Such men knew important things "practically or instinctively," through direct, intuitive means. In the chapter of Walden titled "The Pond in Winter," Thoreau described fishermen as follows:
. . . wild men, who instinctively follow other fashions and trust other authorities than their townsmen . . . as wise in natural lore as the citizen is in artificial. They never consulted with books, and know and can tell much less than they have done. . . . [The fisherman's] life itself passes deeper in Nature than the studies of the naturalist penetrate; himself a subject for the naturalist.
And the old Wellfleet oysterman in Cape Cod, whose only learning is what he had "got by natur [sic]," is presented as an archaic, bardic type.
Although Thoreau had mixed feelings regarding the farmer's capacity for higher understanding, he sometimes wrote in similar terms of those who cultivated the land. In his journal entry for January 20, 1852, Thoreau presented hauling muck, the most prosaic of farm chores, as analogous to his own literary activity:
The scholar's and the farmer's work are strictly analogous. . . . When I see the farmer driving into his barn-yard with a load of muck, whose blackness contrasts strangely with the white snow, I have the thoughts which I have described. He is doing like myself. My barn-yard is my journal.
Moreover, Thoreau found in certain specific Concord farmers strong individuals who possessed an elemental connection with nature. He wrote in his journal about Cyrus Hubbard (December 1, 1856):
. . . a man of a certain New England probity and worth, immortal and natural, like a natural product . . . a redeemer for me. . . . Moderate, natural, true, as if he were made of earth, stone, wood, snow. I thus meet in this universe kindred of mine, composed of these elements.
Thoreau referred to George Minott, "the most poetical farmer," many times in his journals.
