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.
An indistinct path
leading through a dense birch wood
quite out of our course.
Far in the southwest
the locomotive whistle
sounds like a bell.
We continue to
go out of our way till we
are completely lost.
 |
| August 15, 2012, 8:01PM |
Some birds, after they have ceased to sing by day, continue to sing faintly in the morning now as in spring. August 15, 1854
A dog-day, comfortably cloudy and cool as well as still. August 15, 1854
It is the season of mould and mildew, and foggy, muggy, often rainy weather. August 15, 1858
Rain in the night and dog-day weather again, after two clear days. August 15, 1858
Rain again in the night, but now clear. . . . cooler and beautifully clear at last after all these rains, and the crickets chirp with a still more autumnal sound. August 15, 1853
Now a sudden gust of wind blows from the northwest, cooled by a storm there, blowing the dust from roads far over the fields. August 15, 1852
Instead of the late bluish mistiness, I see a distinct, dark shade under the edge of the woods, the effect of the luxuriant foliage seen through the clear air. August 15, 1853
You see every feature of the white pine grove with distinctness, — the stems of the trees, then the dark shade, then their fresh sunlit outsides. August 15, 1853
The smaller white maples are very generally turned a dull red . . . They are redder now than in autumn, and set off the landscape wonderfully. August 15, 1858
The mists are washed and cleared away, and behind them is seen the offspring of the rank vegetation which they nourished, an inky darkness as of night under the edge of the woods and the hedges, now at noonday heralding the evening of the year. august 15, 1853
The fields are remarkably green with a short, firm sward. August 15, 1853
The Great Meadows are not a quarter shorn yet. August 15, 1858
The river meadows, where no mowing, have a yellowish and autumnal look. August 15, 1854
It is too late to see the river's brink in its perfection. It must be seen before you feel this sense of lateness in the year, before the meadows are shorn and the grass of hills and pastures is thus withered and russet. August 15, 1854
On the top of the Hill I see the goldfinch eating the seeds of the Canada thistle. I rarely approach a bed of them or other thistles nowadays but I hear the cool twitter of the goldfinch about it. August 15, 1854
Cnicus pumilus, pasture thistle. How many insects a single one attracts! While you sit by it, bee after bee will visit it, and busy himself probing for honey and loading himself with pollen, regardless of your over shadowing presence. He sees its purple flower from afar, and that use there is in its color. August 15, 1851
Elder-berry ripe. August 15, 1852
The swamp blackberry begins. August 15, 1852
Some cranberries turned red on one cheek along the edges of the meadows. August 15, 1852
Some naked viburnum berries are quite dark purple amid the red, while other bunches are wholly green yet. August 15, 1852
The red choke-berry is small and green still. I plainly distinguish it, also, by its woolly under side. August 15, 1852
In E. Hubbard's swamp I gather some large and juicy and agreeable rum cherries. They are much finer than the small ones on large trees; quite a good fruit. The birds make much account of them.August 15, 1852
Hypericum Canadense, Canadian St. John's-wort, distinguished by its red capsules. The petals shine under the microscope, as if they had a golden dew on them. August 15, 1859
An orchis by the brook under the Cliffs with only three white flowers , only smaller than the fringed white; spurs half an inch long. May it be another species? August 15, 1852
I notice the black willows . . . to see where they grow, distinguishing ten places. In several instances they are on the concave or female side distinctly. August 15, 1858
See a blue heron. August 15, 1860 See a blue heron on the meadow. August 15, 1852
Birds fly in flocks. August 15, 1852
I see a dense, compact flock of bobolinks going off in the air over a field. They cover the rails and alders, and go rustling off with a brassy, tinkling note as I approach, revealing their yellow breasts and bellies. August 15, 1852
This is an autumnal sight, that small flock of grown birds in the afternoon sky. August 15, 1852
Walk all day with Channing, northwest into Acton and Carlisle. I see large flocks of bobolinks on the Union Turnpike. August 15, 1854
Soon after, we follow an indistinct path through a dense birch wood, leading quite out of our course, westward. August 15, 1854
We continue to go out of our way, till we come out on a side-hill immediately overlooking a stream and mill and several houses and a small mill-pond. August 15, 1854
We are completely lost, and see not one familiar object. August 15, 1854
The locomotive whistle, far southwest, sounds like a bell. August 15, 1854
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, 1852
I hear now from Bear Garden Hill — I rarely walk by moonlight without hearing — the sound of a flute, or a horn, or a human voice. August 15, 1851
May I love and revere myself above all the gods that men have ever invented. May I never let the vestal fire go out in my recesses. August 15, 1851
August 15, 2019
7:49 PM
March 29, 1853 ("It is a surprising and memorable and, I may add, valuable experience to be lost in the woods, especially at night")
July 13, 1852 ("The northern wild red cherry of the woods is ripe, handsome, bright red, but scarcely edible; also, sooner than I expected, ")
July 16, 1851 ("May I treat myself tenderly as I would treat the most innocent child whom I love . . . [May] I love and worship myself with a love which absorbs my love for the world.")
