Jersey tea, just beginning.

June 29. 

Jersey tea, just beginning. 

Asclepias obtusifolia, a day or two. 

Sericocarpus conyzoides.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, June 29, 1853

Asclepias obtusifolia, a day or two. See July 4, 1854 ("Asclepias obtusifolia, also day or two."); September 21, 1856 ("The Asclepias obtusifolia . . . A fairy-like casket, shaped like a canoe, with its closely packed imbricated brown seeds, with their yet compressed silvery parachutes like finest unsoiled silk in the right position above them, ready to be wafted some dry and breezy day to their destined places.”)

Sericocarpus conyzoides (Toothed white-top aster) See July 17, 1852 ("That Sericocarjrus conyzoides prevails now"); July 29, 1853 ("Butterflies of various colors are now more abundant than I have seen them before, especially the small reddish or coppery ones. I counted ten yesterday on a single Sericocarpus conyzoides. They were in singular harmony with the plant, as if they made a part of it."); August 12, 1856 ("The leaves of Sericocarpus conyzoides are fragrant when bruised."); August 31, 1858 ("Sericocarpus about done. ")

A record of a sunset. At midnight by moonlight.

June 28.

OEnothera biennis, evening-primrose, with its conspicuous flowers but rather unsightly stem and leaves. 

The Rubus odorata, purple flowering raspberry, in gardens. 

Potatoes for some time. 

Evening. 7 p.m. — Moon more than half. 

There are meteorologists, but who keeps a record of the fairer sunsets? 

While men are recording the direction of the wind, they neglect to record the beauty of the sunset or the rainbow. 

The sun not yet set. 

The bobolink sings descending to the meadow as I go along the railroad to the pond. 

The seringo-bird and the common song sparrow, — and the swallows twitter. 

The plaintive strain of the lark, coming up from the meadow, is perfectly adapted to the hour. 

When I get nearer the wood, the veery is heard, and the oven-bird, or whet-saw, sounds hollowly from within the recesses of the wood. 

The clouds in the west are edged with fiery red. A few robins faintly sing. 

The huckleberry-bird in more open fields in the woods. The thrasher?

The sun is down. 

The night-hawks are squeaking in the somewhat dusky air and occasionally making the ripping sound; the chewinks sound; the bullfrogs begin, and the toads; also tree-toads more numerously. 

Walden imparts to the body of the bather a remark ably chalky-white appearance, whiter than natural, tinged with blue, which, combined with its magnifying and distorting influence, produces a monstrous and ogre like effect, proving, nevertheless, the purity of the water. 

The river water, on the other hand, imparts to the bather a yellowish tinge.

There is a very low mist on the water close to the shore, a few inches high. 

The moon is brassy or golden now, and the air more dusky; yet I hear the pea-wai and the wood thrush, and now a whip-poor-will before I have seen a star. 

The walker in the woods at this hour takes note of the different veins of air through which he passes, — the fresher and cooler in the hollows, laden with the condensed fragrance of plants, as it were distilled in dews; and yet the warmer veins in a cool evening like this do not fail to be agreeable, though in them the air is comparatively lifeless or exhausted of its vitality. It circulates about from pillar to post, from wood-side to side-hill, like a dog that has lost its master, now the sun is gone. 

Now it is starlight; perhaps that dark cloud in the west has concealed the evening star before.

Yet I hear a chewink, veery, and wood thrush. 

Nighthawks and whip-poor-wills, of course. 

A whip-poor-will whose nest, perchance, I am near, on the side of the Cliff, hovers in the dusky air about ten feet from me, now on this side, then on that, on quivering wings, inspecting me, showing the white on its wings. It holds itself stationary for a minute. 

It is the first warm night for a week, and I hear the toads by the river very numerous. 

First there was sundown, then starlight. 

Starlight! That would be a good way to mark the hour, if we were precise. 

That is an epoch, when the last traces of daylight have disappeared and the night (nox) has fairly set in. 

Is not the moon a mediator? 

She is a light-giver that does not dazzle me. 

I have camped out all night on the tops of four mountains, — Wachusett, Saddle-back, Ktaadn, and Monadnock, — and I usually took a ramble over the summit at midnight by moonlight. 

I remember the moaning of the wind on the rocks, and that you seemed much nearer to the moon than on the plains. The light is then in harmony with the scenery. Of what use the sunlight to the mountain-summits? From the cliffs you looked off into vast depths of illumined air.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 28, 1852


When I get nearer the wood, the veery is heard, and the oven-bird, or whet-saw, sounds hollowly from within the recesses of the wood. ...  Now it is starlight [y]et I hear a chewink, veery, and wood thrush. See May 13, 1856 (“At the swamp, hear the yorrick of Wilson’s thrush; the tweezer-bird or Sylvia Americana. Also the oven-bird sings.”); May 19, 1860 (“By the path-side near there, what I should call a veery's nest with four light-blue eggs, but I have not heard the veery note this year, only the yorrick.“); June 11, 1852 ("The oven-bird and the thrasher sing. "); June 15, 1854 ("Thrasher and catbird sing still; summer yellowbird and Maryland yellow-throat sing still; and oven-bird and veery"); June 16, 1856 (“Heard . . . not only Wilson’s thrush, but evergreen forest note and tanager.”); June 21, 1852 (“I hear the veery and the huckleberry-bird and the catbird.”);  July 10, 1854 ("The singing birds at present are . . .  Red-eye, tanager, wood thrush, chewink, veery, oven-bird, — all even at midday.")

