I see from this hill

July 1.

From the hill I perceive that the air is beautifully clear after the rain of yesterday, and not hot; fine grained. The landscape is fine as behind a glass, the horizon-edge distinct. The distant vales toward the northwest mountains lie up open and clear.  The shadows of trees are dark and distinct.

On the river I see the two broad borders of pads reflecting the light, the dividing line between them and the water, their irregular edge, perfectly distinct. 

The clouds are separate glowing masses or blocks floating in the sky, not threatening rain. I see from this hill their great shadows pass slowly here and there over the top of the green forest. 

Later a breeze rises and there is a sparkle on the river. The wood thrush and tanager sing at 4 P.M. at Cliffs.

July 1, 2014

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 1, 1854


The landscape is fine as behind a glass. See February 9, 1852 ("It is a new glass placed over the picture every hour.")

The distant vales toward the northwest mountains lie up open and clear. See June 25, 1852 ("The mountain outline is remarkably distinct, and the intermediate earth appears more than usually scooped out, like a vast saucer sloping up ward to its sharp mountain rim.") Compare July 11, 1857 (“Looking off into the vales from Fair Haven Hill, where a thin blue haze now rests almost universally, I see that the earth itself is invested with a glaucous bloom at this season.”); May 24, 1860 (“Looking into the northwest horizon, I see that Wachusett is partially concealed by a haze. This is one of the values of mountains in the horizon, that they indicate the state of the atmosphere.”); see also August 2, 1852 (“To look across hence to that blue rim of the earth, and be reminded of the invisible towns and communities, . . . which lie in the further and deeper hollows between me and those hills. . . ., and be reminded how many brave and contented lives are lived between me and the horizon.); March 28, 1858 (. On ascending the hill next his home, every man finds that he dwells in a shallow concavity whose sheltering walls are the convex surface of the earth, beyond which he cannot see. .”). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Mountains in the Horizon; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Seen from a Hillside

The shadows of trees are dark and distinct.  See  June 11, 1856 ("I think that this peculiar darkness of the shade, or of the foliage as seen between you and the sky, is not accounted for merely by saying that we have not yet got accustomed to clothed trees, but the leaves are rapidly acquiring a darker green, are more and more opaque, and, besides, the sky is lit with the intensest light.”); Compare June 30, 1860 ("The shadows under the edge of woods are less noticed now because the woods themselves are darker.”)

The clouds are separate glowing masses or blocks floating in the sky. See July 23, 1851 ("The mind is subject to moods, as the shadows of clouds pass over the earth. "); March 22, 1858("No doubt the season is to be detected by the aspect of the clouds no less than by that of the earth."); June 24, 1852 ("The drifting w;ite downy clouds are objects of a large, diffusive interest . . . Far away they float in the serene sky, the most inoffensive of objects. What could a man learn by watching the clouds? ")

I see from this hill their great shadows pass slowly here and there over the top of the green forest. See July 1, 1852 ("It is pleasant to behold so much of the landscape in the shadow of the clouds ") See also June 3, 1858 ("It was interesting to watch from that height the shadows of fair-weather clouds passing over the landscape."); July 27, 1852 ("It is pleasing to behold at this season contrasted shade and sunshine on the side of neighboring hills.")

The wood thrush and tanager sing. See July 10, 1854 ("The singing birds at present are . . . Red-eye, tanager, wood thrush, chewink, veery, oven-bird, — all even at midday.");  July 13, 1854(" hear the hot-weather and noonday birds, -- red eye, tanager, wood pewee, etc. ").

I see from this hill 

the horizon-edge distinct 

clear air after rain. 

Shadows pass slowly 

over the green forest top 

clouds floating in sky. 

A late breeze rises 

wood thrush and tanager sing 

sparkling the river.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, I see from this hill 

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 ©  2009-2024

tinyurl.com/hdt-540701

Sunset from Fair Haven Hill.

July 27.

It has been a clear, cool, breezy day for the season. There is only one white bar of cloud in the north.  The river is silvery, as it were plated and polished smooth, with the slightest possible tinge of gold, to-night. The sun is now set.  All glow on the clouds is gone, except from one higher, small, rosy pink isle.  The solemnity of the evening sky!  Just before the earliest star I turn round, and there shines the moon, silvering the small clouds.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 27, 1852


Tuesday. 4 p. m. — To Assabet behind Lee place. 

