R.E. Slater - Old Tree & Thoreau

To Everything There Is a Season

by R.E. Slater

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace. - Eccl 3.1-8 (KJV)

Over the years I have said goodbye to many things,

things I had loved, whether tiny or great, gifts from my past -

  of familiar habits and climes still haunting my memories,

  each in it's way a tender passing by death or loss,
  immediately felt than let go, not knowing how to feel,

  flushed by the mourning and weeping around me,

  listening to old stories and even older conflicts.

These have all been silently laid down in old age,

buried in the heart's grave and gently turned away -
  not willingly, nor enthusiastically,

  but in the stilled grief with every passing,

  seen etched into dad or mom's face, filing away

  remembered personal habits and old familiarities,

  in a final goodbye, one last time, one last leaving.

It seems especially poignant that humanity's children

must learn to live with unwanted death and pain -
  begun at youth to manhood, middle age to maturity,

  gathering moment upon moment like hungry beggars,
  filled with sadness or longing, prickings of heart and soul,
  left in the passing wakes of conscripted moments,
  moments which formed us, breathed into our souls.

Nary a footfall can be placed forward without tipping

over some collection of compounding forming moments -
  come first as budding growths birthed new and green,

  then whispered o'er the brushy lanes gaily laughing,

  before autumnal burnishes of oranges, reds,

  and crinkled browns fall onto their mouldy mounds, 
  quieting laughter in winter's too soon lifeless mass.

Whether a sister or brother, mother or father,
grandparent, friend, classmate, workmate, travelmate -
  each life is another series of steadying growth rings,

  enlarging time and space over it's hoary millennia,

  marking human frailty by fleshly experience,
  till exhausted upon the wooded stumps of life,

  completing one's singular existence and veiny pedigree.

And when done, the wooded green near pastoral field,
perhaps entangled in wire, brier, bush, or wretched vine -
  may find a sprouting seedling rooting into the elder root,

  composed of tender green and lively shoot soon a'thirst,

  soon yearning all the nurture the dying root might provide,

  of it's own histories, legacies, habits, and foundling ways,

  if tender shoot is to live, to grow, vibrant and strong.

To become hardy and hail against all weathers and climes,
'neath sun and moon, fat and famine, death and demise -

  witnessed above by the twinkling starry expanses,

  silent, light testimonies to every birth and death,

  till all tears are dried, all mourning cease,

  when gathered in the dance of young and old,

  in heavenly reunions of longing and lost laughters.

R.E. Slater
April 16, 2025

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications

all rights reserved

Northern Exposure, S4E25, Synopsis: "The town's oldest tree is dying. Shelly wakes up and finds that she can't talk, but she can sing. The town asks Joel to diagnose Old Vicki. Chris goes wireless and is freed from the confines of the broadcast booth. Shelly's singing starts to get on Holling's nerves. Maggie tries to be pleasant to Joel and the result of all this kindness is that Joel keeps getting injured. Maurice is intent on bringing the tree down. Shelly becomes worried that she may never talk again. After the felling of Old Vicki, the town has a wake. Maurice feels remorse after the felling of Old Vicki. Maggie and Joel cut a deal to try keeping Joel injury free."

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Old Tree, Young Tree

Counting the Fallen

Standing on the Mounds

Alone Times of Imagination and Wonder

Becoming One's Own

Old Tree

by R.E. Slater

Northern Exposure, Season 4, Episode 25, "Old Tree" Watch on Amazon Prime

Narrator: Chris Stevens, played by actor John Corbett, was the show's Radio DJ and occasional narrator.

We open to Chris' on-air observation to the changing seasons he feels within the evolving interplay of life-and-death he is beholding within the natural world around him. 

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in....

As he does so, Chris is reflecting on the theme of courageous acceptance that we must rally to within our worn souls to the merciless forward change we feel-and-see in the lives around us due to the unrelenting losses we experience day-by-day to the passage of time.

Who was this bard Chris was quoting. It comes from Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862), who is known as an American transcendentalist philosopher and writer.

In response to his own statement, Chris next quotes Thoreau,

"Be open to your dreams, people. Embrace that distant shore. Because our mortal journey is over all too soon.

This reflected Thoreau's view of love and the human experience as something to be deeply embraced rather than avoided or diminished. This is also a motif which was consistent with Thoreau's journals and essays on nature, individuality, and the inner life.

Chris then quotes several more of Thoreau's popular lines from his essay, Walden:

“I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born?”

• Implications: Presumed fortune can become a personal burden; an inheritance can create unwanted obligations, if not disharmony. Hence, it is easier to receive things than it is to free onself from their grasp.

