The white maple keys fall and float down the stream like wings of great insects.

May 29

P. M. — To Cedar Swamp by Assabet. 

The white maple keys have begun to fall and float down the stream like the wings of great insects. 

Dandelions and mouse-ear down have been blowing for some time and are seen on water. These are interesting as methinks the first of the class of downy seeds which are more common in the fall. 

There are myriads of shad-flies fluttering over the dark and still water under the hill, one every yard or two, continually descending, almost falling, to the surface of the water as if to drink and then rising again, again to fall upon it, and so on. I see the same one fall and rise five or six feet thus four or five times; and now comes along a large dragon-fly and snatches one. 

Other smaller insects, light-colored, are fluttering low close to the water, and in some places are swarms of small black moths.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 29, 1854

Today's entry includes an extended comment on the fugitive slave trial, in Boston, of Anthony Burns. This material and more from June 9, 1854, toned down, would be worked into HDT's "Slavery in Massachusetts." ("These days it is left to one Mr. Loring to say whether a citizen of Massachusetts is a slave or not. ... Why, the United States Government never performed an act of justice in its life!...Rather than thus consent to establish hell upon earth, — to be a party to this establishment, — I would touch a match to blow up earth and hell together." ) ~ Zphx.

See Thoreau Transforms His Journal into “Slavery in Massachusetts”


The white maple keys have begun to fall and float down the stream like the wings of great insects. See May 21, 1853 ("The white maple keys are nearly two inches long by a half-inch wide, in pairs, with waved inner edges like green moths ready to bear off their seeds.");  May 30, 1853 ("The white maple keys falling and covering the river.");  June 6, 1855 ("The white maple keys are about half fallen.”); June 9, 1858 ("White maple keys are abundantly floating.”). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Maple Keys

Dandelions and mouse-ear down have been blowing for some time and are seen on water. See May 29, 1853 ("Fields are whitened with mouse-ear gone to seed — a mass of white fuzz blowing off one side — and also with dandelion globes of seeds.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Mouse-ear

There are myriads of shad-flies fluttering over the dark and still water. See .  May 4, 1856 ("Shad-flies on the water, schooner-like");  June 2, 1854 ("When we returned to our boat at 7 p. m., I noticed first, to my surprise, that the river was all alive with leaping fish . . . Looking up I found that the whole atmosphere over the river was full of shad-flies. It was a great flight of ephemera.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Insect Hatches in Spring (millers, perla, shad-flies or ephemera)

May 29. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 29

The white maple keys

fall and float down the stream like

wings of great insects.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Insects on the water

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-540529