The asters and goldenrods are now in their prime.

August 31.

P. M. – To Moore's Swamp.

Bidens cernua well out, the flowering one.

The asters and goldenrods are now in their prime, I think. 

August 31, 2020

The rank growth of flowers (commonly called weeds) in this swamp now impresses me like a harvest of flowers. I am surprised at their luxuriance and profusion.

The Solidago altissima is now the prevailing one, i. e. goldenrod, in low grounds where the swamp has been cleared. It occupies acres, densely rising as high as your head, with the great white umbel-like tops of the Diplopappus umbellatus rising above it.

There are also intermixed Solidago stricta, erechthites (fire-weed), Aster puniceus and longifolius, Galium asprellum in great beds, thoroughwort, trumpet-weed, Polygonum Hydropiper, Epilobium molle, etc., etc.

There has been no such rank flowering up to this. One would think that all the poison that is in the earth and air must be extracted out of them by this rank vegetation.

The ground is quite mildewy, it is so shaded by them, cellar-like.

Raspberries still fresh.

I see the first dogwood turned scarlet in the swamp.

Great black cymes of elder berries now bend down the bushes.

Saw a great black spider an inch long, with each of his legs an inch and three quarters long, on the outside of a balloon-shaped web, within which were young and a great bag.

Viola pedata out again.

Leaves of Hypericum mutilum red about water.

Cirsium muticum, in Moore's Swamp behind Indian field, going out of flower; perhaps out three weeks.

Is that very dense-flowered small white aster with short branched racemes A. Tradescanti? — now begun to be conspicuous.

A low aster by Brown's Ditch north of Sleepy Hollow like a Radula, but with narrower leaves and more numerous, and scales without herbaceous tips.

An orange-colored fungus.

Baird, in Patent Office Report, says, “In all deer, except, perhaps, the reindeer, if the male be castrated when the horns are in a state of perfection, these will never be shed; if the operation be performed when the head is bare, they will never be reproduced; and if done when the secretion is going on, a stunted, ill formed, permanent horn is the result.”

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 31, 1853


Bidens cernua well out, the flowering one. See August 20, 1852 ("Bidens, either connata or cernua, by Moore's potato- field. "); August 30, 1856 ("Bidens connata abundant at Moore's Swamp, how long?"); September 12, 1859 ("The four kinds of bidens (frondosa, connata, cernua, and chrysanthemoides) abound now")

The asters and goldenrods are now in their prime, I think. See July 26, 1853 ("I mark again, about this time when the first asters open. . . This the afternoon of the year."); July 28, 1852 ("Goldenrod and asters have fairly begun; there are several kinds of each out. "); August 30, 1853 ("Why so many asters and goldenrods now?") See also August 21, 1856 ("The prevailing solidagos now are . . .”); August 24, 1853(Goldenrods and asters);September 1, 1856 ("I think it stands about thus with asters and golden-rods now.”); September 24, 1856 (“Methinks it stands thus with goldenrods and asters now”); October 8, 1856 ("The following is the condition of the asters and goldenrods")

The great white umbel-like tops of the Diplopappus umbellatus [Tall flat-top white aster] See August 1, 1856 ("Diplopappus umbellatus at Peter's wall."); August 24, 1853 ("D. umbellatus is conspicuous enough in some places (low grounds)"); August 24, 1859 ("Diplopappus umbellatus, how long?"); September 1, 1856 ("D. umbellatus, perhaps in prime or approaching it, but not much seen."); September 24, 1856 ("D. umbellatus, still abundant.")

Great black cymes of elder berries now bend down the bushes. See August 29, 1854 ("The cymes of elder-berries, black with fruit, are now conspicuous.");  August 29, 1859 ("Elder-berry clusters swell and become heavy and therefore droop, bending the bushes down, just in proportion as they ripen. Hence you see the green cymes perfectly erect, the half-ripe drooping, and the perfectly ripe hanging straight down on the same bush."); September 1, 1859 ("The elder-berry cyme, held erect, is of very regular form, four principal divisions drooping toward each quarter around an upright central one.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Elder-berries

Viola pedata out again. See August 12, 1858 (“Saw a Viola pedata blooming again.”); September 4, 1856 ("Viola pedata again."); October 23, 1853 (" The Viola pedata looking up from so low in the wood-path makes a singular impression. "); October 22, 1859 (" In the wood-path below the Cliffs I see perfectly fresh and fair Viola pedata flowers, as in the spring, though but few together. No flower by its second blooming more perfectly brings back the spring to us"); November 9, 1850 ("I found many fresh violets (Viola pedata) to-day (November 9th) in the woods.”).

Leaves of Hypericum mutilum red about water See August 27, 1856 ("Hypericum Canadense and mutilum now pretty generally open at 4 P.M., thus late in the season"); October 2, 1856 ("Now and then I see a Hypericum Canadense flower still. The leaves, . . . turned crimson.")  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

