The beauty of the sunset is doubled by the reflection.

September 7.

September 7, 2014

Paddle to Baker Farm just after sundown, by full moon. 

The wind has gone down, and it is a still, warm night, and no mist. It is just after sundown. The moon not yet risen, one star, Jupiter, visible, and many bats over and about our heads, and small skaters creating a myriad dimples on the evening waters. 

There are many clouds about and a beautiful sunset sky, a yellowish golden sky, looking up the river. All this is reflected in the water. The beauty of the sunset is doubled by the reflection. Being on the water we have double the amount of lit and dun-colored sky above and beneath. 

The reflected sky is more dun and richer than the real one. We seem withal to be floating directly into it. This the first autumnal sunset.

In harmony with this fair evening we paddle over the liquid and almost invisible surface, floating directly toward those clouds in the sunset sky. We advance without  sound, by gentle influences, as the twilight gradually fades away. 

The height of the railroad bridge is doubled by the reflection, and the piers appear to rise from the lowest part of the reflection to the rail above, about fifty feet. We float directly under it, between the piers, as if in mid-air, not being able to distinguish the surface of the water, and look down more than twenty feet to the reflected flooring through whose intervals we see the starlit sky. The ghostly piers stretch downward on all sides, and only the angle made by their meeting the real ones betrays the water surface.

The reflected shadow of the Hill is black as night, and we seem to be paddling directly into it a rod or two before us, but we never reach it at all. The trees and hills are distinctly black between us and the moon, and the water black or gleaming accordingly. 

It is dry and warm. Above the Cliffs we hear one or two owls at a distance.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 7, 1854


Paddle to Baker Farm just after sundown, by full moon. See May 8, 1857 ("The full moon rises, and I paddle by its light."); July 12, 1859 ("In the evening, the moon being about full, I paddle up the river to see the moonlight and hear the bullfrogs.")

The reflected shadow of the Hill is black as night, and we seem to be paddling directly into it a rod or two before us, but we never reach it at all .See June 16, 1852 ("Owing to the reflections of the distant woods and hills, you seem to be paddling into a vast hollow country, doubly novel and interesting.") See also November 2, 1857("I think that most men, as farmers, hunters, fishers, etc., walk along a river's bank, or paddle along its stream, without seeing the reflections.")

Paddling without sound

toward clouds in the sunset sky

as the twilight fades.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  The beauty of the sunset

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-540907