July 18, 1853 ("The Cerasus Virginiana, or choke-cherry, is turning, nearly ripe.")
July 19, 1854 ("Black choke-berry, several days.")
July 25, 1853 ("Cerasus Virginiana, — choke-cherry, — just ripe.")
July 26, 1853 ("How apt we are to be reminded of lateness, even before the year is half spent! This the afternoon of the year")
July 30 1852 ("After midsummer we have a belated feeling . . ., just as in middle age man anticipates the end of life")
July 30, 1860 ("Am glad to press my way through Miles's Swamp. Thickets of choke-berry bushes higher than my head, with many of their lower leaves already red")
July 31, 1855 ("Our dog-days seem to be turned to a rainy season") August 2, 1860 ("Mikania begun, and now, perhaps, the river's brink is at its height. ")
August 4, 1852 (“I hear the cricket. He seems to chirp from a new depth toward autumn, new lieferungs of the fall.”);
August 4, 1856 ( "Have heard the alder cricket some days. The turning-point is reached.")
August 4, 1851 ("I hear the note of a cricket, and am penetrated with the sense of autumn")
August 4, 1854 ("The swamp blackberry on high land, ripe a day or two")
August 5, 1856 ("Choke-cherries near . . . begin to be ripe, though still red. They are scarcely edible, but their beauty atones for it. See those handsome racemes of ten or twelve cherries each, dark glossy red, semi- transparent. You love them not the less because they are not quite palatable.") August 5, 1858 ("Choke-berries, fair to the eye but scarcely palatable, hang far above your head, weighing down the bushes.")
August 6, 1856 ("Rubus hispidus ripe. ")
August 6, 1854 ("The Great Meadows are for the most part shorn.")
August 6, 1854 (".I see some smaller white maples turned a dull red, — crimsonish, — a slight blush on them. ")
August 6, 1852 ("I find a bumblebee asleep in a thistle blossom (a pasture thistle)")
August 7, 1858 ("The most luxuriant groves of black willow are on the inside curves, —but rarely ever against a firm bank or hillside, the positive male shore.")
August 8, 1854 ("I see one large white maple crisped and tinged with a sort of rosaceous tinge”)
August 9, 1857 ("Hear the shrilling of my alder locust.")
August 9, 1857 ("I see the blackbirds flying in flocks.")
August 10, 1853 ("Saw an alder locust this morning.")
August 10, 1854 (“The tinkling notes of goldfinches and bobolinks which we hear nowadays are of one character and peculiar to the season. They are nuts of sound, --ripened seeds of sound. . . like the sparkle on water.”)
August 11, 1852 ("The autumnal ring of the alder locust.")
August 11, 1852 ("The rum cherry is ripe.")
August 12, 1858 ("I eat the blueberry, but I am also interested in the rich-looking glossy black choke-berries which nobody eats, but which bend down the bushes on every side,—sweetish berries with a dry, and so choking, taste. Some of the bushes are more than a dozen feet high.")
August 12, 1853 ("See the blue herons opposite Fair Haven Hill, as if they had bred here.");
August 12, 1854 (“I see goldfinches nowadays on the lanceolate thistles, apparently after the seeds.”)
August 13, 1860 ("Hear the steady shrill of the alder locust")
August 14, 1859 ("You have not seen our weedy river, you do not know the significance of its weedy bars, until you have seen the blue heron wading and pluming itself on it")
August 14,1859 (" If you would know the depth of the water on these few shoalest places of Musketaquid, ask the blue heron that wades and fishes there")
August 14, 1858 ("The Canada thistle down is now begun to fly, and I see the goldfinch upon it.")
