A third fine day.

May 8, 2017

May 8. 

A third fine day. 

The sugar maple at Barrett's is now in full bloom. 

I finish the arbor to-night. This has been the third of these remarkably warm and beautiful. I have worked all the while in my shirt-sleeves. 

Summer has suddenly come upon us, and the birds all together. Some boys have bathed in the river. 

Walk to first stone bridge at sunset. Salix alba, possibly the 6th. 

It is a glorious evening. 

I scent the expanding willow leaves (for there are very few blossoms yet) fifteen rods off. Already hear the cheerful, sprightly note of the yellowbird amid them. It is perfectly warm and still, and the green grass reminds me of June. The air is full of the fragrance of willow leaves. The high water stretches smooth around. 

I hear the sound of Barrett's sawmill with singular distinctness. The ring of toads, the note of the yellowbird, the rich warble of the red-wing, the thrasher on the hillside, the robin's evening song, the woodpecker tapping some dead tree across the water; and I see countless little fuzzy gnats in the air, and dust over the road, between me and the departed sun. 

Perhaps the evenings of the 6th and 7th were as pleasant. But such an evening makes a crisis in the year. I must make haste home and go out on the water. 

I paddle to the Wheeler meadow east of hill after sundown. From amid the alders, etc., I hear the mew of the catbird and the yorrick of Wilson's thrush. One bullfrog's faint er-er-roonk from a distance. (Perhaps the Amphibia, better than any creatures, celebrate the changes of temperature.) One dump note. 

It grows dark around. The full moon rises, and I paddle by its light. 

It is an evening for the soft-snoring, purring frogs (which I suspect to be Rana palustris). I get within a few feet of them as they sit along the edge of the river and meadow, but cannot see them. Their croak is very fine or rapid, and has a soft, purring sound at a little distance. I see them paddling in the water like toads. 

Within a week I have had made a pair of corduroy pants, which cost when done $1.60. They are of that peculiar clay-color, reflecting the light from portions of their surface. They have this advantage, that, beside being very strong, they will look about as well three months hence as now, — or as ill, some would say. Most of my friends are disturbed by my wearing them. I can get four or five pairs for what one ordinary pair would cost in Boston, and each of the former will last two or three times as long under the same circumstances. The tailor said that the stuff was not made in this country; that it was worn by the Irish at home, and now they would not look at it, but others would not wear it, durable and cheap as it is, because it is worn by the Irish. 

Moreover, I like the color on other accounts. Anything but black clothes. I was pleased the other day to see a son of Concord return after an absence of eight years, not in a shining suit of black, with polished boots and a beaver or silk hat, as if on a furlough from human duties generally, — a mere clothes-horse, — but clad in an honest clay-colored suit and a snug every-day cap. It showed unusual manhood. Most returning sons come home dressed for the occasion. 

The birds and beasts are not afraid of me now. A mink came within twenty feet of me the other day as soon as my companion had left me, and if I had had my gray sack on as well as my corduroys, it would perhaps have come quite up to me. 

Even farmers' boys, returning to their native town, though not unfamiliar with homely and dirty clothes, make their appearance on this new stage in a go-to-meeting suit.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 8, 1857

A third fine day. See May 6, 1857 ("A beautiful and warm day."); May 7, 1857 ("A second fine day. "); May 9, 1857 (Another fine day."") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The world can never be more beautiful than now.

Summer has suddenly come upon us, and the birds all together. See May 6, 1852  ("Hear the first warbling vireo this morning on the elms. This almost makes a summer."); May 7, 1852 ("One or more little warblers in the woods this morning are new to the season, . . .The first wave of summer from the south")  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau. Summer

It is a glorious evening. . . .I must make haste home and go out on the water. See  August 31, 1852 ("This is the most glorious part of this day, . . . and the most suggestive. . . . Evening is pensive. The serenity is far more remarkable to those who are on the water.”)

Already hear the cheerful, sprightly note of the yellowbird amid them. See May 8, 1854 (“Hear a yellowbird in the direction of the willows. Its note coarsely represented by che-che-che-char-char- char.”); May 8 1859 ("Summer yellowbird.”) and note to May 11, 1856 ("At a distance I hear the first yellow-bird. . . . All these willows blossom. . .”).

The full moon rises, and I paddle by its light. It is an evening for the soft-snoring, purring frogs (which I suspect to be Rana palustris). See April 11, 1854 ("Hear a slight snoring of frogs on the bared meadows. Is it not the R. palustris? This the first moon to walk by.”)

Such an evening makes a crisis in the year.  Compare July 18, 1854 (“The atmosphere now imparts a bluish or glaucous tinge to the distant trees. A certain debauched look. This a crisis in the season.”); August 20, 1854 (“When the red-eye ceases generally, then I think is a crisis, — the woodland quire is dissolved.”)