To see the lilies open

July 4.  Sunday.

July 4, 2022

3 A. M. - To Conantum, to see the lilies open.

I hear an occasional crowing of cocks in distant barns, as has been their habit for how many thousand years. It was so when I was young; and it will be so when I am old.

I hear the croak of a tree-toad as I am crossing the yard.

I am surprised to find the dawn so far advanced.  There is a yellowish segment of light in the east, paling a star and adding sensibly to the light of the waning and now declining moon.

There is very little dew on the uplands.

I hear a little twittering and some clear singing from the seringo and the song sparrow as I go along the back road, and now and then the note of a bullfrog from the river.

The light in the east has acquired a reddish tinge near the horizon.  Small wisps of cloud are already fuscous and dark, seen against the light, as in the west at evening.

It being Sunday morning, I hear no early stirring farmer driving over a bridge.  The crickets are not remarkably loud at this season. The sound of a whip-poor-will is wafted from the woods.  Now, on the Corner road, the hedges are alive with twittering sparrows, a bluebird or two, etc. 

The daylight now balances the moonlight.

How short the nights! The last traces of day have not disappeared much before 10 o'clock, or perchance 9.30, and before 3 A. M. you see them again in the east, probably 2.30, leaving about five hours of solid night, the sun so soon coming round again.

The robins sing, but not so loud and long as in the spring. I have not been awakened by them latterly in the mornings. Is it my fault? 

Ah! those mornings when you are awakened in the dawn by the singing, the matins, of the birds!

 

I hear the dumping sound of frogs now on the causeway.

Some small clouds in the east are reddish fuscous. There is no fog on the river nor in the meadows.

The kingbird twitters (?) on the black willows.

Methinks I saw the not yet extinguished lights of one or two fireflies in the darker ruts in the grass, in Conant's meadow.

The moon yields to the sun. She pales even in the presence of his dawn.

It is chiefly the spring birds that I hear at this hour, and in each dawn the spring is thus revived.

The notes of the sparrows and the bluebirds and the robin have a prominence now which they have not by day.

The light is more and more general, and some low bars begin to look bluish as well as reddish. (Else-where the sky wholly clear of clouds.) The dawn is at this stage far lighter than the brightest moonlight. I write by it. Yet the sun will not rise for some time.

Those bars are reddening more purplish, or lilac rather, light in the eastern sky. (And now, descending to the Cliff by the riverside, I cannot see the low horizon and its phenomena.)

I love to go through these old apple orchards so irregularly set out. Sometimes two trees standing close together. The rows of grafted fruit will never tempt me to wander amid them like these.

A bittern leaves the shore at my approach. I suppose it is he whose excrement has whitened the rocks, as if a mason had spilled his whitewash.

A nighthawk squeaks and booms, before sunrise.

The insects shaped like shad-flies (some which I see are larger and yellowish) begin to leave their cases (and selves?) on the stems of the grasses and the rushes in the water. I find them so weak they can hardly hold on.

I hear the black-bird's conqueree, and the kingfisher darts away with his alarum and outstretched neck.

Every lily is shut.

Sunrise. I see it gilding the top of the hill behind me, but the sun itself is concealed by the hills and woods on the east shore.

A very slight fog begins to rise now in one place on the river.

There is something serenely glorious and memorable to me in the sight of the first cool sunlight now gilding the eastern extremity of the bushy island in Fair Haven, that wild lake.

The subdued light and the repose remind me of Hades. In such sunlight there is no fever. It is such an innocent pale yellow as the spring flowers. It is the pollen of the sun, fertilizing plants. The color of the earliest spring flowers is as cool and innocent as the first rays of the sun in the morning falling on woods and hills.

The fog not only rises upward (about two feet), but at once there is a motion from the sun over the surface.

What means this endless motion of water-bugs collected in little groups on the surface and ceaselessly circling about their centre, as if they were a family hatched from the eggs on the under side of a pad? Is not this motion intended partly to balk the fishes? Methinks they did not begin to move till sunrise. Where were they? 

And now I see an army of skaters advancing in loose array, of chasseurs or scouts, as Indian allies are drawn in old books.

Now the rays of the sun have reached my seat, a few feet above the water; flies begin to buzz, mosquitoes to be less troublesome.

A hummingbird hums by over the pads up the river, as if looking, like myself, to see if lilies have blossomed.

The birds begin to sing generally, and, if not loudest, at least most noticeably on account of the quietness of the hour, just before -- a few minutes before -- sunrise. They do not sing so incessantly and earnestly, as a regular thing, half an hour later.

Carefully looking both up and down the river, I could perceive that the lilies began to open about fifteen minutes after the sun from over the opposite bank fell on them, which was perhaps three quarters of an hour after sunrise (which is about 4.30), and one was fully expanded about twenty minutes later.  When I returned over the bridge about 6.15, there were perhaps a dozen open ones in sight. 

It was very difficult to find one not injured by insects.  Even the buds which were just about to expand were frequently bored quite through, and the water had rotted them. You must be on hand early to anticipate insects.

One thimble-berry which will be quite ripe by to-morrow.

Indigo almost expanded.

I perceive the meadow fragrance on the causeway.

Bobolinks still.

I bring home a dozen perfect lily buds, — all I can find within many rods, — which have never yet opened; I prepare a large pan of water; I cut their stems quite short; I turn back their calyx-leaves with my fingers, so that they may float upright; I touch the points of their petals, and breathe or blow on them, and toss them in. They spring open rapidly, or gradually expand in the course of an hour, all but one or two. 

At 12.30 P. M., I perceive that the lilies in the river have begun to shut up. The water has gone down so much that I can stand on the shore and pluck as many as I want, and they are the fairest ones, concealed by the pickerel-weed, often the whole plant high and dry. I go again to the river at 2.30 P. M., and every lily is shut.

