Signs of Fall

July 31. There is more shadow under the edges of woods and copses now. The foliage appears to have increased so that the shadows are heavier, and perhaps it is

this that makes it cooler, especially morning and evening, though it may be as warm as ever at noon. The green cranberries are half formed. Saw but one Lysimachia stricta left in the meadows, the meadow-sweet meadows.The absence of flowers, the shadows, the wind, the green cranberries, etc., are autumnal. The river has risen a foot or so since its lowest early in the month. The water is quite cool. Methinks it cannot be so warm again this year. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 31, 1852

To Flint's Pond

July 30. 

The fore part of this month was the warmest weather we have had; the last part, sloping toward autumn, has reflected some of its coolness, for we are very forward to anticipate the fall. 

How long since I heard a veery?  Do they go, or become silent, when the goldfinches herald the autumn? Do not all flowers that blossom after mid-July remind us of the fall? 

After midsummer we have a belated feeling as if we had all been idlers, and are forward to see in each sight and hear in each sound some presage of the fall, just as in middle age man anticipates the end of life.

The ripple-marks on the east shore of Flint's are nearly parallel firm ridges in the white sand, one inch or more apart. They are very distinctly felt by the naked feet of the wader.  

I notice a small blue egg washed up and half buried by the white sand, and as it lay there, alternately wet and dry, no color could be fairer, no gem could have a more advantageous or favorable setting. And is not that shell something very precious that houses that winged life? 

Caught in a thunder-shower, when south of Flint's Pond. It is a grand sound, that of the rain on the leaves of the forest a quarter of a mile distant, approaching.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 30, 1852

After midsummer we have a belated feeling . . .See July 26, 1853 ("How apt we are to be reminded of lateness, even before the year is half spent! This the afternoon of the year.”) See also A Book of the Seasons: Midsummer midlife blues.

The coming harvest.

July 29.

Apples now by their size remind me of the harvest. I see a geranium leaf turned red in the shade of a copse; the same color with the woodbine seen yesterday. 

These leaves interest me as much as flowers. I should like to have a complete list of those that are the first to turn red or yellow. How attractive is color, especially red; kindred this with the color of fruits in the harvest and skies in the evening. 

The colors which some rather obscure leaves assume in the fall in dark copses or unobserved by the roadside interest me more than their flowers. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 29, 1852

These leaves interest me as much as flowers. See May 21, 1860 (“The birches by the railroad, as I am whirled by them in the cars, flash upon me yellow as gamboge, their leaves more like flowers than foliage.”)

Goldenrod and asters have fairly begun.

July 28.


P. M. —To Yellow Pine Lake. 

Epilobium coloratum, roadside just this side of Dennis's. 

Water lobelia, is it, that C. shows me? 

There is a yellowish light now from a low, tufted, yellowish, broad-leaved grass, in fields that have been mown. A June-like, breezy air. 

The large shaped sagittaria out, a large crystalline- white  three-petalled flower. 

Enough has not been said of the beauty of the shrub oak leaf (Quercus ilicifolia), of a thick, firm texture, for the most part uninjured by insects, intended to last all winter; of a glossy green above and now silky downy beneath, fit for a wreath or crown. The leaves of the chinquapin oak might be intermixed. 

Grasshoppers are very abundant, several to every square foot in some fields. 

I observed some leaves of woodbine which had not risen from the ground, turned a beautiful bright red, perhaps from heat and drought, though it was in a low wood. 

This Ampelopsis quinquefolia is in blossom. Is it identical with that about R. W. E.'s posts, which was in blossom July 13th? 

Aster Radula (?) in J. P. Brown's meadow. Solidago altissima (?) beyond the Corner Bridge, out some days at least, but not rough-hairy. Goldenrod and asters have fairly begun; i. e. there are several kinds of each out. 

What is that slender hieracium or aster-like plant in woods on Corner road with lanceolate, coarsely feather-veined leaves, sessile and remotely toothed; minute, clustered, imbricate buds (?) or flowers and buds ? Panicled hieracium?  

The evenings are now sensibly longer, and the cooler weather makes them improvable.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 28, 1852

A June-like breezy air. There is a yellowish light now from a low, tufted, yellowish, broad-leaved grass, in fields that have been mown. Grasshoppers are very abundant, several to every square foot in some fields. Goldenrod and asters have fairly begun; there are several kinds of each out. The evenings are now sensibly longer, and the cooler weather makes them improvable.

Goldenrod and asters have fairly begun. See July 18, 1854 ("Methinks the asters and goldenrods begin, like the early ripening leaves, with midsummer heats.");  July 26, 1853 ("I mark again, about this time when the first asters open. . . This the afternoon of the year.")