Is that very dense-flowered small white aster with short branched racemes A. Tradescanti?  See August 11, 1854 ("Aster Tradescanti, two or three days in low ground; flowers smaller than A. dumosus, densely racemed, with short peduncles or branchlets, calyx-scales narrower and more pointed."); August 14, 1856 ("Aster tradescanti, apparently a day or two."); August 30, 1859 ("Asters, especially Tradescanti, puniceus, corymbosus, dumosus, Diplopappus umbellatus"); September 1, 1854 (" The Aster Tradescanti is perhaps beginning to whiten the shores on moist banks."); September 1, 1856 ("A. Tradescanti, got to be pretty common, but not yet in prime.");
September 7, 1858 ("and now the moist banks and low hollows are beginning to be abundantly sugared with Aster Tradescantia"); September 10, 1853("The Aster Tradescanti, now in its prime, sugars the banks all along the riverside with a profusion of small white blossoms resounding with the hum of bees."): September 13, 1856 ("The Aster Tradescanti now sugars the banks densely, since I left, a week ago. Nature improves this her last opportunity to empty her lap of flowers.");September 14, 1856 ("Now for the Aster Tradescanti along low roads, like the Turnpike, swarming with butterflies and bees. Some of them are pink.");  September 21, 1858 (" Saw no Aster Tradescanti in this walk, but an abundance of A. multiflorus in its prime, in Salem and Marblehead."); September 27, 1856 ("The Aster multiflorus may easily be confounded with the A. Tradescanti. Like it, it whitens the roadside in some places. It has purplish disks, but a less straggling top than the Tradescanti.");  October 8, 1856 ("A. corymbosus, looks fresh! . . . of asters, only corymbosus, undulatus,Tradescanti, and longifolius . . .are common."); October 16, 1856 ("I notice these flowers on the way by the roadside, which survive the frost, . . . yarrow, some Aster Tradescanti, and some red clover."); October 25, 1853 ("In some places along the water's edge the Aster Tradescanti lingers still, some flowers purple, others white. The ground is strewn with pine-needles as sunlight."); November 2, 1853 (Tthough [Aster undulatus ] is the latest aster that is abundant, I am not sure that it lasts absolutely longer than the A. puniceus, or even Tradescanti.")

Brown's Ditch north of Sleepy Hollow. According to Ray Angelo. Place Names of Henry David Thoreau in Concord, Massachusetts   Brown’s Ditch  was located in part of the Deacon Reuben Brown farm in a wetland north of Sleepy Hollow asssociated with Moore’s Swamp.

A cold storm still, — the most serious storm since spring.

August 30. 

A cold storm still, — this the third day, — and a fire to keep warm by. This, methinks, is the most serious storm since spring. 

Polygonum amphibium var. aquaticum, which is rather rare. I have not seen it in flower. It is floating. 

Its broad heart-shaped leaves are purplish beneath, like white lily pads, heart-leaves, and water-targets. What is there in the water that colors them? 

The other variety, which [is] rough and upright, is more common, and its flowers very beautiful.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 30, 1852

A cold storm still, — this the third day, — the most serious storm since spring. See August 25, 1852 ("The cricket sounds louder, preparatory to a cheerful storm! How grateful to our feelings is the approach of autumn! We have had no serious storm since spring."); August 29, 1852 ("A warm rain-storm in the night, with wind, and to-day it continues."); August 31, 1852 ("It is worth the while to have had a cloudy, even a stormy, day for an excursion, if only that you are out at the clearing up.")

Polygonum amphibium.  [Water Smartweed] See  August 5, 1856 ("Polygonum amphibium in water, slightly hairy, well out."); August 19, 1858 ("Large, handsome red spikes of the Polygonum amphibium are now generally conspicuous along the shore."); September 18, 1856 ("I have seen no . . . Polygonum amphibium var. aquaticum . . .this year.");  September 22, 1852 ("The Polygonum amphibium var. terrestre is a late flower, and now more common and the spikes larger, quite handsome and conspicuous, and more like a prince's-feather than any.") See also September 1, 1857 ("I have finally settled for myself the question of the two varieties of Polygonum amphibium. I think there are not even two varieties. "); September 18, 1858 ("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."); September 27, 1858 ("The P. amphibium spikes still in prime. "); October 16, 1858 ("I see some Polygonum amphibium, front-rank,"); November 7, 1855 ("How completely crisp and shrivelled the leaves and stems of the Polygonum amphibium var. terrestre, still standing above the water and grass!")

A stream meanders as much in a zigzag as serpentine manner.

August 29.

The 25th and 26th I was surveying Tuttle's farm.

The northeast side bounds on the Mill Brook and its tributary and is very irregular.

I find, after surveying accurately the windings of several brooks and of the river, that their meanders are not such regular serpentine curves as is commonly supposed, or at least represented. 

They flow as much in a zigzag as serpentine manner.

The eye is very much deceived when standing on the brink, and one who had only surveyed a brook so would be inclined to draw a succession of pretty regular serpentine curves.

But, accurately plotted, the regularity disappears, and there are found to be many straight lines and sharp turns.

I want no better proof of the inaccuracy of some maps than the regular curving meanders of the streams, made evidently by a sweep of the pen.

No, the Meander no doubt flowed in a very crooked channel, but depend upon it, it was as much zigzag as serpentine.

This last brook I observed was doubly zigzag, or compoundly zigzag; i. e., there was a zigzag on a large scale including the lesser.

To the eye this meadow is perfectly level.

Probably all streams are (generally speaking) far more meandering in low and level and soft ground near their mouths, where they flow slowly, than in high and rugged ground which offers more obstacles.

The meadow being so level for long distances, no doubt as high in one direction as another, how, I asked myself, did the feeble brook, with all its meandering, ever find its way to the distant lower end?

What kind of instinct conducted it forward in the right direction?

How unless it is the relict of a lake which once stood high over all these banks, and knew the different levels of its distant shores?

How unless a flow which commenced above its level first wore its channel for it?

Thus, in regard to most rivers, did not lakes first find their mouths for them, just as the tide now keeps open the mouths of sluggish rivers?

And who knows to what extent the sea originally channelled the submerged globe?

Walking down the street in the evening, I detect my neighbor’s ripening grapes by the scent twenty rods off; though they are concealed behind his house, every passer knows of them.

So, too, ever and anon I pass through a little region possessed by the fragrance of ripe apples.

