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| Lambkill (Kalmia augustifolia) |
I hear the muttering of thunder and see a dark cloud in the west-southwest horizon; am uncertain how far up-stream I shall get. An opposite cloud rises fast in the east-northeast, and now the lightning crinkles and I hear the heavy thunder.
My boat passes over beds of potamogetons, pressing their spikes under water. I paddle slowly by farmers in small parties, busily hoeing corn and potatoes. The boy rides the horse dragging the cultivator. They have a jug of sweetened water in the grass at the end of the row.
How beautiful the solid cylinders of the lamb-kill now just before sunset, — small ten-sided, rosy-crimson basins, about two inches above the recurved, drooping dry capsules of last year, — and sometimes those of the year before are two inches lower. The first rose-bug on one of these flowers.
Stop to pick strawberries on Fair Haven.
How thickly stewn our soil is with arrowheads. I never see the surface broken in sandy places but i think of them. I find them on all sides, not only in corn and grain and potato and bean fields, but in pastures and woods, by woodchucks' holes and pigeon beds and, as to-night, in a pasture where a cow has pawed the ground.
When I have stayed out thus late many miles from home, and have heard a cricket beginning to chirp louder near me in the grass I have felt that I was not far from home after all, -- began to be weaned from my village home.
I float homeward over water almost perfectly smooth, my sail so idle that I count ten devil's-needles resting along it at once.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 13, 1854
When I have stayed out thus late many miles from home . . . I have felt that I was not far from home after all. See April 16, 1855 ('We are glad that we stayed out so late and feel no need to go home now in a hurry");May 23, 1853 ("When the chaste and pensive eve draws on...a certain lateness ... releases me from the obligation to return in any particular season. I have passed the Rubicon of staying out. I have said to myself, that way is not homeward; I will wander further from what I have called my home — to the home which is forever inviting me. In such an hour the freedom of the woods is offered me, . . .") ; June 14, 1853 ("home is farther away than ever. Here is home; the beauty of the world impresses you") Also June 13, 1851 (" I listen to the ancient, familiar, immoral, dear cricket sound under all others, and as these cease I become aware of the general earth-song."); January 27, 1858 ("You can not go home yet; you stay and sit in the rain.")
zphx
And the rain stops and Jane and i and the dogs head out. They haven’t been for a walk in a few days. and dogs are full of energy. Everything is green. The spring green is gone. Wet leaves are green and trunks are dark. The sun momentaily dapples the whole woods. Wet at the junction and beyond .
An easy walk to the view. Blue low clouds moving over the lake hide the Adirondacks. We sit a long time. Jane digs around the fire pit. Mist sometimes squeezes betweein the trees and floats in the clearing in front of us.
It is 6 or 7.
The rain stops
and everything is green.
Wet leaves, dark trunks.
The sun momentarily dapples the whole woods.
At the view low clouds over the lake hide the Adirondacks.
We sit a long time.
Mist squeezes between
the trees and floats
into the clearing
in front of us
We take the Pritchard trail up then cut off towards the logging cable. There we flush a family of grouse. The little ones fly only a short distance then sit still -- one on a hemlock in clear view. The hemlock now in their prime with new green growth.
Following a deer trail we reach the mountain trail go down to the pond. It is full. Now dusk, the pond reflects what light there is.
We cut through the ravine at the headwater of the stream back to the junction then down on the edge of the cliff looking for the lady slipper. It is there, blossom gone by.
Then down along the cliff under the lower view past a Thrush nest on the cliff face and ultimatley down to the boulder trail. Between the boulders and before the rock fort we have a close encounter with two barred owls. Noisy and curious. Good view of them in trees and in silent flight.
A satisfying walk. The birds are more quiet but ovenbird thrushes and black throated green still prominent. At the end, a pewee. Wet green dark woods and mushrooms.
Hemlock new green growth
wet green dark woods and mushrooms
grouse and two barred owls.
June 13, 2014zphx
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