Evening Kosmos.

 August 31

Proserpinaca palustris, spear-leaved proserpinaca, mermaid-weed. (This in Hubbard's Grove on my way to Conantum.) 

A hornets' (?) nest in a rather tall huckleberry bush, the stems projecting through it, the leaves spreading over it. How these fellows avail themselves of the vegetables ! They kept arriving, the great fellows, but I never saw whence they came, but only heard the buzz just at the entrance. (With whitish abdomens.) At length, after I have stood before the nest five minutes, during which time they had taken no notice of me, two seemed to be consulting at the entrance, and then one made a threatening dash at me and returned to the nest. I took the hint and retired. They spoke as plainly as man could have done.

 I see that the farmers have begun to top their corn. Examined my old friend the green locust ( ? ), shrilling on an alder leaf. What relation does the fall dandelion bear to the spring dandelion ? 

There is a rank scent of tansy now on some roads, disagreeable to many people from being associated in their minds with funerals, where it is sometimes put into the coffin and about the corpse. 

I have not observed much St. John's-wort yet. 

Galium triflorum, three-flowered cleavers, in Conant's Spring Swamp; also fever-bush there, now budded for next year. 

Tobacco-pipe (Monotropa uniflora) in Spring Swamp Path.

 I came out of the thick, dark, swampy wood as from night into day. Having forgotten the daylight, I was surprised to see how bright it was. I had light enough, methought, and here was an afternoon sun illumining all the landscape . It was a surprise to me to see how much brighter an ordinary afternoon is than the light which penetrates a thick wood. 

One of these drooping clusters of potato balls would be as good a symbol, emblem, of the year's fertility as anything, - better surely than a bunch of grapes. Fruit of the strong soil, containing potash ( ? ).The vintage is come; the olive is ripe. 

"I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude;

And with forc'd fingers rude,

Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year; "

Why not for my coat-of -arms, for device, a drooping cluster of potato balls, - in a potato field ?  

What right has a New England poet to sing of wine, who never saw a vineyard, who obtains his liquor from the grocer, who would not dare, if he could, tell him what it is composed of. A Yankee singing in praise of wine! It is not sour grapes in this case, it is sweet grapes; the more inaccessible they are the sweeter they are. 

It seemed to me that the year had nothing so much to brag of as these potato balls. Do they not concern New-Englanders a thousand times more than all her grapes ? In Moore's new field they grow, cultivated with the bog hoe, manured with ashes and sphagnum. How they take to the virgin soil ! 

Shannon tells me that he took a piece of bog land of Augustus Hayden, cleared, turned up the stumps and roots and burned it over, making a coat of ashes six inches deep, then planted potatoes. He never put a hoe to it till he went to dig them; then between 8 o'clock A. M. and 5 P. M. he and another man dug and housed seventy - five bushels apiece !! 

Cohush now in fruit, ivory-white berries tipped now with black on stout red pedicels, - Actœa alba. Collinsonia Canadensis, horseweed  I had discovered this singular flower there new to me, and, having a botany by me, looked it out. What a surprise and disappointment, what an insult and impertinence to my curiosity and expectation, to have given me the name " horse- weed ! " 

Cohush Swamp is about twenty rods by three or four. Among rarer plants it contains the basswood, the black ( as well as white ) ash, the fever - bus, the cohush, the collinsonia, not to mention sassafras, poison sumach, ivy, agrimony, Arum triphyllum, ( sweet viburnum ( ? ) in hedges near by ), ground - nut, touch-me- not ( as high as your head ), and Eupatorium purpureum ( eight feet, eight inches high, with a large convex corymb ( hemi-spherical ) of many stories, fourteen inches wide; width of plant from tip of leaf to tip of leaf two feet, diameter of stalk one inch at ground, leaves seven in a whorl ). 

Rare plants seem to love certain localities. As if the original Conant had been a botanist and endeavored to form an arboretum. A natural arboretum ? The handsome sweet viburnum berries, now red on one cheek. It was the filiform crowfoot ( Ranunculus filiformis ) that I saw by the riverside the other day and to - day. The season advances apace.

 The flowers of the nettle-leaved vervain are now near the ends of the spike, like the blue. Utricularia inflata, whorled bladderwort, floating on the water at same place. Gentiana Saponaria budded. Gerardia flava at Conant's Grove. 

Half an hour before sunset I was at Tupelo Cliff, when, looking up from my botanizing ( I had been examining the Ranunculus filiformis, the Sium latifolium ( ?? ), and the obtuse galium on the muddy shore), I saw the seal of evening on the river. There was a quiet beauty in the landscape at that hour which my senses were prepared to appreciate. The sun going down on the west side, that hand being already in shadow for the most part, but his rays lighting up the water and the willows and pads even more than before. His rays then fell at right angles on their stems. 

I sitting on the old brown geologic rocks, their feet submerged and covered with weedy moss (utricularia roots? ) Sometimes their tops are submerged. The cardinal-flowers standing by me. The trivialness of the day is past. The greater stillness, the serenity of the air, its coolness and transparency, the mistiness being condensed, are favorable to thought. (The pensive eve.) 

