It is often the unscientific man who discovers the new species.

November 20.

It is a common saying among country people that if you eat much fried hasty pudding it will make your hair curl. My experience, which was considerable, did not confirm this assertion.

Horace Hosmer was picking out to-day half a bushel or more of a different and better kind of cranberry, as he thought, separating them from the rest. They are very dark red, shaded with lighter, harder and more oblong, somewhat like the fruit of the sweet-briar or a Canada red plum, though I have no common cranberry to compare with them. He says that they grow apart from the others.

I must see him about it.

It may prove to be one more of those instances in which the farmer detects a new species and makes use of the knowledge from year to year in his profession, while the botanist expressly devoted to such investigation has failed to observe it. The farmer, in picking over many bushels of cranberries year after year, finds at length, or has forced upon his observation, a new species of that berry, and avails himself thereafter of his discovery for many years before the naturalist is aware of the fact.

Desor, who has been among the Indians at Lake Superior this summer, told me the other day that they had a particular name for each species of tree, as of the maple, but they had but one word for flowers; they did not distinguish the species of the last.

It is often the unscientific man who discovers the new species. It would be strange if it were not so. But we are accustomed properly to call that only a scientific discovery which knows the relative value of the thing discovered, uncovers a fact to mankind.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 20, 1850

It is often the unscientific man who discovers the new species.  See May 31, 1853 ("When I thought I knew the flowers so well, the beautiful purple azalea should be shown me by the hunter who found it. ") May 31, 1853 ("I went on to Melvin's house . . . I told him he had better tell me where it was; I was a botanist and ought to know.")  See also August 23, 1854 (“I find a new cranberry on the sphagnum amid the A. calyculata, — V. Oxycoccus");January 9, 1855 (“Make a splendid discovery this afternoon. Walking through Holden’s white spruce swamp, I see peeping above the snow-crust some slender delicate evergreen shoots very much like the Andromeda Polifolia, amid sphagnum, lambkill, Andromeda calyculata, blueberry bushes, etc., though there is very little to be seen above the snow. It is, I have little doubt, the Kalmia glauca var. rosmarinifolia.”); August 30, 1856 ("I have come out this afternoon a-cranberrying, chiefly to gather some of the small cranberry, Vaccinium Oxycoccus . . . I noticed also a few small peculiar-looking huckleberries hanging on bushes amid the sphagnum, and, tasting, perceived that they were hispid, a new kind to me. Gaylussacia dumosa var. hirtella .”); January 27, 1857 ("The most poetic and truest account of objects is generally by those who first observe them, or the discoverers of them, whether a sharper perception and curiosity in them led to the discovery or the greater novelty more inspired their report."); November 4, 1858 ("We cannot see any thing until we are possessed with the idea of it, and then we can hardly see anything else. In my botanical rambles I find that first the idea, or image, of a plant occupies my thoughts, though it may at first seem very foreign to this locality, and for some weeks or months I go thinking of it and expecting it unconsciously, and at length I surely see it, and it is henceforth an actual neighbor of mine. This is the history of my finding a score or more of rare plants which I could name."); November 26, 1858 (" A new species"); November 28, 1858 ("And all the years that I have known Walden these striped breams have skulked in it without my knowledge!"); November 30, 1858 ("When my eyes first rested on Walden the striped bream was poised in it, though I did not see it.. . ."How wild it makes the pond and the township to find a new fish in it!")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, November 20

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season, 

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2022

To relieve and ventilate the tree and, as well, to destroy its enemies.

December 2. 

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. 

They must be the decaying trees that are most frequented by them, and probably their work serves to relieve and ventilate the tree and, as well, to destroy its enemies.

The barberries are shrivelled and dried. I find yet cranberries hard and not touched by the frost.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 2, 1850


The woodpeckers' holes in the apple trees. See 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."); 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.") see also  Walter Harding, Walden’s Man of Science, VQR (Winter 1981) ("He mistook the distinctive hole-drilling of the yellow-bellied sapsucker for the work of the downy woodpecker,") 

I find yet cranberries hard and not touched by the frost. See August 23, 1859 ("The cranberries (not vines) are extensively frost-bitten and spoiled.");  August 29, 1858 ("We saw where many cranberries had been frost-bitten, F. thinks the night of the 23d. They are much injured."); September 20, 1851 ("The cranberries, too, are touched."); September 24, 1855 ("Some still raking, others picking, cranberries. "); December 7 , 1853 ("I sent two and a half bushels of my cranberries to Boston and got four dollars for them.")

