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
Out late miles from home
All things in this world must be seen with the morning dew on them, must be seen with youthful, early-opened, hopeful eyes. June 13, 1852
It has been cold, and we have had fires the past week sometimes. June 13, 1852
I noticed as I sat in my boat by the riverside last evening, half an hour after sunset, a very low and local, yet dense, fog close to the shore, under the edge of the sedge on one side, a foot high by three or four wide for several rods. It occupied such a space as a shadow does under a hedge. June 13, 1860
I hear the muttering of thunder and see a dark cloud in the west-southwest horizon; am uncertain how far up-stream I shall get. An opposite cloud rises fast in the east-northeast, and now the lightning crinkles and I hear the heavy thunder. June 13, 1854
The river has a summer midday look, smooth to a cobweb, with green shores, and shade from the trees on its banks. June 13, 1852
How thickly stewn our soil is with arrowheads. I never see the surface broken in sandy places but i think of them. I find them on all sides, not only in corn and grain and potato and bean fields, but in pastures and woods, by woodchucks' holes and pigeon beds and, as to-night, in a pasture where a cow has pawed the ground. June 13, 1854
No doubt woodchucks in their burrows hear the steps of walkers through the earth and come not forth. June 13, 1852
Within three feet of the edge of the pond-hole, where I can hardly stand in india-rubber shoes without the water flowing over them, a large ant-hill swarming with ants, – though not on the surface because of the mizzling rain. June 13, 1858
The woolly aphides on alders whiten one's clothes now. June 13, 1852
Mosquitoes are first troublesome in the house with sultry nights. June 13, 1852
Mosquitoes now trouble the walker in low shady woods. June 13, 1852
The great leaves of the bass attract you now, six inches in diameter. June 13, 1852
The Viburnum nudum. June 13, 1852
The Viburnum nudum. June 13, 1852
The Viburnum Lentago is about out of bloom; shows young berries. June 13, 1852
One of the prevailing front-rank plants here, standing in the sphagnum and water, is the elodea. June 13, 1858
The oblong-leaved sundew, but not its flower. June 13, 1852
Do the bulbous arethusas last long? June 13, 1852
What a sweetness fills the air now in low grounds or meadows, reminding me of times when I went strawberrying years ago! It is as if all meadows were filled with some sweet mint. June 13, 1852
Stop to pick strawberries on Fair Haven. June 13, 1854
One of the prevailing front-rank plants here, standing in the sphagnum and water, is the elodea. June 13, 1858
The oblong-leaved sundew, but not its flower. June 13, 1852
Do the bulbous arethusas last long? June 13, 1852
What a sweetness fills the air now in low grounds or meadows, reminding me of times when I went strawberrying years ago! It is as if all meadows were filled with some sweet mint. June 13, 1852
Stop to pick strawberries on Fair Haven. June 13, 1854
Strawberries. June 13, 1858
The ledum has grown three or four inches (as well as the andromeda). It has a rather agreeable fragrance, between turpentine and strawberries. It is rather strong and penetrating, and some times reminds me of the peculiar scent of a bee. The young leaves, bruised and touched to the nose, even make it smart June 13, 1858
The ledum is apparently past prime. June 13, 1858
It is the young and expanding ledum leaves which are so fragrant. There is a yellow fungus common on its leaves, and a black one on the andromeda. June 13, 1858
To Ledum Swamp. Lambkill, maybe one day. June 13, 1858
Lambkill is out. I remember with what delight I used to discover this flower in dewy mornings. June 13, 1852
How beautiful the solid cylinders of the lamb-kill now just before sunset, — small ten-sided, rosy-crimson basins, about two inches above the recurved, drooping dry capsules of last year, — and sometimes those of the year before are two inches lower. The first rose-bug on one of these flowers. June 13, 1854
The Kalmia glauca and the Andromeda Polifolia are done, the kalmia just done. June 13, 1858
The Clintonia borealis amid the Solomon's-seals in Hubbard's Grove Swamp, a very neat and handsome liliaceous flower with three large, regular, spotless, green convallaria leaves, making a triangle from the root, and sometimes a fourth from the scape, linear, with four drooping, greenish-yellow, bell-shaped (?) flowers. Not in sun. In low shady woods. It is a handsome and perfect flower, though not high-colored. I prefer it to some more famous. June 13, 1852
Yellow wood sorrel (Oxalis stricta), which, according to Gray, closes its leaves and droops at nightfall. June 13, 1852
Clover begins to show red in the fields, and the wild cherry is not out of blossom. June 13, 1852
The buck-bean grows in Conant's meadow. June 13, 1852
The compound-racemed convallaria, being fully out, is white. I put it down too early, perhaps by a week. June 13, 1852
I think I know four kinds of cornel beside the dog wood and bunchberry. June 13, 1852
The delicate maidenhair fern forms a cup or dish, very delicate and graceful. Beautiful, too, its glossy black stem and its wave-edged fruited leafets. June 13, 1852
Nature imitates all things in flowers. They are at once the most beautiful and the ugliest objects, the most fragrant and the most offensive to the nostrils, etc., etc. June 13, 1852
The Smilax herbaeea, carrion-flower, a rank green vine with long-peduncled umbels, with small greenish or yellowish flowers just opening, and tendrils, at the Miles swamp. It smells exactly like a dead rat in the wall. June 13, 1852
Orobanche uniflora, single-flowered broom-rape (Bigelow), [or] Aphyllon uniflorum, one-flowered cancer-root (Gray). June 13, 1852
Also the common fumitory (?), methinks; it is a fine-leaved small plant. June 13, 1852
Violets appear to be about done, generally. June 13, 1853
Four-leaved loosestrife just out.