Now it is starlight; perhaps that dark cloud in the west has concealed the evening star before. . . .Starlight! That would be a good way to mark the hour, if we were precise. See  August 8, 1851 ("Starlight! that would be a good way to mark the hour, if we were precise.”); May 8, 1852 (“Starlight marks conveniently a stage in the evening, i. e. when the first star can be seen. ”); June 30, 1852 (“It is starlight about half an hour after sunset to-night; i. e. the first stars appear”); July 20, 1852 ("It is starlight. You see the first star in the southwest, and know not how much earlier you might have seen it had you looked.");

The dogsbane is one of the more interesting little flowers.

June 27.

 4. 30 A. M. – To Island by river.

The cuckoo’s nest is robbed, or perhaps she broke her egg because I found it.

Thus three out of half a dozen nests which I have revisited have been broken up.

It is a very shallow nest, six or seven inches in diameter by two and a half or three deep, on a low bending willow, hardly half an inch deep within ; concealed by overlying leaves of a swamp white oak on the edge of the river meadow, two to three feet from ground, made of slender twigs which are prettily ornamented with much ramalina lichen, lined with hickory catkins and pitch pine needles.

I have described the rest before.

Saw a little pickerel with a minnow in his mouth.

It was a beautiful little silver-colored minnow, two inches long, with a broad stripe down the middle.

The pickerel held [it] crosswise near the tail, as he had seized it, and as I looked down on him, he worked the minnow along in his mouth toward the head, and then swallowed it head foremost.

Was this instinct? 

Fishermen should consider this in giving form to their bait. The pickerel does not swallow the bait at once, but first seizes it, then probably decides how it can best be swallowed, and no doubt he lets go again in disgust some baits of which he can make neither head nor tail.

The radical leaves (four?) of the floating-heart are triangularly or wedge ovate, on petioles one to two inches long.

The two large potamogetons now common on river  the smaller apparently not long in flower), with ovate or elliptical floating leaves sometimes salmon color, belong to one or two of the first three of Gray.

The smaller has its immersed leaves long, narrowly linear, and semicylindrical ; those of the largest are pellucid, lanceolate, and waved.

That sort of ostrich feather on the bottom appears to be the Potamogeton Robbinsii.

What is that foul, submerged, densely whorled and capillary-leaved and forked utricularia like but bladderless plant? Then there is a pinnate and cut- leafed plant on the bottom.

Is it radical leaves of a proserpinaca? or a milfoil? I find a little bug between the calyx and petals of white lilies which have not opened. It has eaten holes in them.

The dogsbane is one of the more interesting little flowers.

  

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

The dogsbane is one of the more interesting little flowers. See April 24, 1856 (“See a dog’s-bane with two pods open and partially curved backward on each side, but a third not yet open. This soon opens and scatters its down and seeds in my chamber. The outside is a dull reddish or mahogany-color, but the inside is a singularly polished very pale brown. The inner bark of this makes a strong twine like that of the milkweed.”); June 15, 1852 (“Dogsbane is just ready to open.”); June 21, 1852 (“It would be pleasant to write the history of one hillside for one year, , ,. Blackberries, roses, and dogsbane also are now in bloom here.”); July 2, 1858 (“the A. androsoemifolium, quite downy beneath.”); July 3, 1853 ("Dogsbane and Jersey tea are among the prevailing flowers now.");August 1, 1858 (“the common apocynum (also in bloom as well as going and gone to seed) are very common.”);  August 16, 1856 ("I find the dog's-bane (Apocynum androsoemifolium) bark not the nearly so strong as that of the A. cannabinum”).; August 21, 1852 (“The leaves of the dogsbane are turning yellow”) See also notes to August 5, 1856 (“At the Assabet stone bridge, apparently freshly in flower, — though it may have been out nearly as long as the androscemifolium, — apparently the Apocynum var. hypericifolium (?)”) and to September 2, 1856 ("Some years ago I sought for Indian hemp (Apocynum cannabinum) hereabouts in vain, and concluded that it did not grow here. A month or two ago I read again, as many times before, that its blossoms were very small, scarcely a third as large as those of the common species, and for some unaccountable reason this distinction kept recurring to me, and I regarded the size of the flowers I saw, though I did not believe that it grew here; and in a day or two my eyes fell on it, aye, in three different places, and different varieties of it.")

Fishing for the Pond.

June 26.

Very cool day.

Had for dinner a pudding made of service-berries.

It was very much like a rather dry cherry pudding without the stones.

A slight hail-storm in the afternoon. [see after the rain]

Euphorbia maculata.

Our warmest night thus far this year was June 21st.

It began to be cooler the 24th.

  

5.30 P. M. – To Cliffs.

Carrot by railroad.

Mine apparently the Erigeron strigosus, yet sometimes tinged with purple.

The tephrosia is an agreeable mixture of white, straw color, and rose pink; unpretending.

What is the result of that one leaf (or more), much and irregularly, or variously, divided and cut, with milk in it, in woods, either a lactuca or prenanthes, probably, one foot or more high? 

Such is oftenest the young man’s introduction to the forest and wild.

He goes thither at first as a hunter and fisher, until at last the naturalist or poet distinguishes that which attracted him and leaves the gun and fishing-rod behind.

The mass of men are still and always young in this respect.

I have been surprised to observe that the only obvious employment which ever to my knowledge detained at Walden Pond for a whole half-day, unless it was in the way of business, any of my “fellow-citizens,” whether fathers or children of the town, with just one exception, was fishing.

They might go there a thousand times, perchance, before the sediment of fishing would sink to the bottom and leave their purpose pure, — before they began to angle for the pond itself.

Thus, even in civilized society, the embryo man (speaking intellectually) passes through the hunter stage of development.

They did not think they were lucky or well paid for their time unless they got a long string of fish, though they had the opportunity of seeing the pond all the while.

