Waiting for the tide

July 30. 

This waiting for the tide is a singular feature in the life by the shore.  In leaving your boat to-day you must always have reference to what you are going to do the next day. A frequent answer is, "Well, you can't start for two hours yet." It is something new to a landsman, and at first he is not disposed to wait.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 30, 1851

A leaden grey morning

A leaden grey morning sitting on the dock trying to figure out the raucous gulls out front, whether those patches of ripples are schooling fish they are after, when i hear a splash here right in front of me to my left an osprey lifts off the water headed at me, hovers a moment to shake the drops off its wings and body, and still coming right at me looks me in the eye, makes a U turn back to the lake where it dives, picks up a small fish in its claw, shakes and carries the fish back past me overhead --- dark-winged the grey morning flies away.

Zphx, 20110729

Sailing on salt water.

July 29.

A northeast wind with rain, but the sea is the wilder for it.

I heard the surf roar on the Gurnet in the night, which, as Uncle Ned and Freeman said, showed that the wind would work round east and we should have rainy weather. It was the wave reaching the shore before the wind.

In the afternoon I sail to Plymouth, three miles, notwithstanding the drizzling rain, or “drisk” as Uncle Ned calls it. We pass round the head of Plymouth beach, which is three miles long. I do not know till afterward that I land where the Pilgrims did and pass over the Rock on Hedge's Wharf. Returning, we have more wind and tacking to do.

This sailing on salt water is something new to me. The boat is such a living creature, even this clumsy one sailing within five points of the wind. The sailboat is an admirable invention, by which you compel the wind to transport you even against itself. It is easier to guide than a horse; the slightest pressure on the tiller suffices.

I think the inventor must have been greatly surprised, as well as delighted, at the success of his experiment. It is so contrary to expectation, as if the elements were disposed to favor you.

This deep, unfordable sea! but this wind ever blowing over it to transport you!

At 10 P.M. it is perfectly fair and bright starlight.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 29, 1851

The boat is such a living creature. See August 22, 1858 ("How sturdily it pulls, shooting us along, catching more wind than I knew to be wandering in this river valley! It suggests a new power in the sail. . .The boat is like a plow drawn by a winged bull.")

Monday morning sail.

July 28.

Sail to the Gurnet, which runs down seven miles into the bay from Marshfield. Hear the peep of the beach-bird. See ringnecks in company with peeps. 

They tell of eagles flying low over the island lately.

Go by Saquish. Gather a basketful of Irish moss bleached on the beach. See a field full of pink-blossomed potatoes at the lighthouse, also some French barley. Old fort and barracks by lighthouse. 

Visit lobster houses or huts there, where they use lobsters to catch bait for lobsters. To obtain bait is sometimes the main thing.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 28, 1851

Walk from Cohasset to Duxbury and sail thence to Clark's Island.

July 27.

Visit the large tupelo tree (Nyssa multiflora) in Scituate, whose rounded and open top I can see from Mr. Sewal's, the tree which George Emerson went twenty-five miles to see, called sometimes snag-tree and swamp hornbeam, also pepperidge and gum-tree. Hard to split. We have it in Concord. See the buckthorn, which is naturalized.


After taking the road by Webster's beyond South Marshfield, I walk a long way at noon, hot and thirsty, before I find a suitable place to sit and eat my dinner. At length I am obliged to put up with a small shade close to the ruts, where the only stream I have seen for some time crosses the road. 

Here numerous robins come to cool and wash themselves and to drink.

They stand in the water up to their bellies, from time to time wetting their wings and tails and also ducking their heads and sprinkling the water over themselves; then they sit on a fence near by to dry. A goldfinch comes and does the same, accompanied by the less brilliant female. These birds evidently enjoy their bath greatly, and it seems indispensable to them.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 27, 1851



Visit the large tupelo tree (Nyssa multiflora) in Scituate, whose rounded and open top I can see from Mr. Sewal's.  See July 5, 1855 (The great tupelo on the edge of Scituate is very conspicuous for many miles .”) See also  June 26, 1857 ("The largest tupelo I remember in Concord is on the northerly edge of Staples's clearing."); June 30, 1856 ("By the roadside, Long Plain, North Fairhaven, observed a tupelo seven feet high with a rounded top, shaped like an umbrella, eight feet diameter."); September 7, 1857 ("Measured that large tupelo behind Merriam's which now is covered with green fruit, and its leaves begin to redden.") ~ Nyssa sylvatica, commonly known as the Black Tupelo, is a medium-sized deciduous tree native to eastern North America, from New England and southern Ontario south to central Florida and eastern Texas. ~ iNaturalist

The morning after a debauch.

July 24.

5 A.M. - The street and fields betray the drought and look more parched than at noon; they look as I feel, -- languid and thin and feeling my nerves. The effects of drought are never more apparent than at dawn. 

Nature is like a hen panting with open mouth, in the grass, as the morning after a debauch.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 24, 1851

Compare July 18, 1854 ("A hot midsummer day with a sultry mistiness in the air . . .The atmosphere now imparts a bluish or glaucous tinge to the distant trees. A certain debauched look. This a crisis in the season.")

The Poet Naturalist

July 23.


Wednesday.

I remember the last moon, shining through a creamy atmosphere, with a tear in the eye of Nature and her tresses dishevelled and drooping, sliding up the sky, the glistening air, the leaves shining with dew, pulsating upward; an atmosphere unworn, unprophaned by day.