What is that slender hieracium or aster-like plant in woods on Corner road? See July 31, 1856 ("Hieracium paniculatum by Gerardia quercifolia path in woods under Cliffs, two or three days."); August21, 1851 ("Hieracium paniculatum, a very delicate and slender hawkweed. I have now found all the hawkweeds. Singular these genera of plants, plants manifestly related yet distinct. They suggest a history to nature, a natural history in a new sense.”)

The evenings are now sensibly longer. See September 11, 1854 ("For a week or so the evenings have been sensibly longer, and I am beginning to throw off my summer idleness")

Sunset from Fair Haven Hill.

July 27.

It has been a clear, cool, breezy day for the season. There is only one white bar of cloud in the north.  The river is silvery, as it were plated and polished smooth, with the slightest possible tinge of gold, to-night. The sun is now set.  All glow on the clouds is gone, except from one higher, small, rosy pink isle.  The solemnity of the evening sky!  Just before the earliest star I turn round, and there shines the moon, silvering the small clouds.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 27, 1852


Tuesday. 4 p. m. — To Assabet behind Lee place. 

It is pleasing to behold at this season contrasted shade and sunshine on the side of neighboring hills. They are not so attractive to the eye when all in the shadow of a cloud or wholly open to the sunshine. Each must enhance the other. 

That the luxury of walking in the river may be perfect it must be very warm, such as are few days even in July, so that the breeze on those parts of the body that have just been immersed may not produce the least chilliness. It cannot be too warm, so that, with a shirt to fend the sun from your back, you may walk with perfect indifference, or rather with equal pleasure, alternately in deep and in shallow water. Both water and air must be unusually warm; otherwise we shall feel no impulse to cast ourselves into and remain in the stream. To-day it is uncomfortably cool for such a walk. 

It is very pleasant to walk up and down the stream, however, studying the further bank, which is six or seven feet high and completely covered with verdure of various kinds. 

I observe grape-vines with green clusters almost fully grown hanging over the water, and hazelnut husks are fully formed and are richly, autumnally, significant. Viburnum dentatum, elder, and red-stemmed cornel, all with an abundance of green berries, help clothe the bank, and the Asclepias incarnata and meadow-rue fill the crevices. Above all there is the cardinal-flower just opened, close to the water's edge, remarkable for its intense scarlet color, contrasting with the surrounding green. 

I see young breams in small schools, only one inch long, light-colored and semitransparent as yet, long in proportion to their depth. Some two inches long are ludicrously deep already, like little halibuts, making the impression, by their form, of vast size like halibuts or whales. They appear to be attended and guarded still by their parents. What innumerable enemies they have to encounter! 

The sun on the bottom is indispensable, and you must have your back to it. 

Woodcocks have been common by the streams and springs in woods for some weeks. 

Aster dumosus ( ?) by wood-paths. 

A quarter before seven p. m. — To Cliffs. 

It has been a clear, cool, breezy day for the season.

There is only one white bar of cloud in the north. I now perceive the peculiar scent of the corn-fields. The corn is just high enough, and this hour is favorable. I should think the ears had hardly set yet. Half an hour before sundown, you perceive the cool, damp air in valleys surrounded by woods, where dew is already formed. 

I am sure that if I call for a companion in my walk I have relinquished in my design some closeness of communion with Nature. The walk will surely be more commonplace. The inclination for society indicates a distance from Nature. I do not design so wild and mysterious a walk. 

The bigoted and sectarian forget that without religion or devotion of some kind nothing great was ever accomplished. 

On Fair Haven Hill. The slight distraction of picking berries is favorable to a mild, abstracted, poetic mood, to sequestered or transcendental thinking. I return ever more fresh to my mood from such slight interruptions. 

All the clouds in the sky are now close to the west horizon, so that the sun is nearly down before they are reached and lighted or gilded. Wachusett, free of clouds, has a fine purplish tinge, as if the juice of grapes had been squeezed over it, darkening into blue. I hear the scratching sound of a worm at work in this hardwood-pile on which I sit. 

We are most disturbed by the sun's dazzle when it is lowest. Now the upper edge of that low blue bank is gilt where the sun has disappeared, leaving a glory in the horizon through which a few cloudy peaks send raylike shadows. Now a slight rosy blush is spreading north and south over the horizon sky and tingeing a few small scattered clouds in the east. A blue tinge south ward makes the very edge of the earth there a mountain. That low bank of cloud in the west is now exactly the color of the mountains, a dark blue. 

We should think sacredly, with devotion. That is one thing, at least, we may do magnanimously. May not every man have some private affair which he can conduct greatly, unhurriedly? 