Woodpeckers' holes in 

the apple trees are about  

half an inch apart.

These fall rains are a peculiarity of the season.

September 11. 

September 11, 2022

Genius is like the snapping-turtle born with a great developed head. 

They say our brain at birth is one sixth the weight of the body. 

Cranberries are being raked for fear of frosts. 

These fall rains are a peculiarity of the season. 

How much fresher some flowers look in rainy weather! When I thought they were about done, they appear to revive, and moreover their beauty is enhanced, as if by the contrast of the louring atmosphere with their bright colors.

Such are the purple gerardia and the Bidens cernua.

The purple gerardia and blue-curls are interesting for their petals strewn about, beaten down by the rain.

Many a brook I look into is strewn with the purple petals of the gerardia, whose stalk is not obvious in the bank. 

Again the Potentilla Canadensis var. pumila, and dandelions occasionally.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 11, 1852

Genius is like the snapping-turtle born with a great developed head. See September 11, 1854 ("It does not so much impress me as an infantile beginning of life as an epitome of all the past of turtledom and of the earth. I think of it as the result of all the turtles that have been. ")

These fall rains are a peculiarity of the season. See August 25, 1852 ("One of those serious and normal storms ~ not a shower which you can see through, not a transient cloud that drops rain ~ something regular, a fall rain, coincident with a different mood or season of the mind."); August 26, 1859 ("The first fall rain is a memorable occasion, when the river is raised and cooled, and the first crop of sere and yellow leaves falls. The air is cleared; the dog-days are over; sun-sparkles are seen on water; crickets sound more distinctt"); September 20, 1856 ("Rain in afternoon. Rain again in the night, hard."); September 20, 1857 ("This is our first fall rain, and makes a dividing line between the summer and fall."); September 20, 1860 ("Rainy in forenoon.");

The Bidens cernua. See September 11, 1851 ("Bidens cernua, or nodding burr marigold, like a small sunflower (with rays) in Heywood Brook, i. e. beggar- tick."); September 12, 1851 ("the Bidens cernua, nodding burr-marigold, with five petals"); September 12, 1859 ("The four kinds of bidens (frondosa, connata, cernua, and chrysanthemoides) abound now, . . . the third and fourth are conspicuous and interesting, expressing by their brilliant yellow the ripeness of the low grounds"); September 13, 1852 ("The great bidens in the sun in brooks affects me as the rose of the fall. They are low suns in the brook."); September 14, 1854 ("The great bidens, the flower and ornament of the riversides at present, and now in its glory,. . . Full of the sun. It needs a name."); September 15, 1856 ("What I must call Bidens cernua, like a small chrysanthemoides, is bristly hairy, somewhat connate and apparently regularly toothed"); September 19, 1851 ("Large-flowered bidens,or beggar-ticks,or bur-marigold, now abundant by riverside.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Bidens Beckii and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Great Bidens

The aspect of the meadow is sky-blue and dark-blue.

February 27

 2 P. M. — Thermometer 50.

February 27, 2015

February 27, 2020

To Abner Buttrick' s Hill. 

The river has been breaking up for several days and I now see great cakes lodged against each of the bridges, especially at Hunt's and the North Bridge, where the river flows with the wind. 

For a week or more you could not go to Ball's Hill by the south side of the river. The channel is now open, at least from our neighborhood all the way to Ball's Hill [ Yes , and upward as far as Cardinal Shore, the reach above Hubbard 's Bridge being open; thence it is mackerelled up to the pond], except the masses of ice moving in it; but the ice generally rests on the bottom of the meadows, — such as was there before the water rose, — and the freshet is for the most part covered with a thin ice except where the wind has broke it up. 

The high wind for several days has prevented this water from freezing hard. 

There are many cranberries washed far on to a large cake of ice which stretches across the river at Hunt's Bridge. The wind subsiding leaves them conspicuous on the middle of the cake. 

I noticed yesterday that the skunk-cabbage had not started yet at Well Meadow, and had been considerably frost-bitten. 

Heywood says that when the ground is regularly descending from the north to the railroad, a low fence a quarter of a mile off has been found to answer perfectly; if it slopes upward, it must be very near the road. 

I walk down the river below Flint's on the north side. 

