The year is but a succession of days,
and I see that I could assign some office to each day
which, summed up, would be the history of the year.
Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852
August 4, 2015
Small lake in the woods
full of light and reflections
as the wood thrush sings.
August 4, 2013
Most huckleberries
blueberries and blackberries
are in their prime now.
Fields which have been mown
now look very green again
like a second spring.
August rain and mist
contract our horizon
to the near and small.
August 4, 1854
In low swampy woods
where cinnamon fern prevails
it’s already fall.
Low thick flat white fog
on meadows after sunset
ushers in the night.
Such a profusion
each patch each bush seems fuller --
blacker than the last.
Lightning in the south.
Clouds alternate with moonlight
the rest of the night.
August 4, 2018
A still, cloudy day with from time to time a gentle August rain. Rain and mist contract our horizon and we notice near and small objects. August 4, 1854
The low fields which have been mown now look very green again in consequence of the rain, as if it were a second spring. August 4, 1853
A pleasant time to behold a small lake in the woods is in the intervals of a gentle rain-storm at this season, when the air and water are perfectly still, but the sky still overcast. August 4, 1852
In the meanwhile the wood thrush sings in the woods around the lake. August 4, 1852.
As my eye rests on the blossom of the meadow-sweet in a hedge, I hear the note of a cricket, and am penetrated with the sense of autumn. I am as dry as the rye which is everywhere cut and housed, though I am drunk with the season's wine. August 4, 1851
Have had a gentle rain, and now with a lowering sky, but still I hear the cricket. August 4, 1852
He seems to chirp from a new depth toward autumn, new lieferungs of the fall. The singular thought-inducing stillness after a gentle rain like this. August 4, 1852
Have heard the alder cricket some days. The turning-point is reached. August 4, 1856
I scent the sweet-scented life-everlasting, which is half expanded. August 4, 1851
I smell the fragrant life-everlasting, now almost out; another scent that reminds me of the autumn. August 4, 1852.
The little bees have gone to sleep amid the clethra blossoms in the rain and are not yet aroused. August 4, 1852
Hypericum corymbosum. Spotted St. John's-wort, some time in July. August 4, 1852.
It is already fall in low swampy woods where the cinnamon fern prevails. There are the sight and scent of beginning decay. August 4, 1854
Purple gerardia, by brook. August 4, 1854
Most huckleberries and blueberries and low blackberries are in their prime now. August 4, 1852
The bushes are black with huckleberries. ... Now in their prime. Some glossy black, some dull black, some blue; and patches of Vaccinium vacillans intermixed. August 4, 1854
Carried party a-berrying to Conantum in boat. August 4, 1856
Conantum hillside is now literally black with berries. What a profusion of this kind of food Nature provides, as if to compensate for the scarcity last year! . . . They are literally five or six species deep.
Most huckleberries and blueberries and low blackberries are in their prime now. August 4, 1852
The bushes are black with huckleberries. ... Now in their prime. Some glossy black, some dull black, some blue; and patches of Vaccinium vacillans intermixed. August 4, 1854
Carried party a-berrying to Conantum in boat. August 4, 1856
Conantum hillside is now literally black with berries. What a profusion of this kind of food Nature provides, as if to compensate for the scarcity last year! . . . They are literally five or six species deep.
- First, away down in the shade under all you find, still fresh, the great very light blue (i. e. with a very thick blue bloom) Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum in heavy clusters, that early ambrosial fruit, delicate-flavored, thin-skinned, and cool, — Olympian fruit;
- then, next above, the still denser bunches and clusters of V. vacillans, of various varieties, firm and sweet, solid food;
- and, rising above these, large blue and also shining black huckleberries (Gaylussacia resinosa) of various flavors and qualities;
- and over all runs rampant the low blackberry (Rubus Canadensis), weighing down the thicket with its wreaths of black fruit.
- Also here and there the high blackberry, just beginning, towers over all.
You go daintily wading through this thicket, picking, perchance, only the biggest of the blackberries — as big as your thumb — and clutching here and there a handful of huckleberries or blueberries, but never, perchance, suspecting the delicious cool blue-bloomed ones under all. This favorable moist weather has expanded some of the huckleberries to the size of bullets. Each patch, each bush, seems fuller and blacker than the last. Such a profusion. August 4, 1856
8.30 A. M. Start for Monadnock. Begins to rain at 9 A. M., and rains from time to time thereafter all day, the mountain top being constantly enveloped in clouds. . . . Am exhilarated by the peculiar raspberry scent by the roadside this wet day . . . Raspberries still quite common, though late August 4, 1860.
