To Gowing's Swamp.

August 13.


P. M. — To Great Meadows and Gowing's Swamp.

Purple grass (Eragrostis pectinacca), two or three days. E. capillaris, say as much. Andropogon scoparius, a day or two. Calamagrostis coarctata, not quite.

Glyceria obtusa, well out; say several days.

Some of the little cranberries at Gowing's Swamp appear to have been frost-bitten. Also the blue-eyed grass, which is now black-topped.

Hear the steady shrill of the alder locust.

Rain this forenoon. Windy in afternoon

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 13, 1860

Glyceria obtusa, well out. See September 2, 1858 (“That rich, close, erect-panicled grass of the meadows, apparently for a month in bloom.”)

The little cranberries at Gowing's Swamp . . . See August 30, 1856 (“I have come out this afternoon a-cranberrying, chiefly to gather some of the small cranberry . . . Better for me, says my genius, to go cranberrying this afternoon for the Vaccinium Oxycoccus in Gowing's Swamp, to get but a pocketful and learn its peculiar flavor, aye, and the flavor of Gowing's Swamp and of life in New England. . .”)

Hear the steady shrill of the alder locust. See August 10, 1853 ("Saw an alder locust this morning."); August 11, 1852 ("The autumnal ring of the alder locust."); August 12, 1858 (“Hear what I have called the alder locust (?) as I return over the causeway, and probably before this.”)

August 13. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, August 13.

 

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 © 2009-202