This sixteen miles up river.

July 31. 

7.30 A. M. — Up river. 

C. and I, having left our boat at Rice's Bend last night, walk to it this forenoon on our way to Saxonville. Water three quarters of an inch above summer level. 

It is emphatically one of the dog-days. A dense fog, not clearing off till we are far on our way, and the clouds (which did not let in any sun all day) were the dog-day fog and mist, which threatened no rain. A muggy but comfortable day. As we go along the Corner road, the dense fog for a background relieves pleasantly the outlines of every tree, though only twenty rods off, so that each is seen as a new object, especially that great oak scrag behind Hubbard's, once bent into a fence, now like a double-headed eagle, dark on the white ground. 

We go in the road to Rice's on account of the heavy dew, yet the fine tops of red-top, drooping with dew over the path, with a bluish hue from the dew, — blue with dew, — wet our shoes through. 

The roads are strewn with meadow-hay, which the farmers teamed home last evening (Saturday). 

The grass is thickly strewn with white cobwebs, tents of the night, which promise a fair day. I notice that they are thickest under the apple trees. Within the woods the mist or dew on them is so very fine that they look smoke-like and dry, yet even there, if you put your finger under them and touch them, you take off the dew and they become invisible. They are revealed by the dew, and perchance it is the dew and fog which they reveal which are the sign of fair weather. 

It is pleasant to walk thus early in the Sunday morning, while the dewy napkins of the cobwebs are visible on the grass, before the dew evaporates and they are concealed. 

Returning home last evening, I heard that exceedingly fine z-ing or creaking of crickets (?), low in the grass in the meadows. You might think it was a confused ringing in your head, it is so fine. Heard it again toward evening. Autumnalish.

On the 26th I saw quails which had been picking dung in a cart-path. Probably their broods are grown. 

The goldfinch's note, the cool watery twitter, is more prominent now. 

We had left our paddles, sail, etc., under one of Rice's buildings, on some old wagon-bodies. Rice, who called the big bittern "cow-poke, baked-plum- pudding." 

It is worth the while to get at least a dozen miles on your journey before the dew is off. 

Stopped at Weir Hill Bend to cut a pole to sound with, and there came two real country boys to fish. One little fellow of seven or eight who talked like a man of eighty, — an old head, who had been, probably, brought up with old people. He was not willing to take up with my companion's jesting advice to bait the fish by casting in some of his worms, because, he said, "It is too hard work to get them where we live." 

Begin to hear the sharp, brisk dittle-ittle-ittle of the wren amid the grass and reeds, generally invisible. I only hear it between Concord line and Framingham line. 

What a variety of weeds by the riverside now, in the water of the stagnant portions! Not only lilies of three kinds, but heart-leaf, Utricularia vulgaris and purpurea, all (at least except two yellow lilies) in prime. Sium in bloom, too, and Bidens Beckii just begun, and Ranunculus Purshii still. 

The more peculiar features of Concord River are seen in these stagnant, lake-like reaches, where the pads and heart-leaf, pickerel-weed, button-bush, utricularias, black willows, etc., abound. 

Above the Sudbury causeway, I notice again that remarkable large and tall typha, apparently T. latifolia (yet there is at least more than an inch interval between the two kinds of flowers, judging from the stump of the sterile bud left on). It is seven or eight feet high (its leaves), with leaves flat on one side (only concave at base, the sheathing part) and regularly convex on the other. They are so much taller than any I see elsewhere as to appear a peculiar species. Long out of bloom. They are what you may call the tallest reed of the meadows, unless you rank the arundo with them, but these are hardly so tall. 

The button-bush, which is, perhaps, at the height of its bloom, resounds with bees, etc., perhaps as much as the bass has. It is remarkable that it is these late flowers about which we hear this susurrus. You notice it with your back to them seven or eight rods off. 

See a blue heron several times to-day and yesterday. They must therefore breed not far off. We also scare up many times green bitterns, perhaps young, which utter their peculiar note in the Beaver Hole Meadows and this side. 

For refreshment on these voyages, [we] are compelled to drink the warm and muddy-tasted river water out of a clamshell which we keep, — so that it reminds you of a clam soup, — taking many a sup, or else leaning over the side of the boat while the other leans the other way to keep your balance, and often plunging your whole face in at that, when the boat dips or the waves run. 

