Looking into the clear southwest sky not long after sundown, all at once a small cloud begins to form half a mile from the summit and rapidly grows in a mysterious manner till it drapes and conceals the summit above us for a few moments, then passes off and disappears northeastward just as it had come.
Watching these small clouds forming and dissolving about the summit of our mountain, I cast my eyes toward the dim bluish outline of the Green Mountains in the clear red evening sky, and, to my delight, I detect exactly over the summit of Saddleback Mountain, some sixty miles distant, its own little cloud shaped like a parasol and answering to that which caps ours.
There is no other cloud to be seen in that horizon. It is a beautiful and serene object, a sort of fortunate isle in the sunset sky, the local cloud of the mountain.
Watching these small clouds forming and dissolving about the summit of our mountain, I cast my eyes toward the dim bluish outline of the Green Mountains in the clear red evening sky, and, to my delight, I detect exactly over the summit of Saddleback Mountain, some sixty miles distant, its own little cloud shaped like a parasol and answering to that which caps ours.
There is no other cloud to be seen in that horizon. It is a beautiful and serene object, a sort of fortunate isle in the sunset sky, the local cloud of the mountain.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 9, 1860
I cast my eyes toward the dim bluish outline of the Green Mountains in the clear red evening sky. See August 6, 1860 ("These are the Green Mountains that we see . . . all of Vermont is but a succession of parallel ranges of mountains.”) See also Robert Frost, “Out, Out” ("those that lifted eyes could count / Five mountain ranges one behind the other / Under the sunset far into Vermont.")
Its own little cloud shaped like a parasol. See November 12, 1852 (“From Fair Haven Hill, I see a very distant, long, low dark-blue cloud in the northwest horizon beyond the mountains, and against this I see, apparently, a narrow white cloud resting on every mountain and conforming exactly to its outline”)
August 9. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 9
Dim bluish outline
of the Green Mountains in the
clear red evening sky.
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 © 2009-2024
https://tinyurl.com/hdt-600809
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