The river is silvery, as it were plated and polished smooth, with the slightest possible tinge of gold, tonight. How beautiful the meanders of a river, thus revealed! How beautiful hills and vales, the whole surface of the earth a succession of these great cups, falling away from dry or rocky edges to gelid green meadows and water in the midst, where night already is setting in! 

The thrush, now the sun is apparently set, fails not to sing. Have I heard the veery lately ? 

All glow on the clouds is gone, except from one higher, small, rosy pink or flesh-colored isle. The sun is now probably set. There are no clouds on high to reflect a golden light into the river. 

How cool and assuaging the thrush's note after the fever of the day! I doubt if they have anything so richly wild in Europe. So long a civilization must have banished it. It will only be heard in America, perchance, while our star is in the ascendant. I should be very much surprised if I were to hear in the strain of the nightingale such unexplored wildness and fertility, reaching to sundown, inciting to emigration. Such a bird must itself have emigrated long ago. 

Why, then, was I born in America ? I might ask. I should like to ask the assessors what is the value of that blue mountain range in the northwest horizon to Concord, and see if they would laugh or seriously set about calculating it. How poor, comparatively, should we be without it ! It would be descending to the scale of the merchant to say it is worth its weight in gold. The privilege of beholding it, as an ornament, a suggestion, a provocation, a heaven on earth. 

If I were one of the fathers of the town I would not sell this right which we now enjoy for all the merely material wealth and prosperity conceivable. If need were, we would rather all go down together. 

The huckleberry-bird as usual, and the nighthawk squeaks and booms, and the bullfrog trumps, just before the earliest star. The evening red is much more remarkable than the morning red. 

The solemnity of the evening sky! I turn round, and there shines the moon, silvering the small clouds which have gathered; she makes nothing red. 

New creaking or shrilling from crickets (?) for a long time past, more fine and piercing than the other.

 Aster dumosus (?) by wood-paths.

That the luxury of walking in the river may be perfect it must be very warm, such as are few days even in July .. 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.”); July 17, 1860 ("The soft sand on the bottom of Walden, as deep as I can wade, feels very warm to my feet, while the water feels cold.");July 22, 1851("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.”).

If I call for a companion in my walk I have relinquished in my design some closeness of communion with Nature. The inclination for society indicates a distance from Nature. See July 26, 1852 ("By my intimacy with nature I find myself withdrawn from man. . . .The mind that perceives clearly any natural beauty is in that instant withdrawn from human society.")

 The solemnity of the evening sky! See July 26, 1852 ("The grandest picture in the world is the sunset sky."); December 27, 1851 ("Sunset from Fair Haven Hill.")

Morning Fog

July 25.

From Fair Haven Hill, the sun having risen, I see great wreaths of fog far northeast, revealing the course of the river, a noble sight, as it were the river elevated, or rather the ghost of the ample stream that once flowed to ocean between these now distant uplands in another geological period, filling the broad meadows, -the dews saved to the earth by this great Musketaquid condenser, refrigerator.

The fog rises highest over the channel of the river and over the ponds in the woods which are thus revealed. I clearly distinguish where White Pond lies by this sign, and various other ponds, methinks, to which I have walked ten or twelve miles distant, and I distinguish the course of the Assabet far in the west and southwest beyond the woods. 

And now the rising sun makes glow with downiest white the ample wreaths, which rise higher than the highest trees. The farmers that lie slumbering on this their day of rest, how little do they know of this stupendous pageant! Every valley is densely packed with the downy vapor.  A certain thrilling vastness or wasteness it now suggests. This is one of those ambosial, white, ever-memorable fogs presaging fair weather. 

In the meanwhile the wood thrush and the jay and the robin sing around me here, and birds are heard singing from the midst of the fog. And in one short hour this sea will all evaporate and the sun be reflected from farm windows on its green bottom.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 25, 1852


Great wreaths of fog...white, ever-memorable fogs presaging fair weather. See July 22, 1851 ("The season of morning fogs has arrived. A great crescent over the course of the river, the fog 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.")

Midsummer

July 24.

The ground is very dry, the berries are drying up. It is long since we have had any rain to speak of. Gardeners use the watering-pot. 

The sere and fallen leaves of the birches in many places redden the ground; this heat and drought have the effect of autumn to some extent. The smooth sumach berries are red. 

However, there is a short, fresh green on the shorn fields, the aftermath. When the first crop of grass is off, and the aftermath springs, the year has passed its culmination . . . 

I heard this afternoon the cool water twitter of the goldfinch. and saw the bird. They come with the springing aftermath. It is refreshing as a cup of cold water to a thirsty man to hear them now only one at a time. 

The corn now forms solid phalanxes, though the ears have not set, and, the sun going down, the shadows, even of corn-fields, fall long over the meadows, and a sweetness comes up from the shaven grass, and the crickets creak more loud in the new-springing grass.

