Pages from Ramey’s Journal

February 11, 2006

It started dusting snow today. At first nothing stuck and then slowly but surely the dusting turned in to a full fledge snow storm. It was magnificent to watch the landscape “turn” white in front of me. I went out to attend to weekly chores and I returned home just before the last light faded. The snow is really coming down hard now and its current form is my favorite, BIG FAT FLUFFY snow flakes that make the trees and bushes take a more voluptuous form. The flakes have changed many times. At first they were extremely fine light flakes that seemed to be gliding down, but actually were falling at a very rapid pace. Then the flakes grew in size but shrank in number. This is when the foundation was formed. The big fat snow appeared and it really started to SNOW. I wrote all of this because it is my first snow of the winter and I am always amazed at how serene the world seems under the blanket of fresh snow. Mother Nature outdid herself this time.

 

 

March 14, 2006
Walden Pond

Right now I am sitting at the top of a little knoll overlooking a cove in the quintessential Walden. The sun is pouring over me as it slowly creeps into the west. The sky is the perfect Carolina blue (which by instinct makes my soul shine) and a bold chilly (but comfortable) wind is blowing huge bunches of cumulous clouds in front of, and then past the sun. I must note that this is a glorious moment because when we came to this hollowed place, it was pouring down huge fat rain drops at an amount that was uncomfortable but not unbearable. It was more tolerable than one might think and the tour that Steve gave was, in all, acceptable. The highlight of the morning was Bev’s reading and maybe the tradition of leaving a “stone” memorial. My rock was quit symbolic of myself in that it was small in relation to most of the others but it was well shaped and sturdy. It was a good rock and I tossed it to the middle of the pile to pay my respects to Mr. Thoreau.

 

 

 

Take a look at photographs from Ramey’s camera.

Ramey Stokes is an English major at Shepherd University.

 

“American Transcendentalism: An Online Travel Guide” was produced by students in ENGL 446, American Transcendentalism, and ENGL 447, American Literature and the Prominence of Place: A Travel Practicum. These courses were team-taught in the Department of English at Shepherd College (now Shepherd University), Shepherdstown, West Virginia, in Spring 2002 by Dr. Patricia Dwyer and Dr. Linda Tate. For more information on the course and the web project, visit “About This Site.” © 2003 Linda Tate.