A Book of the Seasons: August 22 (each place in season, drought, berries, young birds, asters, blue vervain)

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 22

Fruits are colored like 

the trillium berry to 

attract birds to them.

August 22, 1852

I hear muttering

of thunder as the first drops

dimple the river.

August 22, 1853

The circles of the 

blue vervain flowers show how 

advanced the season. 

August 22, 1859

August 22, 2012

There is, no doubt, a particular season of the year when each place may be visited with most profit and pleasure, and it may be worth the while to consider what that season is in each case. August 22, 1854

I go again to the Great Meadows, to improve this remarkably dry season and walk where in ordinary times I cannot go. . . . To Beck Stow's and Gowing's Swamp. August 22, 1854. 

I never find a remarkable Indian relic but I have first divined its existence, and planned the discovery of it. Frequently I have told myself distinctly what it was to be before I found it. August 22, 1860

The Assabet is apparently at its height, and rushing very swiftly past the Hemlocks, where it is narrow and choked with rocks, I can hardly row against it there. August 22, 1856

The two-leaved Solomon's-seal berries begin to be red. August 22, 1852. 

Arum berries ripe. August 22, 1854. The arum berries are mostly devoured, apparently by birds. August 22, 1852.

The panicled cornel berries now white. August 22, 1852.

Perhaps fruits are colored like the trillium berry and the scarlet thorn to attract birds to them. August 22, 1852

Is not the high blackberry our finest berry? August 22, 1852

The elder bushes are weighed down with fruit partially turned, and are still in bloom at the extremities of their twigs. August 22, 1852.

I am struck by the handsome and abundant clusters of yet green shrub oak acorns. Some are whitish. How much food for some creatures! August 22, 1852.

The haze, accompanied by much wind, is so thick this forenoon that the sun is obscured as by a cloud. I see no rays of sunlight. August 22, 1854

There is a pretty strong wind from the north-northwest. The haze is so thick that we can hardly see more than a mile. August 22, 1854

I find at length a pitcher-plant with a spoonful of water in it. It must be last night's dew. August 22, 1854

See a blue heron — apparently a young bird, of a brownish blue — fly up from one of these pools, and a stake-driver from another, and also see their great tracks on the mud, and the feathers they had shed, — some of the long, narrow white neck-feathers of the heron. The tracks of the heron are about six inches long. Here is a rare chance for the herons to transfix the imprisoned fish. It is a wonder that any have escaped. August 22, 1854

To these remote shallow and muddy pools, usually surrounded by reeds and sedge, far amid the wet meadows, — to these, then, the blue heron resorts for its food August 22, 1854

Thus the drought serves the herons, etc., confining their prey within narrower limits, and doubtless they are well acquainted with suitable retired pools far in the marshes to go a-fishing in. August 22, 1854

See one or two blue herons every day now, driving them far up or down the river before me. August 22, 1858. 

The scream of young marsh hawks sounds like some notes of the jay. August 22, 1853. 

A blue jay screams, and one or two fly over, showing to advantage their handsome forms, especially their regular tails, wedge-formed. August 22, 1853. 

I hear but few notes of birds these days; no singing, but merely a few hurried notes or screams or twittering or peeping. . . . not sounds enough to disturb the general stillness. August 22, 1853

Some of the warble of the golden robin. August 22, 1853

The faint warbling I hear nowadays is from apparently the young Maryland yellow- throats, as it were practicing against another spring, — half-finished strains. August 22, 1856 . 

Am surprised to hear a phoebe's pewet pewee and see it. August 22, 1854. 

Hear a peawai whose note is more like singing — as if it were still incubating — than any other. August 22, 1853. 

I hear of some young barn swallows in the nest still in R. Rice’s barn, Sudbury. August 22, 1855

Surprised to hear a very faint bobolink in the air; the link, link, once or twice later. August 22, 1853.