What self-healing in Nature !-swept by the dews.

For some weeks past the roadsides and the dry and trivial fields have been covered with the field trefoil (Trifolium arvense), now in bloom.

8 A. M. – A comfortable breeze blowing.

Methinks I can write better in the afternoon, for the novelty of it, if I should go abroad this morning.

My genius makes distinctions which my understanding cannot, and which my senses do not report.

If I should reverse the usual, — go forth and saunter in the fields all the forenoon, then sit down in my chamber in the afternoon, which it is so unusual for me to do,-it would be like a new season to me, and the novelty of it (would) inspire me.

The wind has fairly blown me outdoors; the elements were so lively and active, and I so sympathized with them, that I could not sit while the wind went by.

And I am reminded that we should especially improve the summer to live out-of-doors.

When we may so easily, it behooves us to break up this custom of sitting in the house, for it is but a custom, and I am not sure that it has the sanction of common sense.

A man no sooner gets up than he sits down again.

Fowls leave their perch in the morning, and beasts their lairs, unless they are such as go abroad only by night.

The cockerel does not take up a new perch in the barn, and he is the embodiment of health and common sense.

Is the literary man to live always or chiefly sitting in a chamber through which nature enters by a window only? What is the use of the summer? You must walk so gently as to hear the finest sounds, the faculties being in repose.

Your mind must not perspire.

True, out of doors my thought is commonly drowned, as it were, and shrunken, pressed down by stupendous piles of light ethereal influences, for the pressure of the atmosphere is still fifteen pounds to a square inch.

I can do little more than preserve the equilibrium and resist the pressure of the atmosphere.

I can only nod like the rye-heads in the breeze.

I expand more surely in my chamber, as far as expression goes, as if that pressure were taken off; but here out doors is the place to store up influences. 

The swallow's twitter is the sound of the lapsing waves of the air, or when they break and burst, as his wings represent the ripple.

He has more air in his bones than other birds; his feet are defective.

The fish of the air.

His note is the voice of the air.

As fishes may hear the sound of waves lapsing on the surface and see the outlines of the ripples, so we hear the note and see the flight of swallows.

The influences which make for one walk more than another, and one day more than another, are much more ethereal than terrestrial.

It is the quality of the air much more than the quality of the ground that concerns the walker, — cheers or depresses him.

What he may find in the air, not what he may find on the ground.

On such a road (the Corner) I walk securely, seeing far and wide on both sides, as if I were flanked by light infantry on the hills, to rout the provincials, as the British marched into Concord, while my grenadier thoughts keep the main road.

That is, my light-armed and wandering thoughts scour the neighboring fields, and so I know if the coast is clear.

With what a breadth of van I advance ! I am not bounded by the walls.

I think more than the road full. (Going southwesterly.)

 While I am abroad, the ovipositors plant their seeds in me; I am fly-blown with thought, and go home to hatch and brood over them.

I was too discursive and rambling in my thought for the chamber, and must go where the wind blows on me walking . . . . .

A little brook crossing the road (the Corner road), a few inches’depth of transparent water rippling over yellow sand and pebbles, the pure blood of nature.

How miraculously crystal-like, how exquisite, fine, and subtle, and liquid this element, which an imperceptible inclination in the channel causes to flow thus surely and swiftly! How obedient to its instinct, to the faintest suggestion of the hills! If inclined but a hair’s breadth, it is in a torrent haste to obey.

And all the revolutions of the planet — nature is so exquisitely adjusted – and the attraction of the stars do not disturb this equipoise, but the rills still flow the same way, and the water levels are not disturbed.

We are not so much like debauchees as in the after noon.

The mind is subject to moods, as the shadows of clouds pass over the earth.

Pay not too much heed to them.

Let not the traveller stop for them.

They consist with the fairest weather.

By the mood of my mind, I suddenly felt dissuaded from continuing my walk, but I observed at the same instant that the shadow of a cloud was passing over [ the ] spot on which I stood, though it was of small extent, which, if it had no connection with my mood, at any rate suggested how transient and little to be regarded that mood was.

I kept on, and in a moment the sun shone on my walk within and without.

The button-bush in blossom.

The tobacco-pipe in damp woods.

Certain localities only a few rods square in the fields and on the hills, sometimes the other side of a wall, attract me as if they had been the scene of pleasure in another state of existence: 

But this habit of close observation, — in Humboldt, Darwin, and others. Is it to be kept up long, this science?

Do not tread on the heels of your experience. Be impressed without making a minute of it. Poetry puts an interval between the impression and the expression, — waits till the seed germinates naturally.



