April 20.
yesterday
A willow coming out fairly, with honey-bees humming on it, in a warm nook. And now different kinds of bees and flies about them. What a sunny sight and summer sound!
A striped snake on a warm, sunny bank.
The painted tortoises are fairly out sunning to-day.
A very pleasant and warm afternoon; the earth seems to be waking up.
Frogs croak in the clear pools on the hillside where rocks have been taken out, and there is frog-spawn there, and little tadpoles are very lively in the sunny water.
I find some advantage in describing the experience of a day on the day following. At this distance it is more ideal, like the landscape seen with the head inverted, or reflections in water.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal April 20, 1854
A willow coming out fairly, with honey-bees humming on it, in a warm nook. See April 17, 1852 ("We hear but little music in the world which charms us more than this sound produced by the vibration of an insect's wing and in some still and sunny nook in spring"); April 17, 1855 ("The second sallow catkin (or any willow) I have seen in blossom —there are three or four catkins on the twig partly open —I am about to clutch, but find already a bee curved close on each half-opened catkin, intoxicated with its early sweet."); April 18, 1852 (" The most interesting fact, perhaps, at present is these few tender yellow blossoms, these half-expanded sterile aments of the willow, seen through the rain and cold, — signs of the advancing year, pledges of the sun's return.")
I find some advantage in describing the experience of a day on the day following. At this distance it is more ideal, like the landscape seen with the head inverted, or reflections in water.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal April 20, 1854
Quickly and surely
the bee finds the first flower
before the poet.
See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Bees
The painted tortoises are fairly out sunning to-day. See March 29, 1858 ("They seem to come out into the sun about the time the phoebe is heard over the water"); May 1, 1859 ("All up and down our river meadows their backs are shining in the sun to-day. It is a turtle day. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,the Painted Turtle (Emys picta)
Describing the experience of the day. See July 23, 1851 ("Put an interval between the impression and the expression, - wait till the seed germinates naturally.”); May 5, 1852 ("I succeed best when I recur to my experience not too late, but within a day or two; when there is some distance, but enough of freshness."); January 10, 1854 ("What you can recall of a walk on the second day will differ from what you remember on the first day, ... as any view changes to one who is journeying amid mountains when he has increased the distance."); March 27, 1857 ("The men and things of to-day are wont to lie fairer and truer in to-morrow’s memory."); March 28, 1857 ("Often I can give the truest and most interesting account of any adventure I have had after years have elapsed, for then I am not confused, only the most significant facts surviving in my memory. Indeed, all that continues to interest me after such a lapse of time is sure to be pertinent, and I may safely record all that I remember.")
April 20. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, April 20
Yesterday is like
a reflection in water.
Ideal. Inverted.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Yesterday is like a refletion
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 © 2009-2024
tinyurl.com/hdt-540420
We reach the lower view just before sunset. The woods have that late afternoon glow. At the view the sun is down. A clearblue sky and saffron horizon. The pond bright. Later walking home the long way the stars are out, shining through the trees like a winters night. the big dipper upside down.
On the long way home
stars shine like a winter night
dipper upside down.
April 20, 2014
Zphx
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