A Book of the Seasons: April 16

April 16. 

Sun not fairly out,

cold disagreeable day,

yet snow melts apace.

April 16, 1854

Pale salmon and blue

reflected in smooth waters 

just after sunrise.
April 16, 1855 

From the Hill-top . . . I could see very clearly the pale salmon of the eastern horizon reflected there and contrasting  with an intermediate streak of skim-milk blue, — now, just after sunrise. April 16, 1855 

Pale blue mountain haze

ushers in summer sunsets --

our warmest day yet.

April 16, 1855

And a great many of the large buff-edged are fluttering over the leaves in wood-paths this warm afternoon. April 16, 1855 

Butterflies flutter 

over the leaves in wood-paths

this warm afternoon.

April 16, 1855 

A striped snake rustles down a dry open hillside where the withered grass is long. April 16, 1855

A striped snake rustles

down a dry open hillside

through long withered grass.

April 16, 1855

April 16, 2014

At sunset, the mountains, after this our warmest day as yet, had got a peculiar soft mantle of blue haze, pale blue as a blue heron, ushering in the long series of summer sunsets, and we were glad that we had stayed out so late and felt no need to go home now in a hurry.  April 16, 1855

Sunset mountain haze,

pale blue as a blue heron,

our warmest day yet.

April 16, 1855

Glad we stayed out late --

we feel no need now to go

home in a hurry.

April 16, 1855.

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 © 2009-2019

A quarter moon in the sky

follows us  back through the old growth trees

coming home after our walk at dusk, 

orange sky in the west,

to end a perfect day,

we hear the first hermit thrush.

      

Zphx~ 20160416