Midsummer on the River; a sultry, languid debauched look.

July 18.

July 18.

A hot midsummer day with a sultry mistiness in the air and shadows on land and water beginning to have a peculiar distinctness and solidity. The river, smooth and still, with a deepened shade of the elms on it, like midnight suddenly revealed, its bed-curtains shoved aside, has a sultry languid look.

The atmosphere now imparts a bluish or glaucous tinge to the distant trees. A certain debauched look. This a crisis in the season. 

After this the foliage of some trees is almost black at a distance. 

I do not know why the water should be so remarkably clear and the sun shine through to the bottom of the river, making it so plain. Methinks the air is not clearer nor the sun brighter, yet the bottom is unusually distinct and obvious in the sun. There seems to be no concealment for the fishes. On all sides, as I float along, the recesses of the water and the bottom are unusually revealed, and I see the fishes and weeds and shells. I look down into the sunny water. 

We have very few bass trees in Concord, but walk near them at this season and they will be betrayed, though several rods off, by the wonderful susurrus of the bees, etc., which their flowers attract. It is worth going a long way to hear. I am warned that I am passing one in two instances on the river, —only two I pass, — by this remarkable sound. At a little distance it is like the sound of a waterfall or of the cars; close at hand like a factory full of looms. They are chiefly humblebees, and the great globose tree is all alive with them. I hear the murmur distinctly fifteen rods off. You will know if you pass within a few rods of a bass tree at this season in any part of the town, by this loud murmur, like a water fall, which proceeds from it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 18, 1854

A certain debauched look: See June 16, 1852 ("The earth looks like a debauchee after the sultry night") and July 24, 1851 ("Nature is like a hen panting with open mouth, in the grass, as the morning after a debauch.")

Bass tree susurrus:  See July 16, 1852 ("The air is full of sweetness. The tree is full of poetry."); July 17, 1856 ("Hear at distance the hum of bees from the bass with its drooping flowers at the Island,. . . It sounds like the rumbling of a distant train of cars.")

I look down into the sunny water  . . . See July 30, 1856 ("The water is suddenly clear.”); July 28, 1859 ("The season has now arrived when I begin to see further into the water . . “);. July 27, 1860 ("The water has begun to be clear and sunny, revealing the fishes and countless minnows of all sizes and colors”). August 8, 1859 ("The river, now that it is so clear and sunny, is better than any aquarium. ")

July 18. See A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 18

A Book of 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 © 2009-2021