July 17.
The soft sand on the bottom of Walden, as deep as I can wade, feels very warm to my feet, while the water feels cold.
The soft sand on the bottom of Walden, as deep as I can wade, feels very warm to my feet, while the water feels cold.
The nighthawk's ripping sound heard overhead suggests a nearness to the earth, as of a low roof echoing back its sounds.
Clean and handsome bullfrogs, with beautiful eyes and fine yellow throats sharply separated from their pickle-green heads by their firmly shut mouths, sit imperturbable out on the stones all around the pond.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 17, 1860
The nighthawk's ripping sound, heard overhead these days,[suggests] a nearness to the earth, as of a low roof echoing back its sounds. See September 15, 1860 ("I love to see anything that implies a simpler mode of life and greater nearness to the earth."); June 11, 1851 I hear the nighthawks uttering their squeaking notes high in the air now at nine o ' clock P . M . , and occasionally - what I do not remember to have heard so late — their booming note . It sounds more as if under a cope than by day . . . . echoed hollowly to earth , making the low roof of heaven vibrate ") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,, the Nighthawk
The soft sand on the bottom of Walden, as deep as I can wade, feels very warm to my feet, while the water feels cold. This may be partly a mere sensation, but I suspect that the sand is really much warmer than the water and that some creatures take refuge in it accordingly, that much heat passes through the water and is absorbed in the sand. Yet when I let a thermometer he on the bottom and draw it up quickly I detect no difference between the temperature of the bottom and of the water at the surface. Probably it would have been different if the thermometer had been buried in the sand.
The nighthawk's ripping sound, heard overhead these days, reminds us that the sky is, as it were, a roof, and that our world is limited on that side, it being reflected as from a roof back to earth. It does not suggest an infinite depth in the sky, but a nearness to the earth, as of a low roof echoing back its sounds.
The sternothaerus in Walden has a smooth, clean shell, rather prettily marked, it is so clean, and would by many be taken for a different species from that of the river, which is commonly colored with mud and moss. I take two into the boat, and they think it enough when they have merely hidden their heads in a corner.
Also the great bullfrogs which sit out on the stones every two or three rods all around the pond are singularly clean and handsome bullfrogs, with fine yellow throats sharply separated from their pickle-green heads by their firmly shut mouths, and with beautiful eyes. They sit thus imperturbable, often under a pile of brush, at nearly regular intervals.
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