Just after sunset I notice that a thin veil of clouds, far in the east, beyond the nearer and heavier dark-gray masses, glows a fine rose-color, like the inner bark or lining of some evergreens.

The clear, solemn western sky till far into night was framed by a dark line of clouds with a heavy edge, curving across the northwest sky, at a considerable height, separating the region of day from that of night.

Lay on a lichen-covered hill which looked white in the moonlight.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 24, 1852

It is long since we have had any rain to speak of. See July 24, 1851 (“The effects of drought are never more apparent than at dawn.”)

There is a short, fresh green on the shorn fields, the aftermath. See July 24, 1860 ("Many a field where the grass has been cut shows now a fresh and very lit-up light green as you look toward the sun.")

The year has passed its culmination. See 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 28, 1854 (Methinks the season culminated about the middle of this month, — . . .having as it were attained the ridge of the summer, commenced to descend the long slope toward winter, the afternoon and down-hill of the year.")

Midsummer. Evening descends on the waters.

July 21.

The whip-poor-will begins to sing at earliest twilight.  The river is perfectly smooth, reflecting the golden sky and the red, for there is a bright and general golden or amber glow from the upper atmosphere in the west. At evening lakes and rivers become thus placid. Every dimple made by a fish or insect is betrayed. 

Evening descends on the waters. There is not a breath of air. Now is the time to be on the water.

  

I see the earliest star fifteen or twenty minutes before the red is deepest in the horizon. At morning and at evening this precious color suffuses the sky.  Do we perceive such a deep Indian red after the first starlight at any other season as now in July?

H. D. Thoreau,  Journal, July 21, 1852

At evening lakes and rivers become thus placid. Every dimple made by a fish or insect is betrayed. See May 29, 1857 ("Fair Haven Lake now, at 4.30 p. m., is perfectly smooth, reflecting the darker and glowing June clouds as it has not before. Fishes incessantly dimple it here and there . . ..”)

Twilight starlight moonlight ecstasy

July 20.

At evening the eastern clouds, the western clouds, and the atmosphere of the west horizon have one history successively-a fainter glow and redness, gradually and by stages deepening till the darkness prevails.

We see from the hill darkness infolding the village, collected first in the elm-tops. If it were not for the lightcolored barns and white houses, it would already be dark there. The redness of the clouds, or the golden or coppery glow, appears to endure almost till starlight. Then the cloudlets in the west turn rapidly dark, the shadow of night advances in the east, and the first stars become visible. The pitch pine woods are heavy and dark, but the river is full of golden light and more conspicuous than by day.

It is starlight. We see the first star in the southwest, and know not how much earlier we might have seen it had we looked. Now the first whip-poor-will sings hollowly in the dark pitch pine wood on Bear Garden Hill, as if the night had never ceased, and it had never ceased to sing, only now we heard it. Night is seen settling down with mists on Fair Haven Bay. The stars are few and distant; the fireflies fewer still.

Now quite into evening. There is a second glow on the few low western cloudlets, when we thought the sun had bid us a final adieu. - Those small clouds, the rearmost guard of day, which were wholly dark, are again lit up for a moment with a dull-yellowish glow and again darken.

And now the evening redness deepens till all the west or northwest horizon is red; as if the sky were rubbed there with some rich Indian pigment, a permanent dye; as if the Artist of the world had mixed his red paints on the edge of the inverted saucer of the sky. An exhilarating, cheering redness, most wholesome. There should be a red race of men. I would look into the west at this hour till my face permanently reflects that red. It is like the stain of some berries crushed along the edge of the sky. 

The crescent moon, meanwhile, grows more silvery, and, as it sinks in the west, more yellowish, and the outline of the old moon in its arms is visible if you do not look directly at it. Some dusky redness lasts almost till the last traces of daylight disappear, about 10 o'clock, the same time the moon goes down.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 20, 1852

The redness of the clouds, or the golden or coppery glow, appears to endure almost till starlight. Then the cloudlets in the west turn rapidly dark, the shadow of night advances in the east, and the first stars become visible. It is starlight. You see the first star in the southwest, and know not how much earlier you might have seen it had you looked. See August 8, 1851 ("Starlight! that would be a good way to mark the hour, if we were precise.”); May 8, 1852 (“Starlight marks conveniently a stage in the evening, i. e. when the first star can be seen. ”); June 28,1852 ("Now it is starlight; perhaps that dark cloud in the west has concealed the evening star before . . .Starlight! That would be a good way to mark the hour, if we were precise. That is an epoch, when the last traces of daylight have disappeared and the night (nox) has fairly set in.”); June 30, 1852 (“It is starlight about half an hour after sunset to-night; i. e. the first stars appear”); July 12, 1852 (“Now, a quarter after nine, as I walk along the river-bank, long after starlight, and perhaps an hour or more after sunset, I see some of those high-pillared clouds of the day, in the southwest, still reflecting a downy light from the regions of day, they are so high.”); July 21, 1852 ("Do we perceive such a deep Indian red after the first starlight at any other season as now in July?”)