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

Probably all streams are far more meandering in low and level and soft ground near their mouths. See July 18, 1852 ("Thus by a natural law a river, instead of flowing straight through its meadows, meanders from side to side and fertilizes this side or that. . . The river has its active and its passive side, its right and left breast."); March 24, 1855 ("Rivers appear to have traveled back and worn into the meadows of their creating, and then they become more meandering than ever. Thus in the course of ages the rivers wriggle in their beds, till it feels comfortable under them. "); July 7, 1859 ("I learn from measuring on Baldwin's second map that the river . . . winds most in the broad meadows. The greatest meander is in the Sudbury meadows."); July 22, 1859 ("It is remarkable how the river, even from its very source to its mouth, runs with great bends or zigzags regularly recurring and including many smaller ones, first northerly, then northeasterly, growing more and more simple and direct as it descends, like a tree; as if a mighty current had once filled the valley of the river, and meandered in it according to the same law that this small stream does in its own meadows. ")


I detect my neighbor’s ripening grapes by the scent twenty rods off. See August 29, 1859 ("The very earliest ripe grapes begin to be scented in the cool nights "); see also  August 27, 1859 ("The first notice I have that grapes are ripening is by the rich scent at evening from my own native vine against the house"); August 30, 1853 ("Grapes are already ripe; I smell them first."); September 8, 1854 ("The grapes would no doubt be riper a week hence, but I am compelled to go now before the vines are stripped. I partly smell them out.");  September 8, 1858 (“Gather half my grapes, which for some time have perfumed the house.”); September 12, 1851 ("How autumnal )is the scent of ripe grapes now by the roadside!");September 13, 1856 ("Up Assabet. Gather quite a parcel of grapes, quite ripe.. . . 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.");October 9, 1853 ("I smell grapes, . . . their scent is very penetrating and memorable."

A cool, white, autumnal evening.

August 28. 

Sunday. P. M. – To Cliffs.

See many sparrows in flocks with a white feather in tail! 

The smooth sumach leaves are fast reddening. 

The berries of the dwarf sumach are not a brilliant crimson, but as yet, at least, a dull sort of dusty or mealy crimson. As they are later, so their leaves are more fresh and green than those of the smooth species. 

The acorns show now on the shrub oaks. 

A cool, white, autumnal evening.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 28, 1853

See many sparrows in flocks with a white feather in tail! See August 19, 1852 ("The small fruits of most plants are now generally ripe or ripening, and this is coincident with the flying in flocks of such young birds now grown as feed on them."); September 3, 1857 ("A slate-colored snowbird back"); October 10, 1853 ("There are many small birds in flocks . . . and especially large flocks of small sparrows, which make a business of washing and pruning them selves in the puddles in the road, as if cleaning up after a long flight ");  October 12, 1859 ("I see scattered flocks of bay-wings amid the weeds and on the fences."); October 13, 1855 ("Larks in flocks in the meadows, showing the white in their tails as they fly, sing sweetly as in spring.")

The smooth sumach leaves are fast reddening. See August 27, 1852 ("Lower leaves of the smooth sumach are red."); August 31, 1858 ("The smooth sumach’s lower leaves are bright-scarlet on dry hills.")

The berries of the dwarf sumach are not a brilliant crimson. See August 25, 1851 ("Rhus copallina, mountain or dwarf sumach"); September 14, 1859 ("The mountain sumach . . . berries are a hoary crimson and not bright like those of the smooth."); October 2, 1856 ("The mountain sumach now a dark scarlet quite generally.")

The acorns show now on the shrub oaks. See September 13, 1859 ("I see some shrub oak acorns turned dark on the bushes and showing their meridian lines, but generally acorns of all kinds are green yet.") and note to October 21, 1859 ("A great many shrub oak acorns hold on, and are a darker brown than ever. ")

A cool, white, autumnal evening. See September 11, 1854 ("This is a cold evening with a white twilight, and threatens frost, the first - in these respects- decidedly autumnal evening. It makes us think of wood for the winter.")

Topping corn now reveals the yellowing pumpkins. September is at hand.

August 27. 

Saturday. P. M. – To Walden. 

Topping corn now reveals the yellowing pumpkins. 

Dangle-berries very large in shady copses now; seem to love wet weather; have lost their bloom. 

Aster undulatus. 

The decurrent gnaphalium has not long shown yellow. Perhaps I made it blossom a little too early. 

September is at hand; the first month (after the summer heat) with a burr to it, month of early frosts; but December will be tenfold rougher. 

January relents for a season at the time of its thaw, and hence that liquid r in its name.

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

Topping corn now reveals the yellowing pumpkins.  See August 28, 1859 ("Pumpkins begin to be yellow."); September 4, 1859 ("Topping the corn, which has been going on some days, now reveals the yellow and yellowing pumpkins. This is a genuine New England scene. The earth blazes not only with sun-flowers but with sun-fruits."); September 18, 1858 ("The earth is yellowing in the September sun.")

A fuller view of Wachusett

August 25.

Warmer to-day. Surveying Tuttle’s farm.

From the extreme eastern side of his farm, looking up the valley of the Mill Brook, in which direction it is about two miles to anything that can be called high ground (say at E. Wood’s), I was surprised to see the whole outline and greater part of the base of Wachusett, though you stand in a low meadow. 

Wachusett from Fair Haven Hill, August 2, 1852

It is because of the great distance of the hills westward. It is a fuller view of this mountain than many of our hills afford. Seen through this lower stratum, the mountain is a very dark blue.

I am struck by the rank growth of weeds at this season. Passing over Tuttle’s farm, only one field removed from the Turnpike, where various kinds of tall, rank weeds are rampant, half concealing the lusty crops, — low ground which has only been cultivated twice before, where turnips and algæ (?) contend for places, fire-weeds (senecio), thoroughwort, Eupatorium purpureum, and giant asters, etc., suggest a vigor in the soil, an Ohio fertility, which I was not prepared for, which on the sandy turnpike I had not suspected, — it seemed to me that I had not enough frequented and considered the products, perchance, of these fertile grounds which the farmers have enriched.