It is pleasing to behold at this season contrasted shade and sunshine on the side of neighboring hills. They are not so attractive to the eye when all in the shadow of a cloud or wholly open to the sunshine. Each must enhance the other. 

That the luxury of walking in the river may be perfect it must be very warm, such as are few days even in July, so that the breeze on those parts of the body that have just been immersed may not produce the least chilliness. It cannot be too warm, so that, with a shirt to fend the sun from your back, you may walk with perfect indifference, or rather with equal pleasure, alternately in deep and in shallow water. Both water and air must be unusually warm; otherwise we shall feel no impulse to cast ourselves into and remain in the stream. To-day it is uncomfortably cool for such a walk. 

It is very pleasant to walk up and down the stream, however, studying the further bank, which is six or seven feet high and completely covered with verdure of various kinds. 

I observe grape-vines with green clusters almost fully grown hanging over the water, and hazelnut husks are fully formed and are richly, autumnally, significant. Viburnum dentatum, elder, and red-stemmed cornel, all with an abundance of green berries, help clothe the bank, and the Asclepias incarnata and meadow-rue fill the crevices. Above all there is the cardinal-flower just opened, close to the water's edge, remarkable for its intense scarlet color, contrasting with the surrounding green. 

I see young breams in small schools, only one inch long, light-colored and semitransparent as yet, long in proportion to their depth. Some two inches long are ludicrously deep already, like little halibuts, making the impression, by their form, of vast size like halibuts or whales. They appear to be attended and guarded still by their parents. What innumerable enemies they have to encounter! 

The sun on the bottom is indispensable, and you must have your back to it. 

Woodcocks have been common by the streams and springs in woods for some weeks. 

Aster dumosus ( ?) by wood-paths. 

A quarter before seven p. m. — To Cliffs. 

It has been a clear, cool, breezy day for the season.

There is only one white bar of cloud in the north. I now perceive the peculiar scent of the corn-fields. The corn is just high enough, and this hour is favorable. I should think the ears had hardly set yet. Half an hour before sundown, you perceive the cool, damp air in valleys surrounded by woods, where dew is already formed. 

I am sure that if I call for a companion in my walk I have relinquished in my design some closeness of communion with Nature. The walk will surely be more commonplace. The inclination for society indicates a distance from Nature. I do not design so wild and mysterious a walk. 

The bigoted and sectarian forget that without religion or devotion of some kind nothing great was ever accomplished. 

On Fair Haven Hill. The slight distraction of picking berries is favorable to a mild, abstracted, poetic mood, to sequestered or transcendental thinking. I return ever more fresh to my mood from such slight interruptions. 

All the clouds in the sky are now close to the west horizon, so that the sun is nearly down before they are reached and lighted or gilded. Wachusett, free of clouds, has a fine purplish tinge, as if the juice of grapes had been squeezed over it, darkening into blue. I hear the scratching sound of a worm at work in this hardwood-pile on which I sit. 

We are most disturbed by the sun's dazzle when it is lowest. Now the upper edge of that low blue bank is gilt where the sun has disappeared, leaving a glory in the horizon through which a few cloudy peaks send raylike shadows. Now a slight rosy blush is spreading north and south over the horizon sky and tingeing a few small scattered clouds in the east. A blue tinge south ward makes the very edge of the earth there a mountain. That low bank of cloud in the west is now exactly the color of the mountains, a dark blue. 

We should think sacredly, with devotion. That is one thing, at least, we may do magnanimously. May not every man have some private affair which he can conduct greatly, unhurriedly? 

The river is silvery, as it were plated and polished smooth, with the slightest possible tinge of gold, tonight. How beautiful the meanders of a river, thus revealed! How beautiful hills and vales, the whole surface of the earth a succession of these great cups, falling away from dry or rocky edges to gelid green meadows and water in the midst, where night already is setting in! 

The thrush, now the sun is apparently set, fails not to sing. Have I heard the veery lately ? 

All glow on the clouds is gone, except from one higher, small, rosy pink or flesh-colored isle. The sun is now probably set. There are no clouds on high to reflect a golden light into the river. 

How cool and assuaging the thrush's note after the fever of the day! I doubt if they have anything so richly wild in Europe. So long a civilization must have banished it. It will only be heard in America, perchance, while our star is in the ascendant. I should be very much surprised if I were to hear in the strain of the nightingale such unexplored wildness and fertility, reaching to sundown, inciting to emigration. Such a bird must itself have emigrated long ago. 

