A distant view of the possible

July 29. 

Wednesday. I noticed there [Telos Lake] Aralia racemosa, and Aster macrophyllus in bloom, with bluish rays and quite fragrant (!), like some medicinal herb, so that I doubted at first if it were that. . . . 

I found on the edge of this clearing the Cirsium muticum, or swamp thistle, abundantly in bloom. I think we scared up a black partridge just beyond. . . . 

I am interested in an indistinct prospect, a distant view, a mere suggestion often, revealing an almost wholly new world to me. I rejoice to get, and am apt to present, a new view. But I find it impossible to present my view to most people. 

In effect, it would seem that they do not wish to take a new view in any case. Heat lightning flashes, which reveal a distant horizon to our twilight eyes. But my fellows simply assert that it is not broad day, which everybody knows, and fail to perceive the phenomenon at all. 

I am willing to pass for a fool in my often desperate, perhaps foolish, efforts to persuade them to lift the veil from off the possible and future, which they hold down with both their hands, before their eyes. 

The most valuable communication or news consists of hints and suggestions. When a truth comes to be known and accepted, it begins to be bad taste to repeat it. Every individual constitution is a probe employed in a new direction, and a wise man will attend to each one's report.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 29, 1857

See The Maine Woods (“Wednesday, July 29. When we awoke it had done raining, though it was still cloudy. . . . We decided to cross the lake at once, before breakfast, or while we could; and before starting I took the bearing of the shore which we wished to strike, S. S. E. about three miles distant . . . After coasting eastward along this shore a mile or two, we breakfasted on a rocky point, the first convenient place that offered. It was well enough that we crossed thus early, for the waves now ran quite high, . . . Leaving a spacious bay, a northeasterly prolongation of Chamberlain Lake, on our left, we entered through a short strait into a small lake a couple of miles over, called on the map Telasinis, but the Indian had no distinct name for it, and thence into Telos Lake, which he called Paytaywecomgomoc, or Burnt-Ground Lake. . . . We landed on a rocky point on the northeast side, to look at some red pines (Pinus resinosa), the first we had noticed, and get some cones, for our few which grow in Concord do not bear any. The outlet from the lake into the East Branch of the Penobscot is an artificial one, and it was not very apparent where it was exactly . . . Here for the first time we found the raspberries really plenty, — that is, on passing the height of land between the Allegash and the East Branch of the Penobscot ; the same was true of the blueberries. . . .Telos Lake, the head of the St. John on this side, and Webster Pond, the head of the East Branch of the Penobscot, are only about a mile apart, and they are connected by a ravine, in which but little digging was required to make the water of the former, which is the highest, flow into the latter. . .Following a moist trail through the forest, we reached the head of Webster Pond about the same time with the Indian, notwithstanding the velocity with which he moved, our route being the most direct. The Indian name of Webster Stream, of which this pond is the source, is, according to him, Madunkchunk, i. e., Height of Land, and of the pond, Madunkchunk-gamooc, or Height of Land Pond. The latter was two or three miles long. We passed near a pine on its shore which had been splintered by lightning, perhaps the day before. This was the first proper East Branch Penobscot water that we came to. At the outlet of Webster Lake was another dam, at which we stopped and picked raspberries . . .An Indian at Oldtown had told us that we should be obliged to carry ten miles between Telos Lake on the St. John and Second Lake on the East Branch of the Penobscot . . . After this rough walking in the dark woods it was an agreeable change to glide down the rapid river in the canoe once more.. . .It was very exhilarating, and the perfection of traveling, quite unlike floating on our dead Concord River, the coasting down this inclined mirror, which was now and then gently winding, down a mountain, indeed, between two evergreen forests, edged with lofty dead white pines . . Coming to falls and rapids, our easy progress was suddenly terminated . . . This was the last of our boating for the day. . . .I saw there very fresh moose tracks, found a new goldenrod to me (perhaps Solidago thyrsoidea), and I passed one white pine log, which had lodged, in the forest near the edge of the stream, which was quite five feet in diameter at the butt. . . .Shortly after this I overtook the Indian at the edge of some burnt land, which extended three or four miles at least, beginning about three miles above Second Lake, which we were expecting to reach that night . . .It was the most wild and desolate region we had camped in, . . . The moon in her first quarter, in the fore part of the night, setting over the bare rocky hills garnished with tall, charred, and hollow stumps or shells of trees, served to reveal the desolation.”)



I noticed there Aralia racemosa. See July 31, 1857 ("I also saw here, or soon after, the red cohosh berries, ripe, (for the first time in my life); spikenard, etc..") See also  July 12, 1853 ("Spikenard, not quite yet"); July 17, 1857 ("Aralia racemosa, not in bloom") July 24, 1853 ("A spikenard just beyond the spring has already pretty large green berries, though a few floweru"); August 6, 1852 ("Aralia racemosa, how long ?"); September 4, 1856 ("Aralia racemosa berries just ripe . . . not edible. "); September 4, 1859 ("See a very large mass of spikenard berries fairly ripening, eighteen inches long.")

Aster macrophyllus in bloom, with bluish rays and quite fragrant (!) See July 22, 1852 ("The Aster macrophyllus, large-leafed, in Miles's Swamp."); See August 9, 1856 ("The flowers of A. macrophyllus are white with a very slight bluish tinge, in a coarse flat-topped corymb. Flowers nine to ten eighths of an inch in diameter."); August 26, 1856 ("Aster macrophyllus, now in its prime. It grows large and rank, two feet high. On one I count seventeen central flowers withered, one hundred and thirty in bloom, and half as many buds.") September 9, 1856 [at Brattleboro] ("High up the mountain the Aster macrophyllus")