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
Single red maple –
a blaze of red reflected
from troubled water.
This fine afternoon
the creak of the cricket sounds
late along the shore.
September 27, 1856
September 27, 2014
Yesterday I traced the note of what I have falsely thought the Rana palustris, or cricket frog, to its true source . . . a mole cricket (Gryllotalpa brevipennis). September 27, 1855
What are those little birds in flocks in the garden and on the peach trees these mornings, about size of chip-birds, without distinct chestnut crowns? September 27, 1858
The maples by the riverside look very green yet, have not begun to blush, nor are the leaves touched by frost. September 27, 1851
Some single red maples now fairly make a show along the meadow. I see a blaze of red reflected from the troubled water. September 27, 1855
At last, its labors for the year being consummated and every leaf ripened to its full, it flashes out conspicuous to the eye of the most casual observer, with all the virtue and beauty of a maple, – Acer rubrum. September 27, 1857
Red maples now fairly glow along the shore. . . .It is the first blush which is the purest. September 27, 1858
It is a day for fishermen. September 27, 1851
The farmers are gathering in their corn. September 27, 1851
The farmers digging potatoes on shore pause a moment to watch my sail and bending mast. September 27, 1858
See men raking cranberries now, or far away squatting in the meadows, where they are picking them. September 27, 1858
Start up a snipe in the meadow. September 27, 1856
Rambled over the hills toward Tarbell's. The huckleberry bushes appear to be unusually red this fall, reddening these hills. September 27, 1851
Huckleberries are still abundant and quite plump on Conantum, though they have a somewhat dried taste. September 27, 1857
The medeola berries are common now, and the large red berries of the panicled Solomon's-seal. September 27, 1852
The arum berries are now in perfection, cone-shaped spikes an inch and a half long, of scarlet or vermilion- colored, irregular, somewhat pear-shaped berries springing from a purplish core. September 27, 1852
At Saw Mill Brook many finely cut and flat ferns are faded whitish and very handsome, as if pressed, — very delicate. September 27, 1852
The large common ferns (either cinnamon or interrupted) are yellowish, and also many as rich a deep brown now as ever. September 27, 1857
Some tall, many-flowered, bluish-white asters are still abundant by the brook-sides. September 27, 1851
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. September 27, 1856
Solidago nemoralis nearly done. September 27, 1857
Solidago speciosa not quite out!! September 27, 1856
Witch-hazel two thirds yellowed. September 27, 1857
White birches have fairly begun to yellow, and blackberry vines here and there in sunny places look like a streak of blood on the grass. September 27, 1857
Green lice are still on the birches. September 27, 1852
Bass, too, fairly begun to yellow. September 27, 1857
From the mountains we do not discern our native hills; but from our native hills we look out easily to the far blue mountains. September 27, 1852
What is it but a faint blue cloud, a mist that may vanish? September 27, 1852
But now that I look across the globe in an instant to the dim Monadnock peak . . . I cannot realize that on the tops of those cool blue ridges are in abundance berries still, bluer than themselves, as if they borrowed their blueness from their locality. September 27, 1852
Who can believe that the mountain peak which he beholds fifty miles off in the horizon, rising far and faintly blue above an intermediate range, while he stands on his trivial native hills . . . can be the same with that which he looked up at once near at hand from a gorge in the midst of primitive woods? September 27, 1852
It is a very fine afternoon to be on the water, some what Indian-summer-like. September 27, 1857
Now the sun in the west is coming out and lights up the river a mile off, so that it shines with a white light like a burnished silver mirror. September 27, 1851
The flashing clearness of the atmosphere. More light appears to be reflected from the earth, less absorbed. September 27, 1852
I do not know what constitutes the peculiarity and charm of this weather; the broad water so smooth, notwithstanding the slight wind . . . There is a slight coolness in the air, yet the sun is occasionally very warm. September 27, 1857
As I sit there I see the shadow of a hawk flying above and behind me. I think I see more hawks nowadays. September 27, 1857
I see some black circling mote beating along, circling along the meadow's edge, now lost for a moment as it turns edgewise in a peculiar light, now reappearing further or nearer. September 27, 1857
Looking up, I see a little dipper in the middle of the river . . . I sit down and watch. September 27, 1860
I see the colors of trees and shrubs beginning to put on their October dress, and the creak of the mole cricket sounds late along the shore. September 27, 1856
*****
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau:
September 27, 2020
March 28, 1858 ("turning my glass toward the mountains, I can see the sun reflected from the rocks on Monadnock, and I know that it would be pleasant to be there too to-day as well as here")
May 17, 1858 ("I doubt if in the landscape there can be anything finer than a distant mountain-range. They are a constant elevating influence.")