I will here tell the history of my rosaceous lilies plucked the 1st of July.

• They were buds at the bottom of a pitcher of water all the 2d, having been kept in my hat part of the day before.
• On the morning of the 3d I assisted their opening, and put them in water, as I have described; but they did not shut up at noon, like those in the river, but at dark, their petals, at least, quite tight and close.
• They all opened again in the course of the forenoon of the 4th, but had not shut up at 10 o'clock P. M., though I found them shut in the morning of the 5th.

May it be that they can bear only a certain amount of light, and these, being in the shade, remained open longer? ( I think not, for they shut up in the river that quite cloudy day, July 1st.) Or is their vitality too little to permit [them] to perform their regu- lar functions? 

Can that meadow fragrance come from the purple summits of the eupatorium? 

I looked down on the river behind Dodd's at 2.30 P. M., a slate-colored stream with a scarcely perceptible current, with a male and female shore; the former, more abrupt, of button-bushes and willows, the other, flat, of grass and pickerel-weed alone. Beyond the former, the water being deep, extends a border or fringe of green and purplish pads lying perfectly flat on the surface, but on the latter side the pads extend a half a rood or a rod beyond the pickerel-weed, — shining pads reflecting the light, dotted with white or yellow lilies. This sort of ruff does the river wear, and so the land is graduated off to water.

A tender place in nature, an exposed vein, and nature making a feint to bridge it quite over with a paddy film, with red-winged black- birds liquidly warbling and whistling on the willows, and kingbirds on the elms and oaks; these pads, if there is any wind, rippling with the water and helping to smooth and allay it. It looks tender and exposed, as if it were naturally subterranean, and now, with these shields of pads, held scale-like by long threads from the bottom, she makes a feint to bridge it.

So floats the Musketaquid over its segment of the sphere.

Methinks there is not even a lily, white or yellow, in Walden.

I see perfectly formed pouts by the shore of the river, one inch long.

The great spatterdock lily is a rich yellow at a little distance, and, seen lying on its great pads, it is an indispensable evidence of the fertility of the river.  The gratiola begins to yellow the mud by the riverside. The Lysimachia lanceolata var. hybrida is out, in the meadows. 

The Rosa nitida (?) appears to be now out of bloom.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 4, 1852

the light of the waning and now declining moon. See June 30, 1852 ('Moon nearly full; rose a little before sunset.") See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, July Moonlight

To see the lilies open. See June 21, 1853 ("4.30 A.M.––Up river for lilies . . .The few lilies begin to open about 5."); July 1, 1852 ("...to see the white lilies in blossom...to breathe the atmosphere of lilies, and get the full impression which lilies are fitted to make"); July 11, 1852 ("The first lily I noticed opened about half an hour after sunrise, or at 5 o'clock."); July 17, 1854 ("I go to observe the lilies . . .I think that I could tell when it was 12 o'clock within half an hour by the lilies.")

They shut up in the river that quite cloudy day, July 1st. See July 1, 1852 ("The freshly opened lilies are a pearly white, and though the water amid the pads is quite unrippled, the passing air gives a slight oscillating, boat-like motion to and fro to the flowers, like boats held fast by their cables.After eating our luncheon at Rice's landing, I can not find one open anywhere for the rest of the day.")

The Rosa nitida (?) appears to be now out of bloom. See June 16, 1854 ("The Rosa nitida grows along the edge of the ditches, the half-open flowers showing the deepest rosy tints, so glowing that they make an evening or twilight of the surrounding afternoon, seeming to stand in the shade or twilight. Already the bright petals of yesterday's flowers are thickly strewn along on the black mud at the bottom of the ditch."); July 8, 1854 ("The Rosa nitida I think has [been] some time done") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Rose

The white-red-purple-berried bush in Hubbard's Meadow.

September 11.

September 11, 2021

2 P. M. - To Hubbard's Meadow Grove.

The skunk-cabbage's checkered fruit (spadix), one three inches long; all parts of the flower but the anthers left and enlarged.

Bidens cernua, or nodding burr marigold, like a small sunflower (with rays) in Heywood Brook, i. e. beggar- tick.

Bidens connata (?), without rays, in Hubbard's Meadow.

Blue-eyed grass still.

Drooping neottia very common.

I see some yellow butterflies and others occasionally and singly only.

The smilax berries are mostly turned dark.

I started a great bittern from the weeds at the swimming-place.

It is very hot and dry weather.

We have had no rain for a week, and yet the pitcher-plants have water in them. Are they ever quite dry? Are they not replenished by the dews always, and, being shaded by the grass, saved from evaporation? What wells for the birds!

The white-red-purple-berried bush in Hubbard's Meadow, whose berries were fairest a fortnight ago, appears to be the Viburnum nudum, or withe-rod.

Our cornel (the common) with berries blue one side, whitish the other, appears to be either the Cornus sericea or C. stolonifera of Gray, i. e. the silky, or the red-osier cornel (osier rouge), though its leaves are neither silky nor downy nor rough.