Why, then, was I born in America ? I might ask. I should like to ask the assessors what is the value of that blue mountain range in the northwest horizon to Concord, and see if they would laugh or seriously set about calculating it. How poor, comparatively, should we be without it ! It would be descending to the scale of the merchant to say it is worth its weight in gold. The privilege of beholding it, as an ornament, a suggestion, a provocation, a heaven on earth. 

If I were one of the fathers of the town I would not sell this right which we now enjoy for all the merely material wealth and prosperity conceivable. If need were, we would rather all go down together. 

The huckleberry-bird as usual, and the nighthawk squeaks and booms, and the bullfrog trumps, just before the earliest star. The evening red is much more remarkable than the morning red. 

The solemnity of the evening sky! I turn round, and there shines the moon, silvering the small clouds which have gathered; she makes nothing red. 

New creaking or shrilling from crickets (?) for a long time past, more fine and piercing than the other.

 Aster dumosus (?) by wood-paths.

That the luxury of walking in the river may be perfect it must be very warm, such as are few days even in July .. See July 10, 1852 (" I make quite an excursion up and down the river in the water, a fluvial, a water walk. . . .Walking up and down a river in torrid weather with only a hat to shade the head.”); July 17, 1860 ("The soft sand on the bottom of Walden, as deep as I can wade, feels very warm to my feet, while the water feels cold.");July 22, 1851("I bathe, and in a few hours I bathe again, not remembering that I was wetted before. When I come to the river, I take off my clothes and carry them over, then bathe and wash off the mud and continue my walk. I would fain take rivers in my walks endwise.”).

If I call for a companion in my walk I have relinquished in my design some closeness of communion with Nature. The inclination for society indicates a distance from Nature. See July 26, 1852 ("By my intimacy with nature I find myself withdrawn from man. . . .The mind that perceives clearly any natural beauty is in that instant withdrawn from human society.")

 The solemnity of the evening sky! See July 26, 1852 ("The grandest picture in the world is the sunset sky."); December 27, 1851 ("Sunset from Fair Haven Hill.")

New creaking or shrilling from crickets . . . more fine and piercing than the other. See July 28, 1854 ("Last evening it was much cooler, and I heard a decided fall sound of crickets"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cricket in July

Before the first star

turn round and there shines the moon 

silvering small clouds.

The flower opens, and lo! another year.

July 9. 

Friday. 4 a.m. — To Cliffs. 

No dew; no dewy cobwebs. The sky looks mist-like, not clear blue. An aurora fading into a general saffron color. At length the redness travels over, partly from east to west, before sunrise, and there is little color in the east. 

The birds all unite to make the morning quire; sing rather faintly, not prolonging their strains. The crickets appear to have received a reinforcement during the sultry night. 

There is no name for the evening red corresponding to aurora. It is the blushing foam about the prow of the sun's boat, and at eve the same in its wake. 

I do not often hear the bluebird now except at dawn. 

Methinks we have had no clear winter skies — no skies the color of a robin's egg, and pure amber around — for some months. 

These blueberries on Fair Haven have a very innocent, ambrosial taste, as if made of the ether itself, as they plainly are colored with it.

I hear the chickadee's two wiry notes. 

The jay's note, resounding along a raw wood-side, suggests a singular wildness. 

I hear many scarlet tanagers, the first I have seen this season, which some might mistake for a red-eye. A hoarse, rough strain, comparatively, but more easily caught owing to its simplicity and sameness; something like heer chip-er-way-heer chory chay.

A bobolink.


Morton, in his "Crania Americana," says, referring to Wilkinson as his authority, that "vessels of porcelain of Chinese manufacture have of late been repeatedly found in the catacombs of Thebes, in Egypt," some as old as the Pharaonic period, and the inscriptions on them "have been read with ease by Chinese scholars, and in three instances record the following legend: 

"The flower opens, and lo! another year." 

There is something sublime in the fact that some of the oldest written sentences should thus celebrate the coming in of spring. How many times have the flowers opened and a new year begun! Hardly a more cheering sentence could have come down to us. How old is spring, a phenomenon still so fresh! Do we perceive any decay in Nature?  How much evidence is contained in this short and simple sentence respecting the former inhabitants of this globe! It is a sentence to be inscribed on vessels of porcelain. Suggesting that so many years had gone before.  An observation as fit then as now.