At about one mile below Saxonville the river winds from amid high hills and commences a great bend called the Ox-Bow. Across the neck of this bend, as I paced, it is scarcely twenty rods, while it must be (as I judged by looking, and was told) a mile or more round. Fisher men and others are accustomed to drag their boats overland here, it being all hard land on this neck. A man by the bridge below had warned us of this cut-off, which he said would save us an hour! 

A man fishing at the Ox-Bow said without hesitation that the stone-heaps were made by the sucker, at any rate that he had seen them made by the sucker in Charles River, — the large black sucker (not the horned one). 

Another said that the water rose five feet above its present level at the bridge on the edge of Framingham, and showed me about the height on the stone. It is an arched stone bridge, built some two years ago. 

About the Sudbury line the river becomes much narrower and generally deeper, as it enters the first large meadows, the Sudbury meadows, and is very winding, — as indeed the Ox-Bow was. It is only some thirty or forty feet wide, yet with firm upright banks a foot or two high, — canal-like. This canal-like reach is the transition from the Assabet to the lake-like or Musketaquid portion. 

At length, off Pelham Pond, it is almost lost in the weeds of the reedy meadow, being still more narrowed and very weedy, with grassy and muddy banks. This meadow, which it enters about the Sudbury line, is a very wild and almost impenetrable one, it is so wet and muddy. It is called the Beaver-Hole Meadows and is a quite peculiar meadow, the chief growth being, not the common sedges, but great bur-reed, five or six feet high and all over it, mixed with flags, Scirpus fluviatilis, and wool-grass, and rank canary grass. Very little of this meadow can be worth cutting, even if the water be low enough.

This great sparganium was now in fruit (and a very little in flower). I was surprised by the sight of the great bur-like fruit, an inch to an inch and a half in diameter, the fruit-stems much branched and three or four feet high. It is a bur of sharp-pointed cones; stigmas linear. I can hardly believe that this is the same species that grows in C. It is apparently much earlier than ours. Yet ours may be a feeble growth from its very seeds floated down. Can it be that in this wild and muddy meadow the same plant grows so rankly as to look like a new species? It is decidedly earlier as well as larger than any I find in C. It does not grow in water of the river, but densely, like flags, in the meadow far and wide, five or six feet high, and this, with the Scirpus fluviatilis, etc., makes a very novel sight. 

Where there are rare, wild, rank plants, there too some wild bird will be found. The marsh wrens and the small green bitterns are especially numerous there. Doubtless many rails here. They lurk amid these reeds.

Behind the reeds on the east side, opposite the pond, was a great breadth of pontederia. Zizania there just begun. 

This wren (excepting, perhaps, the red-wing black bird) is the prevailing bird of the Sudbury meadows, yet I do not remember to have heard it in Concord. I get a nest, suspended in a patch of bulrush (Scirpus lacustris) by the river's edge, just below the Sudbury causeway, in the afternoon. It is a large nest (for the bird), six inches high, with the entrance on one side, made of coarse material, apparently withered bulrush and perhaps pipes and sedge, and no particular lining; well woven and not very thick; some two and a half or three feet above water. The bird is shy and lurks amid the reeds. 

We could not now detect any passage into Pelham Pond, which at the nearest, near the head of this reach, came within thirty rods of the river. 

Do not the lake-like reaches incline to run more north and south? 

The potamogetons do not abound anywhere but in shallows, hence in the swifter places. The lake-like reaches are too deep for them. 

Cardinal-flower. Have seen it formerly much earlier. Perhaps the high water in June kept it back. 

This sixteen miles up, added to eleven down, makes about twenty-seven that I have boated on this river, to which may be added five or six miles of the Assabet.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 31, 1859


The grass is thickly strewn with white cobwebs, tents of the night, which promise a fair day. . . . perchance it is the dew and fog which they reveal which are the sign of fair weather. See July 22, 1851 ( These are our fairest days, which are born in a fog.") July 25, 1852 ("This is one of those ambosial, white, ever-memorable fogs presaging fair weather. ")

The goldfinch's note, the cool watery twitter, is more prominent now. See July 31, 1855 ("Have observed the twittering over of goldfinches for a week."); August 4, 1852 ("I hear the singular watery twitter of the goldfinch, ter tweeter e et or e ee, as it ricochets over, he and his russet ( ?) female."); August 6, 1852 (“With the goldenrod comes the goldfinch. About the time his cool twitter is heard, does not the bobolink, thrasher, catbird, oven-bird, veery, etc., cease?”); August 9, 1856 (“The notes of the wood pewee and warbling vireo are more prominent of late, and of the goldfinch twittering over.”)