This and the last four or five nights have been perhaps the most sultry in the year thus far.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 11, 1851

Bidens cernua and Bidens connata. See September 11, 1852 ("How much fresher some flowers look in rainy weather!. . .their beauty is enhanced, as if by the contrast of the louring atmosphere with their bright colors.Such are the purple gerardia and the Bidens cernua."); September 12, 1851 ("the Bidens cernua, nodding burr-marigold, with five petals"); September 12, 1859 ("The four kinds of bidens (frondosa, connata, cernua, and chrysanthemoides) abound now, . . . the third and fourth are conspicuous and interesting, expressing by their brilliant yellow the ripeness of the low grounds"); September 13, 1852("The great bidens in the sun in brooks affects me as the rose of the fall. They are low suns in the brook."); September 14, 1854 ("The great bidens, the flower and ornament of the riversides at present, and now in its glory,. . . Full of the sun. It needs a name."); September 15, 1856 ("What I must call Bidens cernua, like a small chrysanthemoides, is bristly hairy, somewhat connate and apparently regularly toothed"); September 19, 1851 ("Large-flowered bidens,or beggar-ticks,or bur-marigold, now abundant by riverside.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Bidens Beckii and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Great Bidens

Blue-eyed grass still. See August 25, 1851 and August 30, 1854 ("Blue-eyed grass still"). See also June 17. 1853 ("The dense fields of blue-eyed grass now blue the meadows, as if, in this fair season of the year, the clouds that envelop the earth were dispersing, and blue patches began to appear, answering to the blue sky. The eyes pass from these blue patches into the surrounding green as from the patches of clear sky into the clouds. "); September 23, 1859 ("So live that only the most beautiful wild-flowers will spring up where you have dwelt,") and note to May 29, 1853 ("That exceedingly neat and interesting little flower blue-eyed grass now claims our attention.') See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, blue-eyed grass

We have had no rain for a week, and yet the pitcher-plants have water in them. See 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 21, 1854 ("In Hubbard's meadow, between the two woods, I can not find a pitcher-plant with any water in it."); August 22, 1854 ("I find at length a pitcher-plant with a spoonful of water in it. It must be last night's dew."); November 16, 1852 ("At Holden's Spruce Swamp. The water is frozen in the pitcher-plant leaf."); February 11, 1858 ("The water in the pitcher-plant leaves is frozen, but I see none burst. They are very tightly filled and smooth, apparently stretched.")

The white-red-purple-berried bush in Hubbard's Meadow, whose berries were fairest a fortnight ago, appears to be the Viburnum nudum, or withe-rod. See August 24, 1851 ("Is that the naked viburnum, so common, with its white, red, then purple berries, in Hubbard's meadow?"); August 24, 1852 ("The Viburnum nudum shows now rich, variegated clusters amid its handsome, firm leaves, bright rosy-cheeked ones mingled with dark-purple.  All do not appear to turn purple."); August 29, 1858 ("[J. Farmer] calls the Viburnum nudum 'withe-wood' and  makes a withe by treading on one end and twisting by the other till he cracks it and makes it flexible so that it will bend without breaking.") See also  August 28, 1852 ("The viburnums, dentatum and nudum, are in their prime. The sweet viburnum not yet purple, and the maple-leaved still yellowish."); August 28, 1856 ("The panicled cornel berries are whitening, but already mostly fallen."); August 28, 1852 ("The berries of the alternate leaved cornel have dropped off mostly."); August 31, 1856 ("The Viburnum nudum berries are now in prime, a handsome rose-purple."); September 3, 1856 ("Gather four or five quarts of Viburnum nudum berries, now in their prime, attracted more by the beauty of the cymes than the flavor of the fruit. The berries, which are of various sizes and forms, — elliptical, oblong, or globular, — are in different stages of maturity on the same cyme, and so of different colors, — green or white, rose-colored, and dark purple or black, — i. e. three or four very distinct and marked colors, side by side. If gathered when rose-colored, they soon turn dark purple and are soft and edible, though before bitter. They add a new and variegated wildness to the swampy sprout-lands. Remarkable for passing through so many stages of color before they arrive at maturity. A singular and pleasing contrast, also, do the different kinds of viburnum and cornel berries present when compared with each other.") 

Our cornel (the common) with berries blue one side, whitish the other, appears to be either the Cornus sericea or C. stolonifera of Gray, i. e. the silky, or the red-osier cornel. See June 13, 1852 ("I think I know four kinds of cornel beside the dogwood and bunchberry: . . . (Cornus alternifolia? or sericea?); . . . (C. circinata?); . . . (C. paniculata); and the red osier by the river (C. stolonifera), which I have not seen this year."); August 28, 1852 ("Now the red osier berries are very handsome along the river, overhanging the water, for the most part pale blue mixed with whitish, -- part of the pendant jewelry of the season. . . . The white-berried and red osier are in their prime. The other three kinds I have not seen.); August 28, 1856 ("The bright china-colored blue berries of the Cornus sericea begin to show themselves along the river."); August 31, 1856 (“The Cornus sericea, with its berries just turning,"); September 1, 1854 ("The Cornus sericea berries are now in prime, of different shades of blue, lighter or darker, and bluish white. . . .a great ornament to our causeways and riverside.”); September 3, 1856 (“The white berries of the panicled cornel, soon and apparently prematurely dropping from its pretty fingers, are very bitter. So also are those of the C. sericea. ”); September 4, 1857 ("Cornus sericea berries begin to ripen") September 4, 1859 ("The Cornus sericea and C. paniculata are rather peculiar for turning to a dull purple on the advent of cooler weather and frosts,"); September 7, 1856 ("Apparently Cornus stolonifera (?) by brook . . . with the sericea. ")   See also August 27, 1856 ("There are many wild-looking berries about now."); September 3, 1853 ("Now is the season for those comparatively rare but beautiful wild berries which are not food for man.. . .Berries which are as beautiful as flowers, but far less known, the fruit of the flower."); September 11, 1859 ("September is the month when various small, and commonly inedible, berries in cymes and clusters hang over the roadsides and along the walls and fences, or spot the forest floor. ")

Perambulating the imagination

September 20.

3 P. M. – To Cliffs via Bear Hill. 

September 20, 2020

As I go through the fields, endeavoring to recover my tone and sanity and to perceive things truly and simply again, after having been perambulating the bounds of the town all the week, and dealing with the most commonplace and worldly-minded men, and emphatically trivial things, I feel as if I had committed suicide in a sense.