They measured their success by the length of a string of fish.

The Governor faintly remembers the pond, for he went a-fishing there when he was a boy, but now he is too old and dignified to go a-fishing, and so he knows it no longer.

If the Legislature regards it, it is chiefly to regulate the number of hooks to be used in fishing there, but they know nothing about the hook of hooks.

   

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 26, 1853

They might go there a thousand times, perchance, before the sediment of fishing would sink to the bottom and leave their purpose pure, — before they began to angle for the pond itself. See  December 2, 1856 ("There they sit, ever and anon scanning their reels to see if any have fallen, and, if not catching many fish, still getting what they went for, though they may not be aware of it, i. e. a wilder experience than the town affords.") ; October 4, 1858 ("There he stands at length, per chance better employed than ever, holding communion with nature and himself and coming to understand his real position and relation to men in this world. ")

I keep dry by following this blue guide

June 26.

Still hazy and dogdayish.

Go to the menagerie in the afternoon.

At 5 P. M., — river ten and a half inches above summer level, — cross the meadow to the Hemlocks.

The blue-eyed grass, now in its prime, occupies the drier and harder parts of the meadow, where I can walk dry-shod, but where the coarser sedge grows and it is lower and wetter there is none of it.

I keep dry by following this blue guide, and the grass is not very high about it. You cross the meadows dry-shod by following the winding lead of the blue-eyed grass, which grows only on the firmer, more elevated, and drier parts.

The hemlocks are too much grown now and are too dark a green to show the handsomest bead-work by contrast.

Under the Hemlocks, on the bare bank, apparently the Aira flexuosa, not long.

Young black willows have sprouted and put forth their two minute round leafets where the cottony seeds have lodged in a scum against the alders, etc. Leafets from one fortieth to one twenty-fifth of an inch in diameter. When separated from the continuous film of down they have a tendency to sink.

The Canada naiad (?), which I gathered yesterday, had perhaps bloomed. Thought I detected with my glass something like stamens about the little balls.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 26, 1860



Go to the menagerie in the afternoon. See June 26, 1851 ("Visited a menagerie this afternoon. I am always sur prised to see the same spots and stripes on wild beasts from Africa and Asia and also from South America, — on the Brazilian tiger and the African leopard , — and their general similarity . All these wild animals — lions, tigers, chetas, leopards, etc . — have one hue, — tawny and commonly spotted or striped, — what you may call pard - color , a color and marking which I had not as sociated with America  These are wild beasts. What constitutes the difference between a wild beast and a tame one  How much more human the one than the other  Growling, scratching, roaring, with whatever beauty and gracefulness, still untamable, this royal Bengal tiger or this leopard. They have the character and the importance of another order of men . The majestic lion, the king of beasts, he must retain his title ")

The hemlocks are too much grown now and are too dark a green to show the handsomest bead-work by contrast. See June 5, 1853 ("The fresh light green shoots of the hemlocks have now grown half an inch or an inch, spotting the trees, contrasting with the dark green of last year's foliage."); June 7, 1860  ("the bead-work of the hemlock"); June 11, 1859 ("Hemlocks are about at height of their beauty, with their fresh growth.")

Young black willows have sprouted and put forth their two minute round leafets where the cottony seeds have lodged in a scum against the alders. See, June 26, 1859 ("The black willow down . . . rests on the water by the sides of the stream, where caught by alders, etc., in narrow crescents ten and five feet long, at right angles with the bank, so thick and white ");  June 27, 1860 ("The black willow down is now washed up and collected against the alders and weeds."); June 29, 1857 ("The river is now whitened with the down of the black willow, and I am surprised to see a minute plant abundantly springing from its midst and greening it,. . ., — like grass growing in cotton in a tumbler.")

An unusual quantity of amelanchier berries.

June 25.

Saturday. P.  M.  — To Assabet Bathing Place.

June 25, 2020

Great orange lily beyond stone bridge.

Found in the Glade (?) Meadows an unusual quantity of amelanchier berries, – I think of the two common kinds,-one a taller bush, twice as high as my head, with thinner and lighter-colored leaves and larger, or at least somewhat softer, fruit, the other a shorter bush, with more rigid and darker leaves and dark-blue berries, with often a sort of woolliness on them.

Both these are now in their prime.

These are the first berries after strawberries, or the first, and I think the sweetest, bush berries.

Somewhat like high blueberries, but not so hard. Much eaten by insects, worms, etc. As big as the largest blueberries or peas.

These are the “service-berries” which the Indians of the north and the Canadians use.  La poire of the latter.

They by a little precede the early blueberry (though Holbrook brought two quarts of the last day before yesterday), being now in their prime, while blueberries are but just beginning.

I never saw nearly so many before. It is a very agreeable surprise.

I hear the cherry-birds and others about me, no doubt attracted by this fruit.

It is owing to some peculiarity in the season that they bear fruit.

I have picked a quart of them for a pudding. I felt all the while I was picking them, in the low, light, wavy shrubby wood they make, as if I were in a foreign country.

Several old farmers say, “Well, though I have lived seventy years, I never saw nor heard of them.” I think them a delicious berry, and no doubt they require only to be more abundant every year to be appreciated.

