Do not ask me for my afternoons.

August 31. 

Sunday. P. M. — To Hubbard Bath Swamp by boat.

There sits one by the shore who wishes to go with me, but I cannot think of it. I must be fancy-free. There is no such mote in the sky as a man who is not perfectly transparent to you, — who has any opacity. I would rather attend to him earnestly for half an hour, on shore or elsewhere, and then dismiss him. He thinks I could merely take him into my boat and then not mind him. He does not realize that I should by the same act take him into my mind, where there is no room for him, and my bark would surely founder in such a voyage as I was contemplating. I know very well that I should never reach that expansion of the river I have in my mind, with him aboard with his broad terrene qualities. He would sink my bark (not to another sea) and never know it. I could better carry a heaped load of meadow mud and sit on the thole pins. There would be more room for me, and I should reach that expansion of the river nevertheless. 

I could better afford to take him into bed with me, for then I might, perhaps, abandon him in my dreams. Ah! you are a heavy fellow, but I am well disposed. If you could go without going, then you might go. There's the captain's stateroom, empty to be sure, and you say you could go in the steerage. I know very well that only your baggage would be dropped in the steerage, while you would settle right down into that other snug recess. Why, I am going, not staying. I have come on purpose to sail, to paddle away from such as you, and you have waylaid me at the shore. You have chosen to make your assault at the moment of embarkation. Why, if I thought you were steadily gazing after me a mile off, I could not endure it. It is because I trust that I shall ere long depart from your thoughts, and so you from mine, that I am encouraged to set sail at all. I make haste to put several meanders and some hills between us. This Company is obliged to make a distinction between dead freight and passengers. I will take almost any amount of freight for you cheerfully, — anything, my dear sir, but yourself. 

Some are so inconsiderate as to ask to walk or sail with me regularly every day — I have known such — and think that, because there will be six inches or a foot between our bodies, we shall not interfere! These things are settled by fate. The good ship sails — when she is ready. For freight or passage apply to — ?? Ask my friend where. What is getting into a man's carriage when it is full, compared with putting your foot in his mouth and popping right into his mind without considering whether it is occupied or not ? If I remember aright, it was only on condition that you were asked, that you were to go with a man one mile or twain. Suppose a man asks, not you to go with him, but to go with you! Often, I would rather undertake to shoulder a barrel of pork and carry it a mile than take into my company a man. It would not be so heavy a weight upon my mind. I could put it down and only feel my back ache for it.

The birches on Wheeler's meadow have begun to yellow, apparently owing to the water. 

The Cornus sericea, with its berries just turning, is generally a dull purple now, the first conspicuous change, methinks, along the river; half sunk in water. 

Captain Hubbard is out inspecting his river meadow and his cranberries. Says he never saw the water so high at this season before. I am surprised that the river is not more than two inches higher than yesterday, or than the day before, notwithstanding the last copious rain; but Hubbard says he has heard that they have just lowered their dam a foot at Billerica. He sees that the water has fallen a little in his meadow. It leaves a scum on the grass and gives it a smell and taste, which makes the cattle reject it. 

He gets into my boat, and we obtain some cranberries from beneath the water. Some of them are softened and spoiled. H. thinks it depends on the warmth of the water how much they are injured. This is what calls the farmer out now, — to inspect his cranberries or his grass. He talks with his neighbor about it at church. 

I am frequently amused when I come across the proprietor in my walks, and he asks me if I am not lost. I commonly approach his territory by the river, or some other back way, and rarely meet with him. The other day Conant observed to me, "Well, you have to come out once in a while to take a survey." He thinks that I do not visit his neighborhood more than once in a year, but I go there about once a week, and formerly much oftener; perhaps as often as he. 

H. says he has found coal at the bottom of his meadow under the mud, three feet deep. The Viburnum nudum berries are now in prime, a handsome rose-purple. I brought home a bunch of fifty-three berries, all of this color, and the next morning thirty were turned dark purple. In this state they are soft and just edible, having somewhat of a cherry flavor, not a large stone. 

A painted tortoise shedding its scales.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal August 31, 1856

Some are so inconsiderate as to ask to walk or sail with me regularly every day. . . . See September 16, 1859 ("Ask me for a certain number of dollars if you will, but do not ask me for my afternoons.")

The Cornus sericea, with its berries just turning, is generally a dull purple now . . .See August 28, 1856 ("The bright china-colored blue berries of the Cornus sericea begin to show themselves along the river, . . ..")