August 2, 1852 ("In many moods it is cheering to look across hence to that blue rim of the earth, . . . and be reminded how many brave and contented lives are lived between me and the horizon. . . . These hills extend our plot of earth; they make our native valley or indentation in the earth so much the larger.")
August 5, 1852 (" From Smith's Hill beyond, there is as good a view of the mountains as from any place in our neighbor hood, because you look across the broad valley in which Concord lies first of all. The foreground is on a larger scale and more proportionate. The Peterboro Hills are to us as good as mountains. Hence, too, I see that fair river-reach, in the north.")
August 11, 1854 ("Green lice on birches.")
August 13, 1852 ("There are green lice now on the birches, but I notice no cotton on them.")
September 2, 1853 ("The medeola berries are now dull glossy and almost blue-black; about three, on slender threads one inch long, arising in the midst of the cup formed by the purple bases of the whorl of three upper leaves.")
September 9, 1858 ("Watched a little dipper some ten rods off with my glass . . . Who knows how many little dippers are sailing and sedulously diving now along the edge of the pickerel-weed and the button-bushes on our river, unsuspected by most? . . [O]rdinary eyes might range up and down the river all day and never detect its small black head above the water.")
September 9, 1853 ("I find myself covered with green and winged lice from the birches")
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 12, 1851 ("It is worth the while to see the mountains in the horizon once a day")
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 16, 1854 (" I see little flocks of chip-birds along the roadside and on the apple trees, showing their light under sides when they rise.")
September 21, 1854 ("A fine-grained air, seething or shimmering as I look over the fields, reminds me of the Indian summer that is to come.")
September 24, 1853 ("Witch-hazel well out. ")
September 25, 1852 ("The river is getting to be too cold for bathing.")
September 25, 1857 ("The red maple has fairly begun to blush in some places by the river . . . A single tree becomes the crowning beauty of some meadowy vale and attracts the attention of the traveller from afar.")September 26 1854 (" Took my last bath the 24th . Probably shall not bathe again this year. It was chilling cold.")
September 26, 1854 ("Some single red maples are very splendid now, the whole tree bright-scarlet against the cold green pines; now, when very few trees are changed, a most remarkable object in the landscape; seen a mile off")September 26, 1857("I see a large black cricket on the river, a rod from shore, and a fish is leaping at it.")
September 29, 1853 ("The witch-hazel at Lee's Cliff, in a fair situation, has but begun to blossom; has not been long out, so that I think it must be later than the gentian. Its leaves are yellowed.")
September 29, 1858 ("Take perhaps our last bath in White Pond for the year.")
September 30, 1858 (" I see undoubtedly the little dipper by the edge of the pads this afternoon, and I think I have not seen it before this season. ")
October 3, 1858 ("Some particular maple among a hundred will be of a peculiarly bright and pure scarlet, and, by its difference of tint and intenser color, attract our eyes even at a distance in the midst of the crowd")
October 4, 1859 ("This is a fine and warm afternoon, Indian-summer like, but we have not had cold enough before it.")
October 5, 1858 ("I still see large flocks, apparently of chip birds, on the weeds and ground in the yard; without very distinct chestnut crowns, and they are divided by a light line.")
October 7, 1860 ("Now and for a week the chip-birds in flocks; the withered grass and weeds, etc., alive with them")
November 1, 1858 ("A man dwells in his native valley like a corolla in its calyx, like an acorn in its cup. Here, of course, is all that you love, all that you expect, all that you are.")
.November 5, 1857 ("Start up a snipe feeding in a wet part of the Dam Meadows")
November 11, 1851 ("The horizon has one kind of beauty and attraction to him who has never explored the hills and mountains in it, and another ... to him who has.")
December 8, 1854 ("Why do the mountains never look so fair as from my native fields?")
September 27, 2019
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, September 27
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
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