The river has its active and its passive side.

July 18.

The border of pontederia is rarely of equal depth on both sides of the river at once. It keeps that side in the meander where the sediment is deposited, the shortest course which will follow the shore, as I have dotted it, crossing from this side to that as the river meanders. For on the longest side the river is active, not passive, wearing into the bank, and runs there more swiftly. This is the longest line of blue that nature paints with flowers in our fields, though the lupines may have been more densely blue within a small compass. 

Thus by a natural law a river, instead of flowing straight through its meadows, meanders from side to side and fertilizes this side or that, and adorns its banks with flowers. The river has its active and its passive side, its right and left breast.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 18, 1852


Thus by a natural law a river, instead of flowing straight through its meadows, meanders from side to side. The river has its active and its passive side. See June 15, 1852 ("Methinks there is a male and female shore to the river, one abrupt, the other flat and meadowy. Have not all streams this contrast more or less, on the one hand eating into the bank, on the other depositing their sediment?"); July 19, 1859 ("It is remarkable how the river, while it may be encroaching on the bank on one side, preserves its ordinary breadth by filling up the other side"); July 5, 1859 ("The deepest part of the river is generally rather toward one side, especially where the stream is energetic. On a curve it is generally deepest on the inside bank, and the bank most upright."); July 7, 1859 ("I learn from measuring on Baldwin's second map that the river . . . winds most in the broad meadows. The greatest meander is in the Sudbury meadows. ")

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

To Sudbury Meadows in boat

July 18.

After passing Hubbard's Bridge, looking up the smooth river between the rows of button-bushes, willows, and pads, we see the sun shining on Fair Haven Hill behind a sun-born cloud, while we are in shadow, -- a misty golden light, yellow, fern-like, with shadows of clouds flitting across its slope, -- and horses in their pasture standing with outstretched necks to watch us; and now they dash up the steep in single file, as if to exhibit their limbs and mettle.

Sunday. 8.30 a. m. — To the Sudbury meadows in boat.

Peter Robbins says that the rain of yesterday has not reached the potatoes, after all. Exorbitant potatoes! It takes a good deal to reach them, — serious preaching to convert them.

The white lilies and the floating-heart are both well open at this hour, and more abundant than I have noticed them before. Like ducks, the former sit on the water as far as I can see on both sides.

As we push away from Monroe's shore, the robins are singing and the swallows twittering. There is hardly a cloud in the sky. There are dewy cob webs on the grass; so this is a fit morning for any adventure. It is one of those everlasting mornings, with cobwebs on the grass, which are provided for long enterprises.

It is a sabbath within the water as well as in the air and on the land, and even the little pickerels not half so long as your finger appear to be keeping it holy amid the pads. There is a sort of dusty or mealy light in the bream's tail and fins waving in clear water.

The river is now in all its glory, adorned with water-lilies on both sides. Walkers and sailers ordinarily come hither in the afternoon, when the lilies are shut, and so never see the river in its pride. They come after the exhibition is over for the day, and do not suspect it.

We are gliding swiftly up the river by Barrett's Bend. The surface of the water is the place to see the pontederia from, for now the spikes of flowers are all brought into a dense line, — a heavy line of blue, a foot or more in width, on one or both sides of the river. The pontederias are now in their prime, there being no withered heads. They are very freshly blue. In the sun, when you are looking west, they are of a violaceous blue. The lilies are in greater profusion than when we came to see them before. They appear to be too many for the insects, and we find enough untouched.

Horsemint (Mentha Canadensis) is now out.

We take a bath at Hubbard's Bend. The water seems fresher, as the air, in the morning. Again under weigh, we scare up the great bittern amid the pontederia, and, rowing to where he alights, come within three feet of him and scare him up again. He flies sluggishly away plowing the air with the coulter of his breast-bone, and alighting ever higher up the stream.

We scare him up many times in the course of an hour. The surface of the river is spotted with the radical leaves of the floating-heart, large and thin and torn, rarely whole, which something has loosened from the bottom. The larks and blackbirds and kingbirds are heard in the meadows. But few button-bushes are in blossom yet.

Are they dark-brown weed-like fibrous roots of the plant itself that invest its stems below?