A painted tortoise shedding its scales. See October 12, 1855 ("I see a painted tortoise still out on shore. Three of his back scales are partly turned up and show fresh black ones ready beneath. And now I see that the six main anterior scales have already been shed. They are fresh black and bare of moss. Is not this the only way they get rid of the moss, etc., which adhere to them?"); September 15, 1855 ("See many painted tortoise scales being shed, half erect on their backs.")

It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves.

August 30

Rain again in the night, as well as most of yesterday, raising the river a second time. They say there has not been such a year as this for more than half a century, — for winter cold, summer heat, and rain.

 P. M. — To Vaccinium Oxycoccus Swamp. 

Fair weather, clear and rather cool. 

Pratt shows me at his shop a bottle filled with alcohol and camphor. The alcohol is clear and the camphor beautifully crystallized at the bottom for nearly an inch in depth, in the form of small feathers, like a hoar frost. He has read that this is as good a barometer as any. It stands quite still, and has not been unstoppled for a year; yet some days the alcohol will be quite clear, and even no camphor will be seen, and again it will be quite full of fine feathery particles, or it will be partly clear, as to-day. 

Bidens connata abundant at Moore's Swamp, how long? The aspect of some of what I have called the swamp Solidago stricta there at present makes me doubt if it be not more than a variety, the leaves are so broad, smooth (i. e. uncurled or wrinkled), and thick, and some cauline ones so large, almost speciosaAike, to say nothing of size of rays.

 The Aster puniceus is hardly yet in prime; its great umbel-shaped tops not yet fully out. Its leaves are pretty generally whitened with mildew and unsightly. Even the chelone, where prostrate, has put forth roots from its stem, near the top. 

The sarothra is now apparently in prime on the Great Fields, and comes near being open now, at 3 p. m. Bruised, it has the fragrance of sorrel and lemon, rather pungent or stinging, like a bee. Hypericum corymbosum lingers still, with perforatum. 

I have come out this afternoon a-cranberrying, chiefly to gather some of the small cranberry, Vaccinium Oxycoccus, which Emerson says is the common cranberry of the north of Europe. This was a small object, yet not to be postponed, on account of immi nent frosts, i. e., if I would know this year the flavor of the European cranberry as compared with our larger kind. I thought I should like to have a dish of this sauce on the table at Thanksgiving of my own gathering. I could hardly make up my mind to come this way, it seemed so poor an object to spend the afternoon on. I kept foreseeing a lame conclusion, — how I should cross the Great Fields, look into Beck Stow's, and then retrace my steps no richer thanbefore. In fact, I expected little of this walk, yet it did pass through the side of my mind that somehow, on this very account (my small expectation), it would turn out well, as also the advantage of having some purpose, however small, to be accomplished, — of letting your deliberate wisdom and foresight in the house to some extent direct and control your steps. If you would really take a position outside the street and daily life of men, you must have deliberately planned your course, you must have business which is not your neighbors' business, which they cannot understand. For only absorbing employment prevails, succeeds, takes up space, occupies territory, deter mines the future of individuals and states, drives Kansas out of your head, and actually and perma nently occupies the only desirable and free Kansas against all border ruffians. The attitude of resistance is one of weakness, inasmuch as it only faces an enemy; it has its back to all that is truly attractive. You shall have your affairs, I will have mine. You will spend this afternoon in setting up your neighbor's stove, and be paid for it; I will spend it in gathering the few berries of the Vaccinium Oxycoccus which Nature produces here, before it is too late, and be paid for it also after another fashion. I have always reaped un expected and incalculable advantages from carrying out at last, however tardily, any little enterprise which my genius suggested to me long ago as a thing to be done, — some step to be taken, however slight, out of the usual course. How many schools I have thought of which I might S7 go to but did not go to! expecting foolishly that some greater advantage or schooling would come to me! It is these comparatively cheap and private expeditions that substantiate our existence and batten our lives, as, where a vine touches the earth in its undulating course, it puts forth roots and thickens its stock. Our employment generally is tinkering, mending the old worn-out teapot of society. Our stock in trade is solder. Better for me, says my genius, to go cranberrying this afternoon for the Vaccinium Oxycoccus in Gowing's Swamp, to get but a pocketful and learn its peculiar flavor, aye, and the flavor of Gowing's Swamp and of life in New England, than to go consul to Liverpool and get I don't know how many thousand dollars for it, with no such flavor. Many of our days should be -spent, not in vain expectations and lying on our oars, but in carrying out deliberately and faithfully the hundred little purposes which every man's genius must have suggested to him. Let not your life be wholly without an object, though it be only to ascertain the flavor of a cranberry, for it will not be only the quality of an insignificant berry that you will have tasted, but the flavor of your life to that extent, and it will be such a sauce as no wealth can buy. 

