twitter
      • Google +
      • Pinterest
      • YouTube
      • Flickr
    • Newsletters
    • GET INVOLVED
    • CONTACT
      • Your Name (required)

        Your Email (required)

        Subject (required)

        Your Message

    • Close
  • Shop
  • Search
      • Search
        • Close
      • Categories
          • Agriculture (508)
          • Architecture (73)
          • Arts (307)
          • Business (114)
          • Daily Doodle (62)
          • Dining (145)
          • Doodle Quotes (5)
          • Doodlebomb (3)
          • Education (280)
          • Entertainment (318)
          • Environment (25)
          • Essex Doodles (62)
          • Events (1450)
          • Exercise (54)
          • Government (235)
          • Health & Wellness (132)
          • Heritage (375)
          • History (168)
          • Hyperlocal (21)
          • Landscape (35)
          • Lifestyle (191)
          • Lodging (15)
          • Music (244)
          • Nature (237)
          • News (976)
          • Nightlife (14)
          • Obituary (7)
          • Opinion (43)
          • Outdoors (172)
          • People (105)
          • Philanthropy (56)
          • Real Estate (3)
          • Recreation (196)
          • Resources (7)
          • Services (7)
          • Shopping (80)
          • Sports (21)
          • Transportation (65)
          • Worship (17)
        • Close
      • Archives
          • June 2018 (21)
          • May 2018 (30)
          • April 2018 (28)
          • March 2018 (30)
          • February 2018 (31)
          • January 2018 (26)
          • December 2017 (23)
          • November 2017 (25)
          • October 2017 (22)
          • September 2017 (32)
          • August 2017 (35)
          • July 2017 (30)
          • June 2017 (30)
          • May 2017 (35)
          • April 2017 (31)
          • March 2017 (33)
          • February 2017 (30)
          • January 2017 (35)
          • December 2016 (30)
          • November 2016 (37)
          • October 2016 (43)
          • September 2016 (53)
          • August 2016 (49)
          • July 2016 (59)
          • June 2016 (70)
          • May 2016 (57)
          • April 2016 (64)
          • March 2016 (69)
          • February 2016 (56)
          • January 2016 (46)
          • December 2015 (39)
          • November 2015 (43)
          • October 2015 (61)
          • September 2015 (57)
          • August 2015 (61)
          • July 2015 (54)
          • June 2015 (41)
          • May 2015 (67)
          • April 2015 (66)
          • March 2015 (72)
        • Load More
        • Close
      • Contact us
        • CONTACT US

          Your Name (required)

          Your Email (required)

          Subject (required)

          Your Message

        • Close
    • Close
  • Log In
    • Log Into Calendar
    • Log Into Blog
    • Close
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Essex on Lake Champlain

