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”)