He is continually selecting a virgin soil and adding the contents of his barn-yards to it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 25, 1853

Seen through this lower stratum, the mountain is a very dark blue. See November 13, 1851("The mountains are of an uncommonly dark blue to-day. Perhaps this is owing . . . to the greater clearness of the atmosphere, which brings them nearer"); March 31, 1853 ("It is affecting to see a distant mountain-top,. . . still as blue and ethereal to your eyes as is your memory of it.'); September 27, 1853 ("From our native hills we look out easily to the far blue mountains, which seem to preside over them."); December 27, 1853 ("The outline of the mountains is wonderfully distinct and hard, and they are a dark blue and very near. Wachusett looks like a right whale over our bow, plowing the continent, with his flukes well down")

Tuttle’s farm, where various kinds of tall, rank weeds are rampant. See August 26, 1853 ("The fall dandelion is as conspicuous and abundant now in Tuttle's meadow as buttercups in the spring. It takes their place")

Goldenrods and asters.

August 24.

Another cool, autumn-like morning, also quite foggy.

Rains a little in the forenoon and cloudy the rest of the day.

P. M. – To Saw Mill Brook via Trillium Woods.

A cool breeze blows this cloudy afternoon, and I wear a thicker coat.

The mulgedium by railroad is seven feet high, with great panicles of a regular, somewhat elliptic-lanceolate (?) form, two and a half feet long by ten inches.

The Prinos lævigatus berries begin to redden.

The farmers are beginning to clear out their ditches now.

Blue-stemmed goldenrod, apparently a few days in some places.

The goldenrods which I have observed in bloom this year are (I do not remember the order exactly):

• (1) stricta,
• (2) lanceolata,
• (3) arguta (?),
• (4) nemoralis,
• (5) bicolar,
• (6) odora,
• (7) altissima,
• (8) ulmifolia (?),
• (9) cæsia.

The 4th is the prevailing one and much the most abundant now.

The 1st perhaps next, though it may be getting old.

The altissima (7th) certainly next. It is just beginning to be abundant. Its tops a foot or more broad, with numerous recurved racemes on every side, with yellow and yellowing triangular points. It is the most conspicuous of all.

The bicolor (5th) next, though not conspicuous.

The 3d, 8th, 2d, and 6th perhaps never abundant.

The cæsia (9th) just begun. 

The asters and diplopappi are about in this order:

• (1) Radula,
• (2) D. cornifolius (?),
• (3) A. corymbosus,
• (4) patens,
• (5) lævis,
• (6) dumosus (?),
• (7) miser,
• (8) macrophyllus,
• (9) D. umbellatus,
• (10) A. acuminatus,
• (11) puniceus.

The patens (4), of various forms, some lilac, is the prevailing blue or bluish one now, middle sized and very abundant on dry hillsides and by wood paths; the lævis next.

The 1st, or Radula, is not abundant.

(These three are all the distinctly blue ones yet.) 

The dumosus is the prevailing white one, very abundant; miser mixed with it.

D. umbellatus is conspicuous enough in some places (low grounds), and A. puniceus beginning to be so.

But D. cornifolius, A. corymbosus, macrophyllus, and acuminatus are confined to particular localities.

Dumosus and patens (and perhaps lævis, not common enough) are the prevailing asters now. 

The common large osmunda (?) is already consider ably imbrowned, but the odorous dicksonia (?), which, like most ferns, blossoms later, is quite fresh.

This thin, flat, beautiful fern it is which I see green under the snow.? I am inclined to call it the lace fern.

(Peaches fairly begun.) 

It is a triangular web of fine lace-work surpassing all the works of art.

Solidago latifolia not yet.

I see roundish silvery slate-colored spots, surrounded by a light ring, near the base of the leaves of an aster (miser ?), one beneath another like the dropping of a bird, or as if some tincture had fallen from above.

Some of the leaves of the A. patens are red.

The alternate cornel berries, which are particularly apt to drop off early, are a dark, dull blue, not china-like.

I see those of maple-leaved viburnum merely yellowish now.

There grows by Saw Mill Brook a long firmer, thimble-shaped high blackberry with small grains, with more green ones still on it, which I think like the New Hampshire kind.

I see some black and some greenish light slate-colored fungi. This certainly is the season for fungi.

I see on the shrub oaks now caterpillars an inch and a half or more long, black with yellowish stripes, lying along the petioles, — thick living petioles. They have stripped off the leaves, leaving the acorns bare.

The Ambrina (Chenopodium, Bigelow) Botrys, Jerusalem-oak, a worm-seed, by R. W. E.' s heater piece. The whole plant is densely branched — branches spike-like-and appears full of seed. Has a pleasant, more distinct wormwood-like odor.

In a dry sprout-land (Ministerial Lot), what I will call Solidago puberula  will open in a day or two, — upright and similar to stricta in leaves, with a purple stem and smooth leaves, entire above, and a regular oblong appressed panicle.

Bidens chrysanthemoides, of a small size and earlier, by Turn pike, now in prime there.

I see cattle coming down from up-country. Why?

Yellow Bethlehem-star still.

A. miser (?), with purplish disk and elliptic-lanceolate leaves, serrate in middle, may be as early as dumosuus.


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


The goldenrods which I have observed in bloom this year .(1) stricta,(2) lanceolata,(3) arguta (?),(4) nemoralis etc. . . .The asters are about in this order:(1) Radula,(2) D. cornifolius (?), (3) A. corymbosus, etc.. Compare August 24, 1851 ("The autumnal flowers, — goldenrods, asters, and johnswort, — though they have made demonstrations, have not yet commenced to reign."):  August 21, 1856 ("The prevailing solidagos now are, lst, stricta. . .; 2d, the three-ribbed, of apparently several varieties, which I have called arguta or gigantea (apparently truly the last); 3d, altissima, though commonly only a part of its panicles; 4th, nemoralis, just beginning generally to bloom. . . .The commonest asters now are, 1st, the Radula; 2d, dumosus; 3d, patens etc. ); August 30, 1859 ("The prevailing flowers, considering both conspicuous-ness and numbers, at present time, as I think now: Solidagos, especially large three-ribbed, nemoralis, tall rough, etc.; Asters, especially Tradescanti, puniceus, corymbosus, dumosus, Diplopappus umbellatus")

This certainly is the season for fungi.See September 10, 1854 ("Last year, for the last three weeks of August, the woods were filled with the strong musty scent of decaying fungi, but this year I have seen very few fungi and have not noticed that odor at all.")

