To be serene and successful we must be at one with the universe.

May 28

Sunday. 

May 28, 2014

The F. hyemalis, fox-colored sparrow, rusty grackles, tree sparrows, have all gone by; also the purple finch. The snipe has ceased (?) to boom. I have not heard the phoebe of late, and methinks the bluebird and the robin are not heard so often (the former certainly not ). Those tumultuous morning concerts of sparrows, tree and song, hyemalis, and grackles, like leaves on the trees, are past, and the woodland quire will rather be diminished than increased henceforth. 

But, on the other hand, toads and frogs and insects, especially at night, all through June, betray by the sounds they make their sensitiveness to the increasing temperature, and theirs especially is the music which ushers in the summer. Each warmer night, like this, the toads and frogs sing with increased energy, and already fill the air with sound, though the bullfrogs have not yet begun to trump in earnest. To this add the hum and creak of insects. These still herald or expect the summer. The birds do not foretell that. 

12 M.  By boat to Lee's Cliff.  

The River is still so high that I am obliged to lower my mast at the bridges. Even this spring the arches of the stone bridge were completely concealed by the flood, and yet at midsummer I can sail under them without lowering my mast. 

At the old bridge at the hill, the water being quite smooth, I see a water-bug cross straight from the south to the north side, about six rods, furrowing the water in a waving line, there being no other insects near him on the surface. It takes but about a minute. 

Red clover at Clamshell, a day or two. 

The huckleberries, excepting the late, are now generally in blossom, their rich clear red contrasting with the light-green leaves; frequented by honey-bees, full of promise for the summer. One of the great crops of the year. These are the blossoms of the Vacciniece, or Whortleberry Family, which affords so large a proportion of our berries. 

The crop of oranges, lemons, nuts, and raisins, and figs, quinces, etc., etc., not to mention tobacco and the like, is of no importance to us compared with these. 

The berry-promising flower of the Vacciniece. This crop grows wild all over the country, — wholesome, bountiful, and free, — a real ambrosia — and yet men — the foolish demons that they are — devote themselves to culture of tobacco, inventing slavery and a thousand other curses as the means, — with infinite pains and inhumanity go raise tobacco all their lives. Tobacco is the staple instead of huckleberries.

The huckleberries

now generally in blossom

so full of promise.

Frequented by bees

their rich clear red contrasting

with the light-green leaves.

Wholesome bountiful

and free, this crop grows wild all

over the country.

Finding the low blackberry nearly open, I looked long and at last, where the vine ran over a rock on the south hillside, the reflected heat had caused it [to] open fully its large white blossoms. In such places, apparently yesterday. The high blackberry in similar places, at least to-day. 

At these rocks I hear a sharp peep, methinks of a peetweet dashing away. Four pale-green (?) eggs, finely sprinkled with brown, in a brown thrasher's nest, on the ground (!!) under a barberry bush. 

The night-warbler, after his strain, drops down almost perpendicularly into a tree-top and is lost. 

The crickets, though it is everywhere an oppressively warm day (yesterday I had a fire !! ) and I am compelled to take off my thinnish coat, are heard, particularly amid the rocks at Lee's Cliff. They must love warmth. As if it were already autumn there. 

See that common snake Coluber eximius of De Kay, — checkered adder, etc., etc., — forty-one inches long. A rather light brown above, with large dark-brown, irregularly quadrangular blotches, margined with black, and similar small ones, on the sides; abdomen light salmon-white, — whitest toward the head, — checkered with quadrangular blotches; very light bluish-slate in some lights and dark-slate or black in others. 

I should think from Storer's description that his specimen had lost its proper colors in spirits. He describes not the colors of a living snake, but those which alcohol might impart to it. It is as if you were to describe the white man as very red in the face, having seen a drunkard only.

It would be worth the while to ask ourselves weekly, 

Is our life innocent enough? Do we live inhumanely, toward man or beast, in thought or act?

To be serene and successful we must be at one with the universe. 

The least conscious and needless injury inflicted on any creature is to its extent a suicide. What peace — or life — can a murderer have?The inhumanity of science concerns me, as when I am tempted to kill a rare snake that I may ascertain its species. I feel that this is not the means of acquiring true knowledge.

As I sail down toward the Clamshell Hill about an hour before sunset, the water is smoothed like glass, though the breeze is as strong as before. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 28, 1854

The woodland quire will rather be diminished than increased henceforth. See April 25, 1854 ("I hear the woods filled with the hum of insects, as if my hearing were affected; and thus the summer's quire begins. The silent spaces have begun to be filled with notes of birds and insects and the peep and croak and snore of frogs,"); June 25, 1854 ("Through June the song of the birds is gradually growing fainter."); August 2, 1854 ("he woodland quire has steadily diminished in volume."): August 20, 1854 ("When the red-eye ceases generally, then I think is a crisis, — the woodland quire is dissolved. That, if I remember, was about a fortnight ago. The concert is over.")

Even this spring the arches of the stone bridge were completely concealed by the flood, and yet at midsummer I can sail under them without lowering my mast. See May 8, 1854 (“The water has fallen a foot or more, but I cannot get under the stone bridge, so haul over the road.”); May 10, 1854 ("I drag and push my boat over the road at Deacon Farrar's brook, carrying a roller with me. . . . I make haste back with a fair wind and umbrella for sail.”); April 17, 1856 (“I make haste to take down my sail at the bridges, but at the stone arches forgot my umbrella, which was un avoidably crushed in part.”); April 22, 1857 (“We have to roll our boat over the road at the stone bridge”)

The huckleberries . . . now generally in blossom, their rich clear red contrasting with the light-green leaves, . . . full of promise for the summer. . . .See May 27, 1855 ("How interesting the huckleberries now generally in blossom . . . — countless wholesome red bells, beneath the fresh yellow green foliage!”)

Blackberries. See  June 16, 1858 ("How agreeable and wholesome the fragrance of the low blackberry blossom, reminding me of all the rosaceous fruit bearing plants, so near and dear to our humanity.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Blackberries

The night-warbler, after his strain, drops down almost perpendicularly into a tree-top and is lost. See May 29,1854 (" Saw what I thought my night warbler sparrow-like with chestnut stripes on breast white or whitish below and about eyes and perhaps chestnut head."); May 19, 1858 (“Heard the night-warbler begin his strain just like an oven-bird! I have noticed that when it drops down into the woods it darts suddenly one side to a perch when low. ”According to Emerson the night warbler is "a bird he had never identified, had been in search of twelve years, which always, when he saw it, was in the act of diving down into a tree or bush.” See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Oven-bird

The inhumanity of science concerns me, as when I am tempted to kill a rare snake that I may ascertain its species.  See April 26, 1857 ("I have the same objection to killing a snake that I have to the killing of any other animal, yet the most humane man that I know never omits to kill one.”) Cf. Wordsworth, The Tables Turned ("We murder to dissect. Enough of Science and of Art . . . Come forth, and bring with you a heart that watches and receives.")

To be serene and successful we must be at one with the universe. See  February 20, 1857 ("I see that one could not be completely described without describing the other. I am that rock by the pond-side.?) May 12, 1857 (“He is a brother poet, this small gray bird (or bard), whose muse inspires mine. . . .One with the rocks and with us.”)
 

May 28. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 28

To be serene and

successful we must be one

with the universe.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, We must be one with the universe

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2024

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