H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 23, 1851


This habit of close observation. . . See September 13, 1852 (“I have the habit of attention to such excess that my senses get no rest, but suffer from a constant strain. When I have found myself ever looking down and confining my gaze to the flowers, I have thought it might be well to get into the habit of observing the clouds as a corrective; but no! that study would be just as bad. It is as bad to study stars and clouds as flowers and stones.”):March 23, 1853 (“I feel that I am dissipated by so many observations. . . . I have almost a slight, dry headache as the result of all this observing.”); See also Chapter 3, Thoreau and Humboldtean Science in Seeing New Worlds; and Chapter 19, Henry David Thoreau and Humboldt in The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World


I am reminded that we should especially improve the summer to live out-of-doors. Here out doors is the place to store up influences. See December 29, 1856 (“We must go out and re-ally ourselves to Nature every day. . . .. Staying in the house breeds a sort of insanity always.”) September 13, 1859 ("You must be outdoors long, early and late, and travel far and earnestly, in order to perceive the phenomena of the day. ")

The mind is subject to moods, as the shadows of clouds pass over the earth. See January 26, 1852 ("Would you see your mind, look at the sky. Would you know your own moods, be weather-wise."); February 18, 1860 ("Sometimes, when I go forth at 2 P. M., there is scarcely a cloud in the sky, but soon one will appear in the west and steadily advance and expand itself, and so change the whole character of the afternoon and of my thoughts. ")

Poetry puts an interval between the impression and the expression. . . See Do not tread on the heels of your experience.

July 23. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 23

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

The season of morning fogs. I would fain take rivers in my walks endwise.

July 22.

The season of morning fogs has arrived. I am struck by its firm outlines, as distinct as a pillow's edge, about the height of my house. A great crescent over the course of the river from southwest to northeast.

Already, 5: 30 A .M., some parts of the river are bare. The fog goes off in a body down the river, and does not rise into the heavens. It retreats, and I do not see how it is dissipated, leaving this slight, thin vapor to curl over the surface of the still, dark water, still as glass.  

These are our fairest days, which are born in a fog.

***

I bathe me in the river. I lie down where it is shallow, amid the weeds over its sandy bottom; but it seems shrunken and parched; I find it difficult to get wet through. I would fain be the channel of a mountain brook. I bathe, and in a few. hours I bathe again, not remembering that I was wetted before. When I come to the river, I take off my clothes and carry them over, then bathe and wash off the mud and continue my walk. I would fain take rivers in my walks endwise.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  July 22, 1851

These are our fairest days, which are born in a fog. Compare May 5, 1852 ("Every part of the world is beautiful today."); May 18, 1852 (The world can never be more beautiful than now”); August 19, 1853 (“ The dog-day mists are gone; the washed earth shines; the cooler air braces man. No summer day is so beautiful as the fairest spring and fall days . . . It is a glorious and ever-memorable day.");  December 10, 1853 ("These are among the finest days in the year”);May 21, 1854 (“the finest days of the year, days long enough and fair enough for the worthiest deeds.”); December 21, 1854 (“We are tempted to call these the finest days of the year.”); October 10, 1856 ("These are the finest days in the year, Indian Summer.”); October 10, 1857 ("The sixth day of glorious weather, which I am tempted to call the finest in the year"); September 18, 1860 ("If you are not happy to-day you will hardly be so to-morrow.").

I would fain take rivers in my walks endwise. See July 10, 1852 ("I make quite an excursion up and down the river in the water, a fluvial, a water walk. . . .Walking up and down a river in torrid weather with only a hat to shade the head.”); also July 23, 1856 ("Bathing in Walden, I find the water considerably colder at the bottom while I stand up to my chin . . .”) See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Luxury of Bathing

A morning walk.

July 21.

8 A.M. - I thought to walk this forenoon instead of this after noon, for I have not been in the fields and woods much of late except when surveying. To go forth before the heat is intolerable, and see what is the difference between forenoon and afternoon.

It seems there is a little more coolness in the air; there is still some dew, even on this short grass in the shade of the walls and woods; and a feeling of vigor the walker has.

There are few sounds but the slight twittering of swallows, and the springy note of the sparrow in the grass or trees, and a lark in the meadow (now at 8 A.M.), and the cricket under all to ally the hour to night. Day is, in fact, about as still as night.

It threatens to be a hot day, and the haymakers are whetting their scythes in the fields, where they have been out since 4 o'clock. By 2 o'clock it will be warmer and hazier, obscuring the mountains, and the leaves will curl, and the dust will rise more readily.

Every herb is fresher now, has recovered from yesterday's drought. The cooler air of night still lingers in the fields, as by night the warm air of day.

9 A.M. On Conantum. – Berries are now thick enough to pick. A quarter of a mile is distance enough to make the atmosphere look blue now. It was fit that I should see an indigo-bird here, concerned about its young, a perfect embodiment of the darkest blue that ever fills the valleys at this season. The meadow-grass reflecting the light has a bluish cast also. I eat these berries as simply and naturally as thoughts come to my mind.

10 A. M. - The air grows more and more blue, making pretty effects when one wood is seen from another through a little interval. 

The white lily has opened. 

Some pigeons here are resting in the thickest of the white pines during the heat of the day, migrating, no doubt. 

Flies buzz and rain about my hat. 

The mountains can scarcely be seen for the blue haze, - only Wachusett and the near ones.

The dusty mayweed now blooms by the roadside. The rough hawkweed, too,, resembling in its flower the autumnal dandelion. The Antirrhinum Canadense, Canada snapdragon, in the Corner road; and the ragged orchis on Conantum.

I now return through Conant's leafy woods by the spring, whose floor is sprinkled with sunlight.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 21, 1851

The mountains can scarcely be seen for the blue haze, - only Wachusett and the near ones. See August 19, 1854 (“There is such a haze we see not further than our Annursnack, which is blue as a mountain”)

Sunday morning.

July 20.