The heat to-day (as yesterday) is furnace-like. It produces a thickness almost amounting to vapor in the near horizon. How intense and suffocating the heat under some sunny wood-sides where no breeze circulates!  The railroad men cannot work in the Deep Cut, but have come out on to the causeway, where there is a circulation of air. They tell with a shudder of the heat reflected from the rails. 

Yet a breezy wind, as it were born of the heat, rustles all leaves.  It is refreshing to see the surface of Fair Haven rippled with wind. The waves break here quite as on the seashore. To feel the wind blow on your body, the water flow you and lave you, is a rare physical enjoyment this hot day. Bathing is an undescribed luxury.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 9, 1852

Morton referring to Wilkinson. See John Gardner Wilkinson, A Popular Account of the Ancient Egyptians. [Revised and abridged from Manners and customs of the ancient Egyptians] (1854) ("One side presents a flower, and the other an inscription, containing, according to Sir J. Davis (in three out of eight he examined), the following legend: — “The flower opens, and lo! another year; ” and another has been translated by Mr. Thoms: — “During the shining of the moon the fir-tree sends forth its sap,” ( which in a thousand years becomes amber. )")

Bathing is an undescribed luxury. To feel the wind blow on your body, the water flow on you and lave you, is a rare physical enjoyment this hot day. The water is remarkably warm here, especially in the shal lows, — warm to the hand, like that which has stood long in a kettle over a fire. The pond water being so warm made the water of the brook feel very cold; and this kept close on the bottom of the pond for a good many rods about the mouth of the brook, as I could feel with my feet; and when I thrust my arm down where it was only two feet deep, my arm was in the warm water of the pond, but my hand in the cold water of the brook. See July 3, 1854 ("What a luxury to bathe now! It is gloriously hot, — the first of this weather. I cannot get wet enough. I must let the water soak into me. I begin to inhabit the planet, and see how I may be naturalized at last.”) See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Luxury of Bathing

July 9. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 9

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 season of waving boughs

June 9.

June 9, 2013

For a week past we have had washing days. The grass waving, and trees having leaved out, their boughs wave and feel the effect of the breeze. Thus new life and motion is imparted to the trees. The season of waving boughs; and the lighter under side of the new leaves are exposed. This is the first half of June. 

Methinks this is a traveller's month.  Already the grass is blossomed and some even gone to seed, and it is mixed with reddish ferns and other plants.  The deciduous trees have filled up the intervals between the evergreens, and the woods are bosky now. The locust in bloom. The waving, undulating rye. 

The general leafiness, shadiness, and waving of grass and boughs in the breeze characterize the season.  The weather is very clear, and the sky bright. The river shines like silver. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 9, 1852

For a week past we have had washing days. The grass waving, and trees having leaved out, their boughs wave and feel the effect of the breeze. Thus new life and motion is imparted to the trees. The season of waving boughs; and the lighter under sides of the new leaves are exposed. This is the first half of June. Already the grass is not so fresh and liquid-velvety a green, having much of it blossom[ed] and some even gone to seed, and it is mixed with reddish ferns and other plants, but the general leafiness, shadiness, and wav ing of grass and boughs in the breeze characterize the season. The wind is not quite agreeable, because it prevents your hearing the birds sing. Meanwhile the crickets are strengthening their quire. The weather is very clear, and the sky bright. The river shines like silver. Methinks this is a traveller's month. The locust in bloom. The waving, undulating rye. The deciduous trees have filled up the intervals between the ever greens, and the woods are bosky now.

