I see a small mist of cobweb, globular, on a dead twig eight inches above the ground in the wood-path. It is from an inch and a half to two inches in diameter, and when I disturb it I see it swarming with a mass of a thousand minute spiders.
A spider-nest lately hatched.
June 8.
River at 6 a. m. twelve and seven eighths inches above summer level.
2 p. m. — To Well Meadow via Walden.
Within a day or two has begun that season of summer when you see afternoon showers, maybe with thunder, or the threat of them, dark in the horizon, and are uncertain whether to venture far away or without an umbrella. I noticed the very first such cloud on the 25th of May, — the dark iris of June. When you go forth to walk at 2 p. m. you see perhaps, in the south west or west or maybe east horizon, a dark and threatening mass of cloud showing itself just over the woods, its base horizontal and dark, with lighter edges where it is rolled up to the light, while all beneath is the kind of dark slate of falling rain. These are summer showers, come with the heats of summer.
June-grass just begun to bloom in the village. A great yellow and dark butterfly (C. saw something like it a week ago).1 What delicate fans are the great red oak leaves now just developed, so thin and of so tender a green ! They hang loosely, flaccidly, down at the mercy of the wind, like a new-born butterfly or dragon-fly. A strong and cold wind would blacken and tear them now. They remind me of the frailest stuffs hung around a dry- goods shop. They have not been hardened by exposure yet, these raw and tender lungs of the tree. The white oak leaves are especially downy, and lint your clothes. This is truly June when you begin to see brakes (dark green) fully expanded in the wood-paths. That sedge which grows in the Fox Path Hollow (by the Andromeda Ponds), the coarser one, rather around the sides or slopes than at the very bottom, is a slender Carex siccata, almost all out of bloom, — all except that which is at the bottom of the hollow. For I see here on a smaller scale the same phenomena as at Holbrook Poplar Hollow (vide yesterday). The panicled cornel looks generally dead, just beginning to leaf; young white and black oaks are in the red; and the second amelanchier is in the flower still here. Indeed, shrub oaks, and young oaks generally and conspicuously, are quite late — just in the red — now in hollows and other cold parts of the woods; and generally these shrubs, including hazel even, have not been frost-bitten, but have not put forth till now. Carex bromoides may have been out a fortnight at Well Meadow; and C. scabrata, say ten days. C. tenella (near the earliest cowslip) all in seed and much seed fallen and no sterile flower; say three weeks. C. intumescens, say five or six days (e. g., just south of earliest cowslip). Hoed potatoes first time two or three days ago; my corn to-day. All stagnant water is covered with the lint from the new leaves, — harmless to drink, — especially after rain. If you [take] a scarlet oak leaf and rub the under side on your coat-sleeve, it will not whiten it, but a white oak leaf will color it as with meal. Carex polytrichoides grows at Well Meadow.
I see a small mist of cobweb, globular, on a dead twig eight inches above the ground in the wood-path. It is from an inch and a half to two inches in diameter, and when I disturb it I see it swarming with a mass of a thousand minute spiders. A spider-nest lately hatched.
In early June, methinks, as now, we have clearer days, less haze, more or less breeze, — especially after rain, — and more sparkling water than before. (I look from Fair Haven Hill.) As there is more shade in the woods, so there is more shade in the sky, i. e. dark or heavy clouds contrasted with the bright sky, — not the gray clouds of spring.
The leaves generally are almost fully expanded, i. e. some of each tree. You seek the early strawberries in any the most favor able exposure, — on the sides [of] little knolls or swells, or in the little sandy hollows where cows have pawed, settling the question of superiority and which shall lead the herd, when first turned out to pasture.
As I look at the mountains in the horizon, I am struck by the fact that they are all pyramidal — pyramids, more or less low — and have a peak. Why have the mountains usually a peak? This is not the common form of hills. They do not so impress us at least.
River at 7 p. m. fourteen and a half above summer level.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality."
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021
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