A thunder-shower in the night. The clap that wakes me is as if some one is moving lumber in an upper apartment, some vast hollow hall, tumbling it down and dragging it over the floor; and ever and anon the lightning fills the damp air with light.

Annursnack. The under sides of the leaves, exposed by the breeze, give a light bluish tinge to the woods as I look down on them. Looking at the woods west of this hill, there is a grateful dark shade under their eastern sides, where they meet the meadows, their cool night side, — a triangular segment of night, to which the sun has set. The mountains look like waves on a blue ocean tossed up by a stiff gale. 


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 20, 1851  

The clap that wakes me is as if some one is moving lumber in an upper apartment . . .  See June 17, 1852 ("The thunder sounds like moving a pile of boards in the attic."); May 29, 1857 ("The crashing thunder sounds like the overhauling of lumber on heaven's loft. ")

Beyond the bridge

July 19.

The wind rises more and more. The river and the pond are blacker than the threatening cloud in the south. The thunder mutters in the distance. The surface of the water is slightly rippled. Where the pads grow is a light green border. The woods roar. Small white clouds are hurrying across the dark-blue ground of the storm, which rests on all the woods of the south horizon. But still no rain now for some hours, as if the clouds are dissipated as fast as they reach this atmosphere.

Beyond the bridge there is a goldenrod partially blossomed. First came the St. John's-wort and now the goldenrod to admonish us. I hear, too, a cricket amid these stones under the blackberry vines, singing as in the fall. Yesterday it was spring, and to-morrow it will be autumn. Where is the summer then?

Methinks my seasons revolve more slowly than those of nature; I am differently timed. Here I am thirty-four years old, and yet my life is almost wholly unexpanded. How much is in the germ! I may say I am unborn. If my curve is large, why bend it to a smaller circle? If life is a waiting, so be it. I am contented.

Already the goldenrod is budded, but I can make no haste for that. Let a man step to the music which he hears, however measured.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 19, 1851

Yesterday it was spring, and to-morrow it will be autumn. Where is the summer then? See July 15, 1854 (“We seem to be passing, or to have passed, a dividing line between spring and autumn, and begin to descend the long slope toward winter. ”);  July 16, 1851 ("St.John's-wort, one of the first of yellow flowers, begins to shine along the roadside."); December 7, 1856 ("The winters come now as fast as snowflakes. It was summer, and now again it is winter").

This rapid revolution of nature, even of nature in me, why should it hurry me? Let a man step to the music which he hears, however measured. Is it important that I should mature as soon as an apple tree? aye, as soon as an oak  May not my life in nature, in proportion as it is supernatural, be only the spring and infantile portion of my spirit's life? Shall I turn my spring to summer? Compare Walden ("Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple tree or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer?)



July 19.

Here I am thirty-four years old, and yet my life is almost wholly unexpanded.

How much is in the germ! There is such an interval between my ideal and the actual in many instances that I may say I am unborn.

There is the instinct for society, but no society.

Life is not long enough for one success.

Within another thirty-four years that miracle can hardly take place.

Methinks my seasons revolve more slowly than those of nature; I am differently timed.

I am contented.

This rapid revolution of nature, even of nature in me, why should it hurry me? Let a man step to the music which he hears, however measured.

Is it important that I should mature as soon as an apple tree? aye, as soon as an oak  May not my life in nature, in proportion as it is supernatural, be only the spring and infantile portion of my spirit's life? Shall I turn my spring to summer? May I not sacrifice a hasty and petty completeness here to entireness there  If my curve is large, why bend it to a smaller circle? My spirit 's unfolding observes not the pace of nature.

The society which I was made for is not here.

Shall I , then , substitute for the anticipation of that this poor reality ? I would ( rather ) have the unmixed expectation of that than this reality.

If life is a waiting , so be it.

I will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality.

What were any reality which I can substitute ? Shall I with pains erect a heaven of blue glass over myself , though when it is done I shall be sure to gaze still on the true ethereal heaven far above , as if the former were not , — that still distant sky o ' er arching that blue expressive eye of heaven ? 1 I am enamored of the blue-eyed arch of heaven.

I did not make this demand for a more thorough sympathy.

This is not my idiosyncrasy or disease.

He that made the demand will answer the demand.

My blood flows as slowly as the waves of my native Musketaquid; yet they reach the ocean sooner, per chance, than those of the Nashua.

Already the goldenrod is budded, but I can make no haste for that.


2 P. M.

— The weather is warm and dry, and many leaves curl.

There is a threatening cloud in the south west.

The farmers dare not spread their hay.

It remains cocked in the fields.

As you walk in the woods nowadays, the flies striking against your hat sound like rain-drops.

The stump or root fences on the Corner road remind me of fossil remains of mastodons, etc., exhumed and bleached in sun and rain.

To-day I met with the first orange flower of autumn.

What means this doubly torrid, this Bengal, tint? Yellow took sun enough, but this is the fruit of a dog-day sun. The year has but just produced it.

Here is the Canada thistle in bloom, visited by butterflies and bees.

The butterflies have swarmed within these few days, especially about the milkweeds.

The swamp-pink still fills the air with its perfume in swamps and by the cause ways, though it is far gone.

The wild rose still scatters its petals over the leaves of neighboring plants.

The wild morning - glory or bindweed , with its delicate red and white blossoms.