I think it must be the purple finch, — with the crimson head and shoulders, — which I see and hear singing so sweetly and variedly in the gardens, — one or two to-day. It sits on a bean-pole or fence-picket. It has a little of the martin warble and of the canary bird.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 25, 1853


An unusual quantity of amelanchier berries. See June 25, 1854 ("Shad-berry ripe."); see also May 9, 1852 ("The first shad-bush, Juneberry, or service-berry (Amclanchier canadensis), in blossom."). May 17, 1853 (“The petals have already fallen from the Amelanchier Botryapium, and young berries are plainly forming.”); May 30, 1852 ("The fruit of the amelanchier is as big as small peas. I have not noticed any other berry so large yet. ");  June 15, 1854 ("The Amelanchier Botryapium berries are already red dened two thirds over, and are somewhat palatable and soft, — some of them, — not fairly ripe."); July 13, 1852 ("The dark-purple amelanchier are the sweetest berries I have tasted yet.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Shad-bush, Juneberry, or Service-berry (Amelanchier canadensis)

It must be the purple finch which I see and hear singing so sweetly and variedly in the gardens. See April 3, 1858 ("I am surprised by the rich strain of the purple finch from the elms"); . April 11, 1853 ("I hear the clear, loud whistle of a purple finch, somewhat like and nearly as loud as the robin, from the elm by Whiting's."). May 24, 1855 ("Hear a purple finch sing more than one minute without pause, loud and rich, on an elm over the street."); July 7, 1856 (" The purple finch still sings over the street."); August 25, 1859 ("Mountain-ash berries partly turned. Again see, I think, purple finch eating them.") See also August 11, 1858 ('Heard a fine, sprightly, richly warbled strain from a bird perched on the top of a bean-pole. It was at the same time novel yet familiar to me. I soon recognized it for the strain of the purple finch, which I have not heard lately. But though it appeared as large, it seemed a different-colored bird. With my glass, four rods off, I saw it to be a goldfinch. It kept repeating this warble of the purple finch for several minutes. A very surprising note to be heard now, when birds generally are so silent. Have not heard the purple finch of late.') and  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Elms and the Purple Finch

July 25. See A Book of the Seasons,, by Henry Thoreau, June 25

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

It is surprising that so many birds find hair enough to line their nests with.

June 24.

P. M. – Boated to Clamshell Hill. 


My lilies in the pan have revived with the cooler weather since the rain. (It rained a little last night.) This is what they require that they may keep.

Mayweed yesterday.

The calopogon is a more bluish purple than the pogonia.

The Gnaphalium uliginosum seems to be almost in blossom.

Gratiola out in mud near river, — those bare, rather hard, muddy tracts on the edge of the meadow next the river, where mint grows and the mud has wide cracks, some nearly an inch wide, produced by the sun since the water went down.

It is cooler and remarkably windy this afternoon, showing the under sides of the leaves and the pads, the white now red beneath and all green above.

Wind northwest.

Found what I take to be an Indian hoe at Hubbard Bathing - Place, sort of slate stone four or five eighths of an inch thick, semi circular, eight inches one way by four or more the other, chipped down on the edges.

At the Clamshell curve, great masses of a kind of fresh - water eel - grass have lodged against the potamogeton in mid - channel, as against a shore, half a foot deep, and stretch across the river, long, green, narrow, ribbon - like.

It is apparently the Vallisneria spiralis, eel-grass, tape - grass. It grows at the bottom in shallow places, slanting and waving down - stream.

But what has collected it here all at once? Is it this strong wind operating on shallow places at curves? Or is it that some animal — muskrat or what-not — has loosened it? Or have men been at work up-stream somewhere? Does it always happen at this season? By the botany it does not blossom till August.

There were piles of dried heart - leaf on shore at the bathing - place, a foot high and more.

Were they torn up and driven ashore by the wind? I suspect it is the wind in both cases.

As storms at sea tear up and cast ashore the seaweeds from the rocks. These are our seaweeds cast ashore in storms, but I see only the eel-grass and the heart leaf thus served.

Our most common in the river appears to be between the Potamogeton natans and pulcher; it answers to neither, but can be no other described.

See it in fruit.

I do not see the ranunculus flowers very abundant yet — will it not be this year? Then there is that long, somewhat cylindrical, fine - capillary and bladdery leaved plant which I had wrongly thought belonged to the Ranunculus.

Is it not a utricularia ? All these, but especially the R. Purshii, have a strong fresh - water marsh smell, rather agree able sometimes as a bottle of salts, like the salt marsh and seaweeds, invigorating to my imagination.

In our great stream of distilled water going slowly down to ocean to be salted.

Sparganium, some time.

Pontederia, just out.

The lower translucent, waved leaves of the potamogeton are covered with a sort of very minute black caddis-case.

The peat [?] - black petioles of these leaves are much like seaweed.

There are the heart-leaf ponds, but I cannot say the potamogeton rivers on account of the tautology, and, beside, I do not like this last name, which signifies that it grows in the neighborhood of rivers, when it is not a neighbor but an indweller.

You might as well describe the seaweeds as growing in the neighborhood of the sea.

The brown thrasher’s nest (vide 21st) has been robbed, probably by some other bird. It rested on a branch of a swamp-pink and some grape-vines, effectually concealed and protected by grape-vines and green briar in a matted bower above it.

The foundation of pretty stout twigs, eight or nine inches in diameter, surmounted by coarse strips of grape bark, giving form to the nest, and then lined with some harsh, wiry root-fibres ; within rather small and shallow, and the whole fabric of loose texture, not easy to remove.

Also got a blackbird’s nest whose inhabitants had flown, hung by a kind of small dried rush (?) between two button - bushes which crossed above it  of meadow grass and sedge, dried Mikania scandens vine, horse tail, fish-lines, and a strip apparently of a lady’s bathing-dress, lined with a somewhat finer grass; of a loose and ragged texture to look at.

Green mikania running over it now.

A yellowbird’s nest (vide 21st ) in a fork of a willow on Hubbard’s Causeway, resting chiefly on the leading branch; of fine grass, lined with hair, bottom outside puffing out with a fine, light, flax - like fibre, perhaps the bark of some weed, by which also it is fastened to the twigs.