• Further, A child of beggardly means sees more clearly than those constrained by wealth and social conventions.

• Too, society and family has wrought more efficiently than any tyrant might, when binding their children to the wheel of industry, economy, and cultural expectations in modern forms of serfdom and slavery.

• In comparison, a person's actual human need is small. As s/he gathers and reaps s/he may feed hundreds but by that very industry, "the land" can also devour the one who seeks not to be devoured.

• To Thoreau, to inherit obligations instead of freedom is to be born into a living death. Instead of exploring the world, one's life is becomed burdened in many ways including responsibilities of property, debt, and meeting social needs. In effect, inheritors may be digging their own early graves.         

"[Hence,] I have come to the conclusion that there is no remedy for love but to love more."

• Implication: lean into love, do not retreat from it.

“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.”

• Implication: Accept full immersion and the influences of life, whether in love or the earth, as part of living an authentic human experience.

Here, Thoreau is expressing his philosophy of immersive, rhythmic living in harmony with nature. to which he was applying himself at his cabin on Walden's Pond. He encouraged embracing each season not merely as time passing, but as a living influence to which we open ourselves up more fully - physically, sensorially, and spiritually. This application was part of Thoreau's larger transcendentalist vision: "to simplify, to live deliberately, and to allow the natural world to shape the human soul."

• Implication: Live as simply as you can; do not let living become a form of bondage; learn to explore and discover as much as you can; meet your obligations if you must but be diligent in keeping your own soul; and do not let society's "normal path" become spiritually deadening.

• Lastly, Wake up, see clearly, and live deliberately. We might inherit a script written by others but learn to edit, redact, renounce, and re-apply oneself by means of wisdom, love, and learning.

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The Philosophy of Thoreau

by ChatGPT

Let's break down how Henry David Thoreau’s philosophy - especially as expressed in Walden and his essays on civil disobedience and nature - is woven into Northern Exposure Season 4, Episode 25, “Old Tree.” Here's a thematic analysis that connects Thoreau’s core ideas to the episode’s narrative and imagery:

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🟩 1. Reverence for Nature

Thoreau:

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately…”

Episode:
The townspeople’s effort to save “Old Vicky,” the ancient tree slated for removal, embodies Thoreau’s deep reverence for the natural world. They treat the tree as a living elder, rooted in time and memory—suggesting a sacralization of nature not unlike Thoreau’s own pantheistic leanings.

Chris’s monologue about trees being mythic—referencing the Tree of Knowledge, the Bodhi Tree, and the family tree—mirrors Thoreau’s sense that trees are more than biological organisms; they are symbols of spiritual insight, ancestral memory, and universal life.

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🟦 2. Simplicity, Anti-Materialism, and Non-Conformity

Thoreau:

“Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.”

Episode:
The contrast between modern development and the unassuming presence of Old Vicky reflects Thoreau’s disdain for progress at the cost of nature. The removal of the tree for infrastructure development (to make room for a road or construction) parallels Thoreau’s criticism of how society sacrifices the eternal rhythms of nature for fleeting utility.

Chris’s reflections about inheriting houses and barns echoes Thoreau’s warning that material inheritance and development can be a trap, one that disconnects us from authentic, rooted living.

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🟨 3. Individual Awakening and Community Conscience

Thoreau:

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

Episode:
Though the episode centers on a single tree, its presence awakens in the townsfolk a deeper awareness of what matters. Their advocacy to preserve the tree isn't just about saving wood—it’s about reclaiming meaning, place, and a slower, more attentive mode of being.

The episode dramatizes the collective awakening of a community to something primal, perhaps even sacred, just as Thoreau hoped his writings would stir individuals to live more intentionally.

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🟥 4. Time, Mortality, and the Natural Cycle

Thoreau:

“Every blade in the field... teaches the whole secret of life.”

Episode:
Old Vicky, as a 200-year-old tree, is a living time capsule. Her age puts human lifespans in perspective. As she begins to fall (or be cut), characters reflect on impermanence, the rhythm of nature, and mortality.

This evokes Thoreau’s acceptance of death as a natural part of life’s flow. In both Walden and this episode, the sense of timelessness is juxtaposed against fleeting modern concerns.

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🟫 5. Chris Stevens as Thoreauvian Prophet

Chris, with his radio monologues, rustic wisdom, and poetic digressions, is clearly modeled after figures like Thoreau and Emerson. In this episode:

• He invokes myth and scripture in the same breath as ecology and philosophy.

• He lives on the margins, unburdened by modernity, observing society and trying to elevate its soul through reflection and art.

• His final exhortation—“go out and plant a wet one on a tree”—is pure eco-romanticism, calling listeners to reconnect with the natural world in an embodied, joyful way.

