The thinnest yellow light of November is more warming and exhilarating than any wine they tell of. The mite which November contributes becomes equal in value to the bounty of July. –Henry David Thoreau

This is a juvenile eastern (red-spotted) newt. You may be thinking what an odd picture for a post on bounty. You may be expecting a more traditional cornucopia or Thanksgiving table laden with all the seasonal favorites. But earlier this fall as a fellow writing resident and I were walking Tewksbury Hollow Road in northeastern Pennsylvania, we looked down on the gravel road to find a red-spotted newt making his way across. As like-minded bounty hunters, we stopped and stared at the 3 1/2 inches of scarlet glory below us. Oh, it’s true that bounty and plenty are most often kissing cousins, but bounty, like the best gifts, can also come in the smallest packages. And bounty, like beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder.

American Transcendentalist, Henry David Thoreau, testified to this truth in his writing and with his life. He proclaims the thinnest yellow light of November is equal in value to the bounty of July, and in so doing, reveals his willingness to see beauty and bounty in almost everything. Not only would Thoreau marvel at the newt as he made his way into the forest, he would write pages about it, commemorating it as bounty in its purest form. Most famous for his book, Walden, a reflection of living alone in a simple cabin in the woods outside of Concord, Massachusetts, Thoreau understood that bounty may be everywhere, but one must intentionally seek it. He writes:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms…

Perhaps because almost everything is so accessible now, quickly and often with just the touch of a keystroke, we may think little about the intentionality of bounty hunting. We’ve come to expect that people and things will come to us–physically or digitally. We wait expectantly more than we seek and suck out all the marrow of life. I’m afraid that if Thoreau was our life-coach, he would find that many of us aren’t living deliberately, for we haven’t yet come to know–or have forgotten–that living is so dear. If grades were given, I expect Thoreau might offer us a generous C and comment needs improvement. After all, here is a man who sought to rout all that was not life, to drive life into a corner and reduce it to its lowest terms, so that he might live bountifully. I suspect that he’d lament our mediocrity and passivity.

In his poem, “To the Holy Spirit,” Wendell Berry writes:

O Thou, far off and here, whole and broken,
Who in necessity and in bounty wait,
Whose truth is both light and dark, mute though spoken,
By Thy wide Grace show me Thy narrow gate.

Paradoxically, the gate into bounty is often small and narrow. When we think big, God offers us a baby born in a stable rather than a warrior king. When we think more, Holocaust survivor Gerda Weissmann Klein writes:

Ilse, a childhood friend of mine, once found a raspberry in the concentration camp and carried it in her pocket all day to present to me that night on a leaf. Imagine a world in which your entire possession is one raspberry and you give it to your friend. [All But My Life]

As I review my grocery list for our family Thanksgiving dinner, I’m painfully aware of the contrast between my world and one in which my entire possession is one raspberry that I give to a friend. I’d like to believe that I’d see bounty in a single raspberry, but I’m afraid that, living generally in abundance, I’d struggle. For those who know real scarcity and who struggle for their very survival are most often those who find the narrow gate into grace and bounty.

It goes without saying that bounty may also come so generously, so abundantly that it takes our breath away. That is, it may be gargantuan. Traveling up the Going to the Sun Road in Glacier National Park, I could scarcely take in the majesty of creation. Here was bounty in its super-sized form, and the wonders just kept coming as we traveled to the summit. Likewise, the sheer force of love and familiarity often overwhelms me at family gatherings. In these moments, bounty takes the room like a tsunami, leaving glittering shells of gratitude on the shores of our lives.

Seeking bounty–in big or small packages–is a lifelong endeavor, one that might produce even greater fruits through intentionality and reflection. As a rookie bounty hunter, I’m writing my own improvement plan: one that involves daily reflection on the red-spotted newt, one I think Thoreau would approve.

When one hand isn’t enough

to hold a hedge apple
or all the lemon luster of the hour, 
you need two hands—
fingers fused and heels pressed hard into the other—
to hold the day.

For one hand is rarely enough.
One hand cradles parts and starts
drawing itself up as large as it can—
larger even than it thought possible—
but never large enough. 

One hand can hold the corner of a smile,
catch a single tear,
nest a word or two.

But you want more,
and your two-handed gluttony
is a thing of real beauty,
a chaste and fitting bounty
for one who loves the world so,

for one who wants the sun and moon,
the seed and bloom,
the greening, growing grace of this day
and the next,

for one who walks the earth
a two-handed supplicant.