August 16. 1858 ("A blue heron, with its great undulating wings, prominent cutwater, and leisurely flight, goes over southwest, cutting off the bend of the river west of our house.")
August 17, 1856 ("Hypericum Canadense well out at 2 p. m.")
August 18, 1853 ("The night of the year is approaching")
August 18, 1853 (“What means this sense of lateness that so comes over one now?")August 18, 1856 ("I hear the steady (not intermittent) shrilling of apparently the alder cricket, clear, loud, and autumnal, a season sound. Hear it, but see it not. It reminds me of past autumns and the lapse of time, suggests a pleasing, thoughtful melancholy, like the sound of the flail.")
August 19, 1853 ("After more rain, with wind in the night, it is now clearing up cool. There is a broad, clear crescent of blue in the west, slowly increasing, and an agreeable autumnal coolness")
August 19, 1858 ("The blue heron has within a week reappeared in our meadows")
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")
August 19, 1851 ("Now for the pretty red capsules or pods of the Hypericum Canadense")
August 19, 1858 (“I noticed the localities of black willows as far up as the mouth of the river in Fair Haven Pond, . . ., and from the last observations I infer that the willow grows especially and almost exclusively in places where the drift is most likely to lodge, as on capes and points and concave sides of the river,”)
August 19, 1856 ("I see Hypericum Canadense and mutilum abundantly open at 3 p. m");
August 21, 1859 ("The blue herons must find it easy to get their living now. Are they not more common on our river such [drought] years as this?")
August 21, 1854 ("Red choke-berries are dried black; ripe some time ago. ")
August 22, 1852 ("The panicled cornel berries now white. “)
August 22, 1858 ("Now that the mikania begins to prevail the button-bush has done.")
August 23, 1856 ("At the Lincoln bound hollow, Walden, there is a dense bed of the Rubus hispidus, matting the ground seven or eight inches deep, and full of the small black fruit, now in its prime.. . .Has a peculiar, hardly agreeable acid")
August 23, 1853 ("I am again struck by the perfect correspondence of a day — say an August day — and the year. I think that a perfect parallel may be drawn between the seasons of the day and of the year.”)
Walden, "Spring" ("The day is an epitome of the year. The night is the winter, the morning and evening are the spring and fall, and the noon is the summer.") August 25, 1854 ("Also the choke-berries are very abundant [at Shadbush Meadow], but mostly dried black.")
August 25, 1854 ("The Viburnum nudum berries, in various stages, — green, deep-pink, and also deep-blue, not purple or ripe, — are very abundant at Shadbush Meadow. They appear to be now in their prime and are quite sweet, but have a large seed. Interesting for the various colors on the same bush and in the same cluster.")
August 25, 1856 ("Why is the black willow so strictly confined to the bank of the river?")
August 26, 1860 ("I thread my way through the blueberry swamp in front of Martial Miles's. . . . And now a far greater show of choke-berries is here, rich to see.");
August 27, 1856 ("Hypericum Canadense and mutilum now pretty generally open at 4 P.M., thus late in the season")
August 28, 1856 ("The panicled cornel berries are whitening ")
August 28, 1856 ("The bushes are weighed down with choke-berries, which no creature appears to gather. This crop is as abundant as the huckleberries have been. They have a sweet and pleasant taste enough, but leave a mass of dry pulp in the mouth."); August 31, 1858 ("Red choke-berry, apparently not long. ")
August 31, 1852 ("The evening of the year is colored like the sunset.") September 1,1856 ("Red choke-berries, which last further up in this swamp, with their peculiar glossy red and squarish form, are really very handsome.")
September 1, 1859 ("Red choke-berry ripe.")
September 4, 1860 (“The goldfinch is very busy pulling the thistle to pieces.”)
September 15, 1856 ("The hypericums generally appear to be now about done. I see none.")
October 2, 1856 ("Now and then I see a Hypericum Canadense flower still. The leaves, . . . turned crimson.")
October 11, 1856 ("A pasture thistle with many fresh flowers and bees on it.")
August 15, 2016
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, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality."
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2022
