16.365 Simplifications

[thoreau]

January 16, 1859, "The henhawk and the pine are friends. The same thing which keeps the henhawk in the woods, away from the cities, keeps me here. That bird will not be poultry of yours, lay no eggs for you, forever hides its nest. Though willed or wild, it is not willful in it wildness. The unsympathizing man regards the wildness of some animals, their strangeness to him, as sin, as if all their virtue consisted of tamableness. He has always a charge in his gun ready for their extermination. What we call wilderness is a civilization other than our own. The henhawk shuns the farmer, but it seeks the friendly shelter and support of the pine. It will not consent to walk in the barnyard, but it loves to soar above the cloud. It has its own way and is beautiful when we would fain subject it to our will. So any surpassing work of art is strange and wild to the mass of men, is genius itself." - The Diary of Henry David Thoreau


Title: A Cooper's Hawk
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