That young pitch pine whose buds the crossbills (?) plucked has put out shoots close by them, but they are rather feeble and late. August 22, 1859

The sprouts, apparently of the Populus grandidentata, run up very fast the first year where the wood has been cut, and make great leaves nearly a foot long and nine or ten inches wide, — unlike those of the parent tree, downy. August 22, 1852. 

The circles of the blue vervain flowers, now risen near to the top, show how far advanced the season is. August 22, 1859.  

The savory-leaved aster (Diplopappus linariifolius) out; how long? August 22, 1859

WOOD ASTER AUGUST 20, 2017


Saw the Aster corymbosus on the 19th. August 22, 1859

Now is the time for the cardinal-flower. August 22, 1860

Have seen where squirrels have eaten, i.e. stripped, many white pine cones, for a week past, though quite green. August 22, 1859

There are now hopping all over this meadow small Rana palustris, and also some more beautifully spotted halecina or shad frogs. August 22, 1854 

I hear the muttering of thunder and the first drops dimple the river. August 22, 1853

A yellowbird flew over the river. August 22, 1853. 

And two nighthawks flying high over the river . August 22, 1853. 

At twilight many bats after the showers. August 22, 1853

August 22, 2019

*****

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, at Beck Stow's Swamp

A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Pitcher Plant

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  the Blue Vervain

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Blackberries

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Elder-berries

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Big-toothed Aspen

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Solomon's Seal

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Marsh Hawk 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Eastern Phoebe

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,The Blue Jay

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Young Birds

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Eastern Wood Pewee

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Bobolink

See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Nighthawk

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Summer Yellowbird

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The  Pickerel frog  (Rana palustris)

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Heron

August 22, 2019

April 13, 1860 (“It distinctly occurred to me that, perhaps, if I came against my will, as it were, to look at the sweet-gale as a matter of business, I might discover something else interesting.”)
July 2, 1857 ("We find only the world we look for.")
July 12, 1854 ("Many young barn swallows sit in flocks on the bared dead willows over the water and let me float within four or five feet. Birds do not distinguish a man sitting in a boat.")

July 14, 1853 ("In Beck Stow’s Swamp to-day; approached and discovered the Andromeda Polifolia")

August 4, 1855 ("Just after bathing at the rock near the Island this afternoon, after sunset, I saw a flock of thousands of barn swallows . . .. I supposed that they were preparing to migrate, being the early broods.")

August 6, 1852 ("Blue vervain is now very attractive to me, and then there is that interesting progressive history in its rising ring of blossoms. It has a story.")

August 7, 1853 ("The birds for some weeks have not sung as in the spring. Do I not already hear the jays with more distinctness, as in the fall and winter?")
August 8, 1852 ("No man ever makes a discovery, even an observation of the least importance,
but he is advertised of the fact by a joy that surprises him.")
August 11, 1852 ("Aster corymbosus, path beyond Corner Spring and in Miles Swamp.")

August 12, 1851 ("And the bats are flying about on the edge of the wood, improving the last moments of their day in catching insects.")

August 12, 1858 ("A Maryland yellow-throat, hopping within a bush closely")

August 13, 1854 ("Now the mountains are concealed by the dog-day haze.”)
August 14, 1852 ("There is such a haze that I cannot see the mountains")

August 16, 1858 ("At sunset I hear a low short warble from a golden robin, and the notes of the wood pewee.")
August 17, 1853 ("The high blackberries are now in their prime; the richest berry we have.")

August 18, 1854 ("We can walk across the Great Meadows now in any direction. They are quite dry. Even the pitcher-plant leaves are empty.")
August 19, 1854 (“There is such a haze we see not further than our Annursnack, which is blue as a mountain.”)

August 19, 1858 ("The blue heron has within a week reappeared in our meadows.")
August 19, 1852 ("The trillium berries, six-sided, one inch in diameter, like varnished and stained cherry wood, glossy red, crystalline and ingrained, concealed under its green leaves in shady swamps.");
August 20, 1851 ("The flowers of the blue vervain have now nearly reached the summit of their spikes.")