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🌲 Summary of Thoreauvian Themes in “Old Tree”

Theme	Thoreau's View	Episode Expression
Nature’s Sanctity	Nature as divine, a teacher	“Old Vicky” as sacred elder
Simplicity & Anti-Materialism	Rejecting inherited burdens	Concern over development replacing the tree
Community Awareness	Wakefulness over conformity	Town uniting to protect the tree
Mortality & Time	Accepting natural cycles	Tree as metaphor for life’s fragility
Individual & Mystic Insight	Seek deeper truths in solitude	Chris Stevens as a prophetic voice

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Wikipedia

Henry David Thoreau Quotations

article link

NATURE & THE ENVIRONMENT

A phoebe soon built in my shed, and a robin for protection in a pine which grew against the house. In June the partridge, which is so shy a bird, led her brood past my windows, from the woods in the rear to the front of my house, clucking and calling to them like a hen, and in all her behavior proving herself the hen of the woods.—Walden

A queen might be proud to walk where these gallant trees have spread their bright cloaks in the mud. I see wagons roll over them as a shadow or reflection, and the drivers heed them just as little as they did their own shadows before.—"Autumnal Tints"

A sky without clouds is a meadow without flowers.—Journal, 24 June 1852

A thrumming of piano-strings beyond the gardens and through the elms. At length the melody steals into my being. I know not when it began to occupy me. By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe, I am fitted to hear, my being moves in a sphere of melody, my fancy and imagination are excited to an inconceivable degree. This is no longer the dull earth on which I stood.—Journal, 3 August 1852

After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined, and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance. I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard, and course. A hard, insensible man whom we liken to a rock is indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have no sympathy, I go to commune with the rock, whose hearts are comparatively soft.—Journal, 15 November 1853

Ah dear nature—the mere remembrance, after a short forgetfulness, of the pine woods! I come to it as a hungry man to a crust of bread.—Journal, 12 December 1851

Ah! I need solitude. I have come forth to this hill at sunset to see the forms of the mountains in the horizon—to behold and commune with something grander than man. Their mere distance and unprofanedness is an infinite encouragement. It is with infinite yearning and aspiration that I seek solitude, more and more resolved and strong; but with a certain weakness that I seek society ever.—Journal, 14 August 1854

All nature is doing her best each moment to make us well—she exists for no other end. Do not resist her. With the least inclination to be well we should not be sick.—Journal, 23 August 1853

All that has been said of friendship is like botany to flowers.—Journal, 1842-1844

All the laws of nature will bend and adapt themselves to the least motion of man.—Journal, 1837-1846

Already, by the first of September, I had seen two or three small maples turned scarlet across the pond, beneath where the white stems of three aspens diverged, at the point of a promontory, next the water. Ah, many a tale their color told!—Walden

[A]nd even the sepals from which the birds have picked the berries are a brilliant lake-red, with crimson flame-like reflections, equal to anything of the kind,—all on fire with ripeness.—"Autumnal Tints"

And, above all, there is this difference between resisting this and a purely brute or natural force, that I can resist this with some effect; but I cannot expect, like Orpheus, to change the nature of the rocks and trees and beasts.—"Civil Disobedience"

As Anacreon says "the works of men shine," so the sounds of men and birds are musical.—Journal, 8 March 1853

As I came home through the woods with my string of fish, trailing my pole, it being now quite dark, I caught a glimpse of a woodchuck stealing across my path, and felt a strange thrill of savage delight, and was strongly tempted to seize and devour him raw; not that I was hungry then, except for that wildness which he represented.—Walden

As in many countries precious metals belong to the crown, so here more precious natural objects of rare beauty should belong to the public.—Journal, 3 January 1861

As it is important to consider Nature from the point of view of science remembering nomenclature and system of men, and so, if possible, go a step further in that direction, so it is equally important often to ignore or forget all that men presume they know, and take an original and unprejudiced view of Nature, letting her make what impression she will on you, as the first men, and all children and natural men still do.—Journal, 28 February 1860

As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

As we stood on the pile of chips by the door, fish hawks were sailing overhead; and here, over Shad Pond, might daily be witnessed the tyranny of the bald eagle over that bird.—The Maine Woods

At present, in this vicinity, the best part of the land is not private property; the landscape is not owned, and the walker enjoys comparative freedom. But possibly the day will come when it will be partitioned off into so-called pleasure grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and exclusive pleasure only,—when fences shall be multiplied, and man traps and other engines invented to confine men to the public road; and walking over the surface of God’s earth, shall be construed to mean trespassing on some gentleman’s grounds. To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it. Let us improve our opportunities then before the evil days come.—"Walking"