It is surprising that so many birds find hair enough to line their nests with.

If I wish for a horsehair for my compass sights I must go to the stable, but the hair-bird, with her sharp eyes, goes to the road.

The small white (perhaps sometimes violet or puplis) aster-like flower of Hubbard’s meadow, for some days.

If an aster, then the earliest one.

H. D. Thoreau,  Journal , June 24, 1853

The calopogon is a more bluish purple than the pogonia. See June 21, 1853 ("Calopogon out. I think it surpasses the pogonia, though the latter is sometimes high colored and is of a handsome form; "); June 23, 1853 ("Pogonias are now very abundant in the meadow-grass, and now and then a calopogon is mixed with them .The last is broader and of more singular form, commonly with an unopened bud above on one side."); July 5, 1852 (The calopogon, or grass-pink, now fully open, . . — its four or five open purple flowers — . . . makes a much greater show than the pogonia. It is of the same character with that and the arethusa. "); July 7, 1852 ("The Arethusa bulbosa, " crystalline purple;" Pogonia ophioglossoides, snake-mouthed arethusa, "pale purple;" and the Calopogon pulchellus, grass pink, "pink purple," make one family in my mind, — next to the purple orchis, or with it, — being flowers par excellence, all flower, all color, with inconspicuous leaves, naked flowers,")

The brown thrasher’s nest (vide 21st) has been robbed. See June 21, 1853 ("The nest of a brown thrasher with three eggs, on some green- riar, perfectly concealed by a grape-vine running over it ; eggs greenish -brown; nest of dry sticks, lined with fibres of grape bark and with roots.")  See also May 23, 1858 ("Brown thrasher's nest on ground, under a small tree, with four eggs"); May 27, 1855 ("A thrasher’s nest on the bare open ground with four eggs which were seen three days ago. The nest is as open and exposed as it well can be, lined with roots, on a slight ridge where a rail fence has been, some rods from any bush."); June 5, 1856 ("A brown thrasher’s nest with four eggs considerably developed, under a small white pine on the old north edge of the desert, lined with root-fibres."); June 6, 1857("A brown thrasher's nest, with two eggs, on ground, near lower lentago wall and toward Bittern Cliff. ")  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Brown Thrasher

A yellowbird’s nest in a fork of a willow on Hubbard’s Causeway. See . June 21,1853 ("I saw a yellowbird's nest in the willows on the causeway this afternoon and three young birds, nearly ready to fly, overflowing the nest, all holding up their inute or more, on noise of my approach")  See also e.g.  June 5, 1859 ("A yellowbird's nest; four eggs, open bills and keeping them steadily open for a mdeveloped. ")June 7, 1855 ("A yellowbird’s nest on a willow bough against a twig, ten feet high, four eggs."); June 9, 1855 ("A yellowbird’s nest eight feet from ground in crotch of a very slender maple"); June 9, 1856 ("A yellowbird’s nest in a poplar on Hubbard’s Bridge; four fresh eggs; ten feet high, three rods beyond fence."); . June 20, 1855 ("A summer yellowbird’s, saddled on an apple, of cotton-wool, lined with hair and feathers, three eggs, white with flesh-colored tinge and purplish-brown and black spots") and A Book of the Seasons,: the Summer Yellowbird

Nighthawks flying over high open fields in the woods.

June 23.

It is a pleasant sound to me, the squeaking and the booming of nighthawks flying over high open fields in the woods. They fly like butterflies, not to avoid birds of prey but  apparently, to secure their own insect prey. There is a particular part of the railroad just below the shanty where they may be heard and seen in greatest numbers. But often you must look a long while before you can detect the mote in the sky from which the note proceeds. 

The common cinquefoil (Potentilla simplex) greets me with its simple and unobtrusive yellow flower in the grass. 

The P. argentea, hoary cinquefoil, also is now in blossom. 

P. sarmentosa, running cinquefoil, we had common enough in the spring.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 23, 1851


The squeaking and the booming of nighthawks flying over high open fields in the woods. See June 1, 1853 ("Walking up this side-hill, I disturb a nighthawk eight or ten feet from me . .Without moving, I look about and see its two eggs on the bare ground, on a slight shelf of the hill, on the dead pine-needles and sand, without any cavity or nest whatever."); June 3, 1859 ("Nighthawk, two eggs, fresh. "); June 5, 1854 ("Now, just before sundown, a nighthawk is circling, imp-like, with undulating, irregular flight over the sprout-land on the Cliff Hill, with an occasional squeak and showing the spots on his wings. He does not circle away from this place, and I associate him with two gray eggs somewhere on the ground beneath and a mate there sitting."); June 7, 1853 ("Visit my nighthawk on her nest. . . . The sight of this creature sitting on its eggs impresses me with the venerableness of the globe"); June 7, 1858 ("The nighthawk sparks and booms over arid hillsides and sprout-lands."); June 15, 1852 ("The nighthawk squeaks and booms."); June 21, 1856 ("Nighthawks numerously squeak at 5 P. M. and boom.") See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,, the Nighthawk

The common cinquefoil (Potentilla simplex) greets me with its simple and unobtrusive yellow flower in the grass. See May 17, 1853 ("The early cinquefoil is now in its prime and spots the banks and hillsides and dry meadows with its dazzling yellow. How lively! It is one of the most interesting yellow flowers. ");. May 28, 1856 ("Potentilla argentea, maybe several days");June 4, 1857 ("The early potentilla is now erect in the June grass."); June 4, 1855 (“There are now many potentillas ascendant.”);June 8, 1858 ("The early potentilla is now in some places erect."); June 18, 1855 (" I see a painted tortoise just beginning its hole; then another a dozen rods from the river on the bare barren field near some pitch pines, where the earth was covered with cladonias, cinquefoil, sorrel, etc. "); June 28, 1858 ("The erect potentilla is a distinct variety, with differently formed leaves as well as different time of flowering, and not the same plant at a different season. Have I treated it as such?") June 28, 1860 ("I meet to-day with a wood tortoise which is eating the leaves of the early potentilla")

I hear the sound of distant thunder. The perception of beauty. The succession of wildflowers; the history of a hillside.