I am again forcibly struck with the truth of the fable of Apollo serving King Admetus, its universal applicability.

A fatal coarseness is the result of mixing in the trivial affairs of men. Though I have been associating even with the select men of this and the surrounding towns, I feel inexpressibly begrimed.

My Pegasus has lost his wings; he has turned a reptile and gone on his belly.

Such things are compatible only with a cheap and superficial life.

The poet must keep himself unstained and aloof. Let him perambulate the bounds of Imagination's provinces, the realms of faery, and not the insignificant boundaries of towns. The excursions of the imagination are so boundless, the limits of towns are so petty.

I scare up the great bittern in meadow by the Heywood Brook near the ivy. He rises buoyantly as he flies against the wind, and sweeps south over the willow with outstretched neck, surveying.

The ivy here is reddened. The dogwood, or poison sumach, by Hubbard's meadow is also turned reddish.

Here are late buttercups and dwarf tree-primroses still.

Methinks there are not many goldenrods this year.

The river is remarkably low. There is a rod wide of bare shore beneath the Cliff Hill.

Last week was the warmest perhaps in the year.

On Monday of the present week water was frozen in a pail under the pump. Yet to-day I hear the locust sing as in August.

This week we have had most glorious autumnal weather, - cool and cloudless, bright days, filled with the fragrance of ripe grapes, preceded by frosty mornings. All tender herbs are flat in gardens and meadows. The cranberries, too, are touched.

To-day it is warmer and hazier, and there is, no doubt, some smoke in the air, from the burning of the turf and moss in low lands, where the smoke, seen at sunset, looks like a rising fog.

I fear that the autumnal tints will not be brilliant this season, the frosts have commenced so early.

Butter-and-eggs on Fair Haven.

The cleared plateau beneath the Cliff, now covered with sprouts, shows red, green, and yellow tints, like a rich rug.

I see ducks or teal flying silent, swift, and straight, the wild creatures.

White pines on Fair Haven Hill begin to look parti-colored with the falling leaves, but not at a distance.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 20, 1851

I scare up the great bittern in meadow by the Heywood Brook near the ivy. He rises buoyantly as he flies against the wind, and sweeps south over the willow with outstretched neck, surveying. See September 20, 1855 ("The great bittern, as it flies off from near the rail road bridge, filthily drops its dirt and utters a low hoarse kwa kwa; then runs and hides in the grass, and I land and search within ten feet of it before it rises.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, American Bittern (the Stake-Diver)

On Monday of the present week water was frozen in a pail under the pump. See September 15, 1851 ("Ice in the pail under the pump, and quite a frost.")

This week we have had most glorious autumnal weather, - cool and cloudless, bright days, filled with the fragrance of ripe grapes, preceded by frosty mornings. See August 19, 1853 ("It is a glorious and ever-memorable day. . . . The first bright day of the fall" ); September 3, 1860 ("Here is a beautiful, and perhaps first decidedly autumnal, day, -- a, cloudless sky, a clear air, with, maybe, veins of coolness”); September 18, 1860 ("This is a beautiful day, warm but not too warm, a harvest day . . . the first unquestionable and conspicuous autumnal day,"); September 22, 1851 ("It is a beautifully clear and bracing air, with just enough coolness, full of the memory of frosty mornings"); October 10, 1857 ("The most brilliant days in the year, ushered in, perhaps, by a frosty morning, as this.") October 11, 1857 ("This is the seventh day of glorious weather. Perhaps, these might be called Harvest Days"); December 9, 1853 ("The third (at least) glorious day, clear and not too cold . . .with peculiarly long and clear cloudless silvery twilights morn and eve")

White pines on Fair Haven Hill begin to look parti-colored. SeeAugust 24, 1854 ("The white pines are parti-colored there [Lee's Cliff]"); September 28, 1854 ("R. W. E.’s pines are parti-colored, preparing to fall, some of them.");. September 29, 1857 (". Pines have begun to be parti-colored with yellow leaves");. October 3, 1852 ("The pine fall, i.e. change, is commenced, and the trees are mottled green and yellowish"); October 3, 1856 ("The white pines are now getting to be pretty generally parti-colored, the lower yellowing needles ready to fall. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The October Pine Fall

The peetweets are quite noisy when I approach.

July 2 . 

Cooler to-day. 

Polygonum Persicaria. 

The Ranunculus Purshiï is very rarely seen now. 

I hear a harsh keow from a bittern flying over the river. 

The peetweets are quite noisy about the rocks in Merrick’s pasture when I approach; have eggs or young there, which they are anxious about. 

The tall anemone in blossom, and no doubt elsewhere much earlier, — a week or ten days before this, — but the drought has checked it here .

Saw on a maple leaf floating on the Assabet a kind of large aphides, thickly covering it. It was thickly coated with a mass of down for their tails were like swan’s-down, and, as they were constantly in motion, just stirring at least, it was as if there was a wind on it.

Thimble-berries probably a day or two.

H. .D. Thoreau, Journal, July 2, 1853


The Ranunculus Purshiï is very rarely seen now. See July 24, 1856 ("The Ranunculus Purshii is now very hard to meet with. Saw one double flower with sixteen petals (at least) in two rows. Time to get seeds of it.")

