That fine, dry, wiry wild grass in hollows in woods and sprout-lands

June 11

What if we feel a yearning to which no breast answers? I walk alone. My heart is full. Feelings impede the current of my thoughts. I knock on the earth but no friend appears, and perhaps none is dreaming of me. 

Now (September 16, ’55), after four or five months of invalidity and worthlessness, I begin to feel some stirrings of life in me. 

Is not that carex, Pennsylvanica-like, with a long spike (one inch long by one half-inch wide), C. bullata? 

What a difference between one red-wing blackbird’s egg and another’s! C. finds one long as a robin’s, but narrow, with large black spots on larger end and on side, on or between the bushes by riverside; another much shorter, with a large black spot on the side. Both pale-blue ground. 

The early willows at the bridge are apparently either S. discolor or eriocephala, or both. 

I have noticed the green oak-balls some days. 

Now observe the dark evergreen of June. 

The target leaf is eaten above. 

In order to get the deserted tanager’s nest at the top [of] a pitch pine which was too weak to climb, we carried a rope in our pockets and took three rails a quarter of a mile into the woods, and there rigged a derrick, by which I climbed to a level with the nest, and I could see if there were eggs in it. I have the nest. Tied the three tops together and spread the bottoms. 

Carex cephalophora (?) on Heywood’s Peak. 

That fine, dry, wiry wild grass in hollows in woods and sprout-lands, never mown, is apparently the C. Pennsylvanica, or early sedge. 

There are young bluebirds.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 11, 1855

No friend appears, and perhaps none is dreaming of me. See March 28, 1856 ("Farewell, my friends, my path inclines to this side the mountain, yours to that."): February 8, 1857 ("I know that in love there is no mistake, and that every estrangement is well founded."); November 3, 1858 ("How long we will follow an illusion! On meeting that one whom I call my friend, I find that I had imagined something that was not there.")

What a difference between one red-wing blackbird’s egg and another’s! See May 20, 1853 ("Probably a red-wing blackbird's nest, of grass, hung between two button-bushes; whitish eggs with irregular black marks"); May 25, 1855 ("Red-wing’s nest with four eggs — white, very faintly tinged with (perhaps) green and curiously and neatly marked with brown-black spots and lines on the large end.”); June 1, 1857 ("A red-wing's nest, four eggs, low in a tuft of sedge in an open meadow. What Champollion can translate the hieroglyphics on these eggs? It is always writing of the same character, though much diversified. While the bird picks up the material and lays the egg, who determines the style of the marking?"); June 12, 1855 ("At mouth of Mill Brook, a red-wing’s nest tied on to that thick, high grass and some low willow, eighteen inches from ground, with four eggs variously marked, full of young.”) ; June 28, 1855 ('Two red-wings’ nests, four eggs and three —one without any black marks.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Red-wing in Spring

The tanager’s nest at the top of a pitch pine. See June 8, 1855 ("A tanager’s nest in the topmost forks of a pitch pine about fifteen feet high, by Thrush Alley; the nest very slight, apparently of pine needles, twigs, etc.; can see through it; bird on.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Scarlet Tanager

That fine, dry, wiry wild grass in hollows in woods and sprout-lands, never mown, is apparently the C. Pennsylvanica, or early sedge. See July 10, 1860 ("I was exhilarated by the mass of cheerful bright-yellowish light reflected from the sedge (Carex Pennsylvanica) growing densely on the hillsides laid bare within a year or two there. It is of a distinct cheerful yellow color even this overcast day, even as if they were reflecting a bright sunlight, though no sun is visible")

Young bluebirds. See  June 13, 1852 ("I hear the feeble plaintive note of young bluebirds, just trying their wings or getting used to them");  June 13, 1858 ("I hear the peculiar notes of young bluebirds that have flown. ");  See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Young Birds

June 11. See A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, June 11

What a difference

between one red-wing blackbird’s

egg and another’s! 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, 

That fine, dry, wiry wild grass in hollows in woods and sprout-lands

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 © 2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-550611