Both a conscious and an unconscious life are good. Neither is good exclusively, for both have the same source. The wisely conscious life springs out of an unconscious suggestion. I have found my account in travelling in having prepared beforehand a list of questions which I would get answered, not trusting to my interest at the moment, and can then travel with the most profit. Indeed, it is by obeying the suggestions of a higher light within you that you escape from yourself and, in the transit, as it were see with the unworn sides of your eye, travel totally new paths. What is that pretended life that does not take up a claim, that does not occupy ground, that cannot build a causeway to its objects, that sits on a bank looking over a bog, singing its desires ? 

However, it was not with such blasting expectations as these that I entered the swamp. I saw bags of cranberries, just gathered and tied up, on the banks of Beck Stow's Swamp. They must have been raked out of the water, now so high, before they should rot. I left my shoes and stockings on the bank far off and waded barelegged through rigid andromeda.and other bushes a long way, to the soft open sphagnous centre of the swamp. 

I found these cunning little cranberries lying high and dry on the firm uneven tops of the sphagnum, — their weak vine considerably on one side, — sparsely scattered about the drier edges of the swamp, or some times more thickly occupying some little valley a foot or two over, between two mountains of sphagnum. They were of two varieties, judging from the fruit. The one, apparently the ripest, colored most like the common cranberry but more scarlet, i. e. yellowish- green, blotched or checked with dark scarlet-red, commonly pear-shaped; the other, also pear-shaped, or more bulged out in the middle, thickly and finely dark-spotted or peppered on yellowish-green or straw 39 colored or pearly ground, — almost exactly like the smilacina and convallaria berries now, except that they are a little larger and not so spherical, — and with a tinge of purple. A singular difference. They both lay very snug in the moss, often the whole of the long (an inch and a half or more) peduncle buried, their vines very inobvious, projecting only one to three inches, so that it was not easy to tell what vine they belonged to, and you were obliged to open the moss carefully with your fingers to ascertain it; while the common large cranberry there, with its stiff erect vine, was commonly lifted above the sphagnum. The grayish speckled variety was particularly novel and pretty, though not easy to detect. It lay here and there snugly sunk in the sphagnum, whose drier parts it exactly resembled in color, just like some kind of swamp spar rows' eggs in their nest. I was obliged with my finger carefully to trace the slender pedicel through the moss to its vine, when I would pluck the whole together. Like jewels worn on, or set in, these sphagnous breasts of the swamp, — swamp pearls, call them. One or two to a vine and, on an average, three eighths of an inch in diameter. They are so remote from their vines, on their long thread-like peduncles, that they remind you the more forcibly of eggs, and in May I might mistake them for such. These plants are almost para sitic, resting wholly on the sphagnum, in water instead of air. The sphagnum is a living soil for it. It rests on and amid this, on an acre of sponges. They are evidently earlier than the common. A few are quite soft and red-purple.

.

I waded quite round the swamp for an hour, my bare feet in the cold water beneath, and it was a relief to place them on the warmer surface of the sphagnum. I filled one pocket with each variety, but sometimes, being confused, crossed hands and put them into the wrong pocket. 

I enjoyed this cranberrying very much, notwith standing the wet and cold, and the swamp seemed to be yielding its crop to me alone, for there are none else to pluck it or to value it. I told the proprietor once that they grew here, but he, learning that they were not abun dant enough to be gathered for the market, has probably never thought of them since. I am the only person in the township who regards them or knows of them, and I do not regard them in the light of their pecuniary value. I have no doubt I felt richer wading there with my two pockets full, treading on wonders at every step, than any farmer going to market with a hundred bushels which he has raked, or hired to be raked. I got further and further away from the town every moment, and my good genius seemed [to] have smiled on me, lead ing me hither, and then the sun suddenly came out clear and bright, but it did not warm my feet. I would gladly share my gains, take one, or twenty, into partnership and get this swamp with them, but I do not know an individual whom this berry cheers and nourishes as it does me. When I exhibit it to them I perceive that they take but a momentary interest in it and commonly dismiss it from their thoughts with the consideration that it cannot be profitably cultivated. You could not get a pint at one haul of a rake, and Slocum would not give 41 you much for them. But I love it the better partly for that reason even. I fill a basket with them and keep it several days by my side. If anybody else — any farmer, at least — should spend an hour thus wading about here in this secluded swamp, barelegged, intent on the sphagnum, filling his pocket only, with no rake in his hand and no bag or bushel on the bank, he would be pronounced insane and have a guardian put over him; but if he'll spend his time skimming and water ing his milk and selling his small potatoes for large ones, or generally in skinning flints, he will probably be made guardian of somebody else. I have not gar nered any rye or oats, but I gathered the wild vine of the Assabet.

