Surveying the bridges

June 23.

June 23, 2019

Ride to Wayland, surveying the bridges. 

Veiny-leaved hawkweed freshly out. 

At Heard's Bridge the white maple is the prevailing one, and I do not notice a red one there nor at Bridle Point Bridge. I think I saw the white as far down as the Sudbury causeway.

A foggy, Cape-Cod day, with an easterly wind.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 23, 1859

Ride to Wayland, surveying the bridges. See July 10,1859 ("Take boat at Fair Haven Pond and paddle up to Sudbury Causeway, sounding the river."); see also January 31, 1855 ("I skated up as far as the boundary between Wayland and Sudbury just above Pelham’s Pond, about twelve miles, . . . It was, all the way that I skated, a chain of meadows, with the muskrat-houses still rising above the ice. I skated past three bridges above Sherman’s —or nine in all—and walked to the fourth. It was quite an adventure getting over the bridge ways or causeways, for on every shore there was either water or thin ice which would not bear.")

Veiny-leaved hawkweed freshly out. See June 23, 1858 ("Veiny-leaved hawkweed, how long?") See also August 21, 1851 (" I have now found all the hawkweeds. Singular these genera of plants, plants manifestly related yet distinct. They suggest a history to nature, a natural history in a new sense.”)

A foggy, Cape-Cod day, with an easterly wind. See June 23, 1854 ("There has been a foggy haze, dog-day-like, for perhaps ten days,"); June 23, 1860 ("The atmosphere is decidedly blue. I see it in the street within thirty rods, and perceive a distinct musty odor. First bluish, musty dog-day, and sultry. Thermometer at two only 85°, however, and wind comes easterly soon and rather cool."); June 30, 1857 ("Yesterday afternoon it was remarkably cool, with wind, it being easterly, and I anticipated a sea-turn.")