I hear a harsh keow from a bittern flying over the river. See July 22, 1859 ("A bittern's croak: a sound perfectly becoming the bird, as far as possible from music"); September 20, 1855 (“The great bittern, as it flies off from near the railroad bridge. . . utters a low hoarse kwa kwa”); September 25, 1855 ("Scare up the usual great bittern above the railroad bridge, whose hoarse qua qua, as it flies heavily off, a pickerel-fisher on the bank imitates.”) See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, American Bittern (the Stake-Diver)

The peetweets are quite noisy about the rocks in Merrick’s pasture when I approach; have eggs or young there, which they are anxious about. See July 2, 1860 ("Nowadays hear from my window the constant tittering of young golden robins, and by the river fields the alarm note of the peetweets, concerned about their young.")

The tall anemone in blossom, and no doubt elsewhere much earlier. See June 29, 1852 ("The Anemone Virginiana, tall anemone, looking like a white buttercup, on Egg Rock, cannot have been long in bloom.")

Thimble-berries probably a day or two. See note to July 8, 1858 ("Thimble-berries have begun")

A little bundle scents my pocket for many days.

August 13. 

Mikania scandens well out; was not out July 18th. How long since, then? Perhaps not far from 1st August. 

The Lactuca sanguinea (var.) was perhaps as early as the other. 

Rhexia, very common on those bare places on the river meadows from which the soil has been moved by the ice. 

Saw the head and neck of a great bittern projecting above the meadow-grass, exactly like the point of a stump, only I knew there could be no stump there. 

There are green lice now on the birches, but I notice no cotton on them. 

Pennyroyal abundant in bloom. I find it springing from the soil lodged on large rocks in sprout-lands, and gather a little bundle, which scents my pocket for many days. 

I hear that the Corallorhiza odontorhiza, coral-root, is out.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 13, 1852

Rhexia, very common on those bare places on the river meadows from which the soil has been moved by the ice. See July 18, 1852 ("The petals of the rhexia have a beautiful clear purple with a violet tinge."); August 1, 1856 ("Far in the broad wet meadows, on the hummocks and ridges, these bright beds of rhexia turn their faces to the heavens, seen only by the bitterns and other meadow birds that fly over.") and note to August 5, 1858 ("I cannot sufficiently admire the rhexia, one of the highest-colored purple flowers, but difficult to bring home in its perfection, with its fugacious petals.")

Saw the head and neck of a great bittern projecting above the meadow-grass, exactly like the point of a stump. See  August 5, 1854 (Near Lee's (returning), see a large bittern, pursued by small birds, alight on the shorn meadow near the pickerel-weeds, but, though I row to the spot, he effectually conceals himself.); ;August 31, 1855 ("Passed in boat within fifteen feet of a great bittern, standing perfectly still in the water by the riverside, with the point of its bill directly up, as if it knew that from the color of its throat, etc., it was much less likely to be detected in that position, near weeds.")

Pennyroyal abundant in bloom. I gather a little bundle, which scents my pocket for many days. See August 11, 1853 ("Evening draws on while I am gathering bundles of pennyroyal on the further Conantum height. I find it amid the stubble mixed with blue-curls and, as fast as I get my hand full, tie it into a fragrant bundle.”); August 13, 1856 ("Is there not now a prevalence of aromatic herbs in prime? — The polygala roots, blue-curls, wormwood, pennyroyal, Solidago odora, rough sunflowers, horse-mint, etc., etc. Does not the season require this tonic?"); August 26, 1856 ("I gather a bundle of pennyroyal; it grows largest and rankest high and close under these rocks, amid the loose stones.")

I hear that the Corallorhiza odontorhiza, coral-root, is out. Compare August 13, 1857 ("Corallorhiza multiflora . . . how long")

August 13. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, August 13.

A little bundle

of pennyroyal scents my

pocket for many days.

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 © 2009-2025

The scarlet oak generally is not in prime till now, or even later.

October 26. 

The sugar maples are about bare, except a few small ones. 

October 26, 2018

Minott remembers how he used to chop beech wood. He says that when frozen it is hard and brittle just like glass, and you must look out for the chips, for, if they strike you in the face, they will cut like a knife.

He says that some call the stake-driver “'belcher squelcher,” and some, “wollerkertoot. ” I used to call them “pump-er-gor’. ” Some say “slug-toot. ” 

The largest scarlet oak that I remember hereabouts stands by the penthorum pool in the Sleepy Hollow cemetery, and is now in its prime. I found the sap was flowing fast in it. White birches, elms, chestnuts, Salix alba (small willows), and white maple are a long time falling. The scarlet oak generally is not in prime till now, or even later. 

I wear a thicker coat, my single thick fall coat, at last, and begin to feel my fingers cool early and late. One shopkeeper has hung out woollen gloves and even thick buckskin mittens by his door, foreseeing what his customers will want as soon as it is finger-cold, and determined to get the start of his fellows.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 26, 1858

The sugar maples are about bare, except a few small ones. See October 24, 1853 ("Red maples and elms alone very conspicuously bare in our landscape"); October 25, 1853 ("The white maples are completely bare. ");October 25, 1855 ("The willows along the river now begin to look faded and somewhat bare and wintry.") October 25, 1858 ("I see some alders about bare. Aspens (tremuliformis) generally bare. . . .At the pond the black birches are bare"); October 26, 1854 ("Apple trees are generally bare, as well as bass, ash, elm, maple.")

I used to call them “pump-er-gor’.See April 24, 1854 (" I hear the loud and distinct pump-a-gor of a stake-driver. Thus he announces himself."); and note to April, 25 1858 ("Goodwin says he heard a stake-driver several days ago.")