June 21. 

June 21, 2020

Monday. 7 p.m. — To Cliffs via Hubbard Bathing-Place.

Cherry-birds. I have not seen, though I think I have heard them before, — their fine seringo note, like a vibrating spring in the air. They are a handsome bird, with their crest and chestnut breasts. There is no keeping the run of their goings and comings, but they will be ready for the cherries when they shall be ripe. 

The adder's-tongue arethusa smells exactly like a snake. How singular that in nature, too, beauty and offensiveness should be thus combined! 

In flowers, as well as men, we demand a beauty pure and fragrant, which perfumes the air. The flower which is showy but has no, or an offensive, odor expresses the character of too many mortals. 

The swamp-pink bushes have many whitish spongy excrescences. 

Elder is blossoming; flowers opening now where black berries will be by and by. 

Panicled andromeda, or privet andromeda. 

Nature has looked uncommonly bare and dry to me for a day or two. With our senses applied to the surrounding world we are reading our own physical and corresponding moral revolutions. Nature was so shallow all at once I did not know what had attracted me all my life. I was therefore encouraged when, going through a field this evening, I was unexpectedly struck with the beauty of an apple tree. The perception of beauty is a moral test. 

When, in bathing, I rush hastily into the river the clamshells cut my feet. It is dusky now. Men are fishing on the Corner Bridge. 

I hear the veery and the huckleberry-bird and the catbird. 

It is a cool evening, past 8 o'clock.

I see the tephrosia out through the dusk; a handsome flower. 

What rich crops this dry hillside has yielded! First I saw the Viola pedata here, and then the lupines and the snapdragon covered it; and now the lupines are done and their pods are left, the tephrosia has taken their place. 

This small dry hillside is thus a natural garden. I omit other flowers which grow here, and name only those which to some extent cover it or possess it. No eighth of an acre in a cultivated garden would be better clothed, or with a more pleasing variety, from month to month, and while one flower is in bloom you little suspect that which is to succeed and perchance eclipse it. It is a warmly placed dry hillside beneath a wall, very thinly clad with grass. Such spots there are in nature, natural flower gardens. Of this succession I hardly know which to admire the most. 

It would be pleasant to write the history of one hillside for one year. First and last you have the colors of the rainbow and more, and the various fragrances, which it has not. Blackberries, roses, and dogsbane also are now in bloom here.

I hear neither toads nor bullfrogs at present; they want a warmer night. 

I hear the sound of distant thunder, though no cloud is obvious, muttering like the roar of artillery. That is a phenomenon of this season. As you walk at evening, you see the light of the flashes in the horizon and hear the muttering of distant thunder, where some village is being refreshed with the rain denied to Concord. We say that showers avoid us, that they go down the river, i. e. go off down the Merrimack, or keep to the south. 

Thunder and lightning are remarkable accompaniments to our life, as if to remind us that there always is or should be a kind of battle waging. The thunder is signal guns to us. 

The dwarf orchis (O. herbiola (Bigelow), Platanthera flava (Gray)) at the bathing-place in Hubbard's meadow, not remarkable. 

The purple orchis is a good flower to bring home. It will keep fresh many days, and its buds open at last in a pitcher of water. 

Obtuse galium. 

I observe a rose (called by some moss rose), with a bristly reddish stem; another, with a smooth red stem and but a few prickles; another, with many prickles and bristles. 

Found the single-flowered broom-rape in Love Lane, under the oak.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 21, 1852


The swamp-pink bushes have many whitish spongy excrescences. See June 20, 1853 ("Those great greenish-white puffs on the panicled andromeda are now decaying.On the swamp-pink they are solid.")

The adder's-tongue arethusa smells exactly like a snake. Compare July 26, 1856 ("The pod of the ellipticum, when cut, smells like a bee.") See July 7, 1852 ("The Arethusa bulbosa, "crystalline purple;" Pogonia ophioglossoides, snake-mouthed arethusa, "pale purple;" and the Calopogon pulchellus, grass pink, "pink purple," make one family in my mind, — next to the purple orchis, or with it, — being flowers par excellence, all flower, all color, with inconspicuous leaves, naked flowers, . . .the pogonia has a strong snaky odor."); see also July 2, 857 ("Pogonia ophioglossoides apparently in a day or two. "); to July 7, 1856 ("the snake-head arethusa is now abundant amid the cranberries. there [Gowings Swamp]");July 8, 1857 ("Find a Pogonia ophioglossoides with a third leaf and second flower an inch above the first flower."); August 1, 1856 ("Snake-head arethusa still in the meadow. “)..Coompare Arethusa bulbosa, May 30, 1854 ("I am surprised to find arethusas abundantly out in Hubbard's Close, maybe two or three days ... This high-colored plant shoots up suddenly, all flower, in meadows where it is wet walking. A superb flower.”); June 10, 1854 (“The fragrance of the arethusa is like that of the lady's-slipper, or pleasanter.”).  See also  June 19, 1852 ("These are peculiar days when you find the purple orchis and the arethusa, too, in the meadows."); June 30, 1852 ("Is not this period more than any distinguished for flowers, when roses, swamp-pinks, morning-glories, arethusas, pogonias, orchises, blue flags, epilobiums, mountain laurel, and white lilies are all in blossom at once?")

