P. M. — Sail to Fair Haven Pond.
It is a fine September day. The river is still rising on account of the rain of the 16th and is getting pretty well over the meadows. As we paddle westward, toward College Meadow, I perceive that a new season has come.
The air is incredibly clear. The surface of both land and water is bright, as if washed by the recent rain and then seen through a much finer, clearer, and cooler air. The surface of the river sparkles.
I am struck by the soft yellow-brown or brown-yellow of the black willows, stretching in cloud-shaped wreaths far away along the edges of the stream, of a so much mellower and maturer tint than the elms and oaks and most other trees seen above and beyond them.
It is remarkable that the button-bushes beneath and mingling with them are of exactly the same tint and in perfect harmony with them. They are like two interrupted long brown-yellow masses of verdure resting on the water, a peculiarly soft and warm yellow. This is, perhaps, the most interesting autumnal tint as yet.
Above the railroad bridge, with our sail set, wind north-northwest, we see two small ducks, dusky, —— perhaps dippers, or summer ducks, — and sail within four rods before they fly. They are so tame that for a while we take them for tame ducks.
The pads are drowned by the flood, but I see one pontederia spike rising blue above the surface. Elsewhere the dark withered pontederia leaves show themselves, and at a distance look like ducks, and so help conceal them. For the ducks are now back again in numbers, since the storm and freshet. We can just go over the ammannia meadow.
It is a wonderful day.
As I look westward, this fine air — “gassy,” C. calls it — brings out the grain of the hills. I look into the distant sod. This air and sun, too, bring out all the yellow that is in the herbage. The very grass or sedge of the meadow is the same soft yellow with the willows, and the button-bush harmonizes with them. It is as if the earth were one ripe fruit, like a muskmelon yellowed in the September sun; i. e., the sedges, being brought between me and the sun, are seen to be ripe like the cucumbers and muskmelons in the garden.
The earth is yellowing in the September sun.
It occurs to me to put my knee on it, press it gently, and hear if it does not crack within as if ripe. Has it not, too, a musty fragrance, as a melon?
At Clamshell we take the wind again, and away we glide. I notice, along the edge of the eastern meadow wood, some very light-colored and crisped-looking leaves, apparently on small maples, or else swamp white oaks, as if some vine ran over the trees, for the leaves are of a different color from the rest. This must be the effect of frost, I think.
The sedge and wool-grass all slant strongly southward or up the stream now, which makes a strange impression on the sailor, but of late the wind has been north and stronger than the sluggish current of the river.
The small white pines on the side of Fair Haven Hill now look remarkably green, by contrast with the surrounding shrubbery, which is recently imbrowned. You are struck by their distinct liquid green, as if they had but just sprung up there.
All bright colors seem brighter now for the same reason, i. e. from contrast with the duller browns and russets. The very cows on the hill side are a brighter red amid the pines and the brown' hazels.
The perfectly fresh spike of the Polygonum amphibium attracts every eye now. It is not past its prime. C. thinks it is exactly the color of some candy.
Also the Polygala sanguiuea on the bank looks redder than usual.
Many red maples are now partly turned dark crimson along the meadow-edge.
Near the pond we scare up twenty or thirty ducks, and at the pond three blue herons. They are of a hoary blue. One flies afar and alights on a limb of a large white pine near Well Meadow Head, bending it down. I see him standing there with outstretched neck.
Finding grapes, we proceeded to pluck them, tempted more by their fragrance and color than their flavor, though some were very palatable. We gathered many without getting out of the boat, as we paddled back, and more on shore close to the water’s edge, piling them up in the prow of the boat till they reached to the top of the boat, — a long sloping heap of them and very handsome to behold, being of various colors and sizes, for we even added green ones for variety. Some, however, were mainly green when ripe. You cannot touch some vines without bringing down more single grapes in a shower around you than you pluck in bunches, and such as strike the water are lost, for they do not float. But it is a pity to break the handsome clusters. Thus laden, the evening air wafting the fragrance of the cargo back to us, we paddled homeward.
The cooler air is so clear that we see Venus plainly some time before sundown. The wind had all gone down, and the water was perfectly smooth. The sunset was uncommonly fair.
Some long amber clouds in the horizon, all on fire with gold, were more glittering than any jewelry. An Orient city to adorn the plates of an annual could not be contrived or imagined more gorgeous.
And when you looked with head inverted the effect was increased tenfold, till it seemed a world of enchantment. We only regretted that it had not a due moral effect on us scapegraces.
Nevertheless, when, turning my head, I looked at the willowy edge of Cyanean Meadow and onward to the sober-colored but fine-grained Clamshell Hills, about which there was no glitter, I was inclined to think that the truest beauty was that which surrounded us but which we failed to discern, that the forms and colors which adorn our daily life, not seen afar in the horizon, are our fairest jewelry. The beauty of Clamshell Hill, near at hand, with its sandy ravines, in which the cricket chirps. This is an Occidental city, not less glorious than that we dream of in the sunset sky.
