Checking in on Thoreau

[the first of what may become an ongoing series in which a publishing drudge, working on a new abridgment of the Journals of H.D. Thoreau daydreams about life far away from florescent light glare and ever-whirring air-conditioning fans]

In 2005, the Thoreau Institute kept a chronologic photographic record of some areas of the grounds around their offices. This is the dogwood tree as it appeared on June 10 of that year.

June 10, 1857

In Julius Smith's yard, a striped snake (so called) was running about this forenoon, and in the afternoon it was found to have shed its slough, leaving it halfway out a hole, which probably it used to confine it in. It was about in its new skin. Many creatures—devil's-needles, etc., etc.—cast their sloughs now. Can't I?