With our senses applied to the surrounding world we are reading our own physical and corresponding moral revolutions.See  June 25, 1852 ("There is a flower for every mood of the mind."); May 23, 1853 ("The poet must bring to Nature the smooth mirror in which she is to be reflected. Every new flower that opens, no doubt, expresses a new mood of the human mind.”) August 7, 1853 ("Is it not as language that all natural objects affect the poet? He sees a flower or other object, and it is beautiful or affecting to him because it is a symbol of his thought. . .The objects I behold correspond to my mood.”);  June 6, 1857 (“Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind.”); August 30, 1851 ("The fall of each humblest flower marks the annual period of some phase of human life experience. I can be said to note the flower's fall only when I see in it the symbol of my own change. When I experience this, then the flower appears to me.)


Nature was so shallow all at once I did not know what had attracted me all my life. See November 18, 1857 ("I lost for the time my rapport or relation to nature. ")

I was unexpectedly struck with the beauty of an apple tree. The perception of beauty is a moral test. See  December 11. 1855 ("Beauty and music are not mere traits and exceptions. They are the rule and character. It is the exception that we see and hear "); January 17, 1852 (“As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind. Some see only clouds there; some behold there serenity, purity, beauty ineffable.”); May 17, 1853 ("I was surprised, on turning round, to behold the serene and everlasting beauty of the world, it was so soothing. I saw that I could not go home to supper and lose it. It was so much fairer, serener, more beautiful, than my mood had been."); July 26, 1852 ("The mind that perceives clearly any natural beauty is in that instant withdrawn from human society."); 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."); November 18, 1857 ("You cannot perceive beauty but with a serene mind."); October 4, 1859 ("You have got to be in a different state from common.") Autumnal Tints ("There is just as much beauty visible to us in the landscape as we are prepared to appreciate")

Panicled andromeda, or privet andromeda. See June 21, 1854 ("(panicled andromeda, which loves dry places, now in blossom")

I see the tephrosia out through the dusk; a handsome flower. See July 10, 1857 ("The tephrosia, which grows by Peter's road in the woods, is a very striking and interesting, if I may not say beautiful, flower, especially when, as here, it is seen in a cool and shady place, its clear rose purple contrasting very agreeably with yellowish white, rising from amidst a bed of finely pinnate leaves.")

A natural garden. Blackberries, roses, and dogsbane also are now in bloom here. See June 30, 1852 (" Is not this period more than any distinguished for flowers, when roses, swamp-pinks, morning-glories, arethusas, pogonias, orchises, blue flags, epilobiums, mountain laurel, and white lilies are all in blossom at once?")

We say that showers avoid us, that they go down the river, i. e. go off down the Merrimack, See May 16, 1853 ("At 5 P. M., dark, heavy, wet-looking clouds are seen in the northern horizon, perhaps over the Merrimack Valley, and we say it is going down the river and we shall not get a drop."); June 15, 1860 (“A thunder-shower in the north goes down the Merrimack.”)  See also June 16, 1860 ("Thunder-showers show themselves about 2 P.M. in the west, but split at sight of Concord and go east on each side.”); June 16, 1854 ("Three days in succession, — the 13th, 14th, and 15th, — thunder-clouds, with thunder and lightning, have risen high in the east, threatening instant rain, and yet each time it has failed to reach us.”); June 17, 1852 ("A small thunder-shower comes up . . . We see the increasing outline of the slate-colored falling rain from the black cloud. It passes mainly to the south. Also see note to June 9, 1860 ("We have half a dozen showers to-day, distinct summer showers from black clouds suddenly wafted up from the west and northeast; also some thunder and hail, - large white stones.")

The dwarf orchis Platanthera flava (Gray) at the bathing-place in Hubbard's meadow, not remarkable.  See June 18, 1854 ("Platanthera flava at the Harrington Bathing - Place, possibly yesterday , — an unimportant yellowish - green spike of flowers.")

The purple orchis is a good flower to bring home. It will keep fresh many days, and its buds open at last in a pitcher of water. See June 19, 1852 ("The orchis keeps well. One put in my hat this morning, and carried all day, will last fresh a day or two at home"); June 16, 1854 (" It is eight days since I plucked the great orchis; one is perfectly fresh still in my pitcher. It may be plucked when the spike is only half opened, and will open completely and keep perfectly fresh in a pitcher more than a wee") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Fringed Orchids

I observe a rose (called by some moss rose), with a bristly reddish stem.See June 21, 1854 ("Again I am attracted by the deep scarlet of the wild moss rose half open in the grass , all glowing with rosy light."); See also June 12, 1853 ("A wild moss rose in Arethusa Meadow, where are arethusas lingering still.")

This is the most sultry night we have had.

June 20.

June 20, 2020

Monday.

4 A.M.— No fog; sky mostly over cast; drought continues.

I heard the robin first (before the chip-bird) this morning. Heard the chip-bird last evening just after sunset.

10 A.M.– To Assabet Bathing-Place.

I see wood tortoises in the path; one feels full of eggs.

Those great greenish-white puffs on the panicled andromeda are now decaying.

On the swamp-pink they are solid.

The pitchers of the comandra seeds are conspicuous.

Meadow-sweet out, probably yesterday. It is an agreeable, unpretending flower.

Some of the stone nests are a foot above the water now, but uninjured. I can find nothing in them.

The bosky bank shows bright roses from its green recesses; the small white flowers of the panicled andromeda; beneath, yellow lilies.

