Thoreau: Listen For New Species
Posted by: Loren Coleman on April 9th, 2007
I understand he wasn’t talking about “new species” in the same way that cryptozoologists do, but this thoughtful quote for the day speaks to how we have to “listen” as well as “look.”
The air is full of birds, and as I go down the causeway, I distinguish the seringo note. You have only to come forth each morning to be surely advertised of each newcomer into these broad meadows. Many a larger animal might be concealed, but a cunning ear detects the arrival of each new species of bird. These birds give evidence that they prefer the fields of New England to all other climes, deserting for them the warm and fertile south. Here is their paradise. It is here they express the most happiness by song and action. Though these spring mornings may often be frosty and rude, they are exactly tempered to their constitutions, and call forth the sweetest strains. Henry David Thoreau, 7 A. M. – To Trillium Woods, April 9, 1856.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Listen, my cryptos,
and you might hear…
a gurgle of turtles,
the laugh of a deer…
The puff of a wingbeat,
the squeak of a mouse…
a rustle of insects,
from under the house!
Thanks for the great Thoreau quote! I re-read Walden every spring just to keep focused on what’s important. (Seriously, I really do.)
I wonder what he would have thought about bigfoot? But I suspect he probably would have told us to leave it alone.
Wish I had the quote in front of me, but Thoreau also writes of how the otter – the size of a small boy – lives his entire life near habitations without a human ever catching sight of him.
Yes, Thoreau says it better than that.
And I see today that a new raft of sighting reports is on the BFRO site. Talking about needing to listen. Listen to these, and you wonder whether many more people are seeing the sas than see otters! To say nothing of a number of other species whose existence we accept.