Very hot weather.
P. M. — To Rattlesnake Fern Swamp.
I hear before I start the distant mutterings of thunder in the northwest, though I see no cloud. The haymakers are busy raking their hay, to be ready for a shower. They would rather have their grass wet a little than not have the rain.
I keep on, regardless of the prospect.
See the indigo-bird still, chirping anxiously on the bushes in that sprout-land beyond the red huckleberry.
Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum berries pretty thick there, and one lass is picking them with a dipper tied to her girdle. The first thought is, What a good school this lass goes to!
Rattlesnake fern just done.
I make haste home, expecting a thunder-shower, which we need, but it goes by. The grass by the roadside is burnt yellow and is quite dusty. This, with the sultry air, the parched fields, and the languid inhabitants, marks the season. Already the elms with denser foliage begin to hang dark against the glaucous mist.
The price of friendship is the total surrender of yourself; no lesser kindness, no ordinary attentions and offerings will buy it. There is forever that purchase to be made with that wealth which you possess, yet only once in a long while are you advertised of such a commodity.
Rattlesnake fern just done.
I make haste home, expecting a thunder-shower, which we need, but it goes by. The grass by the roadside is burnt yellow and is quite dusty. This, with the sultry air, the parched fields, and the languid inhabitants, marks the season. Already the elms with denser foliage begin to hang dark against the glaucous mist.
The price of friendship is the total surrender of yourself; no lesser kindness, no ordinary attentions and offerings will buy it. There is forever that purchase to be made with that wealth which you possess, yet only once in a long while are you advertised of such a commodity.
I sometimes awake in the night and think of friendship and its possibilities, a new life and revelation to me, which perhaps I had not experienced for many months. Such transient thoughts have been my nearest approach to realization of it, thoughts which I know of no one to communicate to.
I suddenly erect myself in my thoughts, or find myself erected, infinite degrees above the possibility of ordinary endeavors, and see for what grand stakes the game of life may be played.
Men, with their indiscriminate attentions and ceremonious good-will, offer you trivial baits, which do not tempt; they are not serious enough either for success or failure.
I wake up in the night to these higher levels of life, as to a day that begins to dawn, as if my intervening life had been a long night.
I catch an echo of the great strain of Friendship played somewhere, and feel compensated for months and years of commonplace. I rise into a diviner atmosphere, in which simply to exist and breathe is a triumph, and my thoughts inevitably tend toward the grand and infinite, as aeronauts report that there is ever an upper current hereabouts which sets toward the ocean. If they rise high enough they go out to sea, and be hold the vessels seemingly in mid-air like themselves. It is as if I were serenaded, and the highest and truest compliments were paid me.
The universe gives me three cheers.
Friendship is the fruit which the year should bear; it lends its fragrance to the flowers, and it is in vain if we get only a large crop of apples without it.
This experience makes us unavailable for the ordinary courtesy and intercourse of men. We can only recognize them when they rise to that level and realize our dream.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 13, 1857
Rattlesnake fern swamp. This is Fever-bush Swamp, which HDT today names “Rattlesnake Fern Swamp”. On September 16, 1857 HDT begins to refer to it as Botrychium Swamp. It is the same as his Yellow Birch Swamp See May 5, 1859 and Vascular Flora of Concord, Massachusetts ( "Rattlesnake Fern")
I suddenly erect myself in my thoughts, or find myself erected, infinite degrees above the possibility of ordinary endeavors, and see for what grand stakes the game of life may be played.
Men, with their indiscriminate attentions and ceremonious good-will, offer you trivial baits, which do not tempt; they are not serious enough either for success or failure.
I wake up in the night to these higher levels of life, as to a day that begins to dawn, as if my intervening life had been a long night.
I catch an echo of the great strain of Friendship played somewhere, and feel compensated for months and years of commonplace. I rise into a diviner atmosphere, in which simply to exist and breathe is a triumph, and my thoughts inevitably tend toward the grand and infinite, as aeronauts report that there is ever an upper current hereabouts which sets toward the ocean. If they rise high enough they go out to sea, and be hold the vessels seemingly in mid-air like themselves. It is as if I were serenaded, and the highest and truest compliments were paid me.
The universe gives me three cheers.
Friendship is the fruit which the year should bear; it lends its fragrance to the flowers, and it is in vain if we get only a large crop of apples without it.
This experience makes us unavailable for the ordinary courtesy and intercourse of men. We can only recognize them when they rise to that level and realize our dream.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 13, 1857
Rattlesnake fern swamp. This is Fever-bush Swamp, which HDT today names “Rattlesnake Fern Swamp”. On September 16, 1857 HDT begins to refer to it as Botrychium Swamp. It is the same as his Yellow Birch Swamp See May 5, 1859 and Vascular Flora of Concord, Massachusetts ( "Rattlesnake Fern")
The grass by the roadside is burnt yellow and is quite dusty. This, with the sultry air, the parched fields, and the languid inhabitants, marks the season. See July 13, 1860 ("For a week past. . the season has had a more advanced look, from the reddening, imbrowning, or yellowing, and ripening of many grasses")
Already the elms with denser foliage begin to hang dark . . .See July 7, 1851 (". . .the heavy shadows of the elms covering the ground with their rich tracery . . . like chandeliers of darkness.")
I sometimes awake in the night and think of friendship and its possibilities. . . See June 11, 1855 ("What if we feel a yearning to which no breast answers? I walk alone. My heart is full. Feelings impede the current of my thoughts. I knock on the earth but no friend appears, and perhaps none is dreaming of me.")Already the elms with denser foliage begin to hang dark . . .See July 7, 1851 (". . .the heavy shadows of the elms covering the ground with their rich tracery . . . like chandeliers of darkness.")
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 © 2009-2021
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