September 24, 2014
6 A. M. — To Hill. Low fog-like veil on meadows. On the large sassafras trees on the hill I see many of the handsome red club-shaped pedicels left, with their empty cups which have held fruit; and I see one or two elliptical but still green berries. Apparently the rest have ripened and fallen or been gathered by birds already, unless they fell prematurely.
The Viburnum Lentago berries now turn blue-black in pocket, as the nudum did, which last are now all gone, while the Lentago is now just in season.
P. M. —- By boat to Grape Cliff.
These are the stages in the river fall: first, the two varieties of yellow lily pads begin to decay and blacken (long ago); second, the first fall rains come after dog days and raise and cool the river, and winds wash the decaying sparganium, etc., etc., to the shores and clear the channel more or less; third, when the first harder frosts come (as this year the 21st and 22d inst), the button-bushes, which before had attained only a dull mixed yellow, are suddenly bitten, wither, and turn brown, all but the protected parts.
The first fall is so gradual as not to make much impression, but the last suddenly and conspicuously gives a fall aspect to the scenery of the river. The button-bushes thus withered suddenly paint with a rich brown the river’s brim. There, where the land appears to lap over the water by a mere edging, these thinner portions are first done brown. I float over the still liquid middle. I have not seen any such conspicuous effect of frost as this sudden withering of the button-bushes.
The water begins to be clear of weeds, and the fishes are exposed. It is now too cold to bathe with comfort. I scare up a duck which circles round four times high in the air a diameter of a. hundred rods, and finally alights with a long, slanting flight near where it rose. The muskrats make haste now to rear their cabins and conceal themselves. I see still what I, take to be small flocks of grackles feeding beneath the covert of the button-bushes and flitting from bush to bush. They seldom expose them-selves long.
See a warbler which inquisitively approaches me creeper-wise along some dead brush twigs. It may be the pine-creeping warbler, though I see no white bars on wings. I should say all yellow olivaceous above; clear lemon-yellow throat and breast; narrow white ring around eye; black bill, straight; clay-colored legs; edge of wings white.
What name of a natural object is most poetic? That which he has given for convenience, whose life is most nearly related to it, who has known it longest and best.
The perception of truth, as of the duration of time, etc., produces a pleasurable sensation.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 24, 1854
The perception of truth . . . produces a pleasurable sensation.See September 1851 (“There are innumerable avenues to a perception of the truth. All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy; we reason from our hands to our head.”); 2/27/1851 ("a novel and grand surprise, or a sudden revelation of the insufficiency of all that we had called knowledge before; an indefinite sense of the grandeur and glory of the universe.”); April 19 1852 ("How sweet is the perception of a new natural fact! suggesting what worlds remain to be unveiled. August 8, 1852 (" No man ever makes a discovery, even an observation of the least importance, but he is advertised of the fact by a joy that surprises him.”)
The Viburnum Lentago berries now turn blue-black in pocket, as the nudum did, which last are now all gone, while the Lentago is now just in season.
P. M. —- By boat to Grape Cliff.
These are the stages in the river fall: first, the two varieties of yellow lily pads begin to decay and blacken (long ago); second, the first fall rains come after dog days and raise and cool the river, and winds wash the decaying sparganium, etc., etc., to the shores and clear the channel more or less; third, when the first harder frosts come (as this year the 21st and 22d inst), the button-bushes, which before had attained only a dull mixed yellow, are suddenly bitten, wither, and turn brown, all but the protected parts.
The first fall is so gradual as not to make much impression, but the last suddenly and conspicuously gives a fall aspect to the scenery of the river. The button-bushes thus withered suddenly paint with a rich brown the river’s brim. There, where the land appears to lap over the water by a mere edging, these thinner portions are first done brown. I float over the still liquid middle. I have not seen any such conspicuous effect of frost as this sudden withering of the button-bushes.
The water begins to be clear of weeds, and the fishes are exposed. It is now too cold to bathe with comfort. I scare up a duck which circles round four times high in the air a diameter of a. hundred rods, and finally alights with a long, slanting flight near where it rose. The muskrats make haste now to rear their cabins and conceal themselves. I see still what I, take to be small flocks of grackles feeding beneath the covert of the button-bushes and flitting from bush to bush. They seldom expose them-selves long.
See a warbler which inquisitively approaches me creeper-wise along some dead brush twigs. It may be the pine-creeping warbler, though I see no white bars on wings. I should say all yellow olivaceous above; clear lemon-yellow throat and breast; narrow white ring around eye; black bill, straight; clay-colored legs; edge of wings white.
What name of a natural object is most poetic? That which he has given for convenience, whose life is most nearly related to it, who has known it longest and best.
The perception of truth, as of the duration of time, etc., produces a pleasurable sensation.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 24, 1854
The perception of truth . . . produces a pleasurable sensation.See September 1851 (“There are innumerable avenues to a perception of the truth. All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy; we reason from our hands to our head.”); 2/27/1851 ("a novel and grand surprise, or a sudden revelation of the insufficiency of all that we had called knowledge before; an indefinite sense of the grandeur and glory of the universe.”); April 19 1852 ("How sweet is the perception of a new natural fact! suggesting what worlds remain to be unveiled. August 8, 1852 (" No man ever makes a discovery, even an observation of the least importance, but he is advertised of the fact by a joy that surprises him.”)
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