The farmers are beginning to clear out their ditches now. See August 21, 1859 ("Many are ditching."); August 28, 1854 ("The farmers improve this dry spell to cut ditches and dig mud in the meadows and pond-holes. I see their black heaps in many places. ")

D. umbellatus is conspicuous enough in some places (low grounds), and A. puniceus beginning to be so. See August 24, 1859 ("Aster puniceus and Diplopappus umbellatus, how long? ")

A long firmer, thimble-shaped high blackberry with small grains. See August 24, 1859 ("The small sempervirens blackberry in prime in one place. ")  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Blackberries

I see cattle coming down from up-country. Why? See September 6, 1859 ("Hear the sounds nowadays — the lowing, tramp, and calls of the drivers — of cows coming down from up-country."); September 20, 1852 ("Droves of cattle have for some time been coming down from up-country"); October 28, 1858 ("Cattle coming down from up country.") See also note to April 30, 1860 ("Cattle begin to go up-country.")

A man in a boat in the sun, just disappearing in the distance round a bend.

August 23.

Saturday.

To Walden to bathe at 5.30 A. M.

Traces of the heavy rains in the night. The sand and gravel are beaten hard by them. Three or four showers in succession.

But the grass is not so wet as after an ordinary dew.

The Verbena hastata at the pond has reached the top of its spike, a little in advance of what I noticed yesterday; only one or two flowers are adhering.

At the commencement of my walk I saw no traces of fog, but after detected fogs over particular meadows and high up some brooks’valleys, and far in the Deep Cut the wood fog.

First muskmelon this morning.

I rarely pass the shanty in the woods, where human beings are lodged, literally, no better than pigs in a sty, — little children, a grown man and his wife, and an aged grandmother living this squalid life, squatting on the ground, — but I wonder if it can be indeed true that little Julia Riordan calls this place home, comes here to rest at night and for her daily food, — in whom ladies and gentlemen in the village take an interest.

Of what significance are charity and almshouses? That there they live unmolested! in one sense so many degrees below the almshouse! beneath charity!

It is admirable, — Nature against almshouses.

A certain the wealth of nature, not poverty, it suggests.

Not to identify health and contentment, aye, and independence, with the possession of this world’s goods!

It is not wise to waste compassion on them.

As I go through the Deep Cut, I hear one or two early humblebees, come out on the damp sandy bank, whose low hum sounds like distant horns from far in the horizon over the woods. It was long before I detected the bees that made it, so far away and musical it sounded, like the shepherds in some distant eastern vale greeting the king of day.

The farmers now carry — those who have got them — their early potatoes and onions to market, starting away early in the morning or at midnight. I see them returning in the afternoon with the empty barrels.

Perchance the copious rain of last night will trouble those who had not been so provident as to get their hay from the Great Meadows, where it is often lost.

P. M. – Walk to Annursnack and back over stone bridge.

I sometimes reproach myself because I do not find anything attractive in certain mere trivial employments of men, — that I skip men so commonly, and their affairs, — the professions and the trades, — do not elevate them at least in my thought and get some material for poetry out of them directly. I will not avoid, then, to go by where these men are repairing the stone bridge, — see if I cannot see poetry in that, if that will not yield me a reflection.

It is narrow to be confined to woods and fields and grand aspects of nature only. The greatest and wisest will still be related to men.

Why not see men standing in the sun and casting a shadow, even as trees? May not some light be reflected from them as from the stems of trees? I will try to enjoy them as animals, at least.

They are perhaps better animals than men.

Do not neglect to speak of men’s low life and affairs with sympathy, though you ever so speak as to suggest a contrast between them and the ideal and divine.

You may be excused if you are always pathetic, but do not refuse to recognize.

Resolve to read no book, to take no walk, to undertake no enterprise, but such as you can endure to give an account of to yourself.

Live thus deliberately for the most part.

When I stopped to gather some blueberries by the roadside this afternoon, I heard the shrilling of a cricket or a grasshopper close to me, quite clear, almost like a bell, a stridulous sound, a clear ring, incessant, not intermittent, like the song of the black fellow I caught the other day, and not suggesting the night, but belonging to day.

It was long before I could find him, though all the while within a foot or two. I did not know whether to search amid the grass and stones or amid the leaves. At last, by accident I saw him, he shrilling all the while under an alder leaf two feet from the ground, - a slender green fellow with long feelers and transparent wings.

When he shrilled, his wings, which opened on each other in the form of a heart perpendicularly to his body like the wings of fairies, vibrated swiftly on each other. The apparently wingless female, as I thought, was near.

We experience pleasure when an elevated field or even road in which we may be walking holds its level toward the horizon at a tangent to the earth, is not convex with the earth’s surface, but an absolute level.

On or under east side of Annursnack, Epilobium coloratum, colored willow-herb, near the spring.

Also Polygonum sagittatum, scratch-grass.

The Price Farm road, one of those everlasting roads which the sun delights to shine along in an August afternoon, playing truant; which seem to stretch themselves with terrene jest as the weary traveller journeys on; where there are three white sandy furrows (lira), two for the wheels and one between them for the horse, with endless green grass borders between and room on each side for huckleberries and birches; where the walls indulge in freaks, not always parallel to the ruts, and goldenrod yellows all the path; which some elms began to border and shade once, but left off in despair, it was so long; from no point on which can you be said to be at any definite distance from a town.

I associate the beauty of Quebec with the steel-like and flashing air.

Our little river reaches are not to be forgotten. I noticed that seen northward on the Assabet from the Causeway Bridge near the second stone bridge.

There was [a] man in a boat in the sun, just disappearing in the distance round a bend, lifting high his arms and dipping his paddle as if he were a vision bound to land of the blessed, — far off, as in picture.