The coolness of evening comes to condense the haze of noon and make the air transparent and the outline of objects firm and distinct, and chaste  (chaste eve); even as I am made more vigorous by my bath, am more continent of thought. After bathing, even at noonday, a man realizes a morning or evening life. 

The evening air is such a bath for both mind and body. When I have walked all day in vain under the torrid sun, and the world has been all trivial, - as well field and wood as highway, - then at eve the sun goes down westward, and the wind goes down with it, and the dews begin to purify the air and make it transparent, and the lakes and rivers acquire a glassy stillness, reflecting the skies, the reflex of the day. 

I too am at the top of my condition for perceiving beauty. Thus, long after feeding, the diviner faculties begin to be fed, to feel their oats, their nutriment, and are not oppressed by the belly's load. It is abstinence from loading the belly anew until the brain and divine faculties have felt their vigor. Not till some hours does my food invigorate my brain, - ascendeth into the brain. We practice at this hour an involuntary abstinence. We are comparatively chaste and temperate as Eve herself; the nutriment is just reaching the brain.

 Every sound is music now. The grating of some distant boat which a man is launching on the rocky bottom, though here is no man nor inhabited house, nor even cultivated field, in sight, this is heard with such distinctness that I listen with pleasure as if it was [ sic ] music.

 The attractive point is that line where the water meets the land, not distinct, but known to exist. The willows are not the less interesting because of their nakedness below. How rich, like what we love to read of South American primitive forest, is the scenery of this river! What luxuriance of weeds, what depth of mud along its sides! These old antehistoric, geologic  ante-diluvian rocks, which only primitive wading birds, still lingering among us, are worthy to tread. 

The season which we seem to live in anticipation of is arrived. The water, indeed, reflects heaven because my mind does; such is its own serenity, its transparency and stillness. With what sober joy I stand to let the water drip from me and feel my fresh vigor, who have been bathing in the same tub which the muskrat uses! Such a medicated bath as only nature furnishes. A fish leaps, and the dimple he makes is observed now. How ample and generous was nature! My inheritance is not narrow. Here is no other this evening. 

Those resorts which I most love and frequent, numerous and vast as they are, are as it were given up to me, as much as if I were an autocrat or owner of the world, and by my edicts excluded men from my territories. Perchance there is some advantage here not enjoyed in older countries. 

There are said to be two thousand inhabitants in Concord, and yet I find such ample space and verge, even miles of walking every day in which I do not meet nor see a human being, and often not very recent traces of them . So much of man as there is in your mind, there will be in your eye . Methinks that for a great part of the time, as much as it is possible, I walk as one possessing the advantages of human culture, fresh from society of men, but turned loose into the woods, the only man in nature, walking and meditating to a great extent as if man and his customs and institutions were not . 

The catbird, or the jay, is sure of the whole of your ear now. Each noise is like a stain on pure glass. The rivers now, these great blue subterranean heavens, reflecting the supernal skies and red-tinted cloud. 

A fly (or gnat ?) will often buzz round you and persecute you like an imp. How much of imp-like, pestering character they express ! ( I hear a boy driving home his cows . ) 

What unanimity between the water and the sky! - one only a little denser element than the other. The grossest part of heaven. Think of a mirror on so large a scale ! 

Standing on distant hills, you see the heavens reflected, the evening sky, in some low lake or river in the valley, as perfectly as in any mirror they could be. Does it not prove how intimate heaven is with earth?

 We commonly sacrifice to supper this serene and sacred hour. Our customs turn the hour of sunset to a trivial time, as at the meeting of two roads, one coming from the noon, the other leading to the night. It might be [well] if our repasts were taken out-of-doors, in view of the sunset and the rising stars;

• if there were two persons whose pulses beat together, 
• if men cared for the κόσμος, or beauty of the world; 
• if men were social in a high and rare sense; 
• if they associated on high levels;
• if we took in with our tea a draught of the transparent, dew-freighted evening air;
• if, with our bread and butter, we took a slice of the red western sky;
• if the smoking, steaming urn were the vapor on a thousand lakes and rivers and meads. 

The air of the valleys at this hour is the distilled essence of all those fragrances which during the day have been filling and have been dispersed in the atmosphere. The fine fragrances, perchance, which have floated in the upper atmospheres have settled to these low vales ! 

I talked of buying Conantum once, but for want of money we did not come to terms. But I have farmed it in my own fashion every year since.

 I have no objection to giving the names of some naturalists, men of flowers, to plants, if by their lives they have identified themselves with them. There may be a few Kalmias. But it must be done very sparingly, or, rather, discriminatingly, and no man's name be used who has not been such a lover of flowers that the flowers themselves may be supposed thus to reciprocate his love. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 31, 1851

One made a threatening dash at me and returned to the nest. I took the hint. See August 7, 1854 ("A wasp stung me at one high blueberry bush on the forefinger of my left hand, just above the second joint. It was very venomous;. . . and the finger soon swelled much below the joint, so that I could not completely close the finger,") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. Wasps and Hornets

There is a rank scent of tansy now.  See August 9, 1851 ("Tansy now in bloom and the fresh white clethra")

Why not for my coat-of -arms, for device, a drooping cluster of potato balls. See July 28, 1860 ("A man shows me in the street a single bunch of potato-balls . . . to some extent emulating a cluster of grapes. The very sight of them supplies my constitution with all needed potash.")