The pogonia at Forget-me-not Brook. June 13, 1853
The Vaccinium Oxycoccus grows here and is abundantly out; some days certainly. June 13, 1858
In the plates of Hooker's "Flora Boreali-Americana," the leaves of Vaccinium coespitosum are not so wide as the fruit; yet mine of Tuckerman's Ravine may be it. June 13, 1859
I see large mosses on the beach, crimson and lighter, already spread on the sand. June 13, 1857
The Rubus frondosus will not bloom apparently for a day or two, though the villosus is apparently in prime there. June 13, 1858
Arenaria lateriflora, how long? June 13, 1858
The Scheuchzeria palustris, now in flower and going to seed, grows at Ledum Pool, as at Gowing's Swamp. June 13, 1858
See now in meadows,
- for the most part going to seed, Carex scoparia, with its string of oval beads;
- and C. lupulina, with its inflated perigynia;
- also what I take to be C. stipata, with a dense, coarse, somewhat sharp triangular mass of spikelets;
- also C. stellulata, with a string of little star-like burs.
- The delicate, pendulous, slender-peduncled C. debilis.
See children going a-flagging and returning with large bundles, for the sake of the inmost tender blade. They go miles for them here. June 13, 1857
See the common iris in meadow in Acton. June 13, 1856
Also the smooth wild rose yesterday.
Find that there are two young hawks; one has left the nest and is perched on a small maple seven or eight rods distant. . . It was amusing to observe the swaying to and fro of the young hawk's head to counterbalance the gentle motion of the bough in the wind. June 13, 1853
Also a peetweet’s, with four eggs, in Hubbard’s meadow beyond the old swamp oak site; and two kingbirds’ nests with eggs in an apple and in a willow by riverside. June 13, 1855
The kingbird's eggs are not yet hatched. June 13, 1854
What was that rare and beautiful bird in the dark woods under the Cliffs, with black above and white spots and bars, a large triangular blood-red spot on breast, and sides of breast and beneath white? . . . I think it must be a grosbeak. June 13, 1853
How much it enhances the wildness and the richness of the forest to see in it some beautiful bird which you never detected before! June 13, 1853
The meeting with a rare and beautiful bird like this is like meeting with some rare and beautiful flower, which you may never find again, perchance, like the great purple fringed orchis, at least. June 13, 1853
To Orchis Swamp . Find that there are two young hawks; one has left the nest and is perched on a small maple. June 13, 1853
I see a song sparrow's nest here in a little spruce just by the mouth of the ditch. It rests on the thick branches fifteen inches from the ground, firmly made of coarse sedge without, lined with finer, and then a little hair, small within, — a very thick, firm, and portable nest, an inverted cone; — four eggs. They build them in a peculiar manner in these sphagnous swamps, elevated apparently on account of water and of different materials. Some of the eggs have quite a blue ground. June 13, 1858
My rail's egg of June 1st looks like that of the Virginia rail in the Boston collection. June 13, 1859
A boy brought me a remarkably large cuckoo's egg on the 11th. Was it not that of the yellow-billed? The one in the collection looks like it. This one at B. is not only larger but lighter- colored. June 13, 1859
C. finds a pigeon woodpecker’s nest in an apple tree, five of those pearly eggs, about six feet from the ground; could squeeze your hand in. June 13, 1855
In the great apple tree front of the Miles house I hear young pigeon woodpeckers. June 13, 1858
I hear the feeble plaintive note of young bluebirds, just trying their wings or getting used to them. June 13, 1852
I hear the peculiar notes of young bluebirds that have flown. June 13, 1858
Young robins peep. June 13, 1852
Catbirds hatched. June 13, 1858
My boat passes over beds of potamogetons, pressing their spikes under water. June 13, 1854
I float homeward over water almost perfectly smooth, my sail so idle that I count ten devil's-needles resting along it at once. June 13, 1854
Approaching the pond down Hubbard's Path, after coming out of the woods into a warmer air, I see the moon's inverted pyramid of light shimmering on its surface June 13, 1851
Walk to Walden at night (moon not quite full) by railroad and upland wood-path, returning by Wayland road. June 13, 1851
The different frogs mark the seasons pretty well, -- the peeping hyla, the dreaming frog, and the bullfrog. I believe that all may be heard at last occasionally together. The bullfrog belongs to summer. The tree-toad's, too, is a summer sound. June 13, 1851
I hear partridges drumming to-night as late as 9 o'clock . What singularly space penetrating and filling sound! Why am I never nearer to its source? June 13, 1851