The deciduous trees have filled up the intervals between the evergreens, and the woods are bosky now. The general leafiness, shadiness, and waving of grass and boughs in the breeze characterize the season. The river shines like silver. See June 6, 1855 ("The dark eye and shade of June”); June 8, 1860 “In early June, methinks, as now, we have clearer days, less haze, more or less breeze, — especially after rain, — and more sparkling water than before. . . .As there is more shade in the woods, so there is more shade in the sky, i. e. dark or heavy clouds contrasted with the bright sky. ”); June 9. 1856 ("Now I notice where an elm is in the shadow of a cloud,—the black elm-tops and shadows of June. It is a dark eyelash which suggests a flashing eye beneath. It suggests houses that lie under the shade, the repose and siesta of summer noons, the thunder-cloud, bathing, and all that belongs to summer. ") June 11, 1856 ("I think that this peculiar darkness of the shade, or of the foliage as seen between you and the sky, is not accounted for merely by saying that we have not yet got accustomed to clothed trees, but the leaves are rapidly acquiring a darker green, are more and more opaque, and, besides, the sky is lit with the intensest light. It reminds me of the thunder-cloud and the dark eyelash of summer."); June 23, 1852 ("It is an agreeably cool and clear and breezy day, when all things appear as if washed bright and shine, and, at this season especially, the sound of the wind rustling the leaves is like the rippling of a stream, and you see the light-colored under side of the still fresh foliage, and a sheeny light is reflected from the bent grass in the meadows.. . . The river too has a fine, cool, silvery sparkle or sheen on it. You can see far into the horizon.”); Compare May 26, 1854 (At sight of this deep and dense field all vibrating with motion and light, winter recedes many degrees in my memory. . . . The season of grass, now everywhere green and luxuriant.”); May 27, 1855 ("The fields now begin to wear the aspect of June, their grass just beginning to wave;. . . foliage thickening and casting darker shadows over the meadows,. . . deciduous trees rapidly investing evergreens .”; May 28, 1858 (“These various shades of grass remind me of June.”); May 30, 1852 (Now is the summer come. . . . A day for shadows, even of moving clouds, over fields in which the grass is beginning to wave.”)

June 9. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 9

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

...

Now is the summer come.

May 30

May 30. 2012

Now is the summer come. A breezy, washing day. A day for shadows, even of moving clouds, over fields in which the grass is beginning to wave.

What kind of blackberry do I find in blossom in Hubbard's Swamp? Pass a cow that has just dropped her calf in the meadow. The sumach (glabra) is well under weigh now. The yellow water ranunculus by the Corner causeway. There are young robins in nests. To what sparrow belong the coffee-colored eggs in Hubbard's field by the brook? White cohosh in bloom; high blueberry flowers are quite conspicuous.

Violets everywhere spot the meadows, some more purple, some more lilac. . . .Distinguished the Viola palmata in Hubbard's meadow, near the sidesaddle-flowers, which last are just beginning to blossom. The last are quite showy flowers when the wind turns them so as to show their under sides.

Strong lights and shades now. It is a day of shadows, the leaves have so grown, and of wind, – a washing  day, – and the shadows of the clouds are observed flitting over the landscape.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 30, 1852

Now is the summer come.  . . . A day for shadows, even of moving clouds, over fields in which the grass is beginning to wave.  . . .   See May 27, 1853 ("A new season has commenced - summer - leafy June.”); May 27, 1855 ("The fields now begin to wear the aspect of June, their grass just beginning to wave;. . .”);  May 26, 1854 (At sight of this deep and dense field all vibrating with motion and light, winter recedes many degrees in my memory. . . . The season of grass, now everywhere green and luxuriant.”); May 19, 1860 ("The grass, especially the meadow-grasses, are seen to wave distinctly, and the shadows of the bright fair-weather cumuli are sweeping over them.")

Violets everywhere spot the meadows, some more purple, some more lilac. . . . Distinguished the Viola palmata in Hubbard's meadow,. See May 30, 1853 ("The Viola palmata, which is later, and therefore, methinks, fresher than most, is now quite prevalent, one of the most common, in fact, in low ground and a very handsome purple, with more red than usual in its violet.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Violets

May 30 See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 30

Strong lights and shades now.

It is a day of shadows,

the leaves have so grown –

and of wind –

A day for shadows

of fast moving clouds over

fields of waving grass.

,A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Now is the Summer come

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

May 30. Sunday.

Now is the summer come. A breezy, washing day. A day for shadows, even of moving clouds, over fields in which the grass is beginning to wave.

 Senecio in bloom. A bird's nest in grass, with coffee-colored eggs. Cinquefoil and houstonia cover the ground, mixed with the grass and contrasting with each other.

 Strong lights and shades now.

Wild cherry on the low shrubs, but not yet the trees, a rummy scent.

Violets everywhere spot the meadows, some more purple, some more lilac.

The tall pipe-grass (Equisetum uliginosum) .

The Drosera rotundifolia now glistens with its dew at midday, a beautiful object closely examined.

The dwarf andromeda is about out of bloom. Its new shoots from the side of the old stem are an inch or more long. The little leaves appear to be gradually falling off, after all. See again if they do not all fall off in the summer.