When I see Concord to purpose, I see it as if it were not real but painted, and what wonder if I do not speak to thee? 

I saw a snake by the roadside and touched him with my foot to see if he were alive.

He had a toad in his jaws, which he was preparing to swallow with his jaws distended to three times his width, but he relinquished his prey in haste and fled; and I thought, as the toad jumped leisurely away with his slime-covered hind-quarters glistening in the sun, as if I, his deliverer, wished to interrupt his meditations, — without a shriek or fainting, — I thought what a healthy indifference he manifested. Is not this the broad earth still? he said.


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

The Verbena hastata at the pond has reached the top of its spike, a little in advance of what I noticed yesterday; only one or two flowers are adhering. See  August 6, 1852 ("Blue vervain is now very attractive to me, and then there is that interesting progressive history in its rising ring of blossoms. It has a story."); August 20, 1851 ("The flowers of the blue vervain have now nearly reached the summit of their spikes."); August 21, 1851 (" It is very pleasant to measure the progress of the season by this and similar clocks. So you get, not the absolute time, but the true time of the season."); August 22, 1859 The circles of the blue vervain flowers, now risen near to the top, show how far advanced the season is.") See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  the Blue Vervain

He had a toad in his jaws, which he was preparing to swallow with his jaws distended to three times his width, but he relinquished his prey in haste and fled. See May 19, 1856 ("saw a small striped snake in the act of swallowing a Rana palustris, within three feet of the water. The snake, being frightened, released his hold, and the frog hopped off to the water. "); April 16, 1861 ("Horace Mann says that he killed a bullfrog in Walden Pond which had swallowed and contained a common striped snake")

Coral-root by Brister's Spring

August 20. 

August 20, 2018

That large galium still abundant and in blossom, filling crevices. 

The Corallorhiza multiflora, coral-root (not odontorhiza, I think, for it has twenty-four flowers, and its germ is not roundish oval, and its lip is three-lobed), by Brister's Spring. Found by R. W. E., August 12; also Goodyera pubescens found at same date. 

The purple gerardia is very beautiful now in green grass, and the rhexia also, both difficult to get home. 

I find raspberries still. 

An aster with a smooth leaf narrowed below, somewhat like A. amplexicaulis (or patens (Gray) ?). Is it var. phlogifolius? 

Is that smooth, handsome-stemmed goldenrod in Brown's Sleepy Hollow meadow Solidago serotina? 

Bidens, either connata or cernua, by Moore's potato- field.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 20, 1852


The Corallorhiza multiflora, coral-root (not odontorhiza) found by R. W. E., August 12. See August 13, 1852 ("I hear that the Corallorhiza odontorhiza, coral-root, is out.). See also August 29, 1857 ("Nearby, north [of Indian Rock, west of the swamp], is a rocky ridge, on the east slope of which the Corallorhiza multiflora is very abundant.") and  note to August 13, 1857 ("Corallorhiza multiflora . . . how long") [spotted coral-root (Corallorhiza maculate) -- a saprophytic orchid]


Goodyera pubescens found at same date. See August 20, 1857 ("The Goodyera repens grows behind the spring where I used to sit, amid the dead pine leaves") and note to August 27, 1856 (“Goodyera pubescens, rattlesnake-plantain, is apparently a little past its prime. It is very abundant on Clintonia Swamp hillside. . .”)


The purple gerardia is very beautiful now in green grass, and the rhexia also, both difficult to get home. See August 20, 1851("The Rhexia Virginica is a showy flower at present.") See also note to August 5, 1858 ("I cannot sufficiently admire the rhexia, one of the highest-colored purple flowers, but difficult to bring home in its perfection, with its fugacious petals.")


Bidens, either connata or cernua, by Moore's potato- field. See August 30, 1856 ("Bidens connata abundant at Moore's Swamp, how long? ");  September 12, 1851("in Baker's Meadow beyond Pine Hill. . . the Bidens cernua, nodding burr-marigold, with five petals")September 12, 1859 ("The four kinds of bidens (frondosa, connata, cernua, and chrysanthemoides) abound now, [T]he first two are inconspicuous flowers, cheap and ineffectual, commonly without petals, like the erechthites, but the third and fourth are conspicuous and interesting, expressing by their brilliant yellow the ripeness of the low grounds.");   September 15, 1856 ("What I must call Bidens cernua, like a small chrysanthemoides, is bristly hairy, somewhat connate and apparently regularly toothed"); September 19, 1851 ("Large-flowered bidens,or beggar-ticks,or bur-marigold,now abundant by riverside.")

The never-failing wood thrush inviting the day once more to enter his pine woods.

August 17.

Twenty minutes before 5 a. m. — To Cliffs and Walden.

Dawn.

No breathing of chip-birds nor singing of robins as in spring, but still the cock crows lustily.

The creak of the crickets sounds louder.

As I go along the back road, hear two or three song sparrows.

This morning's red, there being a misty cloud there, is equal to an evening red.

The woods are very still. I hear only a faint peep or twitter from one bird, then the never-failing wood thrush, it being about sunrise, and after, on the Cliff, the phoebe note of a chickadee, a night-warbler, a creeper (?), and a pewee (?), and, later still, the huckleberry-bird and red-eye, but all few and faint.

Cannot distinguish the steam of the engine toward Waltham from one of the morning fogs over hollows in woods.

Lespedeza violacea var. (apparently) angustifolia (?), sessiliflora of Bigelow. Also another L. violacea, or at least violet, perhaps different from what I saw some time since.

Gerardia pedicularia, bushy gerardia, almost ready.

The white cornel berries are dropping off before they are fairly white.

Is not the hibiscus a very bright pink or even flesh- color? It is so delicate and peculiar. I do not think of any flower just like it. It reminds me of some of the wild geraniums most. It is a singular, large, delicate, high-colored flower with a tree-like leaf.

Gaylussada frondosa, blue-tangle, dangle-berry, ripe perhaps a week.