See a blue heron several times to-day and yesterday. They must therefore breed not far off. August 12, 1853 ("See the blue herons opposite Fair Haven Hill, as if they had bred here."); ;August 19, 1858 (" Blue herons, which have bred or been bred not far from us (plainly), are now at leisure, or are impelled to revisit our slow stream. I have not seen the last since spring. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Blue Heron

Where there are rare, wild, rank plants, there too some wild bird will be found. See May 29, 1856 ("Where you find a rare flower, expect to find more rare ones.")

This sixteen miles up, added to eleven down, makes about twenty-seven that I have boated on this river. See 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."); September 14, 1854 ("To opposite Pelham’s Pond by boat. . . We went up thirteen or fourteen miles at least, and, as we stopped at Fair Haven Hill returning, rowed about twenty-five miles to-day.")

A string of lakes which have not made up their minds to be rivers.

July 30. 

A. M. — On river to ascertain the rate of the current.

This dog-day weather I can see the bottom where five and a half feet deep. At five feet it is strewn clear across with sium, heart-leaf, Ranunculus Purshii, etc. It is quite green and verdurous, especially with the first. I see the fishes moving leisurely about amid the weeds, their affairs revealed, especially perch, — some large ones prowling there; and pickerel, large and small, lie imperturbable. 

I see more moss (?) covered rocks on the bottom and some rising quite near the surface, — three or four be tween my boat's place and thirty rods above, — and a good many three feet over on the bottom, revealed in the sunny water, and little suspected before. 

Indeed, the bottom may be considered rocky from above Dodd's to my boat's place, though you would suspect it only when looking through this clear water. They are so completely covered with moss-like weeds or tresses that you do not see them, — like the heads of mermaids. 

A rock there is a nucleus or hard core to a waving mass of weeds, and you must probe it hard with a paddle to detect the hard core. No doubt many a reach is thus rock-strewn which is supposed to have an uninterruptedly muddy bottom. They sleep there concealed under these long tresses on the bottom, suggesting a new kind of antiquity. 

There is nothing to wear on and polish them there. They do not bear the paint rubbed off from any boat. Though unsuspected by the oldest fisher, they have eyed Concord for centuries through their watery veil without ever parting their tresses to look at her. 

Perchance the increased stagnancy of the river at this season makes the water more transparent, it being easier to look into stagnant water than when the particles are in rapid motion. 

The outside heart-leaves above Dodd's grow in six feet of water, and also the kalmiana lily. 

Trying the current there, there being a very faint, chiefly side, wind, commonly not enough to be felt on the cheek or to ripple the water, — what would be called by most a calm, — my bottle floats about seventy-five feet in forty minutes, and then, a very faint breeze beginning to drive it back, I cannot wait to see when it will go a hundred. It is, in short, an exceedingly feeble current, almost a complete standstill. 

My boat is altogether blown up-stream, even by this imperceptible breath. Indeed, you can in such a case feel the pulse of our river only in the shallowest places, where it preserves some slight passage between the weeds. It faints and gives up the ghost in deeper places on the least adverse wind, and you would presume it dead a thousand times, if you did not apply the nicest tests, such as a feather to the nostrils of a drowned man. 

It is a mere string of lakes which have not made up their minds to be rivers. As near as possible to a standstill. 

Yet by sinking a strawberry box beneath the surface I found that there was a slight positive current there, that when a chip went pretty fast up-stream in this air, the same with the box sunk one foot and tied to it went slowly down, at three feet deep or more went faster than when the box was sunk only one foot. The water flowed faster down at three feet depth than at one, there where it was about seven feet deep, and though the surface for several inches deep may be flowing up in the wind, the weeds at bottom will all be slanted down. 

Indeed, I suspect that at four or five feet depth the weeds will be slanted downward in the strongest wind that blows up, in that the current is always creeping along downward underneath. 

After my first experiments I was surprised to find that the weeds at bottom slanted down-stream. I have also been surprised to find that in the clear channel between the potamogetons, though it looked almost stagnant, it was hard to swim against it; as at Rice's Bend. 

See many cowbirds about cows.

