A Book of the Seasons: The Season of Sunny Water

 

The year is but a succession of days, 

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

July 18. A hot midsummer day with a sultry mistiness in the air and shadows on land and water beginning to have a peculiar distinctness and solidity. I do not know why the water should be so remarkably clear and the sun shine through to the bottom of the river, making it so plain. Methinks the air is not clearer nor the sun brighter, yet the bottom is unusually distinct and obvious in the sun. There seems to be no concealment for the fishes. On all sides, as I float along, the recesses of the water and the bottom are unusually revealed, and I see the fishes and weeds and shells. I look down into the sunny water. July 18, 1854

July 27. The water has begun to be clear and sunny, revealing the fishes and countless minnows of all sizes and colors, this year's brood. July 27, 1860

July 28. The season has now arrived when I begin to see further into the water, -- see the bottom, the weeds, and fishes more than before. I can see the bottom when it is five and a half feet deep even, see the fishes scuttling in and out amid the weeds.  July 28, 1859

July 30. This is a perfect dog-day. The atmosphere thick, mildewy, cloudy. The water is suddenly clear, as if clarified by the white of an egg or lime. I think it must be because the light is reflected downward from the overarching dog-day sky. It assists me very much as I go looking for the ceratophyllum, potamogetons, etc. All the secrets of the river bottom are revealed. I look down into sunny depths which before were dark. The wonderful clearness of the water, enabling you to explore the river bottom and many of its secrets now, exactly as if the water had been clarified. This is our compensation for a heaven concealed. The air is close and still. July 30, 1856

July 30. This dog-day weather I can see the bottom where five and a half feet deep. At five feet it is strewn clear across with sium, heart-leaf, Ranunculus Purshii, etc. It is quite green and verdurous, especially with the first. I see the fishes moving leisurely about amid the weeds, their affairs revealed, especially perch, — some large ones prowling there; and pickerel, large and small, lie imperturbable. I see more moss (?) covered rocks on the bottom and some rising quite near the surface, — three or four between my boat's place and thirty rods above, — and a good many three feet over on the bottom, revealed in the sunny water, and little suspected before. July 30, 1859

August 8. This is a day of sunny water . . . I look down a rod and see distinctly the fishes and the bottom. August 8, 1854

August 8. The river, now that it is so clear and sunny, is better than any aquarium. August 8, 1859

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Season of Sunny Water

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 ©  2009-2023