Weston of Lincoln thought there were more grapes, both cultivated and wild, than usual this year, because the rose-bugs had not done so much harm. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal August 17, 1852

The never-failing wood thrush about sunrise. See  August 10, 1856 ("Hear the wood thrush still."); August  12, 1851 ("I hear a wood thrush even now, long before sunrise. . .The wood thrush, that beautiful singer, inviting the day once more to enter his pine woods.") Compare August 12, 1854 ("Have not heard a wood thrush since last week of July. "); August 14, 1853 ("I hear no wood thrushes for a week.")

Lespedeza violacea.  See August 19, 1856 ("I spent my afternoon among the desmodiums and lespedezas, sociably. . . .  All the lespedezas are apparently more open and delicate in the woods, and of a darker green, especially the violet ones. When not too much crowded, their leaves are very pretty and perfect.") and  note to August 14, 1856 ("A short elliptic-leaved Lespedeza violacea, loose and open in Veery Nest Path, at Flint's Pond. In press.")

Bushy gerardia, almost ready. See August 12, 1856 ("Gerardia pedicularia, how long?"); August 23, 1856 ("On the west side of Emerson's Cliff, I notice many Gerardia pedicularia out. A bee is hovering about one bush");August 24, 1858 ("Climbing the hill at the bend, I find Gerardia Pedicularia, apparently several days, or how long?")

The ripe Canada plum

August 16.

AUGUST 16, 2020

2 P. M. — River about ten and a half inches above summer level. 

Apparently the Canada plum began to be ripe about the 10th.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 16, 1860

River about ten and a half inches above summer level. See August 2, 1860 ("At 2 P. M. the river is twelve and seven eighths above summer level, higher than for a long time, on account of the rain of the 31st.");August 12, 1860 ("River at 5 P. M. three and three quarters inches below summer level."); August 22, 1860 ("The river is fifteen and three quarters inches above summer level ."); September 1 1860 ("River about eight inches above summer level yesterday .")

August 16. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  August 16

 

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

There are but us three, the moon, the earth and myself.

 August 12.

August 12, 2018

Tuesday. 1.30 A. M. — Full moon.

Arose and went to the river and bathed, stepping very carefully not to disturb the household, and still carefully in the street not to disturb the neighbors. I did not walk naturally and freely till I had got over the wall.

Then to Hubbard’s Bridge at 2 A. M.

There was a whip-poor-will in the road just beyond Goodwin’s, which flew up and lighted on the fence and kept alighting on the fence within a rod of me and circling round me with a slight squeak as if inquisitive about me.

I do not remember what I observed or thought in coming hither.

The traveller’s whole employment is to calculate what cloud will obscure the moon and what she will triumph over.

In the after-midnight hours the traveller’s sole companion is the moon.

All his thoughts are centred in her.

She is waging continual war with the clouds in his behalf.

What cloud will enter the lists with her next, this employs his thoughts; and when she enters on a clear field of great extent in the heavens, and shines unobstructedly, he is glad.

And when she has fought her way through all the squadrons of her foes, and rides majestic in a clear sky, he cheerfully and confidently pursues his way, and rejoices in his heart.

But if he sees that she has many new clouds to contend with, he pursues his way moodily, as one disappointed and aggrieved; he resents it as an injury to himself.

It is his employment to watch the moon, the companion and guide of his journey, wading through clouds, and calculate what one is destined to shut out her cheering light.

He traces her course, now almost completely obscured, through the ranks of her foes, and calculates where she will issue from them.

He is disappointed and saddened when he sees that she has many clouds to contend with.

Sitting on the sleepers of Hubbard’s Bridge, which is being repaired, now, 3 o’clock A. M., I hear a cock crow.

How admirably adapted to the dawn is that sound! as if made by the first rays of light rending the darkness, the creaking of the sun’s axle heard already over the eastern hills.

Though man’s life is trivial and handselled, Nature is holy and heroic.

With what infinite faith and promise and moderation begins each new day! 

It is only a little after 3 o’clock, and already there is evidence of morning in the sky. 

He rejoices when the moon comes forth from the squadrons of the clouds unscathed and there are no more any obstructions in her path, and the cricket also seems to express joy in his song.

It does not concern men who are asleep in their beds, but it is very important to the traveller, whether the moon shines bright and unobstructed or is obscured by clouds.

It is not easy to realize the serene joy of all the earth when the moon commences to shine unobstructedly, unless you have often been a traveller by night.

The traveller also resents it if the wind rises and rustles the leaves or ripples the water and increases the coolness at such an hour.

A solitary horse in his pasture was scared by the sudden sight of me, an apparition to him, standing still in the moonlight, and moved about, inspecting with alarm, but I spoke and he heard the sound of my voice; he was at once reassured and expressed his pleasure by wagging his stump of a tail, though still half a dozen rods off.

How wholesome the taste of huckleberries, when now by moonlight I feel for them amid the bushes!

And now the first signs of morning attract the traveller’s attention, and he cannot help rejoicing, and the moon begins gradually to fade from his recollection.

The wind rises and rustles the copses.

The sand is cool on the surface but warm two or three inches beneath, and the rocks are quite warm to the hand, so that he sits on them or leans against them for warmth, though indeed it is not cold elsewhere.

As I walk along the side of Fair Haven Hill, I see a ripple on the river, and now the moon has gone behind a large and black mass of clouds, and I realize that I may not see her again in her glory this night, that perchance ere she rises from this obscurity, the sun will have risen, and she will appear but as a cloud herself, and sink unnoticed into the west (being a little after full (a day?)).

As yet no sounds of awakening men; only the more frequent crowing of cocks, still standing on their perches in the barns.

The milkmen are the earliest risers, — though I see no lan-thorns carried to their barns in the distance, – preparing to carry the milk of cows in their tin cans for men’s breakfasts, even for those who dwell in distant cities.