I hear, just as the night sets in, faint notes from time to time from some sparrow falling asleep, — a vesper hymn, — and later . . . The nighthawk booms wide awake . June 13, 1851
As I climb the hill again toward my old bean-field I hear my old musical, simple-noted owl. June 13, 1851
I see reflections of the moon seeming to slide along a few inches with each wave before they are extinguished like so many lustrous burnished coins poured from a bag. June 13, 1851
A few fireflies in the meadow. Do they shine, though invisibly, by day? Is their candle lighted by day? June 13, 1851
Hearing at first some distinct chirps, I listen to the ancient, familiar, immortal, dear cricket sound under all others, and as these cease I become aware of the general earth-song. June 13, 1851
When I have stayed out thus late many miles from home, and have heard a cricket beginning to chirp louder near me in the grass I have felt that I was not far from home after all, -- began to be weaned from my village home. June 13, 1854
*****
See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau:
The meeting with a rare and beautiful bird like this is like meeting with some rare and beautiful flower, which you may never find again. See May 31, 1853 (“That a rare and beautiful flower which we never saw, perhaps never heard of, for which therefore there was no place in our thoughts may be found in our immediate neighborhood, is very suggestive.”)
How beautiful the lamb-kill now just before sunset. - - I remember with what delight I used to discover this flower in dewy mornings. See June 25, 1852 ("Sometimes the lambkill flowers form a very even rounded, close cylinder, six inches long and two and a half in diameter, of rich red saucer-like flowers, the counterpart of the latifolia in flowers and flower- buds, but higher colored. I regard it as a beautiful flower neglected. ")
All things in this world must be seen with the morning dew on them, must be seen with youthful, early-opened, hopeful eyes. See July 18, 1851 ("It is a test question affecting the youth of a person , — Have you knowledge of the morning? . . . Are you abroad early , brushing the dews aside?"); March 17, 1852 ("There is a moment . . .before the exhalations of the day commence to rise, when we see things more truly than at any other time."); Walden (“Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.”); and note to March 17, 1857 (“No mortal is alert enough to be present at the first dawn of the spring”)
The Viburnum nudum. . . .The Viburnum Lentago is about out of bloom; shows young berries. See June 10, 1854 ("The Viburnum lentago is just out of bloom now that the V. nudum is fairly begun.")
Yellow wood sorrel (Oxalis stricta), which closes its leaves and droops at nightfall. See August 15, 1851 ("Oxalis stricta, upright wood-sorrel, the little yellow ternate-leaved flower in pastures and corn-fields. ")
The great leaves of the bass attract you now, six inches in diameter. See May 13, 1854 ("The bass suddenly expanding its little round leaves. ")
Two kingbirds’ nests with eggs in an apple and in a willow by riverside. See June 14, 1855 ("A kingbird’s nest with four eggs on a large horizontal stem or trunk of a black willow, four feet high, over the edge of the river, amid small shoots from the willow; outside of mikania, roots, and knotty sedge, well lined with root fibres and wiry weeds"); June 16, 1855 ("Examined a kingbird’s nest found before (13th) in a black willow over edge of river, four feet from ground. Two eggs."); see also note to June 8, 1858 ("A kingbird's nest with three eggs, lined with some hair, in a fork — or against upright part — of a willow. ")
When I have stayed out thus late many miles from home . . . I have felt that I was not far from home after all. See April 16, 1855 ('We are glad that we stayed out so late and feel no need to go home now in a hurry"); May 23, 1853 ("When the chaste and pensive eve draws on...a certain lateness ... releases me from the obligation to return in any particular season. I have passed the Rubicon of staying out. I have said to myself, that way is not homeward; I will wander further from what I have called my home — to the home which is forever inviting me. In such an hour the freedom of the woods is offered me, . . ."); June 14, 1853 ("home is farther away than ever. Here is home; the beauty of the world impresses you") Also June 13, 1851 (" I listen to the ancient, familiar, immoral, dear cricket sound under all others, and as these cease I become aware of the general earth-song."); January 27, 1858 ("You can not go home yet; you stay and sit in the rain.")
June 13, 2013
If you make the least correctobservation of nature this year,you will have occasion to repeat itwith illustrations the next,and the season and life itself is prolonged.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 13A 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
https://tinyurl.com/HDT13June