August 20, 1851 ("I see cardinal-flowers, with their red artillery, reminding me of soldiers, — red men, war, and bloodshed. Some are four and a half feet high")
August 20, 1851 ("The golden robin is now a rare bird to see")

August 21, 1854 ("I can not find a pitcher-plant with any water in it.")

August 21, 1854 ("Trillium berries bright red.")

August 21, 1851 ("It is very pleasant to measure the progress of the season by this and similar clocks. So you get, not the absolute time, but the true time of the season.")
August 21, 1852 ("There are as few or fewer birds heard than flowers seen. The sound of the crickets gradually prevails more and more. I hear the year falling asleep")
August 21, 1859 ("There is quite a drought, and I can walk almost anywhere over these meadows without wetting my feet., , , It is like the summer of '54.")
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 23, 1851 ("The Verbena hastata at the pond has reached the top of its spike, a little in advance of what I noticed yesterday; only one or two flowers are adhering.")
August 23, 1854 ("I improve the dry weather to examine the middle of Gowing's Swamp")
August 23, 1858 (" High blackberries now in their prime, their great racemes of shining black fruit, mixed with red and green, bent over amid the sweet-fern and sumach on sunny hill sides, or growing more rankly with larger fruit by rich roadsides and in lower ground.").

August 25, 1852 (" I hear no birds sing these days, only the plaintive note of young bluebirds, or the peep of a robin, or the scream of a jay, to whom all seasons are indifferent, the mew of a catbird, the link link of a bobolink, or the twitter of a goldfinch, all faint and rare.")

August 25, 1854 (“I think I never saw the haze so thick as now . . . The sun is shorn of his beams by the haze before 5 o'clock P.M., round and red, and is soon completely concealed, apparently by the haze alone.”);
August 26, 1854 ("I hear part of a phoebe's strain, as I go over the railroad bridge. It is the voice of dying summer.")

August 27, 1856 ("The cardinals in this ditch . . . look like slender plumes of soldiers advancing in a dense troop, . . .the most splendid show of cardinal flowers I ever saw")
August 28, 1856 ("See the great oval masses of scarlet berries of the arum now in the meadows. Trillium fruit, long time.")

August 28, 1853 ("The acorns show now on the shrub oaks.")

August 28, 1856 ("The panicled cornel berries are whitening,, but already mostly fallen.")
August 29, 1859 ("Elder-berry clusters swell and become heavy and therefore droop, bending the bushes down, just in proportion as they ripen. Hence you see the green cymes perfectly erect, the half-ripe drooping, and the perfectly ripe hanging straight down on the same bush.")

August 29, 1858 ("I hear this morning one eat it potter from a golden robin. They are now rarely seen.")
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?")

August 30, 1856 ("I get my new experiences . . . at Beck Stow's Swamp listening to the native wood thrush")
August 31, 1852 ("The rustling of aspen leaves (grandidentata) this cloudy day startled me as if it were rain-drops on the leaves.")

August 31, 1853 ("Great black cymes of elder berries now bend down the bushes.")

August 31, 1858 ("I hear and see but few bobolinks or blackbirds for several days past. The former, at least, must be withdrawing.")
September 1, 1851("The fruit of the trilliums is very handsome.. . .a dense crowded cluster of many ovoid berries turning from green to scarlet or bright brick color.") 

September 1, 1856 ("A. corymbosus, in prime, or maybe past.")
September 1, 1860 ("See how artfully the seed of a cherry is placed in order that a bird may be compelled to transport it.”)
September 1, 1859 ("The scarlet fruit of the arum spots the swamp floor.");
September 2, 1853 (" The dense oval bunches of arum berries now startle the walker in swamps")

September 2, 1856 ("It commonly chances that I make my most interesting botanical discoveries when I am in a thrilled and expectant mood,. . .”)
September 4, 1853 ("The crowded clusters of shrub oak acorns are very handsome now, the rich, wholesome brown of the cups contrasting with the now clear green acorns, sometimes twenty- four with a breadth of three inches.")