The κόσμος, or beauty of the world. See August 6, 1852 ("All men beholding a rainbow begin to understand the significance of the Greek epithet applied to the world, — name for the world, — - Kosmos, or beauty"); January 5, 1856 ("Order, κóσμos.")

I have not observed much St. John's-wort yet. See September 1, 1853 ("Johnswort, the large and common, is about done.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

The pensive eve. See August 31, 1852 ("Evening is pensive. The serenity is far more remarkable to those who are on the water.")

I have no objection to giving the names of some naturalists, men of flowers, to plants . . . no man's name be used who has not been such a lover of flowers. See June 13, 1852 ("But Gray should not name it from the Governor of New York. . .If named after a man, it must be a man of flowers. . . .Name your canals and railroads after Clinton, if you please, but his name is not associated with flowers.")

By moonlight in forests like this we listen to hear wolves howl to Cynthia.

September 5.

By moonlight at Potter's Field toward Bear Garden Hill, 8 P. M. 

The whip-poor-wills sing . . . Moonlight on Fair Haven Pond seen from the Cliffs. A sheeny lake in the midst of a boundless forest, the windy surf sounding freshly and wildly in the single pine behind you; the silence of hushed wolves in the wilderness, and, as you fancy, moose looking off from the shore of the lake. 

September 5, 2019

The stars of poetry and history and unexplored nature looking down on the scene.  This is my world now, with a dull whitish mark curving north ward through the forest marking the outlet to the lake. 

Fair Haven by moonlight lies there like a lake in the Maine wilderness in the midst of a primitive forest untrodden by man. This light and this hour take the civilization all out of the landscape. 

Even in villages dogs bay the moon; in forests like this we listen to hear wolves howl to Cynthia.

Even at this hour in the evening the crickets chirp, the small birds peep, the wind roars in the wood, as if it were just before dawn. The moonlight seems to linger as if it were giving way to the light of coming day. 

The landscape seen from the slightest elevation by moonlight is seen remotely, and flattened, as it were, into mere light and shade, open field and forest, like the surface of the earth seen from the top of a mountain.


How much excited we are, how much recruited, by a great many particular fragrances! A field of ripening corn, now at night, that has been topped, with the stalks stacked up to dry, – an inexpressibly dry, rich, sweet ripening scent. I feel as if I were an ear of ripening corn myself. Is not the whole air then a compound of such odors undistinguishable? Drying corn-stalks in a field; what an herb-garden!


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 5, 1851

Moonlight on Fair Haven Pond seen from the Cliffs. A sheeny lake in the midst of a boundless forest. See June 14, 1851 ("The moon was now seen rising over Fair Haven and at the same time reflected in the river, pale and white like a silvery cloud,");September 4, 1854 ("To Fair Haven Pond by boat. Full moon; bats flying about; skaters and water bugs like sparks of fire on the surface between us and the moon.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, September Moonlight

I feel as if I were an ear of ripening corn myself. See July 12, 1851 ("The earliest corn is beginning to show its tassels now, and I scent it as I walk, — its peculiar dry scent."); September 2, 1851 ("A writer, a man writing, is the scribe of all nature; he is the corn and the grass and the atmosphere writing."); September 4, 1859 ("Topping the corn, which has been going on some days, now reveals the yellow and yellowing pumpkins. This is a genuine New England scene. The earth blazes not only with sun-flowers but with sun-fruits.") September 14, 1851 ("The corn-stalks standing in stacks, in long rows along the edges of the corn-fields."); October 6, 1858 ("The corn stands bleached and faded — quite white in the twilight")

What produces this flashing air of autumn?

September 17. 

What produces this flashing air of autumn? — a brightness as if there were not green enough to absorb the light, now that the first frosts wither the herbs. 

The corn-stalks are stacked like muskets along the fields. 

The pontederia leaves are sere and brown along the river. 

The fall is further advanced in the water, as the spring was earlier there. I should say that the vegetation of the river was a month further advanced in its decay than of the land generally. 

The yellow lily pads are apparently decayed generally; as I wade, I tread on their great roots only; and the white lily pads are thinned. 

Now, before any effects of the frost are obvious on the leaves, I observe two black rows of dead pontederia in the river. 

Is it the alder locust that rings so loud in low land now? 

The umbel-shaped smilax berry clusters are now ripe. 

Still the oxalis blows, and yellow butterflies are on the flowers. 

I hear the downy woodpecker whistle, and see him looking about the apple trees as if to bore him a hole. Are they returning south? 

Abundance of wild grapes. I laid down some wild red grapes in front of the Cliffs, three united to a two-thirds-inch stock, many feet from the root, under an alder marked with two or three small sticks atop, and, ten feet north, two more of different stocks, one-half inch diameter, directly on the edge of the brook, their tops over the water, the shell of a five-inch log across them.