The scarlet oak generally is not in prime till now, or even later."); October 21, 1855 ("Up Assabet. . . . [T]he scarlet oak is very bright and conspicuous. How finely its leaves are out against the sky with sharp points, especially near the top of the tree! "); October 24, 1858 ("The scarlet oak. . . is now completely scarlet and apparently has been so a few days. This alone of our indigenous deciduous trees . . .is now in its glory. "); October 30, 1855 ("Going to the new cemetery, I see that the scarlet oak leaves have still some brightness; perhaps the latest of the oaks."); November 1, 1858 ("If you wish to count the scarlet oaks. do it now. Stand on a hilltop in the woods, when the sun is an hour high and the sky is clear, and every one within range of your vision will be revealed. ")

The largest scarlet oak that I remember hereabouts stands in the Sleepy Hollow cemetery, and is now in its prime. See December 11, 1858 ("The large scarlet oak in the cemetery has leaves on the lower limbs near the trunk just like the large white oaks now."); January 19, 1859 {"Our largest scarlet oak (by the Hollow), some three feet diameter at three feet from ground, has more leaves than the large white oak close by."); March 22, 1859 ("The great scarlet oak has now lost almost every leaf, while the white oak near it still retains them.")

I wear a thicker coat, my single thick fall coat, at last, and begin to feel my fingers cool early and late. See October 25, 1858 ("This is the coolest day thus far, reminding me that I have only a half-thick coat on. ")

One shopkeeper has hung out woollen gloves and even thick buckskin mittens See October 14, 1856 (“[F]inger-cold to-day. Your hands instinctively find their way to your pockets”); October 20, 1859 (“It is finger-cold as I come home, and my hands find their way to my pocket.”); November 11, 1851 (”A bright, but cold day, finger-cold. One must next wear gloves, put his hands in winter quarters.”); November 11, 1853 ("I wear mittens now.")

October 26. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, October 26 and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The seasons and all their changes are in me.

My knowledge now becomes communicable and grows by communication.

August  29. 

I hear this morning one eat it potter from a golden robin. They are now rarely seen. 

The ghost-horse (Spectrum) is seen nowadays, — several of them. 

All these high colors in the stems and leaves and other portions of plants answer to some maturity in us. I presume if I am the wiser for having lived this season through, such plants will emblazon the truth of my experience over the face of nature, and I shall be aware of a beauty and sweetness there. 

Has not the mind, too, its harvest? Do not some scarlet leaves of thought come scatteringly down, though it may be prematurely, some which, perchance, the summer’s drought has ripened,and the rain loosened? Are there my mind ?

 I remember when boiled green corn was sold piping hot on a muster-field in this town, and my father says that he remembers when it used to be carried about the streets of Boston in large baskets on the bare heads of negro women, and gentlemen would stop, buy an ear, and eat it in the street. 

Ah! what a voice was that hawk’s or eagle’s of the 22d! Think of hearing, as you walk the earth, as usual in leaden shoes, a fine, shrill scream from time to time, which you would vainly endeavor to refer to its truje source if you had not watched the bird in its upward flight. It comes from yonder black spot on the bosom of a cloud. I should not have suspected that sound to have issued from the bosom of a cloud if I had not seen the bird. What motive can an eagle have for screaming among the clouds, unobserved by terrestrial creatures? We walk invested by sound, -— the cricket in the grass and the eagle in the clouds. And so it circled over, and I strained my eyes to follow it, though my ears heard it without effort. ,

Almost the very sands confess the ripening influence of the August sun, and, methinks, with the slender grasses waving over them, reflect a purple tinge. The empurpled sands. Such is the consequence of all this sun shine absorbed into the pores of plants and of the earth. All sap or blood is wine-colored. The very bare sands, methinks, yield a purple reflection. At last we have not only the purple sea, but the purple land

P. M. — To J. Farmer’s via Assabet. 

As, standing up in my boat, I am watching some minnows at the Prichard bend steadily stemming the current in the sunny water between the waving potamogeton, right under my face, I see a musquash gliding along above the sand directly beneath them, a perfect denizen of the water as much as they. This rat was a pale brown, as light as pale-brown paper or perfectly withered white oak leaves. Its coat is never of this color out of water, and I suppose it was because it was completely coated with air. This makes it less visible on a sandy bottom. 

Is not that Eleocharis tenuis, long since out of bloom, growing in the water along the Merrick shore, near the oak; round culms, fifteen inches to two feet high? A spiked rush, without a leaf, and round. I can hardly find a head left on it. Yet Flint says this blooms in August! It grows in dense fields like pipes. Did I find it before this year? 

The mikania is apparently in prime or a little past. Perhaps the front-rank polygonum is in prime now, for there is apparently more than before.

I look along Mantatuket Field hedge to see if there are hazelnuts there, but am surprised to find that thereabouts the bushes have been completely stripped by squirrels already and the rich brown burs are strewn on the ground beneath. What a fine brown these dried burs have already acquired, — not chestnut nor hazel! I fear it is already too late for me, though I find some yet quite green in another place. They must have been very busy collecting these nuts and husking them for a fortnight past, climbing to the extremities of the slender twigs. Who witnesses the gathering of the hazelnuts, the hazel harvest? Yet what a busy and important season to the striped squirrel! Now, if ever, he needs to get up a bee. Every nut that I could find left in that field was a poor one. By more frequented paths the squirrels have not worked yet. Take warning from the squirrel, which is already laying up his winter store.

I see some Cornus sericea berries turning. 

The Assabet helianthus (apparently variety of decapetalus), well out some days at least. Are not the petals peculiarly reflexed? 

Small botrychium in the bobolink meadow, not yet. 

Gentiana Andrewsii, one not quite shedding pollen.

Before bathing at the Pokelogan, I see and hear a school of large suckers, which have come into this narrow bay and are swiftly dashing about and rising to the surface, with a bubbling sound, as if to snatch something from the surface. They agitate the whole bay. They [are] great ruddy-looking fellows, limber with life. How intelligent of all watery knowledge! They seem to measure the length, breadth, and depth of that cove — which perhaps they never entered before — with every wave of their fins. They feel it all at once. With what superfluous vigor they seem to move about restlessly in their element! Lift them but six inches, and they would quirk their tails in vain. They are poor, soft fish, however, large as they are, and taste when cooked at present much like boiled brown, paper. 