September 5, 1858 (" I hear two or more wood pewees this afternoon, but had not before for a fortnight or more. The pewee days are over for some time")
September 7, 1854 (" A nighthawk dashes past, low over the water")

September 7, 1854 ("Many bats over and about our heads.")
September 13, 1859 ("I see some shrub oak acorns turned dark on the bushes and showing their meridian lines, but generally acorns of all kinds are green yet") 
September 16, 1858 ("Say within a week have begun. In one small wood, all the white pine cones are on the ground, generally unopened, evidently freshly thrown down by the squirrels, and then the greater part have already been stripped.")

September 18, 1856 ("Diplopappus linariifolius in prime.")
September 21, 1859 ("They [acorns] are as interesting now on the shrub oak (green) as ever.")
September 24, 1857 (" I walk to that very dense and handsome white pine grove east of Beck Stow’s Swamp . . . The ground was completely strewn with white pine cones, apparently thrown down by the squirrels, still generally green and closed, but many stripped of scales, about the base of almost every pine, sometimes all of them.")

September 25, 1854 ("Bats come out fifteen minutes after sunset.")
September 28, 1858 ("The small shrub oak . . . with its pretty acorns striped dark and light alternately.")
September 30, 1859 ("Most shrub oak acorns browned.")
October 1, 1859 ("The shrub oaks on this hill are now at their height, both with respect to their tints and their fruit. . . .Now is the time for shrub oak acorns if not for others.")
October 14, 1859 ("The shrub oak acorns are now all fallen, — only one or two left on,")

October 15, 1859 ("I see some black oak acorns on the trees still and in some places at least half the shrub oak acorns. The last are handsomer now that they have turned so much darker.")

October 21, 1859 ("A great many shrub oak acorns hold on, and are a darker brown than ever.")

November 4, 1858 (" We cannot see any thing until we are possessed with the idea of it, . . .. In my botanical rambles I find that first the idea, or image, of a plant occupies my thoughts, though it may at first seem very foreign to this locality, and for some weeks or months I go thinking of it and expecting it unconsciously, and at length I surely see it, . . . This is the history of my finding a score or more of rare plants which I could name.”)

August 22, 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.

  April 7, 1853 

 August 21 .<<<<<      August 22  >>>>>   August 23

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,August 22

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 © 2009-2022

https://tinyurl.com/HDT22August

What I got by going to Canada was a cold.

August 22.

I found last winter that it was expected by my townsmen that I would give some account of Canada because I had visited it, and because many of them had, and so felt interested in the subject, - - visited it as the bullet visits the wall at which it is fired, and from which it rebounds as quickly, and flattened (somewhat damaged, perchance)!

Yes, a certain man contracted to take fifteen hundred live Yankees through Canada, at a certain rate and within a certain time.

It did not matter to him what the commodity was, if only it would pack well and were delivered to him according to agreement at the right place and time and rightly ticketed, so much in bulk, wet or dry, on deck or in the hold, at the option of the carrier how to stow the cargo and not always right side up.

In the meanwhile, it was understood that the freight was not to be willfully and intentionally debarred from seeing the country if it had eyes.

It was understood that there would be a country to be seen on either side, though that was a secret advantage which the contractors seemed not to be aware of.

I fear that I have not got much to say, not having seen much, for the very rapidity of the motion had a tendency to keep my eyelids closed.

What I got by going to Canada was a cold, and not till I get a fever, which I never had, shall I know how to appreciate it.

It is the fault of some excellent writers -- De Quincey's first impressions on seeing London suggest it to me -- that they express themselves with too great fullness and detail.

They give the most faithful, natural, and lifelike account of their sensations, mental and physical, but they lack moderation and sententiousness.

They do not affect us by an ineffectual earnestness and a reserve of meaning, like a stutterer; they say mean.

Their sentences are not concentrated and nutty.