In the twilight now, by the light of the stars alone, the moon being concealed, they are pressing the bounteous streams from full udders into their milk-pails, and the sound of the streaming milk is all that breaks the sacred stillness of the dawn; distributing their milk to such as have no cows.

I perceive no mosquitoes now.

Are they vespertinal, like the singing of the whip-poor-will? 

I see the light of the obscured moon reflected from the river brightly.

With what mild emphasis Nature marks the spot! — so bright and serene a sheen that does not more contrast with the night.

4 A. M. — It adds a charm, a dignity, a glory, to the earth to see the light of the moon reflected from her streams.

There are but us three, the moon, the earth which wears this jewel (the moon’s reflection) in her crown, and myself.

Now there has come round the Cliff (on which I sit), which faces the west, all unobserved and mingled with the dusky sky of night, a lighter and more ethereal living blue, whispering of the sun still far, far away, behind the horizon.

From the summit of our atmosphere, perchance, he may already be seen by soaring spirits that inhabit those thin upper regions, and they communicate the glorious intelligence to us lower ones.

The real divine, the heavenly, blue, the Jove-containing air, it is, I see through this dusky lower stratum.

The sun gilding the summits of the air.

The broad artery of light flows over all the sky.

Yet not without sadness and compassion I reflect that I shall not see the moon again in her glory.

(Not far from four, still in the night, I heard a nighthawk squeak and boom, high in the air, as I sat on the Cliff. What is said about this being less of a night bird than the whip-poor-will is perhaps to be questioned. For neither do I remember to have heard the whip-poor-will sing at 12 o’clock, though I met one sitting and flying between two and three this morning. I believe that both may be heard at midnight, though very rarely.) 

Now at very earliest dawn the nighthawk booms and the whip-poor-will sings.

Returning down the hill by the path to where the woods [are] cut off, I see the signs of the day, the morning red.

There is the lurid morning star, soon to be blotted out by a cloud.

There is an early redness in the east which I was not prepared for, changing to amber or saffron, with clouds beneath in the horizon and also above this clear streak.

The birds utter a few languid and yawning notes, as if they had not left their perches, so sensible to light to wake so soon, — a faint peeping sound from I know not what kind, a slight, innocent, half-awake sound, like the sounds which a quiet housewife makes in the earliest dawn.

Nature preserves her innocence like a beautiful child.

I hear a wood thrush even now, long before sunrise, as in the heat of the day.

And the pewee and the catbird and the vireo, red-eyed? 

I do not hear— or do not mind, perchance — the crickets now. 

Now whip-poor-wills commence to sing in earnest, considerably after the wood thrush.

The wood thrush, that beautiful singer, inviting the day once more to enter his pine woods.

(So you may hear the wood thrush and whip-poor-will at the same time.) 

Now go by two whip-poor-wills, in haste seeking some coverts from the eye of day.

And the bats are flying about on the edge of the wood, improving the last moments of their day in catching insects.

The moon appears at length, not yet as a cloud, but with a frozen light, ominous of her fate.

The early cars sound like a wind in the woods.

The chewinks make a business now of waking each other up with their low yorrick in the neighboring low copse.

The sun would have shown before but for the cloud.

Now, on his rising, not the clear sky, but the cheeks of the clouds high and wide, are tinged with red, which, like the sky before, turns gradually to saffron and then to the white light of day.

The nettle-leaved vervain (Verbena urticifolia) by roadside at Emerson’s.

What we have called hemp answers best to Urtica dioica, large stinging nettle? 

Now the great sunflower’s golden disk is seen.

The days for some time have been sensibly shorter; there is time for music in the evening.

I see polygonums in blossom by roadside, white and red.

A eupatorium from Hubbard’s Bridge causeway answers to E. purpureum, except in these doubtful points, that the former has four leaves in a whorl, is unequally serrate, the stem is nearly filled with a thin pith, the corymb is not merely terminal, florets eight and nine.

Differs from verticillatum in the stem being not solid, and I perceive no difference between calyx and corolla in color, if I know what the two are. It may be one of the intermediate varieties referred to

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 12, 1851



1.30 A. M. — Full moon. Arose and went to the river. See July 16, 1850 ("Many men walk by day; few walk by night. It is a very different season..")

There are but us three, the moon, the earth and myself.  See May 16, 1851 (" In the moonlight night what intervals are created! . . . There may be only three objects, — myself, a pine tree, and the moon, nearly equidistant."); September 22, 1854 ("By moonlight all is simple. We are enabled to erect ourselves, our minds, on account of the fewness of objects. We are no longer distracted."); See also August 5, 1851 ("Moonlight is like a cup of cold water to a thirsty man. As the twilight deepens and the moonlight is more and more bright, I begin to distinguish myself, who I am and where. I become more collected and composed, and sensible of my own existence, as when a lamp is brought into a dark apartment and I see who the company are. "); July 26, 1852 ("My interest in the sun and the moon, in the morning and the evening, compels me to solitude.")

It is his employment to watch the moon, the companion and guide of his journey, wading through clouds, and calculate what one is destined to shut out her cheering light. See June 1, 1852 (".The moving clouds are the drama of the moonlight nights")

Now, 3 o’clock A. M., I hear a cock crow. How admirably adapted to the dawn is that sound! as if made by the first rays of light. See July 18, 1851 ("Have you knowledge of the morning ? Do you sympathize with that season of nature? Are you abroad early, brushing the dews aside ? If the sun rises on you slumbering, if you do not hear the morning cock-crow, if you do not witness the blushes of Aurora, if you are not acquainted with Venus as the morning star, what relation have you to wisdom and purity? "); February 25, 1859 ("Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature, — if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you,— know that the morning and spring of your life are past.")

She will appear but as a cloud herself, and sink unnoticed into the west. See April 30, 1852 ("Then when I turned, I saw in the east, just over the woods, the modest, pale, cloud-like moon, two thirds full, looking spirit-like on these daylight scenes. Such a sight excites me. The earth is worthy to inhabit.")