 As I waded there I came across an ant-like heap, and, breaking it open with my hand, found it to my surprise to be an ant-hill in the sphagnum, full of ants with their young or ova. It consisted of particles of sphagnum like sawdust, was a foot and a half in diameter, and my feet sunk to water all around it! The ants were small and of a uniform pale sorrel-color.

 I noticed also a few small peculiar-looking huckle berries hanging on bushes amid the sphagnum, and, tasting, perceived that they were hispid, a new kind to me. Gaylussacia dumosa var. hirtella (perhaps just after resinosa), though Gray refers it to a "sandy low soil" and says nothing of the hispid fruit. It grows from one to two feet high, the leaves minutely resinous- dotted — are not others ? — and mucronate, the racemes long, with leaf-like bracts now turned conspicuously red. Has a small black hairy or hispid berry, shining but insipid and inedible, with a tough, hairy skin left in the mouth ; has very prominent calyx-lobes.

I seemed to have reached a new world, so wild a place that the very huckleberries grew hairy and were inedible. I feel as if I were in Rupert's Land, and a slight cool but agreeable shudder comes over me, as if equally far away from human society. What's the need of visiting far-off mountains and bogs, if a half- hour's walk will carry me into such wildness and novelty? But why should not as wild plants grow here as in Berkshire, as in Labrador? Is Nature so easily tamed? Is she not as primitive and vigorous here as anywhere? How does this particular acre of secluded, unfrequented, useless (?) quaking bog differ from an acre in Labrador? Has any white man ever settled on it ? Does any now frequent it? Not even the Indian comes here now. I see that there are some square rods within twenty miles of Boston just as wild and primitive and unfrequented as a square rod in Labrador, as unaltered by man. Here grows the hairy huckleberry as it did in Squaw Sachem's day and a thousand years before, and concerns me perchance more than it did her. I have no doubt that for a moment I experience exactly the same sensations as if I were alone in a bog in Rupert's Land, and it saves me the trouble of going there; for what in any case makes the difference between being here and being there but many such little differences of flavor and roughness put together? Rupert's Land is recognized as much by one sense as another. I felt a shock, a thrill, an agreeable surprise in one instant, for, no doubt, all the possible inferences were at once drawn, with a rush, in my mind, — I could be in Rupert's Land and supping at home within the hour! This beat the railroad. I recovered from my surprise without danger to my sanity, and permanently annexed Rupert's Land. That wild hairy huckleberry, inedible as it was, was equal to a domain secured to me and reaching to the South Sea. That was an unexpected harvest. I hope you have gathered as much, neighbor, from your corn and potato fields. I have got in my huckleberries. I shall be ready for Thanksgiving. 

It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such. It is the bog in our brain and bowels, the primitive vigor of Nature in us, that inspires that dream. I shall never find in the wilds of Labrador any greater wildness than in some recess in Concord, i. e. than I import into it. 

A little more manhood or virtue will make the surface of the globe anywhere thrillingly novel and wild. That alone will provide and pay the fiddler; it will convert the district road into an untrodden cranberry bog, for it restores all things to their original primitive flourishing and promising state. 

A cold white horizon sky in the north, forerunner of the fall of the year. I go to bed and dream of cranberry-pickers far in the cold north. With windows partly closed, with continent concentrated thoughts, I dream. I get my new experiences still, not at the opera listening to the Swedish Nightingale, but at Beck Stow's Swamp listening to the native wood thrush. 

Wading in the cold swamp braces me. I was invigorated, though I tasted not a berry. The frost will soon come and smite them on the surface of the sphagnum. 

Consider how remote and novel that swamp. Beneath it is a quaking bed of sphagnum, and in it grow Andromeda Polifolia, Kalmia glauca, menyanthes (or buck -bean), Gaylussacia dumosa, Vaccinium Oxy coccus, — plants which scarcely a citizen of Concord ever sees. It would be as novel to them to stand there as in a conservatory, or in Greenland.

Better it is to go a-cranberrying than to go a-huckleberrying. For that is cold and bracing, leading your thoughts beyond the earth, and you do not surfeit on crude or terrene berries. It feeds your spirit, now in the season of white twilights, when frosts are appre hended, when edible berries are mostly gone. 