Sentences which suggest far more than they say, which have an atmosphere about them, which do not merely report an old, but make a new, impression; sentences which suggest as many things and are as durable as a Roman aqueduct to frame these, that is the art of writing.

Sentences which are expensive, towards which so many volumes, so much life, went; which lie like boulders on the page, up and down or across; which contain the seed of other sentences, not mere repetition, but creation; which a man might sell his grounds and castles to build.

If De Quincey had suggested each of his pages in a sentence and passed on, it would have been far more excellent writing.

His style is nowhere kinked and knotted up into something hard and significant, which you could swallow like a diamond, without digesting.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 22, 1851

It is very dry now.

August 22. 

Monday. 

The circles of the blue vervain flowers, now risen near to the top, show how far advanced the season is. 

Blue vervain (Verbena hastata)

The savory-leaved aster (Diplopappus linariifolius) out; how long? 

WOOD ASTER AUGUST 20, 2017

Saw the Aster corymbosus on the 19th. 

Have seen where squirrels have eaten, i.e. stripped, many white pine cones, for a week past, though quite green. 

That young pitch pine whose buds the crossbills (?) plucked has put out shoots close by them, but they are rather feeble and late. 

Riding to the factory, I see the leaves of corn, planted thick for fodder, so rolled by the drought that I mistook one row in grass for some kind of rush or else reed, small and terete. 

At the factory, where they were at work on the dam, they showed large and peculiar insects which they were digging up amid the gravel and water of the dam, nearly two inches long and half an inch wide, with six legs, two large shield-like plates on the forward part of the body, — under which they apparently worked their way through wet sand, — and two large claws, some what lobster-like, forward. The abdomen long, of many rings, and fringed with a kind of bristles on each side. 

The other day, as I was going by Messer's, I was struck with the pure whiteness of a tall and slender buttonwood before his house. The southwest side of it for some fifty or more feet upward, as far as the outer bark had recently scaled off, was as white, as distinct and bright a white, as if it had been painted, and when I put my finger on it, a white matter, like paint not quite dry, came off copiously, so that I even suspected it was paint. When I scaled off a piece of bark, the freshly exposed surface was brown. This white matter had a strong fungus-like scent, and this color is apparently acquired after a little exposure to the air. Nearly half the tree was thus uninterruptedly white as if it had been rounded and planed and then painted. No birch presents so uniformly white a surface. 

It is very dry now, but I perceive that the great star-shaped leaves of the castor bean plants in Mr. Rice's garden at twilight are quite cold to the touch, and quite shining and wet with moisture wherever I touch them. Many leaves of other plants, as cucumbers, feel quite dry.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 22, 1859

The circles of the blue vervain flowers, now risen near to the top, show how far advanced the season is. See August 6, 1852 ("Blue vervain is now very attractive to me, and then there is that interesting progressive history in its rising ring of blossoms. It has a story."); August 20, 1851 ("The flowers of the blue vervain have now nearly reached the summit of their spikes."); August 21, 1851 ("It is very pleasant to measure the progress of the season by this and similar clocks. So you get, not the absolute time, but the true time of the season.");August 23, 1851 ("The Verbena hastata at the pond has reached the top of its spike, a little in advance of what I noticed yesterday; only one or two flowers are adhering.")

The savory-leaved aster (Diplopappus linariifolius) out; how long? July 29, 1852 ("That common rigid narrow-leaved faint-purplish aster in dry woods by shrub oak path, Aster linariifolius of Bigelow, but it is not savory leaved. I do not find it in Gray."); August 3, 1858 ("Savory-leaved aster."); September 18, 1856 ("Diplopappus linariifolius in prime.") see also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Savory-leaved aster  
;
Saw the Aster corymbosus on the 19th. See August 9, 1856 ("What I have called Aster corymbosus out a day, above Hemlocks.. It has eight to twelve white rays, smaller than those of the macrophyllus, and a dull-red stem commonly."); August 11, 1852 ("Aster corymbosus, path beyond Corner Spring and in Miles Swamp.");  September 1, 1856 ("A. corymbosus, in prime, or maybe past."); September 6, 1856 ("For the first time distinguish the Aster cordifolius, a prevailing one in B[rattleboro] and but just beginning to flower"); September 9, 1856 [at Brattleboro] ("High up the mountain the Aster macrophyllus as well as corymbosus.");September 22, 1858 [from Salem to Cape Ann on foot] ("saw A. corymbosus, which is a handsome white wood aster"); September 24, 1856 ("A. corymbosus, still fresh though probably past prime."); October 8, 1856 ("A. corymbosus, looks fresh! . . . of asters, only corymbosus, undulatus,Tradescanti, and longifolius . . .are common. ")