Harmless bright-downy clouds form in the atmosphere on every side and sail the heavens. After passing Hubbard's Bridge, looking up the smooth river between the rows of button-bushes, willows, and pads, we see the sun shining on Fair Haven Hill behind a sun-born cloud, while we are in shadow, — a misty golden light, yellow, fern-like, with shadows of clouds flitting across its slope, — and horses in their pasture standing with outstretched necks to watch us; and now they dash up the steep in single file, as if to exhibit their limbs and mettle.

The carcass of a cow which has recently died lies on the sandy shore under Fair Haven, close to the water. Perhaps she was poisoned with the water parsnip, which is now in flower and abounds along the side of the river.

We have left the dog in the middle of Fair Haven Bay swimming in our wake, while we are rowing past Lee's, and we see no more of him.

How simple are the ornaments of a farmhouse! To one rowing past in the middle of a warm summer day, a well at a distance from the house in the shadow of an oak, as here, is a charming sight. The house, too, with no yard but an open lawn sloping to the river. And young turkeys seen wandering in the grass, and ever and anon hopping up as if a snake had scared them. The pontederias are alive with butterflies. Here is a fisherman's willow pole left to mark a lucky place, with green shoots at the top. The other day I noticed that Neighbor Gorman's willow bean poles had grown more than his beans.

We now go through the narrow gut at the bend near the town bound. A comfortable day. Methinks we shall have no torrid blazing dry heats after this," but muggy, dog-dayish weather, tempered by mists and shadows of fogs, the evaporation of vegetation? The nights, too, can be decidedly cool.

No one has ever put into words what the odor of water-lilies expresses. A sweet and innocent purity. The perfect purity of the flower is not to be surpassed. They now begin to shut up. Looking toward the sun, I cannot see them, cannot distinguish lilies from the sun reflected from the pads.

Thus we go on, into the Sudbury meadows, opening the hills. The near hills, even, have a misty blueness, — a liquid one, like a field of oats yet green. Both wish now to face up-stream and see the hills open.

The Peltandra Virginica (Calla), which I saw well budded opposite the Pantry, July 1st, has flowered and curved downward into the water and mud, but I observe other flowers to come. The columbine lingers still.

The red-eye sings at noon, and the song sparrow. The bobolink I do not hear of late, — not since this fall-like, late-feeling weather. Now the fogs have begun, in midsummer and mid-haying time.

We go inland to the Jenkins house spring, through the handsome oak grove, white and black (?), eight or nine of them, on the further edge of the meadow, where the haymakers' path comes in. Strawberries are still occasionally found in meadows. The Cerasus Virginiana, or choke-cherry, is turning, nearly ripe.

We sit on the edge of the hill at the Jenkins house, looking northward over a retired dell in the woods, an unfrequented johnswort and blackberry field, surrounded by a deep forest — with several tall white pines against the horizon, a study of which you would never tire.

The swallows twitter over head, the locust, we know not where, is z-ing, and the huckleberry-bird is heard on the birches. The ground under the apple tree, where we lie, is strewn with small sun-baked apples, but we are not yet reminded of apples.

When I think of the London Times and the reviews here, the Revue des Deux Mondes, and of the kind of life which it is possible to live here, I perceive that this, the natural side, has not got into literature. Think of an essay on human life, through all which was heard the note of the huckleberry-bird still ringing, as here it rings ceaselessly. As if it were the muse invoked! The Revue des Deux Mondes does not embrace this view of things, nor imply it.

Which neottia have I found? In the front and lowest rank, the narrow-leaved polygonum, in the river, I see a flower or two beginning. The farmers have cut some meadow-hay here. In the broader meadows the river winds the most, where there are no iron-bound rocky hills to constrain it. Through all these Sudbury meadows it is a perfect meander, where no wind will serve the sailer long. It is a luxury to sit sailing or rowing here and look off to the hills, at the deep shadows of the trees in which the cattle stand. We land on the left, half a mile above Sherman's Bridge, ramble to the " sand " and poplars, where I picked up two arrow heads. The Spergula arvensis, corn-spurry, which has long been in blossom; the Raphanus Raphanistrum, wild radish; the Lycopus sinuatus, horehound. Here is a horse who keeps the hilltop for the breeze.

We push still further up the river into the great meadow, scaring the bitterns, the largest and the next in size. In many parts of the river the pickerel-weed is several rods wide, its blueness akin to the misty blue air which paints the hills. You thin it by rising in the boat; you thicken or deepen it by sitting low. (When we looked from the hills, there was a general sheeny light from the broad, level meadow, from the bent grass, watered, as it were, with darker streaks where a darker grass, the pipes, etc., bordered the (for the most part) concealed river.)

