Saturday, May 17, 2014

The wooded shore is all lit up with the tender bright green of birches.




May 17. 

The water is now tepid in the morning to the hands, as I slip my hands down the paddle. 

Hear the wood pewee, the warm weather sound. 

I sail up the stream, but the wind is hardly powerful enough to overcome the current, and sometimes I am almost at a standstill where the stream is most contracted and swiftest, and there I sit carelessly waiting for the struggle between wind and current to decide itself. 

It is a pleasing delay, to be referred to the elements, and meanwhile I survey the shrubs on shore.

The large green keys of the white maples are now conspicuous, looking like the wings of insects. 

Azalea nudiflora in woods begins to leaf now.

May 17, 2016

There is a surprising change since I last passed up the Assabet; the fields are now clothed with so dark and rich a green, and the wooded shore is all lit up with the tender, bright green of birches fluttering in the wind and shining in the light, and red maple keys are seen at a distance against the tender green of birches and other trees.

The birches burst out suddenly into leaf and make a great show. It is the first to clothe large tracts of deciduous woodlands with green, and perchance it marks an epoch in the season, the transition decidedly and generally from bare twigs to leaves. When the birches have put on their green sacks, then a new season has come. The light reflected from their tender yellowish green is like sunlight.

A rill empties in above the stone-heaps, and I see where it ran out of June-berry Meadow, and I am impressed as it were by the intelligence of the brook, which for ages in the wildest regions, before science is born, knows so well the level of the ground and through whatever woods or other obstacles finds its way. 

Who shall distinguish between the law by which a brook finds its river, the instinct by which a bird performs its migrations, and the knowledge by which a man steers his ship round the globe? 

The globe is the richer for the variety of its inhabitants.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 17, 1854

Hear the wood pewee, the warm weather sound.
See May 17, 1853 ("I hear the wood pewee, — pe-a-wai. The heat of yesterday has brought him on. "); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Arrival of the Eastern Wood Pewee

The large green keys of the white maples are now conspicuous, looking like the wings of insects. See . May 29, 1854 ("The white maple keys have begun to fall and float down the stream like the wings of great insects")See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Maple Keys

Azalea nudiflora in woods begins to leaf now.  See note to May 31, 1853 ("We went on down the brook, – Melvin and I and his dog, – and crossed the river in his boat, and he conducted me to where the Azalea nudiflora grew,")

A new season has come. The light reflected from their tender yellowish green is like sunlight. See May 17, 1852 ("The sun on the young foliage of birches, alders, etc., on the opposite side of the pond has an enchanting effect. The sunshine has a double effect . . . The birch leaves are so small that you see the landscape through the tree, and they are like silvery and green spangles in the sun . . . The woods putting forth new leaves; it is a memorable season. So hopeful! These young leaves have the beauty of flowers."); May 17, 1857 ("Brches are among the handsomest trees when in bloom. The bunches of numerous rich golden catkins, hanging straight down on all sides and trembling in the breeze, contrast agreeably with the graceful attitude of the tree, commonly more or less inclined, the leaves not being enough expanded to conceal them in the least. They should be seen against evergreens on a hillside, — something so light and airy, so graceful. What nymphs are they? ")

The wooded shore is
all lit up with the tender
bright green of birches 

fluttering in the wind and
shining in the light. 

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-540517

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