The sudden apparition of this dark-blue water on the surface of the earth is exciting. I must now walk where I can see the most water, as to the most living part of nature. This is the blood of the earth, and we see its blue arteries pulsing with new life now. 

I see, from far over the meadows, white cakes of ice gliding swiftly down the stream, - a novel sight. They are whiter than ever in this spring sun. The abundance of light as reflected from clouds and the snow, etc., etc. is more springlike than anything of late. 

For several days the earth generally has been bare. I see the tawny and brown earth, the fescue- and lichen-clad hills behind Dakin's and A. Buttrick's. 

Among the radical leaves most common, and therefore early-noticed, are the veronica and the thistle, - green in the midst of brown and decayed; and at the bottom of little hollows in pastures, now perhaps nearly covered with ice and water, you see some greener leafets of clover. 

I find myself cut off by that arm of our meadow sea which makes up toward A. Buttrick's. The walker now by the river valley is often compelled to go far round by the water, driven far toward the farmers' door-yards.

I had noticed for some time, far in the middle of the Great Meadows, something dazzlingly white, which I took, of course, to be a small cake of ice on its end, but now that I have climbed the pitch pine hill and can overlook the whole meadow, I see it to be the white breast of a male sheldrake accompanied perhaps by his mate (a darker one). They have settled warily in the very midst of the meadow, where the wind has blown a space of clear water for an acre or two. The aspect of the meadow is sky-blue and dark-blue, the former a thin ice, the latter the spaces of open water which the wind has made, but it is chiefly ice still. Thus, as soon as the river breaks up or begins to break up fairly, and the strong wind widening the cracks makes at length open spaces in the ice of the meadow, this hardy bird appears, and is seen sailing in the first widened crack in the ice, where it can come at the water. 

Instead of a piece of ice I find it to be the breast of the sheldrake, which so reflects the light as to look larger than it is, steadily sailing this way and that with its companion, who is diving from time to time. They have chosen the opening farthest removed from all shores. As I look I see the ice drifting in upon them and contracting their water, till finally they have but a few square rods left, while there are forty or fifty acres near by. This is the first bird of the spring that I have seen or heard of.

C. saw a skater-insect on E. Hubbard's Close brook in woods to-day.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 27, 1860

The river has been breaking up for several days . . .  The channel is now open, at least from our neighborhood all the way to Ball's Hill. Compare  February 27, 1856 ( the river has been frozen solidly for seven weeks.") and February 27, 1852 ("The main river is not yet open but in very few places, but the North Branch, which is so much more rapid, is open near Tarbell's and Harrington's, where I walked to-day, and, flowing with full tide bordered with ice on either side, sparkles in the clear, cool air, This restless and now swollen stream has burst its icy fetters, and as I stand looking up it westward for half a mile, where it winds slightly under a high bank, its surface is lit up here and there with a fine-grained silvery sparkle which makes the river appear something celestial"). See also A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau,  Ice out

I noticed yesterday that the skunk-cabbage had not started yet at Well Meadow, and had been considerably frost-bitten. See February 13, 1851 ("Saw in a warm, muddy brook in Sudbury, quite open and exposed, the skunk-cabbage spathes above water. The tops of the spathes were frost- bitten, but the fruit sound. There was one partly expanded. The first flower of the season; for it is a flower. I doubt if there is [a] month without its flower. Examined by the botany all its parts, the first flower I have seen. The Ictodes fætidus.");  February 18, 1851 (" See the skunk-cabbage in flower.”); March 18, 1860   (“Skunk-cabbage, now generally and abundantly in bloom all along under Clamshell.”); March 21, 1858 (“The skunk-cabbage at Clamshell is well out, shedding pollen. The date of its flowering is very fluctuating.”); March 26, 1857 (“At Well Meadow Head, am surprised to find the skunk-cabbage in flower, . . .The first croaking frogs, the hyla, the white maple blossoms, the skunk-cabbage, and the alder’s catkins are observed about the same time.”); March 30, 1856 ("I am surprised to see the skunk cabbage, with its great spear-heads open and ready to blossom (i. e. shed pollen in a day or two)"); April 7, 1855 ("The skunk-cabbage open yesterday, — the earliest flower this season.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring: the Skunk Cabbage