The wild Monarda fistulosa is apparently nearly done. 

Cicuta maculata, apparently generally done. 

J. Farmer shot a sharp-shinned hawk this morning, which was endeavoring to catch one of his chickens. I bring it home and find that it measures seventeen inches in length and thirty in alar extent, and the tail extends four inches beyond the closed wings. It has a very large head, and the wing is six and a half inches wide at the secondaries. It is dark-brown above, skirted with ferruginous; scapulars, with white spots; legs, bright-yellow; iris, yellow. Has those peculiar pendulous lobes to the feet, which Farmer thinks are to enable it to hold a small bone of its prey between the nail and the lobe, as it feeds, while perching. The breast and belly feathers are shafted with dark-brown pointed spots. Vent white. There are three obvious slate-colored bars to tail, alternating with the black.

F. says that he has seen the nest of a smaller hawk, the pigeon hawk, heretofore, on an oak (in Owl-Nest Swamp), made of sticks, some fifteen feet from ground. R. Rice says that he has found the nest of the pigeon hawk hereabouts. 

We go to see a bittern nest by Spencer Brook. F. says they call the cardinal-flower “ slink-weed,” and say that the eating it will cause cows to miscarry. He calls the Viburnum nudum “withe-wood,” and makes a withe by treading on one end and twisting by the other till he cracks it and makes it flexible so that it will bend without breaking. 

The bittern’s nest was close to the edge of the brook, eighteen inches above the water, and was made of the withered sedge that had grown close by (i. e. wool-grass, etc.) and what I have called pages back Eleocharis tenuis. It was quite a deep nest, like and as big as a hen’s nest, deep in the grass. He or his son saw the young about it a month ago. 

He hears — heard a week ago — the sound of a bird flying over, like cra-a-ack, cr-r-r-a-k, only in the night, and thinks it may be a blue heron.

We saw where many cranberries had been frost-bitten, F. thinks the night of the 23d. They are much injured. 

Spiranthes cemua, how long? 

Near the bittern-nest, grows what F. calls blue-joint grass; out of bloom. 

Returning, rather late afternoon, we saw some forty martins sitting in a row and twittering on the ridge of his old house, apparently preparing to migrate. He had never seen it before. Soon they all took to flight and filled the air in the neighborhood. 

The sharp-shinned hawk of to-day is much larger than that of July 21st, though the colors, etc., etc., appear to be essentially the same. Yet its leg is not so stout as that which Farrar gave me, but is at least half an inch longer. The toes, especially, are longer and more slender, but I am not sure whether Farrar’s hawk has those pendulous lobes, the foot is so dry, nor if it had sharp-edged shin, it being eaten away by worms. The inner vanes of the primaries of Farrar’s bird are brighter white with much narrower bars of blackish. The longest primary of Farrar’s bird is about ten inches; that of to day, about eight inches. I find the outside tail-feathers of to-day’s bird much harder to pull than the inside ones!‘

Our black willow is of so peculiar and light a green, so ethereal, that, as I look back forty rods at those by the Heron Rock, their outlines are seen with perfect distinctness against the darker green of maples, etc., three or four rods behind them, as if they were a green cloud or smoke blown by. They are seen as distinctly against these other trees as they would be against the sky. 

Rice tells me a queer story. Some twenty-five years ago he and his brother William took a journey in their wagon into the northwest part of Maine, carrying their guns and fishing-tackle with them. At Fryeburg they visited the scene of Lovewell’s Fight, and, seeing some trout in the stream there, they tried to dig some fishworms for bait, but they could not find any. So they asked a boy where they got fishworms, but he did not know what they meant. “Long, slender worms, angle worms,” said they; but he only answered that he had seen worms in their manure-heap (which were grubs). On inquiring further, they found that the inhabitants had never seen nor heard of angleworms, and one old settler, who had come from Massachusetts and had lived there thirty years, declared that there was no such worm in that neighborhood. 

Mr. Farmer gave me a turtle-shaped bug found by Melvin on a board by the river, some time ago. 

I hear A. W. complained of for overworking his cattle and hired men, but there is this to be said in his favor, that he does not spare himself. They say that he made his horse “Tom” draw twenty-nine hundred of hay to Boston the other day, — or night, — but then he put his shoulder to the wheel at every hill. I hear that since then the horse has died, but W. is alive and working.

How hard one must work in order to acquire his language,—-words by which to express himself! I have known a particular rush, for instance, for at least twenty years, but have ever been prevented from describing some [of] its peculiarities, because I did not know its name nor any one in the neighborhood who could tell me it. With the knowledge of the name comes a distincter recognition and knowledge of'the thing. 

That shore is now more describable, and poetic even. My knowledge was cramped and confined before, and grew rusty be cause not used, — for it could not be used. My knowledge now becomes communicable and grows by communication. I can now learn what others know about the same thing.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 29, 1858

The Assabet helianthus (apparently variety of decapetalus), well out some days at least. Are not the petals peculiarly reflexed? See August 29, 1856 ("To J. Farmer's by river. The Helianthus decapetalus, apparently a variety, with eight petals, about three feet high, leaves petioled, but not wing-petioled")

The sharp-shinned hawk of to-day is much larger than that of July 21st, yet its leg is not so stout as that which Farrar gave me. See July 21, 1858 ("A young man killed one of the young hawks, and I saw it. It was the Falco fuscus, the American brown or slate-colored hawk"); October 11, 1856 (“Farrar gave me a wing and foot of a hawk which he shot about three weeks ago . . . . This foot has a sharp shin and stout claws")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the sharp-shinned hawk.