I hear the singular watery twitter of the goldfinch, ter tweeter e et or e ee, as it ricochets over, he and his russet (?) female. August 4, 1852.
I hear the pigeon woodpecker still, — wickoff, wickoff, wickoff, wickoff, from a neighboring oak. August 4, 1854.
Just after bathing at the rock near the Island this afternoon, after sunset, I saw a flock of thousands of barn swallows and some white-bellied, and perhaps others, for it was too dark to distinguish them. They came flying over the river in loose array, wheeled and flew round in a great circle over the bay there, about eighty feet high, with a loud twittering as if seeking a resting-place, then flew up the stream. I was very much surprised at their numbers. . . . I supposed that they were preparing to migrate. August 4, 1855
After sunset, a very low, thick, and flat white fog like a napkin, on the meadows, which ushers in a foggy night. August 4, 1854
Lightning is seen far in the south. Cloud, drifting cloud, alternate with moonlight all the rest of the night. August 4, 1860
At 11. 00 P. M. I heard a nighthawk. Maybe it hunted then because prevented by the cloud at evening . August 4, 1860
*****
A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, AUGUST
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Haymaking
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Aromatic Herbs
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Bees
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cinnamon Fern
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Blackberries
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Raspberry
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Blueberries
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wood Thrush
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Brown Thrasher
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Goldfinch
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Pigeon Woodpecker (flicker)
A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Nighthawk
August 4, 2019
This small lake was of most value as a neighbor
in the intervals of a gentle rain storm in August, when,
both air and water being perfectly still, but the sky overcast,
mid-afternoon had all the serenity of evening,
and the wood-thrush sang around,
and was heard from shore to shore.
A lake like this is never smoother than at such a time;
and the clear portion of the air above it
being shallow and darkened by clouds,
the water, full of light and reflections,
becomes a lower heaven itself
so much the more important.
~ Walden
May 5, 1854 ("Hear what I should call the twitter and mew of a goldfinch and see the bird go over with ricochet flight.")
May 17, 1858 ("The clouds and rain confine me to near objects")
July 11, 1851 ("The meadow-sweet has bloomed")
July 13, 1851 ("The sweet-scented life-everlasting is budded.")
July 19, 1854 ("The great cinnamon ferns are very handsome now in tufts, falling over in handsome curves on every side. Some are a foot wide and raised up six feet long")
July 21, 1856 ("Hypericum corymbosum, a day or two. The small hypericums are open only in the forenoon.")
July 22, 1851 ("The season of morning fogs has arrived. A great crescent over the course of the river, the fog retreats, and I do not see how it is dissipated, leaving this slight, thin vapor to curl over the surface of the still, dark water, still as glass.")July 19, 1854 ("The great cinnamon ferns are very handsome now in tufts, falling over in handsome curves on every side. Some are a foot wide and raised up six feet long")
July 24, 1852 ("There is a short, fresh green on the shorn fields, the aftermath. When the first crop of grass is off, and the aftermath springs, the year has passed its culmination.")
July 31, 1855 ("Have observed the twittering over of goldfinches for a week")
July 31, 1855 ("Have observed the twittering over of goldfinches for a week")
August 2, 1854 ("The nighthawk flies low, skimming over the ground now")
August 2, 1854 ("Meanwhile the moon in her first quarter is burnishing her disk")
August 2, 1854 ("The crickets on the causeway make a steady creak.")
August 3, 1852 ("I hear a cricket creak in the shade")
August 3, 1852 ("The Great Meadows alive with farmers getting their hay. ")
August 3, 1856 ("High blackberries beginning; a few ripe.")
August 5. 1851 ("The swallows go over with a watery twittering. I hear the whip-poor-will at a distance. It is almost dark. I distinguish the modest moonlight on my paper.")
August 5, 1852 ("The men, women, and children who perchance come hither blueberrying in their season get more than the value of the berries in the influences of the scene")
August 5, 1855 ("Now many swallows in the twilight, after circling eight feet high, come back two or three hundred feet high and then go down the river. ")
August 5, 1860 ("The-fresh, dewy almost crispy blueberries . . . low blueberries, just in their prime. Blueberries of every degree of blueness and of bloom.")
August 6, 1852 ("Summer gets to be an old story. Birds leave off singing, as flowers blossoming. With the goldenrod comes the goldfinch. About the time his cool twitter is heard, does not the bobolink, thrasher, catbird, oven-bird, veery, etc., cease?")