White cakes of ice gliding swiftly down the stream are whiter than ever in this spring sun. The abundance of light as reflected from clouds and the snow, etc., etc. is more springlike than anything of late. See March 1, 1855 ("Banks of snow by the railroad reflect a wonderfully dazzling white due to the higher sun.")  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring; The Days have grown Sensibly Longer

The sudden apparition of this dark-blue water on the surface of the earth is exciting. I must now walk where I can see the most water, as to the most living part of nature. See February 12, 1860 ("Where the agitated surface of the river is exposed, [I see] the blue-black water. That dark-eyed water, especially when I see it at right angles with the direction of the sun, is it not the first sign of spring? How its darkness contrasts with the general lightness of the winter! It has more life in it than any part of the earth's surface. It is where one of the arteries of the earth is palpable, visible. . . .It excites me to see early in the spring that black artery leaping once more through the snow-clad town. All is tumult and life there, not to mention the rails and cranberries that are drifting in it. Where this artery is shallowest, i. e., comes nearest to the surface and runs swiftest, there it shows itself soonest and you may see its pulse beat. These are the wrists, temples, of the earth, where I feel its pulse with my eye. The living waters, not the dead earth. It is as if the dormant earth opened its dark and liquid eye upon us.") Compare March 12, 1854 ("A new feature is being added to the landscape, and that is expanses and reaches of blue water. This great expanse of deep-blue water, deeper than the sky, why does it not blue my soul as of yore? It is hard to soften me now. The time was when this great blue scene would have tinged my spirit more.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Bright Blue Water

This is the first bird of the spring that I have seen or heard of. See March 1, 1856 ("Singular that this hardy bird should have found this small opening, which I had forgotten, while the ice everywhere else was from one to two feet thick, and the snow sixteen inches on a level. , , , Ask the sheldrake whether the rivers are completely sealed up.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Merganser, Goosander)

The farmers digging potatoes on shore pause a moment to watch my sail and bending mast.

September 27

P. M. — By boat to Fair Haven Pond. Wind northeast. Sail most of the way. 

The river has gone down from its height on the 20th, and is now some eighteen inches lower, or within its banks. The front rank polygonum is uncovered and in bloom still, but its leaves generally turned a dull red. The P. hydropiperoides is apparently past prime. The P. amphibium spikes still in prime. 

When close to the bushes you do not notice any mark of the recent high water, but at a little distance you see a perfectly level line on the button-bushes and willows, about eighteen inches above the present surface, it being all dark below and warm sunny yellow above. The leaves that have been immersed are generally fallen or withered. Though the bushes may be loose and open, this water line is so perfectly level that it appears continuous. 

The farmers digging potatoes on shore pause a moment to watch my sail and bending mast. 

It is pleasant to see your mast bend in these safe waters. It is rare that the wind is so northeast that I can sail well from the railroad bridge to Clamshell Hill, as to-day.

Red maples now fairly glow along the shore. They vary from yellow to a peculiar crimson which is more red than common crimson. But these particular trees soon fade. It is the first blush which is the purest. 

See men raking cranberries now, or far away squatting in the meadows, where they are picking them. 

Grapes have begun to shrivel on their stems. They drop off on the slightest touch, and if they fall into the water are lost, going to the bottom. You see the grape leaves touched with frost curled up and looking crisp on their edges. 

The fisherman Haynes thinks that the large flock of peetweet-like birds which I saw on the meadow one fall were what he calls “black-backs.” 

What are those little birds in flocks in the garden and on the peach trees these mornings, about size of chip-birds, without distinct chestnut crowns? 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 27, 1858

The farmers digging potatoes on shore pause a moment to watch my sail and bending mast.See May 19, 1856 ("A traveller riding along the highway is watching my sail while he hums a tune.") Compare September 21, 1859 ("The farmers on all sides are digging their potatoes, so prone to their work that they do not see me going across lots.")

Red maples now fairly glow along the shore. See September 27, 1851 ("The maples by the riverside look very green yet, have not begun to blush, nor are the leaves touched by frost. Not so on the uplands"); September 27, 1855 ("Some single red maples now fairly make a show along the meadow. I see a blaze of red reflected from the troubled water."); September 27, 1857 ("Small red maples in low ground have fairly begun to burn for a week.")

Many yellow butterflies in road and fields all the country over.

September 13. 

P. M._—To Annursnack.

September 13, 2018

 Solidago puberula, apparently in prime and handsome, roadside, Colburn’s Hill. 