Distinguished the Viola palmata in Hubbard's meadow, near the sidesaddle-flowers, which last are just beginning to blossom. The last are quite showy flowers when the wind turns them so as to show their under sides.

It is a day of shadows, the leaves have so grown, and of wind, — a washing day, — and the shadows of the clouds are observed flitting over the landscape.

 I do not yet observe a difference between the two kinds of Pyrus arbutifolia, if, indeed, I have compared the two, i. e. my early black and later red-fruited, which last holds on all winter.

The fruit of the amelanchier is as big as small peas. I have not noticed any other berry so large yet.

The anemones appear to be nearly gone.

Yellow lilies are abundant.

The bulbous arethusa, the most splendid, rich, and high-colored flower thus far, methinks, all flower and color, almost without leaves, and looking much larger than it is, and more conspicuous on account of its intense color. A flower of mark. It appeared two or three times as large as reality when it flashed upon me from the meadow. Bigelow calls it a " crystalline purple." (Saw some the 6th of June, but no longer fresh.)

What kind of blackberry did I find in blossom in Hubbard's Swamp?

 Passed a cow that had just dropped her calf in the meadow.

The sumach (glabra) is well under weigh now.

The yellow water ranunculus by the Corner causeway.

There are young robins in nests.

To what sparrow belong the coffee-colored eggs in Hubbard's field by the brook ?

White cohush in bloom; also Smilacina stellata.

The branches or branchlets of the maidenhair fern are so disposed as to form two thirds of a cup around the stem.

The flowers of the sassafras have not such a fragrance as I perceived last year.

High blueberry flowers are quite conspicuous.

The bass leaf is now large and handsome.

The geranium is a delicate flower and be longs especially to shady places under trees and shrubs, — better if about springs, — in by-nooks, so modest.

The early gnaphaliums are gone to seed, having run up seven or ten inches.

The field plantain, which I saw in Plymouth a week ago, abundant there.

The narrow- leaved cotton-grass.

The Equisetum sylvaticum, or wood horse-tail in the meadows.

The lupine, which I saw almost in blossom a week ago at Plymouth, I hear is in blossom here.

 The river is my own highway, the only wild and unfenced part of the world hereabouts.

 How much of the world is widow's thirds, with a hired man to take negligent care of it!

The apple trees are about out of blossom. It is but a week they last.

 Israel Rice thinks the first half of June is not commonly so warm as May, and that the reason is that vegetation is so advanced that the earth is shaded and protected from the sun by the grass also, so that it is delayed in being warmed by the summer sun.

To Loring's Pond

May 17.

Decidedly fair weather at last; a bright, breezy, flowing, washing day.

The different color of the water at different times. To-day it is full of light and life, the breeze presenting many surfaces to the sun. There is a sparkling shimmer on it. It is a deep, dark blue, as the sky is clear. The air everywhere is, as it were, full of the rippling of waves.



This pond is the more interesting for the islands in it. The water is seen running behind them. It is pleasant to know that it penetrates quite behind and isolates the land you see, and to see it flowing out from behind an island with shining ripples.

The sun on the young foliage of birches, alders, etc., on the opposite side of the pond has an enchanting effect. The sunshine has a double effect. The new leaves abet it, so fresh and tender, not apprehending their insect foes. Do I smell the young birch leaves at a distance ?

Most trees are beautiful when leafing out, but especially the birch. After a storm at this season, the sun comes out and lights up the tender expanding leaves, and all nature is full of light and fragrance, and the birds sing without ceasing, and the earth is a fairyland. The birch leaves are so small that you see the landscape through the tree, and they are like silvery and green spangles in the sun, fluttering about the tree.

I see dark pines in the distance in the sunshine, contrasting with the light fresh green of the deciduous trees.

Now the sun has come out after the May storm, how bright, how full of freshness and tender promise and fragrance is the new world! The woods putting forth new leaves; it is a memorable season. So hopeful! These young leaves have the beauty of flowers.

There is life in these fresh and varied colors, life in the motion of the wind and the waves; all make it a flowing, washing day. It is a good day to saunter.

Does not summer begin after the May storm?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 17, 1852

This pond is the more interesting for the islands in it. See September 12, 1851 ("I love to gaze at the low island in the pond, — at any island or inaccessible land."); December 14, 1850 ("I walk on Loring's Pond to three or four islands there which I have never visited.")