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

The corn-stalks are stacked like muskets along the fields. See September 14,1851("The corn-stalks standing in stacks, in long rows along the edges of the corn-fields, remind me of stacks of muskets.")

The corn-stalks standing

in stacks in long rows along

edges of corn-fields.

September 14,1851

Still the oxalis blows, and yellow butterflies are on the flowers. See August 15, 1851 ("Oxalis stricta, upright wood-sorrel, the little yellow ternate-leaved flower in pastures and corn-fields. "); September 13, 1858 ("Many yellow butterflies in road and fields all the country over.”) and note to October 20, 1858 ("I see yellow butterflies chasing one another, taking no thought for the morrow, but confiding in the sunny day as if it were to be perpetual.")

I hear the downy woodpecker whistle, and see him looking about the apple trees as if to bore him a hole. Are they returning south? See December 2, 1850 ("The woodpeckers' holes in the apple trees are about a fifth of an inch deep or just through the bark and half an inch apart. "); December 5, 1853 ("See and hear a downy woodpecker on an apple tree. Have not many winter birds, like this and the chickadee, a sharp note like tinkling glass or icicles?");  December 14, 1855 ("I heard the sound of a downy woodpecker tapping . . . Frequently, when I pause to listen, I hear this sound in the orchards or streets.");December 21, 1855 ( "Going to the post-office at 9 A. M. this very pleasant morning, . . . scare a downy woodpecker and a brown creeper in company"); December 30, 1855 ("See one downy woodpecker and one or two chickadees."); January 5, 1860 ("I see where the downy woodpecker has worked lately by the chips of bark and rotten wood scattered over the snow, though I rarely see him in the winter. Once to-day, however, I hear his sharp voice."); January 20, 1856 ("A downy woodpecker without red on head the only bird seen in this walk.")

I laid down some wild red grapes in front of the Cliffs. Compare September 18, 1858 ("Finding grapes, we proceeded to pluck them, tempted more by their fragrance and color than their flavor, though some were very palatable. We gathered many without getting out of the boat, as we paddled back, and more on shore close to the water’s edge, piling them up in the prow of the boat till they reached to the top of the boat, — a long sloping heap of them and very handsome to behold, being of various colors and sizes, for we even added green ones for variety. Some, however, were mainly green when ripe. You cannot touch some vines without bringing down more single grapes in a shower around you than you pluck in bunches, and such as strike the water are lost, for they do not float. But it is a pity to break the handsome clusters. Thus laden, the evening air wafting the fragrance of the cargo back to us, we paddled homeward. ")

The earth itself appears to me as a ripe purple fruit.

September 4. 

P. M. — To Well Meadow and Walden.

The purple culms and spikes of the crab-grass or finger-grass, spreading and often almost prostrate under our feet in sandy paths and causeways, are where the purple cuticle of the earth again shows itself, and we seem to be treading in our vintage whether we will or not. Earth has donned the purple. 

When, walking over some dry field (some time since), I looked down and saw the yellowish tuft of the Fimbristylis capillaris, with its spreading inverted cone of capillary culms, like the upper half of an hour-glass, but still more, when, pacing over the sandy railroad causeway, I look down and find myself treading on the purple culms of the crab-grass, I am reminded of the maturity of the year. 

We have now experienced the full effects of heat such as we have in this latitude. The earth itself appears to me as a ripe purple fruit, — though somewhat dusty here, — and I may have rubbed the bloom off with my feet. But if Bacchus can ever stand our climate, this must be his season. 

Topping the corn, which has been going on some days, now reveals the yellow and yellowing pumpkins. This is a genuine New England scene. The earth blazes not only with sun-flowers but with sun-fruits. 

The four-leaved loosestrife, which is pretty generally withering and withered, seems to have dried up, — to suffer peculiarly from the annual drought, — perhaps both on account of its tenuity and the sandiness or dryness of its locality. 

The Lycopodium complanatum sheds pollen [sic]. 

Where are the robins and red-wing blackbirds of late? I see no flocks of them; not one of the latter, and only a few solitary robins about wild cherry trees, etc.

 A few yew berries, but they appear (?) to be drying up. The most wax-like and artificial and surprising of our wild berries, — as surprising as to find currants on hemlocks. 

In the Well Meadow Swamp, many apparent Aster miser, yet never inclining to red there (in the leaf) and sometimes with larger flowers (five eighths of an inch [in] diameter) and slenderer cauline leaves than common, out apparently almost as long as miser elsewhere. 

The swamp thistle (Cirsium muticum) is apparently in its prime. One or two on each has faded, but many more are to come. Some are six feet high and have radical leaves nearly two feet long. Even these in the shade have humblebees on them. 

You see small flocks of ducks, probably wood ducks, in the smaller woodland ponds now and for a week, as I at Andromeda Ponds, and can get nearer to them than in the spring. 

The Cornus sericea and C. paniculata are rather peculiar for turning to a dull purple on the advent of cooler weather and frosts, in the latter part of August and first part of September. The latter, which grows at the bottom of our frostiest hollows, turns a particularly clear dark purple, an effect plainly attributable to frost. 