I noticed the black willows quite imbrowned on the 10th, and the button-bushes beginning to look yellowish. 

A. Hosmer is pleased because from the cupola of his new barn he can see a new round-topped mountain in the northwest. Is curious to know what one it is. Says that if he lived as near Annursnack as Heywood does, he should go up it once a week, but he supposes that Heywood does not go up it more than once a year. 

What is that grass still in bloom a foot or more in height in Heywood’s potato-field, some fifty rods west of house leek? It is somewhat like what I have wrongly called Danthonia spicata, but with a longer and a round spike, etc., etc. Vide press. 

There is a man there mowing the Panicum Crus-galli, which is exceedingly rank and dense, completely concealing the potatoes, which have never been hoed, it was so wet. He saves this grass and says the cattle like it well. 

I notice that the large ant-hills, though they prevent bushes and ferns from growing where they are built, keeping open a space four to seven feet wide in their midst, do not keep out grass, but they are commonly little grassy mounds with bare tops. 

Looking from the top of Annursnack, the aspect of the earth generally is still a fresh green, especially the woods, but many dry fields, where apparently the June-grass has withered uncut, are a very pale tawny or lighter still. It is fit that some animals should be nearly of this color. The cougar would hardly be observed stealing across these plains. In one place I still detect the ruddiness of sorrel. 

Euphorbia hypericifolia still, and gone to seed, on the top of Annursnack. 

From many a barn these days I hear the sound of the flail. For how many generations this sound will continue to be heard here! At least until they discover a new way of separating the chaff from the wheat.

Saw one raking cranberries on the 10th; rather early.

A small dense flock of wild pigeons dashes by over the side of the hill, from west to east, — perhaps from Wetherbee’s to Brooks’s, for I see the latter’s pigeon place. They make a dark slate-gray impression. 

Fringed gentian out well, on easternmost edge of the Painted-Cup Meadows, by wall.[Caroline Pratt tells me the 20th that her father found it out full a fortnight before that date!]

Saw a striped snake run into the wall, and just before it disappeared heard a loud sound like a hiss! I think it could hardly have been made by its tail among leaves. 

The squirrels know better than to open unsound hazelnuts. At most they only peep into them. I see some on the walls with a little hole gnawed in them, enough to show that they are empty. 

Muskmelons and squashes are turning yellow in the ‘  gardens, and ferns in the swamps. 

Hear many warbling vireos these mornings.

Many yellow butterflies in road and fields all the country over.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 13, 1858

Fringed gentian out well, on easternmost edge of the Painted-Cup Meadows, by wall. See October 12, 1857 ("To Annursnack. . . .The fringed gentian by the brook opposite is in its prime, and also along the north edge of the Painted-Cup Meadows")

Many yellow butterflies in road and fields all the country over. See September 4, 1856 ("Butterflies in road a day or two. "); September 3, 1854 (“I see some fleets of yellow butterflies in the damp road after the rain, as earlier.”); September 11, 1852 ("I see some yellow butterflies and others occasionally and singly only."); September 17, 1852 ("Still the oxalis blows, and yellow butterflies are on the flowers"); September 19, 1859 (" See many yellow butterflies in the road this very pleasant day after the rain of yesterday. One flutters across between the horse and the wagon safely enough, though it looks as if it would be run down.")

This is the true way to crack the nut of happiness.

October 29

P. M. — Down river in boat. 

Though it did not rain yesterday, as I remember, it was overcast all day, — didn’t clear up, — and this forenoon it has rained again. The sun only comes out once or twice for a moment this afternoon. [This is the fall storm.]

Accordingly, this being the seventh day of cloud and the fourth of rain (skipping yesterday), the river is very high for the season and all over the meadow in front of the house, and still rising. Many are out (as yesterday) shooting musquash. 

I see evidently what Storer calls the little brown snake (Coluber ordinatus), driven out of the grass of the meadow by the flood. Its head is raised to the surface for air, and it appears sluggish and enfeebled by the water. Putting out my paddle, it immediately coils about it and is raised into the boat. 

It has a distinct pale-pink abdomen, slightly bluish forward. Above it is pale-brown, with a still lighter brown stripe running down the middle of the back, on each side of which is a line of dark-brown spots about an eighth of an inch apart, as the two lines are also an eighth of an inch apart. This snake is about one foot long. I hold it in my hand, and it is quite inoffensive. 