The birch leaves are so small that you see the landscape through the tree, and they are like silvery and green spangles in the sun, fluttering about the tree.... See May 17, 1854 ("the wooded shore is all lit up with the tender, bright green of birches fluttering in the wind and shining in the light, ...")

Now the sun has come out after the May storm, how bright, how full of freshness and tender promise and fragrance is the new world! May 24, 1860 ("How perfectly new and fresh the world is seen to be, when we behold a myriad sparkles of brilliant white sunlight on a rippled stream.")
Does not summer begin after the May storm? See  May 11, 1854 (" I suspect that summer weather may be always ushered in in a similar manner, — thunder-shower, rainbow, smooth water, and warm night.")

To Gowing's Swamp

June 7. 

A female chestnut-sided warbler
 hops within four feet of me.
inquisitively

6 A.M.— River nine and fifteen sixteenths above summer level; has risen one and three sixteenths inches since last evening at 6.30.

Thus, it having rained two days most of the time, though not much the last afternoon, the river had risen some six inches at the end of the last afternoon, by the time it cleared up, and only some one and a quarter inches in the next twelve hours of night.

P.M.– To Gowing’s Swamp and Copan.

Red maple seed is still in the midst of its fall; is blown far from the trees.

This is a southwest-breezy day, after the rain of the last two days. There is on the whole a fresh and breezy coolness in June thus far, perhaps owing to the rains and the expanded foliage.

White clover already whitens some fields and resounds with bees.

Am surprised to find that in that frosty Holbrook Road Hollow (call it Frosty Poplar Hollow) none of the poplars (P. tremuliformis) less than ten feet high (or parts of others less than ten feet above the ground) in the bottom of the hollow have burst their buds yet, making this which in some localities is perhaps the earliest conspicuous tree, in others the latest to leaf.

Also the shrub oaks are but just begun to leaf here, and many maples and white birches have but lately leafed, having yet very small and tender leaves.

These poplars, and I think the oaks (for I detect no dead and withered leafets on them), etc., have here acquired a new habit, and are retarded in their development, just as if they grew in a colder latitude, like the plants by the snow in Tuckerman’s Ravine. They have not put forth and then been frost-bitten, as in most hollows, but the spring has come later to them.

The poplars generally look quite dead still amid the verdure that surrounds the hollow; only those that rise about ten feet are unfolded at the top.

The amount of development is a matter of elevation here. Generally speaking, all poplar buds above a certain level have burst, and all below are inert. The line of separation is very distinct now, because the tops of the tallest are already leafed out and are green. This level line extends to the hillsides all around, and above it all trees are leafed out. 

This is true of the shrub oaks also, except that a great many of them which stand much higher have already leafed and been frost-bitten, which makes them look about as late as those which apparently have not leafed. 

This hollow seems to be peculiar, — a dry depression between Beck Stow’s and the Great Meadows, — to be steadily cold and late, and not warm by day so that the buds burst and are then killed by frost, as usual. 

Perhaps it is not so much a frosty hollow as a cold one. It is most open north and south. 

Standing at Holbrook’s barrel spring, a female chestnut-sided warbler hops within four feet of me, inquisitively holding its head down one side to me and peeping at me. 

Seeing house-leek on several rocks in the fields and by roadside in the neighborhood of Brooks Clark’s, Farmer told me that it was the work of Joe Dudley, a simple fellow who lives at one of the Clarks; that, though half-witted, he knew more medicinal plants 335 than almost anybody in the neighborhood.

Is it necessary that the simpler should be a simpleton? I noticed rye (winter rye) just fairly begun to bloom, May 29th. 

A painted turtle beginning her hole for eggs at 4 P.M. 

Yellow bugs have come by thousands this clear and rather warm day after the rain; also squash-bugs have come. 

When, in a warm day after rain, the plants are tender and succulent, this is the time they work most. 

River at 6 P.M., twelve and five eighths inches above summer level. 

To-night the toads ring loudly and generally, as do hylodes also, the thermometer being at 62 at 9 P.M. 

Four degrees more of warmth, the earth being drier and the water warmer, makes this difference.

It appears, then, that the evening just after a rain-storm (as the last), thermometer 58, the toads will be nearly silent, but the hylodes wide awake; but the next evening, with thermometer at 62, both will be wide awake. 

Dor-bugs come humming by my head to-night. 

