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