The sun comes out once or twice, the water is smooth, and the cocks crow as in spring. 

As I am picking cranberries below Flint's Bridge, they being drifted against the shore together with much loose meadow wreck, I notice many crickets wrecked with them and half drowned, as well as snails’ shells. Spiders, however, are in their element. 

A flock of about eighty crows flies ramblingly over toward the sowing, cawing and loitering and making a great ado, apparently about nothing. 

I meet Goodwin and afterward Melvin. They are musquash shooting. The latter has killed nineteen to-day down stream, thirty-one yesterday up the Assabet. 

He has also a coot, which he calls a little black dipper! It has some clear white under its tail. Is this, then, the name of that dipper? and are the young dippers of Moosehead different? The latter were in flocks and had some white in front, I have said.

Melvin asked if I had seen “Pink-eye,” meaning Goodwin. 

There is a large square-sided black rock, say five or six feet high, eight long, and five wide, on Mrs. Ripley's shore, wedged close between two small elms, and your first thought on seeing it is that it has according to some law occupied that space between the trees, not reflecting that it is more ancient than the trees by a geological period, and that the latter have but recently sprung up under its protection. I thought the rock had been accurately fitted into that space. 

There are some things of which I cannot at once tell whether I have dreamed them or they are real; as if they were just, perchance, establishing, or else losing, a real basis in my world. This is especially the case in the early morning hours, when there is a gradual transition from dreams to waking thoughts, from illusions to actualities, as from darkness, or perchance moon and star light, to sunlight. 

Dreams are real, as is the light of the stars and moon, and theirs is said to be a dreamy light. Such early morning thoughts as I speak of occupy a debatable ground between dreams and waking thoughts. They are a sort of permanent dream in my mind. At least, until we have for some time changed our position from prostrate to erect, and commenced or faced some of the duties of the day, we cannot tell what we have dreamed from what we have actually experienced. 

This morning, for instance, for the twentieth time at least, I thought of that mountain in the easterly part of our town (where no high hill actually is) which once or twice I had ascended, and often allowed my thoughts alone to climb. I now contemplate it in my mind as a familiar thought which I have surely had for many years from time to time, but whether anything could have reminded me of it in the middle of yesterday, whether I ever before remembered it in broad daylight, I doubt. I can now eke out the vision I had of it this morning with my old and yesterday forgotten.

My way up used to lie through a dark and unfrequented wood at its base, - I cannot now tell exactly, it was so long ago, under what circumstances I first ascended, only that I shuddered as I went along (I have an indistinct remembrance of having been out overnight alone), — and then I steadily ascended along a rocky ridge half clad with stinted trees, where wild beasts haunted, till I lost myself quite in the upper air and clouds, seeming to pass an imaginary line which separates a hill, mere earth heaped up, from a mountain, into a superterranean grandeur and sublimity. What distinguishes that summit above the earthy line, is that it is unhandselled, awful, grand. It can never become familiar; you are lost the moment you set foot there. You know no path, but wander, thrilled, over the bare and pathless rock, as if it were solidified air and cloud. That rocky, misty summit, secreted in the clouds, was far more thrillingly awful and sublime than the crater of a volcano spouting fire. 

This is a business we can partly understand. The perfect mountain height is already thoroughly purified. It is as if you trod with awe the face of a god turned up, unwittingly but helplessly, yielding to the laws of gravity. And are there not such mountains, east or west, from which you may look down on Concord in your thought, and on all the world? In dreams I am shown this height from time to time, and I seem to have asked my fellow once to climb there with me, and yet I am constrained to believe that I never actually ascended it. It chances, now I think of it, that which makes it rises in my mind where lies the Burying-Hill. You might go through its gate to enter that dark wood, but that hill and its graves are so concealed and obliterated by the awful mountain that I never thought of them as underlying it. Might not the graveyards of the just always be hills, ways by which we ascend and overlook the plain? 

But my old way down was different, and, indeed, this was another way up, though I never so ascended. I came out, as I descended, breathing the thicker air. I came out the belt of wood into a familiar pasture, and along down by a wall. Often, as I go along the low side of this pasture, I let my thoughts ascend toward the mount, gradually entering the stinted wood (Nature subdued) and the thinner air, and drape them selves with mists. There are ever two ways up: one is through the dark wood, the other through the sunny pasture. That is, I reach and discover the mountain only through the dark wood, but I see to my surprise, when I look ofl’ between the mists from its summit, how it is ever adjacent to my native fields, nay, imminent over them, and accessible through a sunny pasture. Why is it that in the lives of men we hear more of the dark wood than of the sunny pasture? A hard-featured god reposing, whose breath hangs about his forehead. 