Aster corymbosus . now known as Eurybia divaricata , commonly known as the white wood aster, can be found in dry open woods as well as along wood-edges and clearings. Its flower heads have yellow centers and white rays that are arranged in flat-topped corymbiform arrays (growing in such a fashion that the outermost are borne on longer pedicels than the inner, bringing all flowers up to a common level. to flattish top superficially resembling an umbel,). It flowers in the late summer through fall. Other distinguishing characteristics include its serpentine stems and sharply serrated narrow heart-shaped leaves. ~Wikipedia


Have seen where squirrels have eaten, i.e. stripped, many white pine cones, for a week past, though quite green. See September 9, 1857 ("How fast I could collect cones, if I could only contract with a family of squirrels to cut them off for me!"); September 16, 1857 ("I see green and closed cones beneath, which the squirrels have thrown down. On the trees many are already open. Say within a week have begun. In one small wood, all the white pine cones are on the ground, generally unopened, evidently freshly thrown down by the squirrels, and then the greater part have already been stripped.");September 24, 1857 ("The ground was completely strewn with white pine cones, apparently thrown down by the squirrels, still generally green and closed, but many stripped of scales, about the base of almost every pine, sometimes all of them. Now and for a week a good time to collect them.")

That young pitch pine whose buds the crossbills (?) plucked has put out shoots. See March 8, 1859 ("I see, under the pitch pines on the southwest slope of the hill, the reddish bud-scales scattered on the snow . . . and, examining, I find that in a great many cases the buds have been eaten by some creature and the scales scattered about. . .I am inclined to think that these were eaten by the red squirrel; or was it the crossbill? for this is said to visit us in the winter. Have I ever seen a squirrel eat the pine buds?")

The boat is like a plow drawn by a winged bull.

August 22. 

P. M. — I have spliced my old sail to a new one, and now go out to try it in a sail to Baker Farm. It is a “square sail,” some five feet by six. I like it much. It pulls like an ox, and makes me think there’s more wind abroad than there is. 

The yard goes about with a pleasant force, almost enough, I would fain imagine, to knock me overboard. 

How sturdily it pulls, shooting us along, catching more wind than I knew to be wandering in this river valley! It suggests a new power in the sail, like a Grecian god. I can even worship it, after a heathen fashion. And then, how it becomes my boat and the river, — a simple homely square sail, all for use not show, so low and broad! Ajacean. 

The boat is like a plow drawn by a winged bull. If I had had this a dozen years ago, my voyages would have been performed more quickly and easily. But then probably I should have lived less in them. I land on a remote shore at an unexpectedly early hour, and have time for a long walk there. Before, my sail was so small that I was wont to raise the mast with the sail on it ready set, but now I have had to rig some tackling with which to haul up the sail. 

As for the beauty of the river’s brim: now that the mikania begins to prevail the button-bush has done, the pontederia is waning, and the willows are already some what crisped and imbrowned (though the last may be none the worse for it); lilies, too, are as good as gone. So perhaps I should say that the brim of the river was in its prime about the 1st of August this year, when the pontederia and button-bush and white lilies were in their glory. 

The cyperus (phgmatodes, etc.) now yellows edges of pools and half-bare low grounds. 

See one or two blue herons every day now, driving them far up or down the river before me. 