Those small gray sparrow-egg cranberries lay so prettily in the recesses of the sphagnum, I could wade for hours in the cold water gazing at them, with a swarm of mosquitoes hovering about my bare legs, — but at each step the friendly sphagnum in which I sank protected my legs like a buckler, — not a crevice by which my foes could enter.

 I see that all is not garden and cultivated field and crops, that there are square rods in Middlesex County as purely primitive and wild as they were a thousand years ago, which have escaped the plow and the axe and the scythe and the cranberry-rake, little oases of wildness in the desert of our civilization, wild as a square rod on the moon, supposing it to be uninhabited.

I believe almost in the personality of such  planetary matter, feel something akin to reverence for it, can even worship it as terrene, titanic matter extant in my day. We are so different we admire each other, we healthily attract one another. I love it as a maiden. These spots are meteoric, aerolitic, and such matter has in all ages been worshipped. 

Aye, when we are lifted out of the slime and film of our habitual life, we see the whole globe to be an aerolite, and reverence it as such, and make pilgrimages to it, far off as it is. How happens it that we reverence the stones which fall from another planet, and not the stones which belong to this, — another globe, not this, — heaven, and not earth? Are not the stones in Hodge's wall as good as the aerolite at Mecca ? Is not our broad back-door-stone as good as any corner-stone in heaven ? 

It would imply the regeneration of mankind, if they were to become elevated enough to truly worship stocks and stones.

 It is the sentiment of fear and slavery and habit which makes a heathenish idolatry. Such idolaters abound in all countries, and heathen cross the seas to reform heathen, dead to bury the dead, and all go down to the pit together. If I could, I would worship the parings of my nails. If he who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before is a benefactor, he who discovers two gods where there was only known the one (and such a one!) before is a still greater benefactor. I would fain improve every opportunity to wonder and worship, as a sunflower welcomes the light.

The more thrilling, wonderful, divine objects I behold in a day, the more expanded and immortal I become. If a stone appeals to me and elevates me, tells me how many miles I have come, how many remain to travel, — and the more, the better, — reveals the future to me in some measure, it is a matter of private rejoicing. If it did the same service to all, it might well be a matter of public rejoicing.

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

I get my new experiences still, not at the opera listening to the Swedish Nightingale, but at Beck Stow's Swamp . . .see May 23, 1854 ("Think of going abroad out of one's self to hear music, —. . . to sit up late and hear Jenny Lind!”)

If a stone appeals to me and elevates me, tells me how many miles I have come, how many remain to travel, — and the more, the better, — reveals the future to me in some measure, it is a matter of private rejoicing. See February 20, 1857 ("If I were to discover that a certain kind of stone by the pond-shore was affected, say partially disintegrated, by a particular natural sound, as of a bird or insect, I see that one could not be completely described without describing the other. I am that rock by the pond-side.”); January 23, 1858 ("If I feel no softening toward the rocks, what do they signify?”)

In it grow Andromeda Polifolia, Kalmia glauca, menyanthes (or buck -bean), Gaylussacia dumosa, Vaccinium Oxycoccus, — plants which scarcely a citizen of Concord ever sees . See August 8, 1858 ("The peculiar plants of [Ledum] swamp are, then, as I remember, these nine: spruce, Andromeda Polifolia, Kalmia glauca, Ledum latifolium, Gaylussacia dumosa var. hirtella, Vaccinium Oxycoccus, Platanthera blephari glottis, Scheuchzeria palustris, Eriophorum 'vaginatum.")

The Helianthus decapetalus, apparently a variety, with eight petals.

August 29.
Heavy rain in the night and this forenoon. 

P. M. — To J. Farmer's by river. 

The Helianthus decapetalus, apparently a variety, with eight petals, about three feet high, leaves petioled, but not wing-petioled, and broader-leaved than that of August 12th, quite ovate with a tapering point, with ciliate petioles, thin but quite rough beneath and above, stem purple and smoothish, Hosmer's bank, opposite Azalea Swamp. 

Fragrant everlasting in prime and very abundant, whitening Carter's pasture. 

Ribwort still. 

An apparent white vervain with bluish flowers, as blue as bluets even or more so, roadside beyond Farmer's barn.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 29, 1856

Helianthus . . . broader-leaved than that of August 12th . . . See August 12, 1856 ("Am surprised to see still a third species or variety of helianthus. . . I cannot identify it."); see also August 11, 1856 ("A new sunflower at Wheeler's Bank, this side Corner Spring, which I will call the tall rough sunflower; . . . It does not correspond exactly to any described.”);  August 11, 1858 (“See a small variety of helianthus growing with the divaricatus, on the north side of Peter’s path, two rods east of bars southeast of his house. It is an imperfect flower, but apparently answers best to the H. tracheliifolius.”)