Essex, New York Community Blog Since 2011

  • Lifestyle
    • Agriculture
      • CSAs in Essex, NY
        • Essex Farm
        • Full and By Farm
      • Farmstead Catering
      • The Hub on the Hill
      • Reber Rock Farm
    • Outdoors
      • Champlain Area Trails (CATS)
      • Pok-O-MacCready Outdoor Education Center
    • Entertainment
      • Champlain Valley Film Series
      • Whallonsburg Grange Hall
    • Arts
      • Adirondack Art Association
      • Essex Community Concerts
      • Champlain Valley Film Series
      • Essex Poetry Open Mic
    • Music
      • Essex Community Concerts
    • Shopping
    • Recreation
      • Champlain Area Trails (CATS)
    • Health & Wellness
      • Lake Champlain Yoga & Wellness
      • NEW Health
    • Nature
      • Champlain Area Trails (CATS)
    • Education
      • CFES Brilliant Pathways
      • Pok-O-MacCready Outdoor Education Center
    • Nightlife
    • Worship
  • Events
    • Christmas in Essex
    • Downtown Essex Day
    • Fourth of July in Essex, NY
  • Dining
    • Chez Lin & Rays
    • Essex Ice Cream Cafe
    • Essex Inn on the Adirondack Coast
    • Farmstead Catering
    • Old Dock Restaurant
    • The Pink Pig Cafe
  • Lodging
    • Essex Inn on the Adirondack Coast
    • The Cupola House and Cottage
  • Transportation
    • Essex-Charlotte Ferry
  • Heritage
    • Architecture
      • Essex, New York Architecture: A Doodler’s Field Guide
    • Historic Essex
    • History
    • People
    • Government
      • Essex Post Office
      • Town of Essex Government
    • Vintage Essex Trivia
    • Vintage Essex Artifacts
  • Directory
    • Adirondack Art Association
    • Champlain Area Trails (CATS)
    • CFES Brilliant Pathways
    • The Cupola House and Cottage
    • Essex-Charlotte Ferry
    • Essex Farm
    • Essex Ice Cream Cafe
    • Essex Initiatives
    • Essex Post Office
    • Farmstead Catering
    • Full and By Farm
    • Historic Essex
    • Lake Champlain Yoga & Wellness
    • NEW Health
    • Pedal Power
    • Reber Rock Farm
    • The Hub on the Hill
    • Town of Essex Government
    • Whallonsburg Grange Hall
  • Show Search
Hide Search
You are here: Home / Arts / “The Adirondacs” by Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The Adirondacs” by Ralph Waldo Emerson

May 2, 2016 By Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

“The Adirondacs” by Ralph Waldo Emerson
A Journal
Dedicated to My Fellow Travellers in August, 1858

The Philosophers' Camp, by William James Stillman, 1858 (Setting for Ralph Waldo Emerson's poem, "The Adirondacs".)

 

Wise and polite,—and if I drew
Their several portraits, you would own
Chaucer had no such worthy crew,
Nor Boccace in Decameron.

WE crossed Champlain to Keeseville with our friends,
Thence, in strong country carts, rode up the forks
Of the Ausable stream, intent to reach
The Adirondac lakes. At Martin’s Beach
We chose our boats; each man a boat and guide,—
Ten men, ten guides, our company all told.

Next morn, we swept with oars the Saranac,
With skies of benediction, to Round Lake,
Where all the sacred mountains drew around us,
Tahawus, Seaward, MacIntyre, Baldhead,
And other Titans without muse or name.
Pleased with these grand companions, we glide on,
Instead of flowers, crowned with a wreath of hills.
We made our distance wider, boat from boat,
As each would hear the oracle alone.
By the bright morn the gay flotilla slid
Through files of flags that gleamed like bayonets,
Through gold-moth-haunted beds of pickerel-flower,
Through scented banks of lilies white and gold,
Where the deer feeds at night, the teal by day,
On through the Upper Saranac, and up
Père Raquette stream, to a small tortuous pass
Winding through grassy shallows in and out,
Two creeping miles of rushes, pads and sponge,
To Follansbee Water and the Lake of Loons.

Northward the length of Follansbee we rowed,
Under low mountains, whose unbroken ridge
Ponderous with beechen forest sloped the shore.
A pause and council: then, where near the head
Due east a bay makes inward to the land
Between two rocky arms, we climb the bank,
And in the twilight of the forest noon
Wield the first axe these echoes ever heard.
We cut young trees to make our poles and thwarts,
Barked the white spruce to weatherfend the roof,
Then struck a light and kindled the camp-fire.

The wood was sovran with centennial trees,—
Oak, cedar, maple, poplar, beech and fir,
Linden and spruce. In strict society
Three conifers, white, pitch and Norway pine,
Five-leaved, three-leaved and two-leaved, grew thereby.
Our patron pine was fifteen feet in girth,
The maple eight, beneath its shapely tower.

‘Welcome!’ the wood-god murmured through the leaves,—
‘Welcome, though late, unknowing, yet known to me.’
Evening drew on; stars peeped through maple-boughs,
Which o’erhung, like a cloud, our camping fire.
Decayed millennial trunks, like moonlight flecks,
Lit with phosphoric crumbs the forest floor.