The lilies are shut. First on the edge of the bright river in the sun, in this great meadow, are the pads, then the pontederia or polygonum, then the bulrushes standing in dense squadrons, or pipes or meadow-grass, then the broad heavens, in which small downy clouds are constantly forming and dissolving. No fear of rain. The sky is a pretty clear blue, yet not such a skimmed-milk blue, methinks, as in winter; some cream left in the milk. I cannot believe that any of these dissolving cloudlets will be rainbow-tinged or mother-o'-pearled.

I observe that even in these meadows, where no willows nor button-bushes line the shore, there is still a pretty constant difference between the shores. The border of pontederia is rarely of equal depth on both sides at once, but it keeps that side in the meander where the sediment is deposited, the shortest course which will follow the shore, as I have dotted it,

crossing from this side to that as the river meanders; for on the longest side the river is active, not passive, wearing into the bank, and runs there more swiftly. This is the longest line of blue that nature paints with flowers in our fields, though the lupines may have been more densely blue within a small compass. Thus by a natural law a river, instead of flowing straight through its meadows, meanders from side to side and fertilizes this side or that, and adorns its banks with flowers. The river has its active and its passive side, its right and left breast.

Return.

There is a grand view of the river from the hill near Rice's. The outlines of this hill, as you ascend it, and its various swells are very grateful, closely grazed, with a few shade trees on its sides. You look far south over the gulf meadow, and north also. The meadow-grass seen from this side has no sheen on it. Round Hill is a mathematical curve. The petals of the rhexia have a beautiful clear purple with a violet tinge. The Brasenia peltata, or water-shield, which was budded July 1st, is now in blossom, — obscure reddish blossoms.

To what plant does that elliptical pad belong whose lobes lap more than half an inch, three inches long, and stem lenticular on a cross-section? Does the Kalmiana so vary? What kind of lettuce (or Nabalus?) is that, with triangular hastate leaves, reddish stem, and apparently whitish flowers, now budded ?

When near home, just before sundown, the sun still inconveniently warm, we were surprised to observe on the uppermost point of each pontederia leaf a clear drop of dew already formed, or flowing down the leaf, where all seemed still warmth and dryness, also as often hanging from the lobes below. It appeared a wonderful chemistry by which the broad leaf had collected this pearly drop on its uppermost extremity. The sun had no sooner sunk behind the willows and the button-bushes, than this process commenced.

And now we see a slight steam like smoke rising from amidst the pontederias. In half an hour the river and the meadows are white with fog, like a frosted cake. As you stand on the bank in the twilight, it suddenly moves up in sprayey clouds, moved by an unfelt wind, and invests you where you stand, its battalions of mists reaching even to the road.

But there is less in the morning.

Every poet has trembled on the verge of science.

Got green grapes to stew.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 18, 1852

This is a fit morning for any adventure. It is one of those everlasting mornings, with cobwebs on the grass, which are provided for long enterprises. See 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 ?"); May 21, 1854 ("Cobwebs on grass, the first I have noticed.. . .These little dewy nets or gauze, a faery's washing spread out in the night, are associated with the finest days of the year, days long enough and fair enough for the worthiest deeds.")

Every poet has trembled on the verge of science. See February 18, 1852(“It is impossible for the same person to see things from the poet's point of view and that of the man of science.”)

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

A perfect susurrus.

July 16.

The bass on Conantum is a very rich sight now, a solid mass of verdure and of flowers with its massed and rounded outline.  Its twigs are drooping, weighed down with pendulous flowers.  When you stand directly under it and look up, you see one mass of flowers, a flowery canopy.  Its conspicuous leaf-like bracts, too, have the effect of flowers. The tree resounds with the hum of bees, -- bumblebees and honey-bees; rose-bugs and butterflies, also, are here,-- a perfect susurrus, a sound unlike any other in nature, not like the wind, as that is like the sea.

This is a still thoughtful day, the air full of vapors which shade the earth, preparing rain for the morrow. The air is full of sweetness. The tree is full of poetry.

H. D.  Thoreau, Journal, July 16, 1852

The tree resounds with the hum of bees, . . . a perfect susurrus, a sound unlike any other in nature See July 11, 1852; ("The bass on Conantum is now well in blossom. It probably commenced about the 9th. Its flowers are conspicuous for a tree, and a rather agreeable odor fills the air. The tree resounds with the hum of bees on the flowers. On the whole it is a rich sight.”);  July 17, 1854 (" I was surprised by the loud humming of bees, etc., etc., in the bass tree; thought it was a wind rising at first. Methinks none of our trees attract so many.") July 17, 1856 ("Hear at distance the hum of bees from the bass with its drooping flowers at the Island, a few minutes only before sunset. It sounds like the rumbling of a distant train of cars.”); July 18, 1854 ("At a little distance it is like the sound of a waterfall or of the cars; close at hand like a factory full of looms. . . .You will know if you pass within a few rods of a bass tree at this season in any part of the town, by this loud murmur, like a water fall, which proceeds from it.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Basswood;

Berrying along the Walden road. A new spring

July 14.