I remember it ever as a goblet full of purest morning air and sparkling with dew, showing the dew-point, winding round itself for want of other support. It grows by the Hubbard Bridge causeway, near the angelica.

The cherry-birds are making their seringo sound as they flit past.

They soon find out the locality of the cherry trees.

And beyond the bridge there is a goldenrod partially blossomed.

Yesterday it was spring, and to-morrow it will be autumn.

Where is the summer then?

First came the St. John 's-wort and now the goldenrod to admonish us.

I hear, too, a cricket amid these stones under the blackberry vines, singing as in the fall.

Ripe blackberries are multiplying.

I see the red- spotted berries of the small Solomon ' s seal in my path.

I notice, in the decayed end of an oak post, that the silver grain is not decayed, but remains sound in thin flakes, alternating with the decayed portions and giving the whole a honeycombed look. Such an object supramundane, as even a swallow may descend to light on, a dry mullein stalk for instance.

I see that hens, too, follow the cows feeding near the house, like the cow troopial, and for the same object. They cannot so well scare up insects for themselves. This is the dog the cowbird uses to start up its insect game.

I see yellow butterflies in pairs, pursuing each other a rod or two into the air, and now, as he had bethought himself of the danger of being devoured by a passing bird, he descends with a zigzag flight to the earth, and the other follows.

The black huckleberries are now so thick among the green ones that they no longer incur suspicion of being worm-eaten.

When formerly I was looking about to see what I could do for a living, some sad experience in conforming to the wishes of friends being fresh in my mind to tax my ingenuity, I thought often and seriously of picking huckleberries; that surely I could do, and its small profits might suffice, so little capital it required, so little distraction from my wonted thoughts, I foolishly thought. While my acquaintances went unhesitatingly into trade or the professions, I thought of this occupation as most like theirs; ranging the hills all summer to pick the berries which came in my way, which I might carelessly dispose of; so to keep the flocks of King Admetus. My greatest skill has been to want but little. I also dreamed that I might gather the wild herbs, or carry evergreens to such villagers as loved to be reminded of the woods and so find my living got. But I have since learned that trade curses everything it handles; and though you trade in messages from heaven, the whole curse of trade attaches to the business.

 The wind rises more and more.

The river and the pond are blacker than the threatening cloud in the south.

The thunder mutters in the distance.

The surface of the water is slightly rippled.

Where the pads grow is a light green border.

The woods roar.

 Small white clouds are hurrying across the dark-blue ground of the storm, which rests on all the woods of the south horizon.

But still no rain now for some hours, as if the clouds were dissipated as fast as they reached this atmosphere.

The barberry's fruit hangs yellowish-green.

What pretty covers the thick bush makes, so large and wide and drooping ! The Fringilla juncorum sings still, in spite of the coming tempest, which, perchance only threatens.

The woodchuck is a good native of the soil.

The distant hillside and the grain-fields and pastures are spotted yellow or white with his recent burrows , and the small mounds remain for many years.

Here where the clover has lately been cut, see what a yellow mound is brought to light ! Heavily hangs the common yellow lily (Lilium Canadense) in the meadows.

In the thick alder copses by the causeway - side I find the Lysimachia hybrida.

Here is the Lactuca sanguinea with its runcinate leaves, tall stem  and pale-crimson ray.

And that green stemmed one higher than my head, resembling the last in its leaves, is perchance the “tall lettuce," or fireweed.

Can that my fine white - flowered meadow-plant with the leaf be a thalictrum ?

The locust first heard

July 18.

I first heard the locust sing,
so dry and piercing,
by the side of the pine woods
in the heat of the day.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  July 18, 1851

See June 14, 1854 ("Caught a locust, — properly harvest-fly (cicada), — drumming on a birch, which Bacon and Hill (of Waltham) think like the septendecim, except that ours has not red eyes but black ones. Harris's other kind, the dog-day cicada (canicularis), or harvest-fly. He says it begins to be heard invariably at the beginning of dog-days; he (Harris) heard it for many years in succession with few exceptions on the 25th of July."); July 17, 1856 (“A very warm afternoon. Thermometer at 97° at the Hosmer Desert. I hear the early locust.”); July 18, 1851 ("I first heard the locust sing, so dry and piercing, by the side of the pine woods in the heat of the day.”); July 19, 1854 ("The more smothering, furnace-like heats are beginning, and the locust days."); July 22, 1860 ("First locust heard."); July 26, 1854 ("It is a windy day like yesterday, yet almost constantly I hear borne on the wind from far, mingling with the sound of the wind, the z-ing locust, scarcely like a distinct sound.”); July 26, 1853 (“I mark again, about this time when the first asters open, the sound of crickets or locusts that makes you fruitfully meditative, helps condense your thoughts, like the mel dews in the afternoon. This the afternoon of the year.”); July 31, 1856 (“This dog-day afternoon [a]s I make my way amid rank weeds still wet with the dew, the air filled with a decaying musty scent and the z-ing of small locusts, I hear the distant sound of a flail, and thoughts of autumn occupy my mind, and the memory of past years.”); August 14, 1853 ("Locust days, — sultry and sweltering. I hear them even till sunset. The usually invisible but far-heard locust."); August 16, 1852 ("These are locust days. I hear them on the elms in the street, but cannot tell where they are.")