Fragrant everlasting in prime and very abundant . . . See August 10, 1856 ("Fragrant everlasting, maybe some days.”); August 11, 1858 (“I smell the fragrant everlasting concealed in the higher grass and weeds there, some distance off.”)

White vervain with bluish flowers . . . See August 6, 1853 ("lower leaves of some catnip and a white vervain have turned. ")

Has not the great world existed for them as much as for you?

August 28. 

First watermelon. 

P. M. — To tortoise eggs, Marlborough road. 

Potentilla Norvegica again. 

I go over linnaea sprout lands. 

The panicled cornel berries are whitening, but already mostly fallen. As usual the leaves of this shrub, though it is so wet, are rolled like corn, showing the paler under sides. At this season it would seem that rain, frost, and drought all produce similar effects. 

Now the black cherries in sprout-lands are in their  prime, and the black choke-berries just after huckleberries and blueberries. They are both very abundant this year. The branches droop with cherries. Those on some trees are very superior to others. 

The bushes are weighed down with choke-berries, which no creature appears to gather. This crop is as abundant as the huckleberries have been. They have a sweet and pleasant taste enough, but leave a mass of dry pulp in the mouth. But it is worth the while to see their profusion, if only to know what nature can do. 

Huckleberries are about given up, low blueberries more or less shrivelled, low blackberries done, high blackberries still to be had. Viburnum nudum berries are beginning; I already see a few shrivelled purple ones amid the light green. Poke berries also begun. 

A goldfinch twitters away from every thistle now, and soon returns to it when I am past. I see the ground strewn with the thistle-down they have scattered on every side. 

At Tarbell's andromeda swamp. A probable Bidens connata or small chrysanthemoides. 

I open the painted tortoise nest of June 10th, and find a young turtle partly out of his shell. He is roundish and the sternum clear uniform pink. The marks on the sides are pink. The upper shell is fifteen sixteenths of an inch plus by thirteen sixteenths. He is already wonderfully strong and precocious. Though those eyes never saw the light before, he watches me very warily, even at a distance. With what vigor he crawls out of the hole I have made, over opposing weeds! He struggles in my fingers with great strength; has none of the tenderness of infancy. His whole snout is convex, and curved like a beak. Having attained the surface, he pauses and warily watches me. In the meanwhile another has put his head out of his shell, but I bury the latter up and leave them. 

Meanwhile a striped squirrel sits on the wall across the road under a pine, eying me, with his cheek-pouches stuffed with nuts and puffed out ludicrously, as if he had the mumps, while the wall is strewn with the dry brown husks of hazelnuts he has stripped. A bird, perhaps a thrasher, in the pine close above him is hopping restlessly and scolding at him. 

June, July, and August, the tortoise eggs are hatching a few inches beneath the surface in sandy fields. You tell of active labors, of works of art, and wars the past summer; meanwhile the tortoise eggs underlie this turmoil. What events have transpired on the lit and airy surface three inches above them! Sumner knocked down; Kansas living an age of suspense. Think what is a summer to them! How many worthy men have died and had their funeral sermons preached since I saw the mother turtle bury her eggs here! They contained an undeveloped liquid then, they are now turtles. 

June, July, and August, — the livelong summer, — what are they with their heats and fevers but sufficient to hatch a tortoise in. Be not in haste; mind your private affairs. Consider the turtle. A whole summer — June, July, and August — is not too good nor too much to hatch a turtle in. 

Perchance you have worried yourself, despaired of the world, meditated the end of life, and all things seemed rushing to destruction; but nature has steadily and serenely advanced with a turtle's pace. 

The young turtle spends its infancy within its shell. It gets experience and learns the ways of the world through that wall. While it rests warily on the edge of its hole, rash schemes are undertaken by men and fail. Has not the tortoise also learned the true value of time? You go to India and back, and the turtle eggs in your field are still unhatched. French empires rise or fall, but the turtle is developed only so fast. 

What's a summer? Time for a turtle's eggs to hatch. So is the turtle developed, fitted to endure, for he outlives twenty French dynasties. One turtle knows several Napoleons. 

They have seen no berries, had no cares, yet has not the great world existed for them as much as for you?

Euphorbia hypericifolia, how long? It has pretty little white and also rose-colored petals, or, as they are now called, involucre. Stands six inches high, regularly curving, with large leaves prettily arranged at an angle with both a horizontal and perpendicular line. 