Ten scholars, wonted to lie warm and soft
In well-hung chambers daintily bestowed,
Lie here on hemlock-boughs, like Sacs and Sioux,
And greet unanimous the joyful change.
So fast will Nature acclimate her sons,
Though late returning to her pristine ways.
Off soundings, seamen do not suffer cold;
And, in the forest, delicate clerks, unbrowned,
Sleep on the fragrant brush, as on down-beds.
Up with the dawn, they fancied the light air
That circled freshly in their forest dress
Made them to boys again. Happier that they
Slipped off their pack of duties, leagues behind,
At the first mounting of the giant stairs.
No placard on these rocks warned to the polls,
No door-bell heralded a visitor,
No courier waits, no letter came or went,
Nothing was ploughed, or reaped, or bought, or sold;
The frost might glitter, it would blight no crop,
The falling rain will spoil no holiday.
We were made freemen of the forest laws,
All dressed, like Nature, fit for her own ends,
Essaying nothing she cannot perform.

In Adirondac lakes,
At morn or noon, the guide rows bareheaded:
Shoes, flannel shirt, and kersey trousers make
His brief toilette: at night, or in the rain,
He dons a surcoat which he doffs at morn:
A paddle in the right hand, or an oar,
And in the left, a gun, his needful arms.
By turns we praised the stature of our guides,
Their rival strength and suppleness, their skill
To row, to swim, to shoot, to build a camp,
To climb a lofty stem, clean without boughs
Full fifty feet, and bring the eaglet down:
Temper to face wolf, bear, or catamount,
And wit to trap or take him in his lair.
Sound, ruddy men, frolic and innocent,
In winter, lumberers; in summer, guides;
Their sinewy arms pull at the oar untired
Three times ten thousand strokes, from morn to eve.

Look to yourselves, ye polished gentlemen!
No city airs or arts pass current here.
Your rank is all reversed; let men of cloth
Bow to the stalwart churls in overalls:
They are the doctors of the wilderness,
And we the low-prized laymen.
In sooth, red flannel is a saucy test
Which few can put on with impunity.
What make you, master, fumbling at the oar?
Will you catch crabs? Truth tries pretension here.
The sallow knows the basket-maker’s thumb;
The oar, the guide’s. Dare you accept the tasks
He shall impose, to find a spring, trap foxes,
Tell the sun’s time, determine the true north,
Or stumbling on through vast self-similar woods
To thread by night the nearest way to camp?

Ask you, how went the hours?
All day we swept the lake, searched every cove,
North from Camp Maple, south to Osprey Bay,
Watching when the loud dogs should drive in deer,
Or whipping its rough surface for a trout;
Or, bathers, diving from the rock at noon;
Challenging Echo by our guns and cries;
Or listening to the laughter of the loon;
Or, in the evening twilight’s latest red,
Beholding the procession of the pines; *
Or, later yet, beneath a lighted jack,
In the boat’s bows, a silent night-hunter
Stealing with paddle to the feeding-grounds
Of the red deer, to aim at a square mist? *
Hark to that muffled roar! a tree in the woods
Is fallen: but hush! it has not scared the buck
Who stands astonished at the meteor light,
Then turns to bound away,—is it too late?

Our heroes tried their rifles at a mark,
Six rods, sixteen, twenty, or forty-five;
Sometimes their wits at sally and retort,
With laughter sudden as the crack of rifle;
Or parties scaled the near acclivities
Competing seekers of a rumored lake,
Whose unauthenticated waves we named
Lake Probability,—our carbuncle,
Long sought, not found.

Two Doctors in the camp
Dissected the slain deer, weighed the trout’s brain,
Captured the lizard, salamander, shrew,
Crab, mice, snail, dragon-fly, minnow and moth;
Insatiate skill in water or in air
Waved the scoop-net, and nothing came amiss;
The while, one leaden pot of alcohol
Gave an impartial tomb to all the kinds.
Not less the ambitious botanist sought plants,
Orchis and gentian, fern and long whip-scirpus,
Rosy polygonum, lake-margin’s pride,
Hypnum and hydnum, mushroom, sponge and moss,
Or harebell nodding in the gorge of falls.
Above, the eagle flew, the osprey screamed,
The raven croaked, owls hooted, the woodpecker
Loud hammered, and the heron rose in the swamp.
As water poured through hollows of the hills
To feed this wealth of lakes and rivulets,
So Nature shed all beauty lavishly
From her redundant horn.

