All the secrets of the river bottom are revealed.

July 30.

July 30. 

P. M. — To Rudbeckia laciniata via Assabet. 

Amaranthus hybridus and albus, both some days at least; first apparently longest. 

This is a perfect dog-day. The atmosphere thick, mildewy, cloudy. It is difficult to dry anything. The sun is obscured, yet we expect no rain. Bad hay weather. 

The streams are raised by the showers of yesterday and day before, and I see the farmers turning their black-looking hay in the flooded meadows with a fork. 

The water is suddenly clear, as if clarified by the white of an egg or lime. I think it must be because the light is reflected downward from the overarching dog-day sky.  It assists me very much as I go looking for the ceratophyllum, potamogetons, etc. 

All the secrets of the river bottom are revealed. I look down into sunny depths which before were dark. The wonderful clearness of the water, enabling you to explore the river bottom and many of its secrets now, exactly as if the water had been clarified. This is our compensation for a heaven concealed. The air is close and still. 

Some days ago, before this weather, I saw haymakers at work dressed simply in a straw hat, boots, shirt, and pantaloons, the shirt worn like a frock over their pants. The laborer cannot endure the contact with his clothes. 

I am struck with the splendid crimson-red under sides of the white lily pads where my boat has turned them, at my bath place near the Hemlocks. For these pads, i. e. the white ones, are but little eaten yet. 

Rudbeckia laciniata, perhaps a week. 

When I have just rowed about the Island a green bittern crosses in my rear with heavy flapping flight, its legs dangling, not observing me. It looks deep slate-blue above, yellow legs, whitish streak along throat and breast, and slowly plows the air with its prominent breast-bone, like the stake-driver.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 30, 1856

The water is suddenly clear. . . See July 18, 1854 ("I do not know why the water should be so remarkably clear and the sun shine through to the bottom of the river, making it so plain.“);  July 28, 1859 ("The season has now arrived when I begin to see further into the water . .  .”); July 27, 1860 ("The water has begun to be clear and sunny, revealing the fishes and countless minnows of all sizes and colors”).

 The splendid crimson-red under sides of the white lily pads . . . See June 29, 1852 ("The wind exposes the red under sides of the white lily pads. This is one of the aspects of the river now"); June 30, 1859 ("The pads blown up by it already show crimson, it is so strong, but this not a fall phenomenon yet.”); August 24, 1854 ("The bright crimson-red under sides of the great white lily pads, turned up by the wind").

A green bittern. . .with heavy flapping flight, its legs dangling, . . . See May 6, 1852 ("A green bittern, a gawky bird.”); June 25, 1854 (A green bittern . . . awkwardly alighting on the trees and uttering its hoarse, zarry note,”); July 12, 1854 (“[A] green bittern wading in a shallow muddy place, with an awkward teetering, fluttering pace.”); May 16, 1855 ("A green bittern with its dark-green coat and crest, sitting watchful, goes off with a limping peetweet flight.”); July 29, 1859 ("Heard from a bittern, a peculiar hoarse, grating note, lazily uttered as it flew over the meadows. A bittern's croak: a sound perfectly becoming the bird, as far as possible from music."); July 31, 1859 ("The small green bitterns are especially numerous."); August 1, 1858 ("So the green bitterns are leaving the nest now"); August 2, 1856 ("A green bittern comes, noiselessly flapping, with stealthy and inquisitive looking to this side the stream and then that . . There is a sympathy between its sluggish flight and the sluggish flow of the stream,.— its slowly lapsing flight,"); August 24, 1860 (“[A] green bittern nearby standing erect on Monroe's boat. Finding that it is observed, it draws in its head and stoops to conceal itself. It allows me to approach so near, apparently being deceived by some tame ducks there. When it flies it seems to have no tail.”); August 31, 1858 ("At Goose Pond I scare up a small green bittern. It plods along low, a few feet over the surface, with limping flight, and alights on a slender water-killed stump, and voids its excrement just as it starts again, as if to lighten itself. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. The Green Bittern