August 5
The wind changes to northerly toward morning, falling down from over the summit and sweeping through our camp, open on that side, and I go out before sunrise to gather blueberries. A grand view of the summit on the north now, it being clear; the-fresh, dewy almost crispy blueberries, much cooler and more grateful at this hour, and this morning the lichens on the rocks of the southernmost summit (south of us), just lit by the rising sun, present a peculiar yellowish or reddish brown light.
The wind changes to northerly toward morning, falling down from over the summit and sweeping through our camp, open on that side, and I go out before sunrise to gather blueberries. A grand view of the summit on the north now, it being clear; the-fresh, dewy almost crispy blueberries, much cooler and more grateful at this hour, and this morning the lichens on the rocks of the southernmost summit (south of us), just lit by the rising sun, present a peculiar yellowish or reddish brown light.
The whole mountain-top for two miles is covered, on countless little shelves and in hollows between the rocks, with low blueberries, just in their prime. There are the blue with a copious bloom, others simply black and on largish bushes, and others of a peculiar blue, as if with a skim-coat of blue, hard and thin, as if glazed. These blueberries grow and bear abundantly almost wherever anything else grow on the rocky part of the mountain, quite up to the summit. No shelf amid the piled rocks is too high or dry for them, for everywhere they enjoy the cool and moist air of the mountain. Blueberries of every degree of blueness and of bloom.
August 5, 2019 / August 5, 1860
When we behold this summit at this season of the year, far away and blue in the horizon, we may think of the blueberries as blending their color with the general blueness of the mountain.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 5, 1860
We may think of the blueberries as blending their color with the general blueness of the mountain. See September 27, 1853 ("I cannot realize that on the tops of those cool blue ridges are in abundance berries still, bluer than themselves, as if they borrowed their blueness from their locality.")
Thoreau visited Monadnock on four occasions: a solo overnight on the summit in 1844, a quick day-hike in September 1852, and more extended stays in 1858, : June 2, 1858, June 3, 1858, and June 4, 1858; and this visit of August 4 1860, August 5, 1860. August 6, 1860, August 7, 1860, August 8, 1860, and August 9, 1860. See also Monadnock pencil drawings (1860)
August 5. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 5
The blue horizon
the blueness of the mountain –
blueberry blueness.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Blueberry Mountain
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 © 2009-2025
https://tinyurl.com/hdt-600805
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