The evening of the year

August 31.

The evening of the year is colored like the sunset.

I land at Lee's Cliff
in Fair Haven Pond
and sit on the Cliff.

Late in the afternoon. 

The wind is gone down

the water is smooth 

a serene evening approaches

the clouds disperse.

The pond so smooth and 

full of reflections 

after a dark and breezy day 

is unexpectedly beautiful. 

There is a little boat on it

schooner-rigged, with three sails, 

a perfect little vessel and 

perfectly reflected now in the water. 

The boatman is airing 

his sails after the storm. 

There is hardly a puff of air.

Being in the reflection 

of the opposite woods

the water on which the little boat rests 

is absolutely invisible and 

it makes an impression 

of buoyancy and lightness.

I float slowly down from Fair Haven 

till I have passed the bridge. 

The sun comes out just before setting

with a brilliant, warm light

and there is the slightest undulation 

discernible on the water. 

The reflections are perfect. 

A bright, fresh green 

on fields and trees now after the rain, 

spring-like with the sense of summer past. 

The reflections are the more perfect 

for the blackness of the water. 

This is the most glorious part of this day, 

the serenest, warmest, brightest part, 

and the most suggestive. 

Evening is fairer than morning.  

Morning is full of promise and vigor. 

Evening is pensive. 

The serenity is far more remarkable 

to those who are on the water.

I let the boat float 

That part of the sky 

just above the horizon

 

seen reflected 

is as light a blue as the actual

but it goes on deepening 

as your eye draws nearer to the boat

until it is lost in the 

blackness of the water. 

I observe on the willows 

on the east shore

the shadow of my boat

and self and oars

upside down.

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

I land at Lee's Cliff, in Fair Haven Pond, and sit on the Cliff. Late in the afternoon . . . See  February 14, 1851 ("One afternoon in the fall, November 21st, I saw Fair Haven Pond with its island and meadow; between the island and the shore, a strip of perfectly smooth water in the lee of the island; and two hawks sailing over it; and something more I saw which cannot easily be described . . ."); April 14, 1852 ("Fair Haven Pond -- the pond, the meadow beyond the button-bush and willow curve, the island, and the meadow between the island and mainland with its own defining lines -- are all parted off like the parts of a mirror. A fish hawk is calmly sailing over all . . . "); November 1, 1852 ("As I approached their edge, I saw the woods beneath, Fair Haven Pond, and the hills across the river, — which, owing to the mist, was as far as I could see, and seemed much further in consequence. I saw these between the converging boughs of two white pines a rod or two from me on the edge of the rock; and I thought that there was no frame to a landscape equal to this, — to see, between two near pine boughs, whose lichens are distinct, a distant forest and lake, the one frame, the other picture.")

Evening is pensive. The serenity is far more remarkable to those who are on the water. See August 31, 1851 ("I saw the seal of evening on the river.")

Upside down shadow: see also October 18, 1853("Returning late, we see a double shadow of ourselves and boat, one, the true, quite black, the other directly above it and very faint, on the willows and high bank."); August 16, 1854 ("At the steam mill sand-bank is the distinct shadow of our shadows, — first on the water, then the double one on the bank bottom to bottom, one being upside down, — three in all, — one on water, two on land or bushes.");  November 2, 1854 ("Sailing past the bank above the railroad, just before a clear sundown, close to the shore on the east side I see a second fainter shadow of the boat, sail, myself, and paddle, etc., directly above and upon the first on the bank. What makes the second? At length I discovered that it was the reflected sun which cast a higher shadow like the true one. As I moved to the west side, the upper shadow rose, grew larger and less perceptible; and at last when I was so near the west shore that I could not see the reflected sun, it disappeared; but then there appeared one upside down in its place!") and Walden, The Pond in Winter ("Sometimes, also, when the ice was covered with shallow puddles, I saw a double shadow of myself, one standing on the head of the other, one on the ice, the other on the trees or hillside.”)


The evening of the year is colored like the sunset. See August, 19, 1853 (" The day is an epitome of the year.”); November 14, 1853 (“October [w]ith respect to its colors and its season, it is the sunset month of the year, when the earth is painted like the sunset sky.”)