P. M. — Left boat at Rice's Bend. 

I spoke to him of the clapper rail. He remembered that his father once killed a bird, a sort of mud-hen, which they called the tinker, since he made [a] noise just like a tinker on brass, and they used to set it agoing in the meadows by striking two coppers together. His father stuffed it and did not know what it was. It had a long body. 

Yet the river in the middle of Concord is swifter than above or below, and if Concord people are slow in consequence of their river's influence, the people of Sudbury and Carlisle should be slower still.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 30, 1859

I can see the bottom where five and a half feet deep. I see the fishes moving leisurely about amid the weeds, their affairs revealed, especially perch, — some large ones prowling there; and pickerel, large and small, lie imperturbable. See  July 18, 1854 ("I do not know why the water should be so remarkably clear and the sun shine through to the bottom of the river, making it so plain.“);  July 27, 1860 ("The water has begun to be clear and sunny, revealing the fishes and countless minnows of all sizes and colors”); July 28, 1859 ("The season has now arrived when I begin to see further into the water, — see the bottom, the weeds, and fishes more than before. I can see the bottom when it is five and a half feet deep even, see the fishes, especially the perch, scuttling in and out amid the weeds.."); July 30, 1856 ("The wonderful clearness of the water, enabling you to explore the river bottom and many of its secrets now...”)

My bottle floats about seventy-five feet in forty minutes, and then, a very faint breeze beginning to drive it back, I cannot wait to see when it will go a hundred. Compare June 24, 1859 ("Simonds of Bedford, who is measuring the rapidity of the current at Carlisle Bridge, says that a board with a string attached ran off there one hundred yards in fifteen minutes");   July 25, 1859 ("a bottle sunk low in the water floats one hundred feet . . . in four and a half minutes.")

It is a mere string of lakes which have not made up their minds to be rivers. As near as possible to a standstill. See April 16, 1852 ("A succession of bays it is, a chain of lakes, . . .There is just stream enough for a flow of thought; that is all. Many a foreigner who has come to this town has worked for years on its banks without discovering which way the river runs. ")

Berrying to Brooks Clark's.

July 29. 

P. M. — Berrying to Brooks Clark's. 

Rich-weed, how long? 

Amaranthus hypochondriacus, apparently some days, with its interesting spotted leaf, lake beneath, and purple spike; amid the potatoes.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 29, 1854


Rich-weed, how long? See July 28, 1856 ("Richweed at Brown's oak, several days (since 16th; say 22d).")

Amaranthus hypochondriacus, See September 14, 1852 ("Amaranthus hypochondriacus, prince's-feather, with 'bright red-purple flowers' and sanguine stem")

The drought ceases with the dog-days.

July 27. 

8 a. m. — Rains, still quite soakingly. 

June and July perhaps only are the months of drought. The drought ceases with the dog-days. 

P. M. — To White Pond in rain. 

The autumnal dandelion now appears more abundantly within a week. 

Solidago lanceolata also, a few days probably, though only partially open.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 27, 1853

The drought ceases with the dog-days. See July 24, 1854 ("A decided rain-storm to-day and yesterday, such as we have not had certainly since May."); July 31, 1855 ("Our dog-days seem to be turned to a rainy season"); August 15, 1858 ("It is the season of mould and mildew, and foggy, muggy, often rainy weather.")

The autumnal dandelion now appears more abundantly within a week. See August 4. 1854 ("The autumnal dandelion is now more common.");  September 13, 1856 ("Surprised at the profusion of autumnal dandelions in their prime on the top of the hill")

Apple trees, square and round, in the northwest landscape.

July 26. 

P. M. — To Great Meadows.

July 26, 2019

I see in Clark's (?) land, behind Garfield's, a thick growth of white birches, apparently three years old, blown from the wood on the west and southwest.

Looking from Peter's, the meadows are somewhat glaucous, with a reddish border, or bank, by the river, where the red-top and Agrostis scabra grow, and a greener stream where the pipes are, in the lowest part, by the Holt, and in some places yellowish-green ferns and now brown-topped wool-grass. 

There is much of what I call Juncus scirpoides now in its prime in the wetter parts, as also the Eleocharis palustris, long done, and Rhyncospora alba lately begun. Also buck-bean by itself in very wet places which have lost their crust. 

Elodea, how long? 

Now observe the darker shades, and especially the apple trees, square and round, in the northwest landscape. 