See the great oval masses of scarlet berries of the arum now in the meadows. Trillium fruit, long time.

August 28, 2014

The river being thus high, for ten days or more I have seen little parcels of shells left by the muskrats. So they eat them thus early. 

Peppermint, how long? May be earlier than I have thought, for the mowers clip it. 

The bright china-colored blue berries of the Cornus sericea begin to show themselves along the river, amid their red-brown leaves, — the kinnikinnic of the Indians. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 28, 1856

The panicled cornel berries are whitening . . .See August 15, 1854 ("Panicled cornel berries on College Road. “); August 22, 1852 ("The panicled cornel berries now white. “)

I open the painted tortoise nest of June 10th . . .See June 10, 1856 ("A painted tortoise laying her eggs ten feet from the wheel-track on the Marlborough road.”). See also August 26, 1854 ("Open one of my snapping turtle's eggs. . . .”)

Has not the great world existed for them as much as for you? See September 9, 1854 ("Thus the earth is the mother of all creatures.”); August 26, 1854 ("I am convinced that there must be an irresistible necessity for mud turtles.”)

The bright china-colored blue berries of the Cornus sericea begin to show themselves along the river. . .  See  August 28, 1852 ("Now the red osier berries are very handsome along the river, overhanging the water, for the most part pale blue mixed with whitish, -- part of the pendant jewelry of the season.”) See also August 24, 1852 ("Of

 cornels , have not seen the dwarf nor the dogwood berries . The alternate - leaved with red cymes 

and round dull ( ? ) blue berries appeared first ; then the red osier began to turn bright , glass - beady , amethystine ( ? ) blue , mixed with white , and is still for the most part green ; then the white - berried . But the round - leaved I have not seen .

 "); September 1, 1854 ("The Cornus sericea berries are now in prime, of different shades of blue, lighter or darker, and bluish white. . . .a great ornament to our causeways and riverside.”); September 3, 1856  (“The white berries of the panicled cornel, soon and apparently prematurely dropping from its pretty fingers, are very bitter. So also are those of the C. sericea. ”)

There are many wild-looking berries about now.

August 27.

August 27, 2016

P. M. —To Clintonia Swamp and Cardinal Ditch.

Unusually cold last night.

Goodyera pubescens, rattlesnake-plantain, is apparently a little past its prime. It is very abundant on Clintonia Swamp hillside, quite erect, with its white spike eight to ten inches high on the sloping hillside, the lower half or more turning brown, but the beautifully reticulated leaves which pave the moist shady hillside about its base are the chief attraction. These oval leaves, perfectly smooth like velvet to the touch, about one inch long, have a broad white midrib and four to six longitudinal white veins, very prettily and thickly connected by other conspicuous white veins transversely and irregularly, all on a dark rich green ground.

Is it not the prettiest leaf that paves the forest floor? As a cultivated exotic it would attract great attention for its leaf. Many of the leaves are eaten. Is it by partridges? It is a leaf of firm texture, not apt to be partially eaten by insects or decayed, and does not soon wilt. So unsoiled and undecayed. It might be imitated on carpets and rugs. Some old withered stems of last year still stand.

On dry, open hillsides and fields the Spiranthes gracilis is very common of late, rising tall and slender, with its spiral of white flowers like a screw-thread at top; sometimes fifteen inches high.

There are, close by the former, the peculiar large dark blue indigo clintonia berries of irregular form and dark-spotted, in umbels of four or five on very brittle stems which break with a snap and on erectish stemlets or pedicels.

See no fringed gentian yet.

Veronica serpyllifolia again by Brister's Spring.

Krigia yesterday at Lee's Cliff, apparently again, though it may be uninterruptedly.

Tobacco-pipe still.

The rhexia greets me in bright patches on meadow banks.

Ludwigia alternifolia still. It is abundant in Cardinal Ditch, twenty rods from road.

Bidens frondosa, how long?

Hypericum Canadense and mutilum now pretty generally open at 4 P.M., thus late in the season, it being more moist and cooler.

The cardinals in this ditch make a splendid show now, though they would have been much fresher and finer a week ago. They nearly fill the ditch for thirty-five rods perfectly straight, about three feet high. I count at random ten in one square foot, and as they are two feet wide by thirty-five rods, there are four or five thousand at least, and maybe more. They look like slender plumes of soldiers advancing in a dense troop, and a few white (or rather pale-pink) ones are mingled with the scarlet. That is the most splendid show of cardinal flowers I ever saw. They are mostly gone to seed, i. e. the greater part of the spike. 