Lords of this realms,
Bounded by dawn and sunset, and the day
Rounded by hours where each outdid the last
In miracles of pomp, we must be proud,
As if associates of the sylvan gods.
We seemed the dwellers of the zodiac,
So pure the Alpine element we breathed,
So light, so lofty pictures came and went.
We trode on air, contemned the distant town,
Its timorous ways, big trifles, and we planned
That we should build, hard-by, a spacious lodge
And how we should come hither with our sons,
Hereafter,—willing they, and more adroit. *

Hard fare, hard bed and comic misery,—
The midge, the blue-fly and the mosquito
Painted our necks, hands, ankles, with red bands:
But, on the second day, we heed them not,
Nays we saluted them Auxiliaries,
Whom earlier we had chid with spiteful names.
For who defends our leafy tabernacle
From bold intrusion of the travelling crowd,—
Who but the midge, mosquito and the fly,
Which past endurance sting the tender cit,
But which we learn to scatter with a smudge,
Or baffle by a veil, or slight by scorn?

Our foaming ale we drank from hunters’ pans,
Ale, and a sup of wine. Our steward gave
Venison and trout, potatoes, beans, wheat-bread;
All ate like abbots, and, if any missed
Their wonted covenance, cheerly hid the loss
With hunters’ appetite and peals of mirth.
And Stillman, our guides’ guide, and Commodore,
Crusoe, Crusader, Pius Æneas, said aloud,
“Chronic dyspepsia never came from eating
Food indigestible”:—then murmured some,
Others applauded him who spoke the truth. *

Nor doubt but visitings of graver thought
Checked in these souls the turbulent heyday
‘Mid all the hints and glories of the home.
For who can tell what sudden privacies
Were sought and found, amid the hue and cry
Of scholars furloughed from their tasks and let
Into this Oreads’ fended Paradise,
As chapels in the city’s thoroughfares,
Whither gaunt Labor slips to wipe his brow
And meditate a moment on Heaven’s rest.
Judge with what sweet surprises Nature spoke
To each apart, lifting her lovely shows
To spiritual lessons pointed home,
And as through dreams in watches of the night,
So through all creatures in their form and ways
Some mystic hint accosts the vigilant,
Not clearly voiced, but waking a new sense
Inviting to new knowledge, one with old.
Hark to that petulant chirp! what ails the warbler?
Mark his capricious ways to draw the eye.
Now soar again. What wilt thou, restless bird,
Seeking in that chaste blue a bluer light,
Thirsting in that pure for a purer sky?

And presently the sky is changed; O world!
What pictures and what harmonies are thine!
The clouds are rich and dark, the air serene,
So like the soul of me, what if’t were me?
A melancholy better than all mirth.
Comes the sweet sadness at the retrospect,
Or at the foresight of obscurer years?
Like yon slow-sailing cloudy promontory
Whereon the purple iris dwells in beauty
Superior to all its gaudy skirts.
And, that no day of life may lack romance,
The spiritual stars rise nightly, shedding down
A private beam into each several heart.
Daily the bending skies solicit man,
The seasons chariot him from this exile,
The rainbow hours bedeck his glowing chair,
The storm-winds urge the heavy weeks along,
Suns haste to set, that so remoter lights
Beckon the wanderer to his vaster home.