I see it this afternoon in the dry, deep hollow just west of the middle Andromeda Pond. 

I think I see two kinds of three-ribbed goldenrod (beside Canadensis), both being commonly smooth-stemmed below and downy above, but one has very fine or small rays as compared with the other. They appear to be both equally common now. The fine-rayed at Sedge Path. 

See a very large mass of spikenard berries fairly ripening, eighteen inches long. 

Three kinds of thistles are commonly out now, — the pasture, lanceolate, and swamp, — and on them all you are pretty sure to see one or two humblebees. They be come more prominent and interesting in the scarcity of purple flowers. (On many you see also the splendid goldfinch, yellow and black (?) like the humble-bee.) The thistles beloved of humblebees and goldfinches. 

Three or four plants are peculiar now for bearing plentifully their fruit in drooping cymes, viz. the elder berry and the silky cornel and the Viburnum Lentago and Solanum Dulcamara. 

The other cornels do not generally come to droop before they lose their fruit. Nor do the viburnums droop much. The fruit of the Cornus sericea is particularly interesting to me, and not too profuse, — small cymes of various tints half concealed amid the leaves.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 4, 1859

The purple culms and spikes of the crab-grass or finger-grass. See September 4, 1858 ("P[anicum]. sanguinale, crab grass, finger grass, or purple panic grass")

The earth blazes not only with sun-flowers but with sun-fruits. See October 6, 1857 ("The very pumpkins yellowing in the fields become a feature in the landscape, and thus they have shone, maybe, for a thousand years here.")

Where are the robins and red-wing blackbirds of late? I see no flocks of them; not one of the latter. See September 20, 1859 ("Where are the red-wings now? I have not seen nor heard one for a long time")

The swamp thistle (Cirsium muticum) is apparently in its prime. See July 29, 1857 (" [the Maine Woods--} Cirsium muticum, or swamp thistle, abundantly in bloom."); September 13, 1854 ("I find the large thistle (Cirsium muticum) out of bloom,")

 The Cornus sericea and C. paniculata are rather peculiar for turning to a dull purple on the advent of cooler weather and frosts, in the latter part of August and first part of September. The fruit of the Cornus sericea is particularly interesting to me, and not too profuse, — small cymes of various tints half concealed amid the leaves. See September 4, 1857 ("Cornus sericea berries begin to ripen").; September 1, 1854 ("The Cornus sericea berries are now in prime, of different shades of blue, lighter or darker, and bluish white."); August 31, 1856 (“The Cornus sericea, with its berries just turning, is generally a dull purple now "); August 28, 1856 ("The bright china-colored blue berries of the Cornus sericea begin to show themselves along the river.”)

Three kinds of thistles are commonly out now, — the pasture, lanceolate, and swamp, — . . . The thistles beloved of humblebees and goldfinches. See September 4, 1860  ("The goldfinch is very busy pulling the thistle to pieces") and  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Thistles.See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau the Goldfinch

Bleached and faded corn stands quite white in the twilight.

October 6. 

October 6, 2018

P. M. — To Saw Mill Brook and Flint’s Pond. 

Now, methinks, the autumnal tints are brightest in our streets and in the woods generally. 

In the streets, the young sugar maples make the most show. The street is never more splendid. As I look up the street from the Mill-Dam, they look like painted screens standing before the houses to celebrate a gala-day. One half of each tree glows with a delicate scarlet. 

But only one of the large maples on the Common is yet on fire. The butternuts on the street are with, or a little later than, the walnuts. The three-thorned acacias have turned (one half) a peculiarly clear bright and delicate yellow, peculiar also for the smallness of the leaf. 

Asparagus-beds are a soft mass of yellow and green. Buttonwoods have no bright colors, but are a brownish and yellowish green, some what curled and crisp and looking the worse for the wear. 

Stand where half a dozen large elms droop over a house. It is as if you stood within a ripe pumpkin rind, and you feel as mellow as if you were the pulp.

In Saw Mill Brook Path, and in most wood-paths, the Aster undulatus is now very fair and interesting. Generally a tall and slender plant with a very long panicle of middle-sized lilac or paler purple flowers, bent over to one side the path. 

The Rhus Toxicodendron leaves are completely changed and of very various colors, pale yellow to deep scarlet and delicate. The leaf-stalks are commonly drooping, being bent short downward near the base in a peculiar manner. 

Several species of ferns are faded quite white in the swamp, — dicksonia and another, and some brakes, — for in moist woods and swamps they are preserved longer than in dry places. 

Solidago latifolia in bloom still, but always sparingly. 

Cinnamon ferns are generally crisped, but in the swamp I saw some handsomely spotted green and yellowish, and one clump, the handsomest I ever saw, perfect in outline, falling over each way from the centre, of a very neat drab color, quaker-like, fit to adorn an Oriental drawing-room. 

The evergreens seem positively greener, owing to the browning of other leaves. 