I see a mass of bur-reed, etc., which the wind and waves are sweeping down-stream. The higher water and wind thus clear the river for us. 

At Baker Farm a large bird rose up near us, which at first I took for a hen-hawk, but it appeared larger. It screamed the same, and finally soared higher and higher till it was almost lost amid the clouds, or could scarcely be distinguished except when it was seen against some white and glowing cumulus. I think it was at least half a mile high, or three quarters, and yet I distinctly heard it scream up there each time it came round, and with my glass saw its head steadily bent toward the ground, looking for its prey. 

Its head, seen in a proper light, was distinctly whitish, and I suspect it may have been a white headed eagle. It did not once flap its wings up there, as it circled and sailed, though I watched it for nearly a mile. How fit that these soaring birds should be haughty and fierce, not like doves to our race!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 22, 1858

The boat is like a plow drawn by a winged bull.  See August 24, 1858 ("Under my new sail the boat dashes off like a horse with the bits in his teeth."). See also  July 29, 1851 ("The boat is such a living creature, even this clumsy one sailing within five points of the wind. The sailboat is an admirable invention, by which you compel the wind to transport you even against itself. It is easier to guide than a horse; the slightest pressure on the tiller suffices. I think the inventor must have been greatly surprised, as well as delighted, at the success of his experiment."); May 8, 1854 ("I look round with a thrill on this bright fluctuating surface on which no man can walk, whereon is no trace of footstep, unstained as glass. I feel exhilaration, mingled with a slight awe, as I drive before this strong wind over the great black-backed waves, cutting through them, and hear their surging and feel them toss me."); April 29, 1856 ("It is flattering to a sense of power to make the wayward wind our horse and sit with our hand on the tiller. Sailing is much like flying, and from the birth of our race men have been charmed by it.")

Now that the mikania begins to prevail, the button-bush has done [and] the pontederia is waning ...I should say that the brim of the river was in its prime about the 1st of August this year, when the pontederia and button-bush and white lilies were in their glory. See September 7, 1857 ("It occurred to me some weeks ago that the river-banks were not quite perfect. It is too late then, when the mikania is in bloom, because the pads are so much eaten then.")

See one or two blue herons every day now. See August 19, 1858 ("The blue heron has within a week reappeared in our meadows,"); August 22, 1854 ("See a blue heron — apparently a young bird, of a brownish blue — fly up . . . and the feathers they had shed, — some of the long, narrow white neck-feathers of the heron. The tracks of the heron are about six inches long.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Blue Heron

A tree growing in Windsor, Vt., which they call the pepperidge.

August 22.

Saturday. 

Channing has brought me from Plymouth and Watson Drosera filiformis, just out of bloom, from Great South Pond, Solidago tenuifolia in bloom, Sabbatia chloroides, and Coreopsis rosea. 

Edward Hoar shows me Lobelia Kalmii, which he gathered in flower in Hopkinton about the 18th of July. (I found the same on the East Branch and the Penobscot); staphylea (in fruit) from Northampton, plucked within a week or so (Bigelow says it grows in Weston); also the leaves of a tree growing in Windsor, Vt., which they call the pepperidge, quite unlike our tupelo. Is it not the Celtis crassifolia? 

He says he found the Uvularia perfoliata on the Stow road, he thinks within Concord bounds.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 22, 1857

I found the same on the East Branch and the Penobscot. See August 1, 1857 ("Lobelia Kalmii, . . .on bare rocks just below the falls.")

The Uvularia perfoliata on the Stow road.  Thoreau’s only references to Concord occurrence of the perfoliate bellwort  are two that are second-hand, August 22, 1857,  and  September 22, 1852 (noting Sophia finds this in Concord with no date or locale given,)~ Ray Angelo, Vascular Flora of Concord, Massachusetts

The river is now rising fast.

August 22

Fair weather at last. 