Found two lilies open in the very shallow inlet of the meadow. Exquisitely beautiful, and unlike anything else that we have, is the first white lily just expanded in some shallow lagoon where the water is leaving it, – perfectly fresh and pure, before the insects have discovered it.

How admirable its purity! how innocently sweet its fragrance!

How significant that the rich, black mud of our dead stream produces the water-lily, — out of that fertile slime springs this spotless purity!

It is remarkable that those flowers which are most emblematical of purity should grow in the mud.

There is also the exquisite beauty of the small sagittaria, which I find out, maybe a day or two, — three transparent crystalline white petals with a yellow eye and as many small purplish calyx-leaves, four or five inches above the same mud.

Coming home at twelve, I see that the white lilies are nearly shut.

The river has been some days full with weeds which drape and trail from my oars — I am now on foot — (the potamogeton), as if it were Charon’s boat, and this a funeral procession down the Cocytus.

8 P.M.— Up North River to Nawshawtuct.

The moon full.

Perhaps there is no more beautiful scene than that on the North River seen from the rock this side the hemlocks.

As we look up-stream, we see a crescent-shaped lake completely embosomed in the forest.

There is nothing to be seen but the smooth black mirror of the water, on which there is now the slightest discernible bluish mist, a foot high, and thick set alders and willows and the green woods without an interstice sloping steeply upward from its very sur face, like the sides of a bowl.

The river is here for half a mile completely shut in by the forest.

One hemlock, which the current has undermined, has fallen over till it lies parallel with the water, a foot or two above it and reaching two thirds across the stream, its extremity curving upward to the light, now dead.

Here it has been a year or two, and it has only taken the place of others which have successively fallen in and been carried away by the stream. One lies now cast up on the shore.

Some wild roses, so pale now in the twilight that they look exactly like great blackberry blossoms. I think these would look so at midday.

Saw a little skunk coming up the river-bank in the woods at the White Oak, a funny little fellow, about  six inches long and nearly as broad. It faced me and actually compelled me to retreat before it for five minutes. Perhaps I was between it and its hole.

Its broad black tail, tipped with white, was erect like a kitten’s. It had what looked like a broad white band drawn tight across its forehead or top-head, from which two lines of white ran down, one on each side of its back, and there was a narrow white line down its snout.

It raised its back, sometimes ran a few feet forward, sometimes backward, and repeatedly turned its tail to me, prepared to discharge its fluid like the old. Such was its instinct.

And all the while it kept up a fine grunting like a little pig or a squirrel. It reminded me that the red squirrel, the woodchuck, and the skunk all make a similar sound.

Now there are young rabbits, skunks, and probably woodchucks.

Walking amid the bushes and the ferns just after moonrise, I am refreshed with many sweet scents which I cannot trace to their source.

How the trees shoot!

The tops of young pines toward the moon are covered with fine shoots some eighteen inches long. Will they grow much more this year?

There is a peculiarly soft, creamy light round the moon, now it is low in the sky.

The bullfrogs begin about 8.30.

They lie at their length on the surface amid the pads.

I touched one’s nose with my finger, and he only gave a sudden froggish belch and moved a foot or two off.

How hard to imitate their note exactly, — its sonorousness. Here, close by, it is like er er ough, er er er ough, with a sonorous trump which these letters do not suggest.

On our return, having reached the reach by Merrick’s pasture, we get the best view of the moon in the southeast, reflected in the water, on account of the length of the reach.

The creamy light about it is also perfectly reflected; the path of insects on the surface between us and the moon is lit up like fire.

The leafy-columned elms, planted by the river at foot of Prichard’s field, are exceedingly beautiful, the moon being behind them, and I see that they are not too near together, though sometimes hardly a rod apart, their branches crossing and interlacing. Their trunks look like columns of a portico wreathed with evergreens on the evening of an illumination for some great festival.

They are the more rich, because in this creamy light you cannot distinguish the trunk from the verdure that drapes it.

This is the most sultry night we have had.

All windows and doors are open in the village and scarcely a lamp is lit.

I pass many families sitting in their yards.

The shadows of the trees and houses are too extended, now that the moon is low in the heavens, to show the richest tracery.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, June 20, 1853

I see wood tortoises in the path; one feels full of eggs. See June 23, 1858 ("Take two eggs out of the oviduct of an E. insculpta, just run over in the road. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,the Wood Turtle (Emys insculpta) 

Coming home at twelve, I see that the white lilies are nearly shut. See July 1, 1852 ("After eating our luncheon I can not find one open anywhere for the rest of the day."); July 11, 1852 ("It is a sufficient reason for walking in the forenoon sometimes that some flowers shut up at noon and do not open again during the day"); July 17, 1854 ("I think that I could tell when it was 12 o'clock within half an hour by the lilies.")

Perhaps there is no more beautiful scene than that on the North River seen from the rock this side the hemlocks. See March 29, 1853 ("A pleasant short voyage is that to the Leaning Hemlocks on the Assabet, just round the Island under Nawshawtuct Hill. The river here has in the course of ages gullied into the hill, at a curve, making a high and steep bank, on which a few hemlocks grow and overhang the deep, eddying basin. For as long as I can remember, one or more of these has always been slanting over the stream at various angles, being undermined by it, until one after another, from year to year, they fall in and are swept away. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, at the Leaning Hemlocks and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The world can never be more beautiful than now.

I touched one’s nose with my finger. See April 18, 1858 ("Perchance you may now scratch its nose with your finger and examine it to your heart's content, for it is become as imperturbable as it was shy before. You conquer them by superior patience and immovableness; not by quickness, but by slowness; not by heat, but by coldness")

June 20. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 20

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