I should not suspect that the white birches had changed so much and lost so many leaves, if I did not see them against the unchanged pitch pines on the hillside. 

I notice Hieracium paniculatum and scabrum in dark, low wood-paths, turned a hoary white. 

The medeola leaves are a pale straw-color with a crimson centre; perhaps getting stale now. 

The tupelo at Wharf Rock is completely scarlet, with blue berries amid its leaves. 

Leaves now have fairly begun to rustle under foot in wood-paths, especially in chestnut woods, scaring the ducks as you approach the ponds. And what is that common scent there so much like fragrant everlasting? 

The smooth sumachs, which are in their prime, or perhaps a little past, are, methinks, the most uniform and intense scarlet of any shrub or tree. They stand perfectly distinct amid the pines, with slender spreading arms, their leafets drooping and somewhat curled though fresh. Yet, high-colored as they are, from their attitude and drooping, like scarfs, on rather bare and dark stems, they have a funereal effect, as if you were walking in the cemetery of a people who mourned in scarlet. 

Most S. nemoralis, and most other goldenrods, now look hoary, killed by frost. 

The corn stands bleached and faded — quite white in the twilight — in the fields. No greenness there has the frost and sun left. Seen against the dark earth. 

My phosphorescent wood still glows a little, though it has lain on my stove all day, and, being wet, it is much improved still.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 6, 1858

Autumnal tints are brightest in our streets and in the woods generally. See October 6, 1857 (“We are not prepared to believe that the earth is now so parti-colored, and would present to a bird's eye such distinct masses of bright color. A great painter is at work.”); October 23, 1857 ("I can find no bright leaves now in the woods.")

The Aster undulatus is now very fair and interesting. See September 20, 1852 ("Aster undulatus, or variable aster, with a large head of middle-sized blue flowers."); October 2, 1859 ("The A. undulatus looks fairer than ever, now that flowers are more scarce."); October 4, 1853 ("Bumblebees are on the Aster undulatus"); October 25, 1858 ("The Aster undulatus is now a dark purple (its leaves), with brighter purple or crimson under sides."); November 3, 1858 ("Aster undulatus is still freshly in bloom");November 7, 1858 ("Aster undulatus and several goldenrods, at least, may be found yet.") 
 

Most S. nemoralis, and most other goldenrods, now look hoary, killed by frost. See October 3, 1857 ("Asters, and still more goldenrods, look quite rare now.") Compare  October 3, 1852 ("The Aster undulates is common and fresh, also the Solidago nemoralis of Gray.”)

Cinnamon ferns are generally crisped, but in the swamp I saw some handsomely spotted green and yellowish. See  October 2, 1859 ("I perceive in various places, in low ground, this afternoon, the sour scent of cinnamon ferns decaying. It is an agreeable phenomenon, reminding me of the season and of past years.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cinnamon Fern

Where half a dozen large elms droop over a houseit is as if you stood within a ripe pumpkin rind. See October 9, 1857 ("As I look down our street, which is lined with them, now clothed in their very rich brownish-yellow dress, they remind me of yellowing sheaves of grain, as if the harvest had come to the village itself”)

The medeola leaves are a pale straw-color with a crimson centre; perhaps getting stale now.. See May 25, 1852 ("Medeola or cucumber-root in bud, with its two-storied whorl of leaves. "); July 24, 1853 ("The medeola is still in flower, though with large green berries"); August 27, 1851 ("The Medeola Virginica, cucumber-root, the whorl-leaved plant, is now in green fruit"); September 2, 1853 ("The medeola berries are now dull glossy and almost blue-black; about three, on slender threads one inch long, arising in the midst of the cup formed by the purple bases of the whorl of three upper leaves.");October 14, 1859 (" Medeola probably fallen several weeks.")See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Cucumber Root (medeola)

The tupelo at Wharf Rock is completely scarlet, with blue berries amid its leaves. See August 31, 1857 ("At Flint's Pond I wade along the edge eight or ten rods to the wharf rock, carrying my shoes and stockings"); September 11, 1859 ("I see tall tupelos, all dotted with the now ripe (apparently in prime) small oval purple berries, two or three together on the end of slender peduncles, amid the reddening leaves. This fruit is very acid and has a large stone, but I see several robins on the trees, which appear to have been attracted by it."); September 30, 1854 ("I find a fine tupelo near Sam Barrett’s now all turned scarlet. I find that it has borne much fruit — small oval bluish berries,"); October 19, 1859 ("The tupelo berries have all fallen") [Nyssa sylvatica, commonly known as the Black Tupelo, is a medium-sized deciduous tree native to eastern North America, from New England and southern Ontario south to central Florida and eastern Texas. ~ iNaturalist]

Leaves now have fairly begun to rustle under foot in wood-paths, scaring the ducks as you approach the ponds. See October 10, 1851 ("You make a great noise now walking in the woods.”); October 22, 1857 (“As I go through the woods now, so many oak and other leaves have fallen the rustling noise somewhat disturbs my musing. However, Nature in this may have intended some kindness to the ducks, which are now loitering hereabouts on their migration south ward, mostly young and inexperienced birds, for, as they are feeding [in] Goose Pond, for instance, the rustling of the leaves betrays the approach of the sports man and his dog, or other foe; so perhaps the leaves on the ground protect them more than when on the trees. ”); and note to October 22, 1854 ("Now they rustle as you walk through them in the woods.”)