How deep or perhaps slaty sky-blue are those blueberries that grow in the shade in dense drooping clusters under the fresh green of oak and hickory sprouts.

See to-day for the first time this season fleets of yellow butterflies in compact assembly in the road like a mackerel fleet with their small hulls and great sails now suddenly dispersing on our approach and filling the air with yellow in their zigzag flight, as when a fair wind calls schooners out of haven and disperses them over the broad ocean.

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or perchance a palace or temple on the earth, and at length the middle-aged man concludes to build a wood-shed with them.

Trees have commonly two growths in the year, a spring and a fall growth, the latter sometimes equalling the former, and you can see where the first was checked whether by cold or drouth, and wonder what there was in the summer to produce this check, this blight. 

So is it with man; most have a spring growth only, and never get over this first check to their youthful hopes; but plants of hardier constitution, or perchance planted in a more genial soil, speedily recover themselves, and, though they bear the scar or knot in remembrance of their disappointment, they push forward again and have a vigorous fall growth which is equivalent to a new spring. 

These two growths are now visible on the oak sprouts, the second already nearly equalling the first.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 14, 1852

See to-day for the first time this season fleets of yellow butterflies in compact assembly in the road. See July 19, 1856 ("Fleets of yellow butterflies on road. “);July 26, 1854 ("Today I see in various parts of the town the yellow butterflies in fleets in the road, on bare damp sand, twenty or more collected within a diameter of five or six inches in many places.")


Two growths are now visible on the oak sprouts, the second already nearly equalling the first. See  May 25, 1853 ("Many do most of their growing for the year in a week or two at this season. They shoot - they spring - and the rest of the Year they harden and mature,. . .”);August 19, 1853 ("In the case of a single tree there is the dark glossy green of the lower, older leaves, — the spring growth, — which hang down, fading on every side into the silvery hoariness of the younger and more downy leaves on the edges, — the fall growth, — whose under sides are seen, which stand up, and more perhaps at this hour."); May 26, 1854 ("Some young red oaks have already grown eighteen inches, i. e. within a fortnight, before their leaves have two-thirds expanded. They have accomplished more than half their year's growth, as if,. . . now burst forth like a stream which has been dammed. They are properly called shoots.”);  June 30, 1854 ("Young oak shoots have grown from one and a half to three or four feet");

To the Assabet. Still no rain.

July 12.

July 12,  2012

I observed this morning a row of several dozen swallows perched on the telegraph-wire by the bridge, and ever and anon a part of them would launch forth as with one consent, circle a few moments over the water or meadow, and return to the wire again.

 2 p. m. — To the Assabet. Still no rain.

 The clouds, cumuli, lie in high piles along the southern horizon, glowing, downy, or cream-colored, broken into irregular summits in the form of bears erect, or demigods, or rocking stones, infant Herculeses; and still we think that from their darker bases a thunder-shower may issue.

The mower, perchance, cuts some plants which I have never seen in flower. 

I hear the toads still at night, together with bullfrogs, but not so universally nor loud as formerly. I go to walk at twilight, — at the same time that toads go to their walks, and are seen hopping about the sidewalks or the pump.

Now, a quarter after nine, as I walk along the river-bank, long after starlight, and perhaps an hour or more after sunset, I see some of those high-pillared clouds of the day, in the southwest, still reflecting a downy light from the regions of day, they are so high. It is a pleasing reminiscence of the day in the midst of the deepening shadows of the night.

As I sit on the river-bank beyond the ash tree there is an aurora, a low arc of a circle, in the north. The twilight ends to-night apparently about a quarter before ten. There is no moon.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 12, 1852

I hear the toads still at night, together with bullfrogs, but not so universally nor loud as formerly. See July 12, 1859 (“In the evening, the moon being about full, I paddle up the river to see the moonlight and hear the bullfrogs. The toads and the pebbly dont dont are most common.”) See also July 8, 1855 (“I am surprised at the number of large light-colored toads everywhere hopping over these dry and sandy fields. ”); June 15, 1860 (“ For some time I have not heard toads by day, and the hylodes appear to have done."); July 16, 1856 (“See several bullfrogs lying fully out on pads at 5 p. m. They trump well these nights.”);  July 17, 1852 (“As I walked by the river last evening, I heard no toads.”); July 17, 1856 (“I see many young toads hopping about on that bared ground amid the thin weeds, not more than five eighths to three quarters of an inch long.”);  July 17, 1860 ("Clean and handsome bullfrogs. . .sit imperturbable out on the stones all around the pond.”)

July 12. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, July 12

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