July 18. See A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 18

A Book of 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

Have you knowledge of the morning?

July 18.

Do you sympathize with that season of nature? Are you abroad early, brushing the dews aside?


If the sun rises on you slumbering, if you do not hear the morning cock-crow, if you do not witness the blushes of Aurora, if you are not acquainted with Venus as the morning star, what relation have you to your Creator?


Your shutters are darkened till noon! You rise with a sick headache! What birds would slumber on their perches till the sun was an hour high, and then take a dish of tea or hot coffee before they begin to sing? What kind of fowl would they be and what kind of bats and owls, -hedge sparrows or larks?


In the morning sing, as do the birds.



H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  July 18, 1851

It is a test question affecting the youth of a person, — Have you knowledge of the morning ? Do you sympathize with that season of nature? Are you abroad early, brushing the dews aside ? If the sun rises on you slumbering, if you do not hear the morning cock-crow, if you do not witness the blushes of Aurora, if you are not acquainted with Venus as the morning star, what relation have you to wisdom and purity? You have then forgotten your Creator in the days of your youth! Your shutters were darkened till noon! You rose with a sick headache! In the morning sing, as do the birds. What of those birds which should slumber on their perches till the sun was an hour high ? What kind of fowl would they be and new kind of bats and owls, — hedge sparrows or larks ? then took a dish of tea or hot coffee before they began to sing?

July 18. See A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 18

A Book of 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

Midsummer 1851

July 16.

Set out at 3 P.M. for Nine-Acre Corner Bridge via Hubbard's Bridge and Conantum, returning via Dashing Brook, rear of Baker's, and railroad at 6.30 P.M.

The song sparrow, the most familiar and New England bird, sets this midsummer day to music, as if it were the music of a mossy rail or fence post; a little stream of song, cooling, rippling through the noon.

Berries are just beginning to ripen, and children are planning expeditions after them. The milkweeds, or silkweeds, are rich flowers, now in blossom. The Asclepias syriaca, or common milkweed; its buds fly open at a touch.

I see the yellow butterflies now gathered in fleets in the road, and on the flowers of the milkweed (Asclepias pulchra) by the roadside, a really handsome flower; also the smaller butterfly, with reddish wings, and a larger, black or steel-blue, with wings spotted red on edge, and one of equal size, reddish copper-colored.

The earliest corn begins to tassel out. The lark sings in the meadow; the very essence of the afternoon is in his strain. This is a New England sound, but the cricket is heard under all sounds.

The twittering of swallows is in the air, reminding me of water. The meadow-sweet is now in bloom, and the yarrow prevails by all roadsides. I see the hardback too, homely but dear plant, just opening its red clustered flowers.

The small aster, too, now abounds (Aster miser), and the tall buttercup still. 

The tree-primrose, or scabish, still is seen over the fence. 

The red-wings and crow blackbirds are heard chattering on the trees.

St.John's-wort, one of the first of yellow flowers, begins to shine along the roadside.

I hear the kingbird twittering or chattering like a stout-chested swallow. 

The prunella sends back a blue ray from under my feet as I walk; the pale lobelia too. 

The plaintive, spring-restoring 'peep of a bluebird is occasionally heard.

The wild rose peeps from amid the alders and other shrubs by the roadside. 

The elder-blow fills the air with its scent. 

The angelica,with its large umbels, is gone to seed. On it I find one of those slow-moving green worms, with rings spotted black and yellow. 

The whiteweed is turning black . 

Grapes are half grown and lead the mind forward to autumn.

It is an air this afternoon that makes you indifferent to all things, - perfect summer, but with a comfortable breeziness. Notwithstanding the drifting clouds, you fear no rain to-day. You know not heat nor cold. What season of the year is this?

The yellow lilies reign in the river. The painted tortoises drop off the willow stumps as you go over the bridge. The river is now so low that you can see its bottom, shined on by the sun, and travellers stop to look at fishes as they go over, leaning on the rails. The pickerel-weed sends up its heavenly blue. The devil's-needles seem to rest in air over the water. The tansy is budded.

The color of the cows on Fair Haven Hill, how fair a contrast to the hillside! How striking and wholesome their clean brick-red! When were they painted? How carelessly the eye rests on them, or passes them by as things of course!

Now, at 4 P. M., I hear the pewee in the woods, and the cuckoo reminds me of some silence among the birds I had not noticed. The vireo sings like a robin at even, incessantly, - for I have now turned into Conant's woods.

The oven-bird helps fill some pauses. The poison sumach shows its green berries, now unconscious of guilt. The heart-leaved loosestrife (Lysimachia ciliata) is seen in low open woods. The breeze displays the white under sides of the oak leaves and gives a fresh and flowing look to the woods.

The river is a dark-blue winding stripe amid the green of the meadow. What is the color of the world? Green mixed with yellowish and reddish for hills and ripe grass, and darker green for trees and forests; blue spotted with dark and white for sky and clouds, and dark blue for water.

I am refreshed by the view of Nobscot and the southwestern vales, from Conantum, seething with the blue element. I walk through these elevated fields, terraced upon the side of the hill so that my eye looks off into the blue cauldron of the air at his own level.

Methinks this is the first of dog-days. The air in the distance has a peculiar blue mistiness, or furnace-like look, though it is not sultry yet.