With a vermilion pencil mark the day
When of our little fleet three cruising skiffs
Entering Big Tupper, bound for the foaming Falls
Of loud Bog River, suddenly confront
Two of our mates returning with swift oars.
One held a printed journal waving high
Caught from a late-arriving traveller,
Big with great news, and shouted the report
For which the world had waited, now firm fact,
Of the wire-cable laid beneath the sea,
And landed on our coast, and pulsating
With ductile fire. Loud, exulting cries
From boat to boat, and to the echoes round,
Greet the glad miracle. Thought’s new-found path
Shall supplement henceforth all trodden ways,
Match God’s equator with a zone of art,
And lift man’s public action to a height
Worthy the enormous cloud of witnesses,
When linkèd hemispheres attest his deed.
We have few moments in the longest life
Of such delight and wonder as there grew,—
Nor yet unsuited to that solitude:
A burst of joy, as if we told the fact
To ears intelligent; as if gray rock
And cedar grove and cliff and lake should know
This feat of wit, this triumph of mankind;
As if we men were talking in a vein
Of sympathy so large, that ours was theirs,
And a prime end of the most subtle element
Were fairly reached at last. Wake, echoing caves!
Bend nearer, faint day-moon! Yon thundertops,
Let them hear well! ‘t is theirs as much as ours. *

A spasm throbbing through the pedestals
Of Alp and Andes, isle and continent,
Urging astonished Chaos with a thrill
To be a brain, or serve the brain of man. *
The lightning has run masterless too long;
He must to school and learn his verb and noun
And teach his nimbleness to earn his wage,
Spelling with guided tongue man’s messages
Shot through the weltering pit of the salt sea.
And yet I marked, even in the manly joy
Of our great-hearted Doctor in his boat
(Perchance I erred), a shade of discontent;
Or was it for mankind a generous shame,
As of a luck not quite legitimate,
Since fortune snatched from wit the lion’s part?
Was it a college pique of town and gown,
As one within whose memory it burned
That not academicians, but some lout,
Found ten years since the Californian gold?
And now, again, a hungry company
Of traders, led by corporate sons of trade,
Perversely borrowing from the shop the tools
Of science, not from the philosophers,
Had won the brightest laurel of all time.
‘T was always thus, and will be; hand and head
Are ever rivals: but, though this be swift
The other slow,—this the Prometheus,
And that the Jove,—yet, howsoever hid,
It was from Jove the other stole his fire,
And, without Jove, the good had never been.
It is not Iroquois or cannibals,
But ever the free race with front sublime,
And these instructed by their wisest too,
Who do the feat, and lift humanity.
Let not him mourn who best entitled was,
Nay, mourn not one: let him exult,
Yea, plant the tree that bears best apples, plant,
And water it with wine, nor watch askance
Whether thy sons or strangers eat the fruit:
Enough that mankind eat and are refreshed.

We flee away from cities, but we bring
The best of cities with us, these learned classifiers,
Men knowing what they seek, armed eyes of experts.
We praise the guide, we praise the forest life:
But will we sacrifice our dear-bought lore
Of books and arts and trained experiment,
Or count the Sioux a match for Agassiz?
O no, not we! Witness the shout that shook
Wild Tupper Lake; witness the mute all-hail
The joyful traveller gives, when on the verge
Of craggy Indian wilderness he hears
From a log cabin stream Beethoven’s notes
On the piano, played with master’s hand.
‘Well done!’ he cries;’ the bear is kept at bay,
The lynx, the rattlesnake, the flood, the fire;
All the fierce enemies, ague, hunger, cold,
This thin spruce roof, this clayed log-wall,
This wild plantation will suffice to chase.
Now speed the gay celerities of art,
What in the desert was impossible
Within four walls is possible again,—
Culture and libraries, mysteries of skill,
Traditioned fame of masters, eager strife
Of keen competing youths, joined or alone
To outdo each other and extort applause.
Mind wakes a new-born giant from her sleep.
Twirl the old wheels! Time takes fresh start again,
On for a thousand years of genius more.’

The holidays were fruitful, but must end;
One August evening had a cooler breath;
Into each mind intruding duties crept;
Under the cinders burned the fires of home;
Nay, letters found us in our paradise:
So in the gladness of the new event
We struck our camp and left the happy hills.
The fortunate star that rose on us sank not;
The prodigal sunshine rested on the land,
The rivers gambolled onward to the sea,
And Nature, the inscrutable and mute,
Permitted on her infinite repose
Almost a smile to steal to cheer her sons,
As if one riddle of the Sphinx were guessed.

About Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The Adirondacs”

[Note: In August, 1858, American artist William J. Stillman invited an entourage of ten friends and acquaintances to visit Follensby Pond in the Adirondacks for a month. This retreat would come to be known as the Philosophers’ Camp, and the group consisted of William James Stillman, Ralph Waldo Emerson and James Russell Lowell (poets), Amos Binney and Estes Howe (doctors), Ebenezer Hoar and Horatio Woodman (lawyers), Louis Agassiz and Jeffries Wyman (scientists), and Oliver Wendell Holmes’s younger brother John Holmes. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poem, “The Adirondacs”, offers an enchanting window into the retreat.]

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • Email
  • More
  • Print
  • LinkedIn
  • Pocket
  • Reddit
  • Tumblr

Filed Under: Arts, Heritage Tagged With: Follensby Pond, Philosophers' Camp, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Editorial Staff

About Editorial Staff

Posts published under the Editorial Staff byline are drawn from press releases and other notices, and/or they may be first-time submissions from someone/some organization without a byline of their own; if latter, then the author will be acknowledged in the post. To submit your news for publication on the Essex blog please use the Submit a Story form or contact the editors via email (blue button above), Facebook or Twitter.

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

Poems from Essex & Elsewhere 

Essex, New York Architecture: A Doodler's Field Guide

View all Essex Editions books...

Follow Essex, NY on FacebookFollow Essex, NY on TwitterFollow Essex, NY on PinterestFollow Essex, NY on YouTubeFollow Essex, NY on FlickrFollow Essex, NY on RSS

Search

Top 10 Contributors

  • Katie Shepard (576)
  • Geo Davis (393)
  • Whallonsburg Grange Hall (209)
  • Essex FarmEssex Farm (205)
  • Olive Alexander (190)
  • Champlain Area Trails (CATS) (185)
  • Sara Kurak (165)
  • Tom ManganoTom Mangano (142)
  • Fort TiconderogaFort Ticonderoga (142)
  • Lakeside SchoolLakeside School (116)

Upcoming Events

Click to enlarge.

Essex Yoga Club

December 9 @ 5:30 pm At St. John's Church

The Essex Yoga Club meets every Monday at 5:30 pm at St. John’s Church. Free, open to all. N… [Continue Reading]

Click to enlarge.

Essex Community Potluck

December 10 @ 6:00 pm At St. John's Church

Essex Community Potluck Tuesdays 6pm Join us for food and friendly conversation. Please bring a potl… [Continue Reading]

Click to enlarge.

Newman Film Series: SCROOGE

December 14 @ 7:00 pm At Newman Center

The Newman Center film series (90 Broad St., Plattsburgh) will present its annual screening of 1970&… [Continue Reading]

Click to enlarge.

Essex Community Church Sunday Service

December 15 @ 10:15 am At Essex Community Church

In the spirit of fellowship and community that defines us, we welcome everyone who wants to celebrat… [Continue Reading]

Footer

Resources & Policies

  • About Essex on Lake Champlain
  • About Essex, New York
  • Essex, NY Weather
  • Disclosure Policy
  • Privacy Policy
  • Submit a Story
  • Contact Us

Popular Essex, NY Searches

  • Essex, NY
  • Essex, New York
  • Essex on Lake Champlain
  • Essex Charlotte ferry
  • Essex ferry schedule
  • Essex Charlotte ferry schedule
  • Full and By Farm
  • Essex Farm
  • timber rattlesnake
  • Essex NY fireworks
  • Christmas in Essex, NY
  • Champlain Area Trails

Local Links

  • Adirondack Art Association
  • Champlain Area Trails
  • Champlain Valley Film Society
  • Essex Community Concerts
  • Essex Theatre Company
  • Historic Essex
  • Macaroni Kid Northern Adirondacks
  • Rosslyn Redux
  • The Crater Club
  • Town of Essex Information

Copyright © 2019 Essex Editions

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.