Dogdayish. 

Methinks the hardhack leaves always stand up, for now they do, and have as soon as they blossomed at least.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 26, 1859

I see in Clark's land, behind Garfield's, a thick growth of white birches, apparently three years old, blown from the wood on the west and southwest. See January 7, 1854 ("The bird-shaped scales of the white birch are blown more than twenty rods from the trees"); January 7, 1856 ("I see birch scales (bird-like) on the snow on the river more than twenty rods south of the nearest and only birch, and trace them north to it”);  March 25, 1858 ("Going across A. Clark's field behind Garfield’s, I see many fox-colored sparrows flitting past in a straggling manner into the birch and pitch pine woods on the left"); November 8, 1860 ("Also a wet and brushy meadow some forty rods in front of Garfield's is being rapidly filled with white pines whose seeds must have been blown  [fifty rods].").

July 26. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 26

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

I measure the rapidity of the river's current.

July 25. 

July 25, 2019

The Rice boy brings me what he thought a snipe's egg, recently taken from a nest in the Sudbury meadows. It is of the form of a rail's egg, but is not whitish like mine, but olive-colored with dark-brown spots. Is it the sora rail? 

He has also a little egg, as he says taken out of a thrasher's nest, apparently one third grown. 

Flagg says that the chimney swallow is sometimes abroad "the greater part of the night;" is informed by Fowler that the rose-breasted grosbeak often sings in the light of the moon. 

P. M. — Water three and a half inches above summer level. 

I measure the rapidity of the river's current. At my boat's place behind Channing's, a bottle sunk low in the water floats one hundred feet in five minutes; one hundred feet higher up, in four and a half minutes. (I think the last the most correct.) It came out a rod and a half ahead of two chips.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 25, 1859

Olive-colored with dark-brown spots. Is it the sora rail? See note to December 7, 1858 ("The rail’s egg (of Concord, which I have seen) . . . Is it the sora rail’s (of which there is no egg in this collection)?")

Water three and a half inches above summer level. See July 9, 1859 ("July 9th, water is eleven and a half inches above summer level.")

Near the ditch beyond Dennis's Lupine Hill

July 24. 

P. M. — To Ledum Swamp. 

The hairy huckleberry still lingers in bloom, — a few of them. 

The white orchis will hardly open for a week.

Mulgedium, how long? 

Near the ditch beyond Dennis's Lupine Hill, a vaccinium near to Pennsylvanicum, perhaps a variety of it, with ripe fruit, little or no bloom, broader-leaved than that, and not shining beneath but somewhat glaucous.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 24, 1859

The hairy huckleberry still lingers in bloom, — a few of them.The white orchis will hardly open for a week See July 15, 1859 ("The white orchis not yet, apparently, for a week or more. Hairy huckleberry still in bloom, but chiefly done."); August 8, 1858 ("I find at Ledum Swamp, near the pool, the white fringed orchis, quite abundant but past prime, only a few, yet quite fresh. It seems to belong to this sphagnous swamp and is some fifteen to twenty inches high, quite conspicuous, its white spike, amid the prevailing green. The leaves are narrow, half folded, and almost insignificant. It loves, then, these cold bogs.")

Mulgedium, how long? See August 12, 1856 ("The mulgedium in that swamp is very abundant and a very stately plant, so erect and soldier-like, in large companies, rising above all else, with its very regular long, sharp, elliptic head and bluish-white flowers.")

A vaccinium near to Pennsylvanicum, perhaps a variety of it, with ripe fruit, little or no bloom.See  July 15, 1859 ("Ledum Swamp . . .Gather a few Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum.")  See also July 3, 1852 ("When the woods on some hillside are cut off, the Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum springs up, or grows more luxuriantly, being exposed to light and air, and by the second year its stems are weighed to the ground with clusters of blueberries covered with bloom, and much larger than they commonly grow, also with a livelier taste than usual, as if remembering some primitive mountain-side given up to them anciently.");July 11, 1857(“Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum ripe. Their dark blue with a bloom is a color that surprises me. ”); July 13, 1852 ("There are evidently several kinds of . . . blueberries not described by botanists: of the very early blueberries at least two varieties, one glossy black with dark-green leaves, the other a rich light blue with bloom and yellowish-green leaves"); July 13, 1854 (“The V. Pennsylvanicum is soft and rather thin and tasteless, mountain and spring like, with its fine light-blue bloom, very handsome, simple and ambrosial.”); July 13, 1857 ("Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum berries pretty thick [in that sprout-land beyond the red huckleberry], and one lass is picking them with a dipper tied to her girdle.");July 21, 1856 ("Low blackberries thick enough to pick in some places, three or four days. Thimble-berries about the 12th, and V. Pennsylvanicum much longer."). July 29, 1858 ("To Pine Hill, looking for the Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum berries. I find plenty of bushes, but these bear very sparingly. They appear to bear but one or two years before they are overgrown."); August 4, 1856 (“still fresh, the great very light blue (i. e. with a very thick blue bloom) Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum in heavy clusters, that early ambrosial fruit, delicate-flavored, thin-skinned, and cool, — Olympian fruit”