It is a world of orchards and small-fruits now, and you can stay at home if the well has cool water in it. Here the haymakers have just gone to tea, - at 5 o'clock, the farmer's hour, before the afternoon is ended, while he still thinks much work may still be done before night.

At the Corner Bridge the white lilies are budded. Green apples are now so large as to remind me of coddling and the autumn again. The season of fruits is arrived.

I come through the pine plains behind James Baker's, where late was open pasture, now open pitch pine woods; only here and there the grass has given place to a carpet of pine-needles. These are among our pleasantest woods, - open, level, with blackberry vines interspersed and flowers, as lady's- slippers, earlier, and pinks on the outskirts.

And now I hear the wood thrush from the shade, who loves these pine woods as well as I.

I pass by Walden's scalloped shore. The epilobium reflects a pink gleam up the vales and down the hills. The chewink jingles on a bush's top.

Still the cars come and go with the regularity of nature, of the sun and moon.

***

What more glorious condition of being can we imagine than from impure to be becoming pure? 

It is almost desirable to be impure that we may be the subject of this improvement.

That I am innocent to myself!

That I love and reverence my life!

That I am better fitted for a lofty society to-day than I was yesterday!

To make my life a sacrament! What is nature without this lofty tumbling?

May I treat myself with more and more respect and tenderness.

May I not forget that I am impure and vicious.

May I not cease to love purity.

May I go to my slumbers as expecting to arise to a new and more perfect day.

May I so live and refine my life as fitting myself for a society ever higher than I actually enjoy.

May I treat myself tenderly as I would treat the most innocent child whom I love; may I treat children and my friends as my newly discovered self.

Let me forever go in search of myself; never for a moment think that I have found myself; be as a stranger to myself, never a familiar, seeking acquaintance still.

May I be to myself as one is to me whom I love, a dear and cherished object.

What temple, what fane, what sacred place can there be but the innermost part of my own being? The possibility of my own improvement, that is to be cherished.

As I regard myself, so I am.

O my dear friends, I have not forgotten you.

I will know you to-morrow.

I associate you with my ideal self.

I had ceased to have faith in myself.

I thought I was grown up and become what I was intended to be, but it is earliest spring with me.

In relation to virtue and innocence the oldest man is in the beginning spring and vernal season of life.

It is the love of virtue makes us young ever.

That is the fountain of youth, the very aspiration after the perfect.

I love and worship myself with a love which absorbs my love for the world.

The lecturer suggested to me that I might become better than I am.

Was it not a good lecture, then?

May I dream not that I shunned vice; may I dream that I loved and practiced virtue.

 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 16, 1851

I might have added to the list of July 16th the Aralia hispida, bristling aralia; the heart-leaved loosestrife (Lysimachia ciliata) also the upright loosestrife (L. racemosa), with a rounded terminal raceme; the tufted vetch (Vicia cracca). Sweet-gale fruit now green. H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 18, 1851

The color of the cows on Fair Haven Hill, how fair a contrast to the hillside! How striking and wholesome their clean brick-red! See July 5, 1853 ("Such a habit have cows in a pasture of moving forward while feeding that, in surveying on the Great Fields to-day, I was interrupted by a herd of a dozen cows, which successively passed before my line of vision, feeding forward, and I had to watch my opportunity to look between them.") 

The lark sings in the meadow; the very essence of the afternoon is in his strain. This is a New England sound. See June 30, 1851 (“ The lark sings a note which belongs to a New England summer evening.”)

And now I hear the wood thrush from the shade, who loves these pine woods as well as I. See May 28, 1855 ("While we sit by the path in the depths of the woods three quarters of a mile beyond Hayden’s,. . ., the wood thrush sings steadily for half an hour, now at 2.30 P. M., amid the pines, — loud and clear and sweet."); June 15, 1851 ("I sit in the shade of the pines to hear a wood thrush at noon. The bird begins on a low strain, i. e. it first delivers a strain on a lower key, then a moment after another a little higher, then another still varied from the others, — no two successive strains alike, either ascending or descending.")

My life is an ecstasy.

July 16.

The morning and the evening are sweet to me. Nature develops as I develop, and grows up with me. I wonder if a mortal has ever known what I know.

My life is ecstasy. I am all alive, and inhabit my body with inexpressible satisfaction. Both its weariness and its refreshment are sweet to me. To have such sweet impressions made on me, such ecstasies begotten of the breezes! 

I  am astonished. I am daily intoxicated. There comes to me  such an indescribable, infinite, all-absorbing, divine, heavenly pleasure, a sense of elevation and expansion --  and yet I have had nought to do with it. This is a pleasure, a joy, an existence that I have not procured myself. I am dealt with by superior powers.

The maker of me is improving me. When I detect this interference I am profoundly moved. With all your science can you tell how it is, and whence it is, that light comes into the soul?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  July 16, 1851

I am all alive, and inhabit my body with inexpressible satisfaction. See November 25, 1850 ("The satisfaction of existence. . . .Just as the sun shines into us warmly and serenely, our Creator breathes on us and re-creates us."); December 11, 1855 ("To perceive freshly, with fresh senses, is to be inspired. My body is all sentient. As I go here or there, I am tickled by this or that I come in contact with, as if I touched the wires of a battery.  The age of miracles is each moment thus returned. Now it is wild apples, now river reflections, now a flock of lesser redpolls.”) March 30, 1853 ("Ah, those youthful days! are they never to return? when the walker . . . sees, hears, scents, tastes, and feels only himself, - the phenomena that show themselves in him, - his expanding body, his intellect and heart.”) August 23, 1852 ("There is something invigorating in this air, which I am peculiarly sensible is a real wind blowing from over the surface of a planet.”)