The peculiarities of the new leaves, or young ones, are to be observed. As I now remember, there is

• the whitish shoot of the white pine; 
• the reddish brown of the pitch pine, giving a new tinge to its tops; 
• the bead work of the hemlock; 
• the now just conspicuous bursting lighter glaucous-green buds of the black spruce in cold swamps; 
• the frizzly-looking glaucous-green shoots and leafets of the fir (and fragrant now or soon); 
• the thin and delicate foliage of the larch; 
• the inconspicuous and fragrant arbor-vitæ;
•  the bead-work of the Juniperus repens (red cedar inconspicuous);
•  probably the bead work of the yew;
•  the tented leaves of the white oak;
•  the crimson black and white oaks and black shrub lately, and now, in hollows, the downy grayish (at first) of black and white, etc.;
•  the now tender, delicate green of swamp white and chincapin;
•  the large and yellowish, rapildy expanding (at first), of the nut trees; 
• the gamboge-yellow of the birches (now as dark as most, for leaves are acquiring one shade at present);
•  the thick darker green of alders;
•  the downyish of buttonwood still small;
•  the soon developed and darkened and fluttering early aspens and Gileads;
•  the still silvery Populus grandidentata; the small-leafeted and yellowish locust; 
• the early yellow of Salix alba; 
• the fine-leaved S. nigra; the wreath-and-column-leaved elm; 
• the suddenly expanding but few-leaved ash trees, showing much stalk, or stem, and branch;
•  the button-bush, with shoots before leaves;
•  the reddish-leafed young checkerberry; the suddenly developed and conspicuous viburnums (sweet and naked);
•  the unequal-leafing panicled andromeda;
•  the purplish-brown stipules of the Amelanchier Botryapium; 
• the downy stipules of the A.oblongifolia.

The red maples now become darker and firm, or hard. 

The large-leafed sumachs. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 7, 1860

Red maple seed is still in the midst of its fall; is blown far from the trees.  See June 3, 1860 ("The roads now strewn with red maple seed."); August 1, 1860 ("If you look carefully through a dense red maple swamp now, you find many little maples a couple of inches high") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Maple Keys

A female chestnut-sided warbler hops within four feet of me. See note to June 15, 1854 (" A yellow crown, chestnut stripe on sides, white beneath, and two yellowish bars on wings. "); See also JJ Audubon ("In the beginning of May 1808, I shot five of these birds, on a very cold morning, near Pottsgrove, in the State of Pennsylvania. There was a slight fall of snow at the time, although the peach and apple trees were already in full bloom. The females had the ovaries furnished with numerous eggs, about the size of the head of a common pin. I have never met with a single individual of this species since.")

Am surprised to find that in that frosty Holbrook Road Hollow none of the poplars (P. tremuliformis) less than ten feet high in the bottom of the hollow have burst their buds yet. See May 25, 1860 (" It is remarkable that the aspen on Holbrook's road, though in most places it is the earliest indigenous tree to leaf, is the very latest, and the buds are hardly yet swollen at all. Can it be a distinct variety? ") See also  June 6, 1857 ("Already the aspens are trembling again, and a new summer is offered me. "); A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Aspens. and  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Leaf-Out


The peculiarities of the new leaves, or young ones . . .

• the whitish shoot of the white pine. See May 19, 1854 ("The white pine shoots are now two or three inches long generally, — upright light marks on the body of dark green.")

• the bead work of the hemlock See June 5, 1853 (" The fresh light green shoots of the hemlocks have now grown half an inch or an inch, spotting the trees, contrasting with the dark green of last year's foliage.")

• the gamboge-yellow of the birches. See May 21, 1860 ("The color of the new leaves is surprising . The birches by the railroad , as I am whirled by them in the cars , flash upon me yellow as gamboge , their leaves more like flowers than foliage.") 

• the now just conspicuous bursting lighter glaucous-green buds of the black spruce in cold swamps. See May 21, 1857 ("The staminate buds of the black spruce are quite a bright red."); May 22, 1856 ("The red and cream-colored cone-shaped staminate buds of the black spruce will apparently shed pollen in one to three days?"); June 10, 1855 (" The white spruce cones are now a rich dark purple, more than a half inch long.")

June 7. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, June 7

Red maple seed is

still in the midst of its fall –

blown far from the trees.

The conspicuous

bursting glaucous-green buds of

black spruce in cold swamps.

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