A Book of the Seasons: July 8 (The moon reflected from the rippled surface like a stream of dollars.).

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

July 8

The moon reflected

from the rippled surface like

a stream of dollars.

July 8, 1854 

Here are some rich rye-fields waving over all the land, their heads nodding in the evening breeze with an alternating motion.  How rich a sight this cereal fruit, now yellow for the cradle. It is an impenetrable phalanx . . . These long grain-fields which you must respect, – must go round, – occupying the ground like an army. July 8, 1851

It is perhaps the warmest day yet. We held on to the abutments under the red bridge to cool ourselves in the shade. No better place in hot weather, the river rippling away beneath you and the air rippling through beneath the abutments, if only in sympathy with the river, while the planks afford a shade. .July 8, 1852

I found a remarkable moth lying flat on the still water as if asleep (they appear to sleep during the day), as large as the smaller birds . . .  of a sea-green color, with four conspicuous spots whitish within, then a red line, then yellowish border below or toward the tail, [a luna moth] The sight affected me as tropical, and I suppose it is the northern verge of some species. It suggests into what productions Nature would run if all the year were a July. July 8, 1852

Toads are still heard occasionally at evening. To-day I heard a hylodes peep . . . which have so long been silent. July 8, 1853

To Assabet Bathing Place. The 4th and 5th were the hot bathing days thus far; thermometer at 98 and 96 respectively. 8 p. m. — Full moon; by boat to Hubbard's Bend. There is wind, making it cooler and keeping off fog, delicious on water. The moon reflected from the rippled surface like a stream of dollars. I hear a few toads still . . . The bullfrogs trump from time to time. The whip-poor-wills are heard, and the baying of dogs. July 8, 1854

[Cape Cod ]A northeasterly storm. A great part of beach bodily removed and a rock five feet high exposed — before invisible — opposite lighthouse. July 8, 1855

To Baker Farm by boat. River down to lower side of long rock. When I land on Hosmer flat shore, start a large water adder, apparently running on the bank. It ran at once into the river and was lost under the pads. Ranunculus reptans is abundantly out at mouth of brook, Baker shore. July 8, 1856

July 8, 2016

Counted the rings of a white pine stump, sawed off last winter at Laurel Glen. It was three and a half feet in  diameter and has one hundred and twenty-six rings. July 8, 1857

Edith Emerson shows me Oldenlandia purpurea var. longifolia, which she saw very abundantly in bloom on the Blue Hills (Bigelow's locality) on the 29th of June. Says she has seen the pine-sap this year in Concord. July 8, 1857 

[Mt. Washington,  Tuckerman's Ravine] The wood thrush, which Wentworth called the nightingale, sang at evening and in the morning, and the same bird which I heard on Monadnock, I think, and then thought might be the Blackburnian warbler; also the veery. July 8, 1858

I see an emperor moth (Attacus Cecropia), which came out the 6th.  July 8, 1859

This morning there is a cold mist, which soon becomes rain, – at 2.30 P.M. The thermometer is at 66°, and some sit by fires. July 8, 1860

See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, July Moonlight

If you make the least correct 

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853  

July 7 <<<<< July 8 >>>>> July 9

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 8

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 © 2009-2023

https://tinyurl.com/HDT08JULY