This is a pleasure, a joy, an existence that I have not procured myself. See May 23, 1854("There was a time when the beauty and the music were all within, and I sat and listened to my thoughts, and there was a song in them. I sat for hours on rocks and wrestled with the melody which possessed me. I sat and listened by the hour to a positive though faint and distant music . . .. When I walked with a joy which knew not its own origin.")

My life was ecstasy. In youth, before I lost any of my senses, I can remember that I was all alive, and inhabited my body with inexpressible satisfaction; both its weariness and its refreshment were sweet to me  This earth was the most glorious musical instrument, and I was audience to its strains. To have such sweet impressions made on us, such ecstasies begotten of the breezes! I can remember how I was astonished. I said to myself, — I said to other , “There comes into my mind such an indescribable , infinite , all - absorbing , divine , heavenly pleasure , a sense of elevation and expansion, and [ I ] have had nought to do with it . I perceive that I am dealt with by superior powers. This is a pleasure, a joy, an existence which I have not procured myself  I speak as a witness on the stand , and tell what I have perceived." The morning and the evening were sweet to me, and I led a life aloof from society of men. I wondered if a mortal had ever known what I knew. I looked in books for some recognition of a kindred experience, but, strange to say, I found none 


What more glorious condition of being can we imagine than from impure to be becoming pure? It is almost desirable to be impure that we may be the subject of this improvement. That I am innocent to my self! That I love and reverence my life! That I am better fitted for a lofty society to-day than I was yesterday! To make my life a sacrament! What is nature without this lofty tumbling? May I treat myself with more and more respect and tenderness. May I not for get that I am impure and vicious. May I not cease to love purity. May I go to my slumbers as expecting to arise to a new and more perfect day. May I so live and refine my life as fitting myself fofa society ever higher than I actually enjoy. May I treat myself tenderly as I would treat the most innocent child whom I love; may I treat children and my friends as my newly dis covered self. Let me forever go in search of myself; never for a moment think that I have found myself; be as a stranger to myself, never a familiar, seeking acquaintance still. May I be to myself as one is to me whom I love, a dear and cherished object. What temple, what fane, what sacred place can there be but the innermost part of my own being? The possibility of my own improvement, that is to be cherished. As I regard myself, so I am. O my dear friends, I have not forgotten you. I will know you to-morrow. I associate you with my ideal self. I had ceased to have faith in myself. I thought I was grown up and become what I was intended to be, but it is earliest spring with me. In relation to virtue and innocence the oldest man is in the beginning spring and vernal season of life. It is the love of virtue makes us young ever. That is the fountain of youth, the very aspiration after the perfect. I love and worship myself with a love which absorbs my love for the world. The lecturer suggested to me that I might become better than I am. Was it not a good lecture, then? May I dream not that I shunned vice ; may I dream that I loved and practiced virtue.

Crickets

July 14.

If I take the same walk by moonlight an hour later or earlier in the evening, it is as good as a different one. I love the night for its novelty; it is less prophaned than the day.

The creaking of the crickets seems at the very foundation of all sound. At last I cannot tell it from a ringing in my ears. It is a sound from within, not without.

You cannot dispose of it by listening to it. In proportion as I am stilled I hear it. It reminds me that I am a denizen of the earth.      


H. D. Thoreau,  Journal,  July 14, 1851

I love the night for its novelty. See June 11, 1851 ("Hardly two nights are alike."); October 26, 1857.(My moods are thus periodical, not two days in my year alike.)

Haymaker's Moon

July 13.

The evergreen is very handsome in the woods now, rising somewhat spirally in a round tower of five or six stories, surmounted by a long bud.

Looking across the river to Conantum from the open plains, I think how the history of the hills would read, since they have been pastured by cows, if every plowing and mowing and sowing and chopping were recorded. 

These plains are covered with shrub oaks, birches, aspens, hickories, mingled with sweet-fern and brakes and huckleberry bushes and epilobium, now in bloom, and much fine grass. The hellebore by the brooksides has now fallen over, though it is not broken off.

I hear, 4 P.M., a pigeon woodpecker on a dead pine near by, uttering a harsh and scolding scream, spying me. The chewink jingles on the tops of the bushes, and the [field] sparrow, the vireo, and oven-bird at a distance. A robin sings, superior to all; a barking dog has started something on the opposite side of the river; and now the wood thrush surpasses them all.

The cows now repose and chew the cud under the shadow of a tree, or crop the grass in the shade along the side of the woods, and when you approach to observe them they mind you just enough.

The sweet-scented life-everlasting is budded.

This might be called the Haymaker's Moon, for I perceive that when the day has been oppressively warm the haymakers rest at noon and resume their mowing after sunset, sometimes quite into evening.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  July 13, 1851

The haymakers rest at noon and resume their mowing after sunset, sometimes quite into evening. See July 13, 1857 ("The haymakers are busy raking their hay, to be ready for a shower. They would rather have their grass wet a little than not have the rain. ")

July 13.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 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 © 2009-2021