Already the season of small fruits has arrived.

June 17.

June 17, 2019

A cold fog. 

These mornings those who walk in grass are thoroughly wetted above mid-leg. All the earth is dripping wet. I am surprised to feel how warm the water is, by contrast with the cold, foggy air.

From the Hill I am reminded of more youthful mornings, seeing the dark forms of the trees eastward in the low grounds, partly within and against the shining white fog, the sun just risen over it. The mist fast rolling away eastward from them, their tops at last streaking the mist and dividing it into vales. All beyond them a submerged and unknown country, as if they grew on the sea shore. 

See the sun reflected up from the Assabet to the hill top, through the dispersing fog, giving to the water a peculiarly rippled, pale-golden hue.

Another remarkably hazy day; our view is confined, the horizon near, no mountains; as you look off only four or five miles, you see a succession of dark wooded ridges and vales filled with mist. It is dry, hazy June weather. 

We are more of the earth, farther from heaven, these days.  We are getting deeper into the mists of earth.

The season of hope and promise is past; already the season of small fruits has arrived. We are a little saddened, because we begin to see the interval between our hopes and their fulfillment. The prospect of the heavens is taken away, and we are presented only with a few small berries. 

Before sundown I reach Fair Haven Hill and gather strawberries. I find beds of large and lusty strawberry plants in sprout-lands, but they appear to run to leaves and bear very little fruit, having spent themselves in leaves by the time the dry weather arrives. It is those still earlier and more stinted plants which grow on dry uplands that bear the early fruit, formed before the droughts. But the meadows produce both leaves and fruit.

The sun goes down red again, like a high-colored flower of summer. As the white and yellow flowers of spring are giving place to the rose, and will soon to the red lily, etc., so the yellow sun of spring has become a red sun of June drought, round and red like a midsummer flower, production of torrid heats.

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

Another remarkably hazy day; our view is confined, the horizon near, no mountains.  See June 21, 1856 (”Very hot day, as was yesterday, -— 98° at 2 P. M., 99° at 3, and 128° in sun”); June 25, 1858 (“Hotter than yesterday and, like it, muggy or close. So hazy can see no mountains.");  Compare June 23, 1854 (“.The air is beautifully clear  . . It is a great relief to look into the horizon. There is more room under the heavens”); See Also June 23, 1852 (“ It is an agreeably cool and clear and breezy day, when all things appear as if washed bright and shine . . . You can see far into the horizon.”); June 26, 1853 (" Summer returns without its haze. We see infinitely further into the horizon on every side, and the boundaries of the world are enlarged.")

The season of hope and promise is past; already the season of small fruits has arrived. Compare
August 9, 1853 ("This is the season of small fruits. I trust, too, that I am maturing some small fruit as palatable in these months, which will communicate my flavor to my kind.");August 18, 1853 (“The season of flowers or of promise may be said to be over, and now is the season of fruits; but where is our fruit ? The night of the year is approaching. What have we done with our talent?”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: Strawberries

A red sun of June drought, round and red like a midsummer flower, production of torrid heats.See
May 5, 1859 ("The sun sets red (first time), followed by a very hot and hazy day ");June 5, 1854 ("The sun goes down red and shorn of his beams, a sign of hot weather,"); June 18, 1854 ("Another round red sun of dry and dusty weather to-night, – a red or red-purple helianthus.")

June 17. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 17

Note: Today there is more on Anthony Burns:

Some men act as if they believed that they could safely slide down-hill a little way, — or a good way, — and would surely come to a place, by and by, whence they could slide up again. This is expediency, or choosing that course which offers the fewest obstacles. But there is no such thing as accomplishing a moral reform by the use of expediency or policy. There is no such thing as sliding up-hill. In morals the only sliders are backsliders.

See May 29, 1854 , June 9, 1854, June 16, 1854 and ""Slavery in Massachusetts.

As white and yellow

flowers give place to the rose

and soon red lily

yellow sun of spring

becomes red sun of June heat –

midsummer flower.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Season of Small Fruits

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-540617