Though the pleasure of ascending the mountain is largely mixed with awe, my thoughts are purified and sublimed by it, as if I had been translated. 

I see that men may be well-mannered or conventionally polite toward men, but skeptical toward God. 

Forever in my dream and in my morning thought, Eastward a mount ascends; But when in the sunbeam its hard outline is sought, It all dissolves and ends. The woods that way are gates; the pastures too slope up To an unearthly ground; But when I ask my mates to take the staff and cup, It can no more be found. Perhaps I have no shoes fit for the lofty soil Where my thoughts graze, No properly spun clues, nor well-strained mid-day oil, Or must I mend my ways? It is a promised land which I have not yet earned. I have not made beginning With consecrated hand, nor have I ever learned To lay the underpinning. The mountain sinks by day, as do my lofty thoughts, Because I’m not high-minded. If I could think alway above these hills and warts, I should see it, though blinded. It is a spiral path within the pilgrim’s soul Leads to this mountain's brow; Commencing at his hearth he climbs up to this goal

We see mankind generally either (from ignorance or avarice) toiling too hard and becoming mere machines in order to acquire wealth, or perhaps inheriting it or getting it by other accident, having recourse, for relaxation after excessive toil or as a mere relief to their idle ennui, to artificial amusements, rarely elevating and often debasing. I think that men generally are mistaken with regard to amusements. 

Every one who deserves to be regarded as higher than the brute may be supposed to have an earnest purpose, to accomplish which is the object of his existence, and this is at once his work and his supremest pleasure; and for diversion and relaxation, for suggestion and education and strength, there is offered the never-failing amusement of getting a living, — never-failing, I mean, when temperately indulged in. 

I know of no such amusement, — so wholesome and in every sense profitable, —for instance, as to spend an hour or two in a day picking some berries or other fruits which will be food for the winter, or collecting driftwood from the river for fuel, or cultivating the few beans or potatoes which I want. Theatres and operas, which intoxicate for a season, are as nothing compared to these pursuits. And so it is with all the true arts of life. 

Farming and building and manufacturing and sailing are the greatest and wholesomest amusements that were ever invented (for God invented them), and I suppose that the farmers and mechanics know it, only I think they indulge to excess generally, and so what was meant for a joy becomes the sweat of the brow. Gambling, horse-racing, loafing, and rowdyism generally, after all tempt but few. 

The mass are tempted by those other amusements, of farming, etc. It is a great amusement, and more profitable than I could have invented, to go and spend an afternoon hour picking cranberries. By these various pursuits your experience becomes singularly complete and rounded. 

The novelty and significance of such pursuits are remarkable. Such is the path by which we climb to the heights of our being; and compare the poetry which such simple pursuits have inspired with the unreadable volumes which have been written about art. 

Who is the most profitable companion? He who has been picking cranberries and chopping wood, or he who has been attending the opera all his days? I find when I have been building a fence or surveying a farm, or even collecting simples, that these were the true paths to perception and enjoyment. My being seems to have put forth new roots and to be more strongly planted. This is the true way to crack the nut of happiness. 

If, as a poet or naturalist, you wish to explore a given neighborhood, go and live in it, i. e. get your living in it. Fish in its streams, hunt in its forests, gather fuel from its water, its woods, cultivate the ground, and pluck the wild fruits, etc., etc. This will be the surest and speediest way to those perceptions you covet. No amusement has worn better than farming. It tempts men just as strongly to-day as in the day of Cincinnatus. Healthily and properly pursued, it is not a whit more grave than huckleberrying, and if it takes any airs on itself as superior there's something wrong about it. 

I have aspired to practice in succession all the honest arts of life, that I may gather all their fruits. But then, if you are intemperate, if you toil to raise an unnecessary amount of corn, even the large crop of wheat be comes as a small crop of chaff. 

If our living were once honestly got, then it would be time to invent other amusements. 

After reading Ruskin on the love of Nature, I think, “Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.” He there, to my surprise, expresses the common infidelity of his age and race. He has not implicitly surrendered himself to her. And what does he substitute for that Nature? I do not know, unless it be the Church of England. Questioning whether that relation to Nature was of so much value, after all! It is sour grapes! He does not speak to the condition of foxes that have more spring in their legs. 