Mimulus there still common.

Near the clintonia berries, I found the Polygonatum pubescens berries on its handsome leafy stem recurved over the hillside, generally two slaty-blue (but darkgreen beneath the bloom) berries on an axillary peduncle three quarters of an inch long, hanging straight down; eight or nine such peduncles, dividing to two short pedicels at end; the berries successively smaller from below upwards, from three eighths of an inch diameter to hardly more than one eighth.

There are many wild-looking berries about now.

The Viburnum Lentago begin to show their handsome red cheeks, rather elliptic-shaped and mucronated, one cheek clear red with a purplish bloom, the other pale green, now. Among the handsomest of berries, one half inch long by three eighths by two eighths, being somewhat flattish.

Then there are the Viburnum dentatum berries, in flattish cymes, dull leadcolored berries, depressed globular, three sixteenths of an inch in diameter, with a mucronation, hard, seedy, dryish, and unpalatable.

The large depressed globular hips of the moss rose begin to turn scarlet in low ground.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, August 27, 1856 

Is it not the prettiest leaf that paves the forest floor? See August 20, 1856 (“The hillside at Clintonia Swamp is in some parts quite shingled with the rattlesnake-plantain (Goodyera pubescens) leaves overlapping one another. The flower is now apparently in its prime. ”);  March 10, 1852 ("I see the reticulated leaves of the rattlesnake-plantain in the woods, quite fresh and green.”); June 12, 1853 ("The rattlesnake-plantain now surprises the walker amid the dry leaves on cool hillsides in the woods; of very simple form, but richly veined with longitudinal and transverse white veins. It looks like art.”) Also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,The Rattlesnake-Plantain

I see Hypericum Canadense and mutilum abundantly open at 4 p. m. See  August 15, 1859 ("Hypericum Canadense, Canadian St. John's-wort, distinguished by its red capsules."); August 17,1856 ("Hypericum Canadense well out at 2 p. m."); August 19, 1851 ("Now for the pretty red capsules or pods of the Hypericum Canadense");   August 19, 1856 ("I see Hypericum Canadense and mutilum abundantly open at 3 P. M.")  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

The cardinals in this ditch make a splendid show now, though they would have been much fresher and finer a week ago. . . . They look like slender plumes of soldiers advancing in a dense troop, . . .the most splendid show of cardinal flowers I ever saw. Compare August 20, 1851 ("In the dry ditch, near Abel Minott's house that was, I see cardinal-flowers, with their red artillery, reminding me of soldiers, — red men, war, and bloodshed. Some are four and a half feet high. Thy sins shall be as scarlet. Is it my sins that I see ? It shows how far a little color can go; for the flower is not large, yet it makes itself seen from afar, and so answers the purpose for which it was colored completely. It is remarkable for its intensely brilliant scarlet color. You are slow to concede to it a high rank among flowers, but ever and anon, as you turn your eyes away, it dazzles you and you pluck it. ")

Near the clintonia berries, I found the Polygonatum pubescens berries on its handsome leafy stem . See June 12, 1852 ("Clintonia borealis  amid the Solomon's-seals in Hubbard's Grove Swamp. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Solomon's Seal

The Polygonatum pubescens berries . . . generally two slaty-blue (but darkgreen beneath the bloom) . . ..  See  August 21, 1853 ("The polygonatum berries have been a bluish-green some time.”)

The Viburnum Lentago begin to show their handsome red cheeks,. . . See August 21, 1853 ("The Viburnum Lentago berries are but just beginning to redden on one cheek.”); August 23, 1853 (".How handsome now the cymes of Viburnum Lentago berries, flattish with red cheeks!”); August 25, 1852 ("The fruit of the Viburnum Lentago is now very handsome, with its sessile cymes of large elliptical berries, green on one side and red with a purple bloom on the other or exposed side, not yet purple, blushing on one cheek.”);August 27, 1854 ("Some Viburnum Lentago berries, turned blue before fairly reddening.”)

See no fringed gentian yet. See September 12, 1854 ("I cannot find a trace of the fringed gentian.”); September 14, 1855”( I see no fringed gentian yet.”) and September 14, 1856 ("Fringed gentian well out (and some withered or frost-bitten ?), say a week, though there was none to be seen here August 27th.”)

Hips of the moss rose begin to turn scarlet . . .See August 27, 1852 ("Hips of the early roses are reddening.”); August 29, 1854 ("The moss rose hips will be quite ripe in a day or two.”)

There are many wild-looking berries about now.

tinyurl.com/wildberriesHDT