I notice Hieracium paniculatum and scabrum in dark, low wood-paths, turned a hoary white. See August 6, 1856 ("Hieracium scabrous.”) See July 21, 1851 ("The rough hawkweed, too, resembling in its flower the autumnal dandelion.”); August21, 1851 ("Hieracium paniculatum, a very delicate and slender hawkweed. I have now found all the hawkweeds. Singular these genera of plants, plants manifestly related yet distinct. They suggest a history to nature, a natural history in a new sense.”)

The corn stands bleached and faded — quite white in the twilight . . . seen against the dark earth. See October 1, 1851 ("I go through Wheeler's corn-field in the twilight, where the stalks are bleached almost white, and his tops are still stacked along the edge of the field. The moon is not far up above the southwestern horizon. Looking west at this hour, the earth is an unvaried, undistinguishable black in contrast with the twilight sky. It is as if you were walking in night up to your chin.") See also September 17, 1852 ("The corn-stalks are stacked like muskets along the fields."); October 8, 1858 ("Fine pasture grass seen in the sun, begins to.look faded and bleached like the corn."); October 10, 1857 ("See the heaps of apples in the fields and at the cider mill, of pumpkins in the fields, and the stacks of cornstalks and the standing corn."); October 12, 1858 ("The coarse grass of the riverside . . . is bleached as white as corn."); October 28, 1853 ("Just saw in the garden, in the drizzling rain, little sparrow-sized birds flitting about amid the dry corn stalks and the weeds.")

My phosphorescent wood.  See October 4, 1858 ("I saw on the sidewalk something bright like fire.");
October 5, 1858 ("My phosphorescent wood of last night still glows somewhat, but I improve it much by putting it in water. The little chips which remain in the water or sink to the bottom are like so many stars in the sky.")

October 6. See  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, October 6

Medeola leaves 

 are a pale straw-color with 

a crimson centre;

Bleached and faded corn

stands quite white in the twilight

against the dark earth.

 A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, 

 Bleached and faded corn stands quite white in the twilight.

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-581006 

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

A still, warm, cloudy, rain-threatening day.

November 30

A still, warm, cloudy, rain-threatening day. 

Surveying the J. Richardson lot. 

The air is full of geese. I saw five flocks within an hour, about 10 A. M., containing from thirty to fifty each, and afterward two more flocks, making in all from two hundred and fifty to three hundred at least, all flying southwest over Goose and Walden Ponds. The former was apparently well named Goose Pond. 

You first hear a faint honking from one or two in the northeast and think there are but few wandering there, but, looking up, see forty or fifty coming on in a more or less broken harrow, wedging their way southwest. I suspect they honk more, at any rate they are more broken and alarmed, when passing over a village, and are seen falling into their ranks again, assuming the perfect harrow form. Hearing only one or two honking, even for the seventh time, you think there are but few till you see them. 

According to my calculation a thousand or fifteen hundred may have gone over Concord to-day. When they fly low and near, they look very black against the sky. [I hear that one was killed by Lee in the Corner about this time.]

Northwest of Little Goose Pond, on the edge of Mrs. Bigelow's wood-lot, are several hornbeams (Carpinus). Looking into a cleft in one of them about three feet from the ground, which I thought might be the scar of a blazing, I found some broken kernels of corn, probably placed there by a crow or jay. This was about half a mile from a corn-field. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 30, 1857

A still, warm, cloudy, rain-threatening day. The air is full of geese all flying southwest. See November 8 , 1857 ("A warm, cloudy, rain-threatening morning. About 10 A.M. a long flock of geese are going over from northeast to southwest  . . .  In the afternoon. . .was the third flock to-day. Now if ever, then, we may expect a change in the weather."); November 13, 1855 ("Seventy or eighty geese, in three harrows successively smaller, flying southwest—pretty well west—over the house. A completely overcast, occasionally drizzling forenoon. "); November 18, 1854 (" Sixty geese go over the Great Fields, in one waving line, broken from time to time by their crowding on each other and vainly endeavoring to form into a harrow, honking all the while."); November 20, 1853 ("Methinks the geese are wont to go south just before a storm");  December 1, 1857 ("I hear of two more flocks of geese going over to-day.”)

The thing that really concerns me is not there.

November 5. 

P. M. — To the Dam Meadows. 

But little corn is left in the field now, and that looks rather black. There is an abundance of cat-tail in the Dam Meadows. 

Returning, talked with Minott. He told me how he and Harry Hooper used to go to Howard's meadow (Heywood's, by the railroad) when it was flowed and kill fishes through the ice. They would cuft a long stick and go carefully over the ice when it was only a couple of inches thick, and when they saw a fish, strike the ice smartly, cracking it in all directions, right over him, and when he turned his belly, being stunned, would cut him out quickly before he came to. These were little fishes which he called “prods.” He didn’t know much more about them. They were somewhat like a small pout, but had different heads. They got so many once that he told Harry to cut a stick and string them and they'd give them to Zilpha as they went by. He has caught pickerel in the brook there which weighed two or three pounds.