A Book of the Seasons: July

JULY 

Nature offers fruits now as well as flowers.

In the midst of July heat and drought, the season is trivial as noon.

A month of haying, heat, low water, and weeds.

“The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign

some office to each day

which, summed up, 

would be the

history of the year.”

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

***

July 1.

A late breeze rises,

wood thrush and tanager sing,

sparkling the river. 

July 1, 1854

July 2.

Fine silvery light 
reflecting from the blades of

miles of waving grass.

July 2, 1851

July 3.

Wintergreen blossom,

pretty little chandelier,

adorns forest floor.

July 3, 1852

 July 4.

Waves of light and shade

over the breadth of the land

sweeping the landscape.

July 4, 1860

July 5.

Shadows of pine stems

fall across the small wood path,

red with pine-needles.

July 5, 1851

July 6

June grasses are past.

Now the grass turns to hay as

  flowers turn to fruits.

July 6, 1851

July 7.

Lilies surprise me.

Now the flowering season

has reached its height.

July 7, 1852

July 8.

The moon reflected

from the rippled surface like

a stream of dollars.

July 8, 1854

July 9.

Busy hummingbird

unmindful of the shower,

struck by a big drop.

July 9, 1860

July 10.

Aboriginal

bream over its sandy nest

poised on waving fin.

July 10, 1853

July 11.

Waving in the wind

this grass gives a purple sheen

over the meadow.

July 11, 1860

July 12.

Long after starlight

high-pillared clouds of the day

reflect downy light.

July 12, 1852

July 13.

Hayers rest at noon

and resume after sunset.

The Haymaker’s moon.

July 13, 1851

July 14.

A fine misty rain

lies on reddish tops of grass

like morning cobwebs.

July 14, 1854

July 15.

Thoughts driven inward

by clouds and trees reflected

in the still, smooth water.

July 15, 1854

July 16.

Dark-blue winding stripe,

green meadow, dark-green forest,

blue dark and white sky.

July 16, 1851

July 17.

Flying shore to shore,

yellowish devil's-needles

cross their Atlantic.

July 17, 1854

July 18.

With midsummer heats

 asters and goldenrods now,

children of the sun.

July 18, 1854

July 19.

The more smothering,

furnace-like heats are begun,

and the locust days.

July 19, 1854

July 20.

Darting forked lightning,

a muttering thunder-cloud

drives me home again.

July 20, 1854

July 21.

Sun warm on my back

I turn round and shade my face --

a beautiful life.

July 21, 1853

July 22.

Our fairest days born

in a fog, the season of

morning fogs arrived.

July 22, 1851

July 23

Along the river

the memory of roses.

Late rose now in prime.

July 23, 1860

July 24.

In low Flint's Pond Path 

goldenrod makes a thicket 

higher than my head. 

July 24, 1856

July 25.

Fog rises highest

over the river and ponds

which are thus revealed.

July 25, 1852

July 26.

Sun's disk round and red

seen well above horizon

through thick atmosphere.

July 26, 1856

July 27. 

The voice of the loon 

in the middle of the night

far over the lake.

July 27, 1857

July 28

Goldenrod, asters

grasshoppers now abundant,

cooler breezy air.

July 28, 1852

July 29.

Kindred red color

of skies in the evening and

fruits in the harvest.

July 29, 1852

July 30.

Grand sound of the rain

on the leaves of the forest

-- distant, approaching.

July 30, 1852

July 31.

At mid-afternoon

caught in a deluging rain

under a maple.

July 31, 1860

.

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A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, July

See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, July Moods

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