Monday, October 30, 2017

Circle round the moon.


October 30

Another, the eighth, day of cloudy weather, though no rain to-day.

P. M. — Near the island, in my boat, I scare up a bittern (Ardea minor), and afterward half a dozen ducks, probably summer ducks.

Saw a large flock of blackbirds yesterday. 

There’s a very large and complete circle round the moon this evening, which part way round is a faint rainbow. It is a clear circular space, sharply and mathematically cut out of a thin mackerel sky. You see no mist within it, large as it is, nor even a star. 

I find thousands of ants now apparently gone into winter quarters in my stumps, large black ones, red in the middle, partly dormant even this warm weather, yet with white grubs or young. Some are winged. . . . 

The clintonia was perfectly at home there [in the Maine woods]. Its leaves were just as handsomely formed and green and disposed commonly in triangles about its stem, and its berries were just as blue and glossy as if they grew by some botanist's favorite walk in Concord. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 30, 1857

There’s a very large and complete circle round the moon this evening. . . See February 27, 1852 ("To-night a circle round the moon.”)



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