With the knowledge of the name comes a distincter recognition and knowledge of'the thing. See August 20, 1851 ("Botany is worth studying if only for the precision of its terms, — to learn the value of words and of system."); March 1, 1852 (""There is a certain advantage in these hard and precise terms, such as the lichenist uses.); January 15, 1853 ("I have long known this dust, but, as I did not know the name of it, i. e . what others called it, I therefore could not conveniently speak of it, and it has suggested less to me and I have made less use of it. I now first feel as if I had got hold of it."); March 23, 1853 ("One studies books of science merely to learn the language of naturalists , — to be able to communicate with them.")

You may say it is the first day of autumn.

August 19. 

P. M. — Sail to Baker Farm shore. 

It is cool with a considerable northwesterly wind, so that we can sail to Fair Haven. The dog-day weather is suddenly gone and here is a cool, clear, and elastic air. You may say it is the first day of autumn. 

You notice the louder and clearer ring of crickets, and the large, handsome red spikes of the Polygonum amphibium are now generally conspicuous along the shore. The P. hydropiperoides fairly begins to show. The front-rank polygonum is now in prime. 

We scare up a stake-driver several times. The blue heron has within a week reappeared in our meadows, and the stake-driver begins to be seen oftener, and as early as the 5th I noticed young summer ducks about; the same of hawks, owls, etc. 

This occurs as soon as the young birds can take care of themselves, and some appear to be very early on the return southward, with the very earliest prospect of fall. Such birds are not only more abundant but, methinks, more at leisure now, having reared their family, and perhaps they are less shy. 

Yes, bitterns are more frequently seen now to lift themselves from amid the pontederia or flags, and take their sluggish flight to a new resting-place, —bitterns which either have got through the labors of breeding or are now first able to shift for themselves.

And likewise blue herons, which have bred or been bred not far from us (plainly), are now at leisure, or are impelled to revisit our slow stream. I have not seen the last since spring. 

When I see the first heron, like a dusky blue wave undulating over our meadows again, I think, since I saw them going northward the other day, how many of these forms have been added to the landscape, complete from bill to toe, while, perhaps, I have idled! 

I see two herons. A small bird is pursuing the heron as it does a hawk. Perhaps it is a blackbird and the herons gobble up their young! 

I see thistle-down, grayish-white, floating low quite across Fair Haven Pond. There is wont to be just water [sic] enough above the surface to drive it along. 

The heads of the wool-grass are now brown and, in many meadows, lodged. 

The button-bush is about done. Can hardly see a blossom. 

The mikania not yet quite in prime. 

Pontederia has already begun to wane; i. e., the fields of them are not so dense, many seed-vessels having turned down; and some leaves are already withered and black, but the remaining spikes are as fair as ever. 

It chances that I see no yellow lilies. They must be scarce now. 

The water is high for the season. Water cool to bather. 

We have our first green corn to-day, but it is late.

The saw-grass (Paspalum?) of mown fields, not long. 

I noticed the localities of black willows as far up as the mouth of the river in Fair Haven Pond, but not so carefully as elsewhere, 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, though I noticed a few exceptions to my rule. 

It is so cool, some apprehend a frost to-night.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 19, 1858

The dog-day weather is suddenly gone and here is a cool, clear, and elastic air. You may say it is the first day of autumn. See August 19, 1853 ("The first bright day of the fall . . .. The dog-day mists are gone; the washed earth shines; the cooler air braces man. No summer day is so beautiful as the fairest spring and fall days.”)

I see thistle-down, grayish-white, floating low quite across Fair Haven Pond. September 1, 1852 (“-- a delicate hint of approaching autumn, when the first thistle-down descends on some smooth lake's surface, full of reflections, in the woods, sign to the fishes of the ripening year.”)

Blue herons, which have bred or been bred not far from us (plainly), are now at leisure, or are impelled to revisit our slow stream. See August 12, 1853 ("See the blue herons opposite Fair Haven Hill, as if they had bred here.”); 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 15, 1852 (“See a blue heron on the meadow.”); August 15, 1860 ("See a blue heron.”); 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 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 24, 1854 (“See a blue heron standing on the meadow at Fair Haven Pond. At a distance before you, only the two waving lines appear, and you would not suspect the long neck and legs.”); 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.”); August 26, 1856 (“A blue heron sails away from a pine at Holden Swamp shore and alights on the meadow above.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Blue Heron

August 19. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, August 19

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 © 2009-2021

The young bird, all down, with a tinge of fawn or cinnamon.

June 17. 

P. M. – To hawk's nest.

One egg is hatched since the 8th, and the young bird, all down, with a tinge of fawn or cinnamon, lies motionless on its breast with its head down and is already about four inches long! 

An hour or two after, I see the old hawk pursue a stake-driver which was flying over this spot, darting down at him and driving him off. The stake-driver comes beating along, like a long, ungainly craft, or a revenue cutter, looking into the harbors, and if it finds a fisherman there, standing out again. 

See a painted turtle digging at mid-afternoon. I have only to look at dry fields or banks near water to find the turtles laying there afternoons.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 17, 1858

One egg is hatched since the 8th. See June 8, 1858 (“The marsh hawk's eggs are not yet hatched. ”)

I see the old hawk pursue a stake-driver darting down at him and driving him off. See August 5, 1854 (“Near Lee's (returning), see a large bittern, pursued by small birds.”)

I have only to look at dry fields or banks near water to find the turtles laying. See June 16, 1855 (“ A painted tortoise just burying three flesh-colored eggs in the dry, sandy plain. . .Find near by four more about this business. ”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  The Painted Turtle