It chanced that all the front-rank polygonum, with its rosaceous spikes, was drowned by the flood, but now, the sun having for some time set, with our backs to the west we saw the light reflected from the slender clear white spikes of the P. hydropiperoides (now in its prime), which in large patches or masses rise about a foot above the surface of the water and the other polygonum. Under these circumstances this polygonum was very pretty and interesting, only its more presentable part I rising above the water.
Mr. Warren brings to me three kinds of birds which he has shot on the Great Meadows this afternoon, viz. two Totanus flavipes, such as I saw the 8th (there were eight in the flock, and he shot seven), one Rallus Carolinus, and one peetweet. I doubt if I have seen any but the T. flavipes here, since I have measured this.[Or very likely I have. Vide 25th.] Wilson says that this does not penetrate far inland, though he sees them near Philadelphia after a northeast storm.
The above rail corresponds to the land rail or corn crake of Europe in form and habits. In Virginia is called the sora; in South Carolina, the coot. It is the game rail of the South, and the only species of the genus Crex in America. Note kuk kuk kuk. Go to Hudson’s Bay and thereabouts to breed. This was a male, having a black throat and black about base of bill. Peabody says that they are seen here only in the autumn on their return from the north, though Brewer thinks their nest may be found here. In the genus Crex, the bill is stout and shorter than the head. In Rallus (as in R. Virginianus), it is longer than the head and slender. In the latter, too, the crown and whole upper parts are black, streaked with brown; the throat, breast, and belly, orange-brown; sides and vent, black tipped with white; legs and feet, dark red-brown; none of which is true of the R. Carolinus.
I notice that the wing of the peetweet, which is about two inches wide, has a conspicuous and straight-edged white bar along its middle on the under side for half its length. It is seven eighths of an inch wide and, being quite parallel with the darker parts of the wing, it produces that singular effect in its flying which I have noticed. This line, by the way, is not mentioned by Wilson, yet it is, perhaps, the most noticeable mark of the bird when flying! The under side of the wings is commonly slighted in the description, though it is at least as often seen by us as the upper. Wilson says that “the whole lower parts are beautifully marked with roundish spots of black, . . . but the young are pure white be low.” May I not have made the young the T. solitarius? But the young are white-spotted on wings.
I think that I see a white-throated sparrow this after noon.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 18, 1858
Finding grapes, we proceeded to pluck them, tempted more by their fragrance and color than their flavor,piling them up in the prow of the boat till they reached to the top of the boat, — the evening air wafting the fragrance of the cargo back to us, we paddled homeward . See September 8, 1854 ("As I paddle home with my basket of grapes in the bow, every now and then their perfume was wafted to me in the stern, and I think that I am passing a richly laden vine on shore."); September 13, 1856 ("The best are more admirable for fragrance than for flavor. Depositing them in the bows of the boat, they fill all the air with their fragrance, as we row along against the wind, as if we were rowing through an endless vineyard in its maturity. ")
Some long amber clouds in the horizon, all on fire with gold, were more glittering than any jewelry. And when you looked with head inverted the effect was increased tenfold, till it seemed a world of enchantment. See January 8, 1854 ("Gilpin, in his essay on the "Art of Sketching Landscape," says: "When you have finished your sketch . . . tinge the whole over with some light horizon hue." . . .I have often been attracted by this harmonious tint in his and other drawings, and sometimes, especially, have observed it in nature when at sunset I inverted my head.")
Nevertheless, when, turning my head, . . .I was inclined to think that the truest beauty was that which surrounded us but which we failed to discern, that the forms and colors which adorn our daily life, not seen afar in the horizon, are our fairest jewelry. See June 21, 1852 ("The perception of beauty is a moral test."); May 17, 1853 ("I was surprised, on turning round, to behold the serene and everlasting beauty of the world"); May 17, 1853 ("Ah, the beauty of this last hour of the day — when a power stills the air and smooths all waters and all minds — that partakes of the light of the day and the stillness of the night"); ;December 11. 1855 ("It is only necessary to behold thus the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair’s breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance."); Autumnal Tints ("There is just as much beauty visible to us in the landscape as we are prepared to appreciate")
The cooler air is so clear that we see Venus plainly some time before sundown. See February 3, 1852 ("Venus is now like a little moon in the west,"); May 8, 1852 ("Venus is the evening star and the only star yet visible"); December 27, 1853 ("It is a true winter sunset, almost cloudless, clear, cold indigo-y along the horizon. The evening star is seen shining brightly, before the twilight has begun")
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