August 6, 1852 ( How different the feeble twittering of the birds here at sunrise from the full quire of the spring! Only the wood thrush, a huckleberry-bird or two, or chickadee, the scream of a flicker or a jay, or the caw of a crow, and commonly only an alarmed note of a robin")
August 6, 1852 ("I find a bumblebee asleep in a thistle blossom, having crowded himself in deep amid the dense florets, out of the reach of birds, while the sky was overcast.")August 6, 1855 ("I see seven or eight nighthawks together; dull-buff breasts, with tails short and black beneath")
August 7, 1852 ("At this season we have gentle rain-storms, making the aftermath green . . . as if it were a second spring").
August 7, 1853 (“The river is dark and smooth these days, reflecting no brightness but dark clouds, and the goldfinch is heard twittering over; though presently a thicker mist or mizzle falls, and you are prepared for rain. . . The stillness and the shade enable you to collect and concentrate your thoughts.”)
August 7, 1855 ("To Tarbell Hill again with the Emersons, a-berrying. Very few berries this year.")
August 9, 1851 ("Tansy now in bloom and the fresh white clethra")
August 7, 1855 ("To Tarbell Hill again with the Emersons, a-berrying. Very few berries this year.")
August 9, 1851 ("Tansy now in bloom and the fresh white clethra")
August 10, 1853 ("August, royal and rich . . . It is glorious to see those great shining high blackberries, now partly ripe.")
August 10, 1856 ("Hear the wood thrush still.")
August 11, 1853 ("What a humming of insects about the sweet-scented clethra blossoms, honey-bees and others, and flies and various kinds of wasps!") August 12, 1851 ("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.")
August 12, 1851 ("I hear a wood thrush even now.")
August 12, 1853 ("To Conantum by boat, berrying, with three ladies.")
August 12, 1854("Have not heard a wood thrush since last week of July.")
August 12, 1856 ("Gerardia purpurea, two or three days")
August 12, 1860 ("The clethra is in prime")
August 12, 1860 ("The clethra is in prime")
August 14, 1853 ("I hear no wood thrushes for a week.")
August 15, 1852 ("That clear ring like an alder locust (is it a cricket ?) for some time past is a sound which belongs to the season.")
August 15, 1854 ("The clethra must be one of the most conspicuous flowers not yellow at present.")
August 19, 1851 ("The fragrance of the clethra fills the air by water sides.")
August 19, 1856(In the radula swamp the sweet scent of clethra")
August 20, 1852 ("The purple gerardia is very beautiful now in green grass.")
August 19, 1856(In the radula swamp the sweet scent of clethra")
August 20, 1852 ("The purple gerardia is very beautiful now in green grass.")
August 20, 1854 ("The woodland quire is dissolved. That, if I remember, was about a fortnight ago. The concert is over.")
August 21, 1851 ("The purple gerardia now.")
August 21, 1851 ("Clethra (really a fine, sweet-scented, and this year particularly fair and fresh, flower, some unexpanded buds at top tinged with red)")August 21, 1851 ("Mowing to some extent improves the landscape to the eye of the walker. The aftermath, so fresh and green, begins now to recall the spring to my mind")
August 23, 1858 ("The luxuriant cinnamon fern . . . has complete possession of the swamp floor. Its great fronds, curving this way and that, remind me [of] a tropical vegetation. They are as high as my head and . .. form one green waving mass.")
August 29,1854 ("The barn swallows are very lively, filling the air with their twittering now, at 6 p.m. They rest on the dry mullein-tops, then suddenly all start off together as with one impulse and skim about over the river, hill, and meadow. . . .Are they not gathering for their migration?")September 12, 1858 ("The cinnamon fern has begun to yellow and wither. How rich in its decay! . . . Thus gradually and successively each plant lends its richest color to the general effect, and in the fittest place,")
November 7, 1855 ("The view is contracted by the misty rain . . . I am compelled to look at near objects.")
November 8, 1857 ("When the air is thick and the sky overcast, we need not walk so far. We give our attention to nearer objects")
November 7, 1855 ("The view is contracted by the misty rain . . . I am compelled to look at near objects.")
November 8, 1857 ("When the air is thick and the sky overcast, we need not walk so far. We give our attention to nearer objects")
August 4, 2018
If you make the least correct
observation of nature this year,
you will have occasion to repeat it
with illustrations the next,
and the season and life itself is prolonged.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 4A 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 © 2009-2022
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