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

Owing to the rain of the 8th and before, two days and two nights, the river rose to within six inches of the top of Hoar's wall. It had fallen about one half, when the rain began again on the night of the 20th, and again continued about two nights and two days, though so much did not fall as before; but, the river being high, it is now rising fast. 

The Assabet is apparently at its height, and rushing very swiftly past the Hemlocks, where it is narrow and choked with rocks, I can hardly row against it there. I see much hay floating, and two or three cocks, quite black, carried round and round in a great eddy by the side of the stream, which will ere long be released and continue their voyage down-stream. 

The water is backing up the main stream so that there is no current what ever in that, as far up as my boat's place, at least. When I rest on my oars the boat will not after any waiting drift down-stream.  It is within three inches of the top of Hoar's wall at 7 p. m. 

August 22, 2026

I notice three or four clumps of white maples, at the swamp up the Assabet, which have turned as red (dull red) as ever they do, fairly put on their autumnal hue. But we have had no dry weather and no frost, and this is apparently a premature ripening of the leaves. The water stands around and affects them as it does the weeds and grass, — steams them too. They, as it were, take these for the fall rains, the latter rain, accept their fates, and put on the suitable dress. 

This shows how little frost has to do with such changes, except as a ripener of the leaves. The trees are so ready for this change that only a copious rain and rise of the waters as in the fall produces the same effect. 

Also some red maples on hillsides have a crisped look for the same reason, actually ripening and drying without turning and without drought or frost. 

I find that much of the faint warbling I hear nowadays is from apparently the young Maryland yellow- throats, as it were practicing against another spring, — half-finished strains. They are also more inquisitive and bold than usual, hopping quite near. 

The creak of the mole cricket is heard along the shore.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 22, 1856

It is within three inches of the top of Hoar's wall at 7 p. m. See August 9, 1856 (" Few, if any, can remember such a succession of thunder-storms merged into one long thunder-storm, lasting almost continuously (the storm does) two nights and two days"); August 10, 1856 ("The river . . . is between two and a half and three feet higher than ten days ago . . . It is within nine and a half inches of the top of Hoar's wall at 6 p. m. "); Compare August 22, 1854 ("I go again to the Great Meadows, to improve this remarkably dry season and walk where in ordinary times I cannot go.")

Three or four clumps of white maples, at the swamp up the Assabet, which have turned as red (dull red) as ever they do. See August 15, 1858 (“The smaller white maples are very generally turned a dull red, and their long row, seen against the fresh green of Ball’s Hill, is very surprising . . . They are redder now than in autumn, and set off the landscape wonderfully.")

Young Maryland yellow-throats . . . more inquisitive and bold than usual, hopping quite near. See August 5, 1858 ("I heard what I should call my night-warbler’s note, and, looking up, saw the bird dropping to a bush on the hillside: Looking through the glass, I saw that it was the Maryland yellow-throat!"); August 12, 1858 ("A Maryland yellow-throat, hopping within a bush closely."); September 20, 1858 ("The Maryland yellow-throat is here.")

The creak of the mole cricket is heard along the shore. See September 27, 1855 ("I traced the note of what I have falsely thought the Rana palustris, or cricket frog, to its true source [and] I found a mole cricket (Gryllotalpa brevipennis)."); August 6, 1855 ("The mole cricket creaks along the shore."); August 23, 1857 ('The mole cricket nowadays.");  September 27, 1856 ("The creak of the mole cricket sounds late along the shore.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Cricket in August

August 22. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 22

Faint warbling of 

young Maryland yellow-throats

as if practicing.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  The river is now rising fast

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 © 2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-560822

Barn swallows in the nest still.

August 22.
I hear of some young barn swallows in the nest still in R. Rice’s barn, Sudbury.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 22, 1855

A Book of the Seasons: August 22

August 22.

I hear muttering
of thunder as the first drops
dimple the river.
August 22, 1853

It pulls like an ox 

and makes me think there’s more wind 

abroad than there is. 

August 22, 1858

August 22, 2019

 

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 © 2009-2018