Henry David Thoreau on Lichens and the Universe

Thoreau's journals of March 1852 seem to me a revelation.  There is a romanticism toward life, mixed with his growing scientific interests, that may prove to be part of an essay that is presently in the works.  This from the 5th of the month:

"I find myself inspecting little granules, as it were, on the bark of trees, little shields or apothecia spring from a thallus, such is the mood of my mind, and I call it studying lichens. That is merely the prospect which is afforded me. It is short commons and innutritious. Surely I might take wider views. The habit of looking at things microscopically, as the lichens on the trees and rocks, really prevents my seeing aught else in a walk. Would it not be noble to study the shield of the sun on the thallus of the sky, cerulean, which scatters its infinite sporules of light through the universe ? To the lichenist is not the shield (or rather the apothecium) of a lichen disproportionately large compared with the universe? The minute apothecium of the pertusaria, which the woodchopper never detected,  occupies so large a space in my eye at present as to shut out a great part of the world."

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• A Visit to a Pottawatomie Medicine Dance (1842). Catherine Stewart took the opportunity, while residing on a Pottawatomie reservation, in the early 1840s, to attend a number of activities including a Medicine Dance.
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• Be sure to check out the Browser's Guide to the Library of Babel.