He went to Bateman’s Pond once in the winter to catch minnows with a net through the ice, but didn’t get any. He went—rode—with Oliver Williams first into Acton and then round to this pond on this errand. 

Minott was rather timid. One day early in the winter he had been over to Fair Haven Hill after a fox with John Wyman, but they didn’t get him. The pond was frozen about two inches thick, but you could easily see the water through the ice, and when they came back, Wyman said he was going straight across because it was nearer, but Minott objected. But Wyman told him to follow; it was safe enough. Minott followed half a dozen rods and then decided that he wouldn’t risk it and went back; he’d go ten miles round sooner than cross. “But,” said Minott, “the fellow kept on and I’ll be hanged if he didn’t get safe across.” 

The pitch pines generally have lost their leaves now, and the larches are fast falling. The elms have been bare some time. 

November 4, 2021

 "My thoughts are with the

 polypody a long time after 

my body has passed."

November 2, 1857

Sometimes I would rather get a transient glimpse or side view of a thing than stand fronting to it, — as those polypodies. The object I caught a glimpse of as I went by haunts my thoughts a long time, is infinitely suggestive, and I do not care to front it and scrutinize it, for I know that the thing that really concerns me is not there, but in my relation to that. That is a mere reflecting surface. 

It is not the polypody in my pitcher or herbarium, or which I may possibly persuade to grow on a bank in my yard, or which is described in botanies, that interests me, but the one that I pass by in my walks a little distance off, when in the right mood. Its influence is sporadic, wafted through the air to me. Do you imagine its fruit to stick to the back of the leaf all winter? At this season polypody is in the air. 

It is worth the while to walk in swamps now, to bathe your eyes with greenness. The terminal shield fern is the handsomest and glossiest green. 

Start up a snipe feeding in a wet part of the Dam Meadows. 

I think that the man of science makes this mistake, and the mass of mankind along with him: that you should coolly give your chief attention to the phenomenon which excites you as something independent on you, and not as it is related to you. The important fact is its effect on me. He thinks that I have no business to see anything else but just what he defines the rainbow to be, but I care not whether my vision of truth is a waking thought or dream remembered, whether it is seen in the light or in the dark. It is the subject of the vision, the truth alone, that concerns me. The philosopher for whom rainbows, etc., can be explained away never saw them. With regard to such objects, I find that it is not they themselves (with which the men of science deal) that concern me; the point of interest is somewhere between me and them (i. e. the objects). . . . 

And where does your Eastern stuff go to? Whose houses does it build? It has built Bangor, and what is the precise value of Bangor, omitting the lumber on its wharves? Western stuff is good enough for me. I think that this craving a better material than we deserve, and wasting what we get, is the secret of bankruptcy. And what is it, after all, but lumber? I do not wish to see any more poor men in rich houses. I would rather see one rich man in a poor house. No more cripples on stilts. . . . 

For a man to pride himself on this kind of wealth, as if it enriched him, is as ridiculous as if one struggling in the ocean with a bag of gold on his back should gasp out, “I am worth a hundred thousand dollars!” I see his ineffectual struggles just as plainly, and what it is that sinks him.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 5, 1857

The terminal shield fern is the handsomest and glossiest green. See October 23, 1857 ("The ferns which I can see on the bank, apparently all evergreens, are polypody at rock, marginal shield fern, terminal shield fern, and (I think it is) Aspidium spinulosum . . . The above-named evergreen ferns are so much the more conspicuous on that pale-brown ground. They stand out all at once and are seen to be evergreen; their character appears.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Evergreen Ferns, Part Three: Polypody, Marginal Shield Fern, Terminal Shield Fern

The object I caught a glimpse of as I went by haunts my thoughts a long time. See November 2, 1857 (“My thoughts are with the polypody a long time after my body has passed. ”). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Polypody

Sometimes I would rather get a transient glimpse or side view of a thing . . .  for I know that the thing that really concerns me is not there, but in my relation to that. See September 13, 1852 ("I must walk more with free senses. I must let my senses wander as my thoughts, my eyes see without looking. . . .. Go not to the object; let it come to you.”); August 7, 1853 ("The objects I behold correspond to my mood.“); May 6, 1854 ("There is no such thing as pure objective observation. Your observation, to be interesting, i. e. to be significant, must be subjective.”);  February 20, 1857 ("If I were to discover that a certain kind of stone by the pond-shore was affected, say partially disintegrated, by a particular natural sound, as of a bird or insect, I see that one could not be completely described without describing the other."); April 15, 1859 ("We are provided with singing birds and with ears to hear them . . . Whether a man's work be hard or easy, whether he be happy or unhappy, a bird is appointed to sing to a man while he is at his work.")

November 5. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, November 5

It is worth the while 

to walk in swamps now – to bathe 

your eyes with greenness.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The thing that really concerns me is not there

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-571105