The love of Nature and fullest perception of the revelation which she is to man is not compatible with the belief in the peculiar revelation of the Bible which Ruskin entertains.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 29, 1857

A flock of about eighty crows flies ramblingly over toward the sowing, cawing and loitering and making a great ado, apparently about nothing. See October 29,1855 (“As I pass Merrick’s pasture, I see and count about a hundred crows advancing in a great rambling flock from the southeast and crossing the river on high, and cawing.”); November 1, 1853 ("As I return, I notice crows flying southwesterly in a very long straggling flock, of which I see probably neither end.")

The bog cranberry on the dinner table

August 5. 

Wednesday. 

To my surprise found on the dinner-table at Thatcher's the Vaccinium Oxycoccus. T. did not know it was anything unusual, but bought it at such a rate per bushel of Mr. Such-a-one, who brought it to market. They call it the "bog cranberry." I did not perceive that it differed from the common, unless that it was rather more skinny. 

T. has four rude pictures which belonged to Reuben Brown, on which is printed, "A. Doolittle sculpt," and these titles : — 
"Plate I. The Battle of Lexington April 19, 1775.” 
"Plate II. A View of the Town of Concord.” 
"Plate III. The Engagement at the North Bridge in Concord.” 
"Plate IV. A View of the South Part of Lexington.” 

Plate II is like that at Mr. Brooks's. In Plate III (you look westward) what appears to be the old Buttrick house has the upper story projecting over the lower. The French (Hoar's) house appears on the left. Another house is seen on the right of Buttrick's (?), perhaps Jarvis's. There is a wall on the south or town side of the road, where the British stood, and a large upright tree on the south side there, at the Bridge. 

P. M. — Rode to Old Fort Hill at the bend of the Penobscot some three miles above Bangor, to look for the site of the Indian town, — perhaps the ancient Negas? [Willis puts it on the Kenduskeag.] Found several arrowheads and two little dark and crumbling fragments of Indian earthenware, like black earth.

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

To my surprise found on the dinner-table at Thatcher's the Vaccinium Oxycoccus. See August 30, 1856 ("I have come out this afternoon a-cranberrying, chiefly to gather some of the small cranberry, Vaccinium Oxycoccus . . .“); August 23, 1854 (“I find a new cranberry on the sphagnum amid the A. calyculata, — V. Oxycoccus . . .It has small, now purplish-dotted fruit, flat on the sphagnum, some turned scarlet partly, on terminal peduncles, with slender, thread-like stems and small leaves strongly revolute on the edges.”

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

 

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

April true.

April 1. 

8 A. M. —Up Assabet. 

See an Emys guttata sunning on the bank. I had forgotten whether I ever saw it in this river. 

Hear a phoebe, and this morning the tree sparrows sing very sweetly about Keyes’s arbor-vitae and Cheney’s pines and apple trees. 

Crow blackbirds. I think it must have been these I saw the 29th of March. 

Checkerberries very fair and abundant now near Muhlenbergii Brook, contrasting with the red-brown leaves. They are not commonly touched by the frost.

I see children picking spring cranberries in the meadows. 

It is a true April evening, feeling and looking as if it would rain, and already I hear a robin or two singing their evening song.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 1, 1857

I had forgotten whether I ever saw it [Emys guttata] in this river. See  March 28, 1857 (“Do I ever see a yellow-spot turtle in the river? Do I ever see a wood tortoise in the South Branch?”)

Hear a phoebe . . . See April 1, 1859 (“[U]p the Assabet, I see my first phoebe, the mild bird. It flirts its tail and sings pre vit, pre vit, pre vit, pre vit incessantly, as it sits over the water, and then at last, rising on the last syllable, says pre-VEE, as if insisting on that with peculiar emphasis. “); April 6, 1856 ("What confidence after the lapse of many months, I come out to this waterside, some warm and pleasant spring morning, and, listening, hear, from farther or nearer, through the still concave of the air, the note of the first pewee!")

Checkerberries very fair and abundant now near Muhlenbergii Brook. . . See October 15, 1856 (“An abundance of checkerberries by the hemlock at V. Muhlenbergii Brook. A remarkable year for berries.”)

A true April evening, feeling and looking as if it would rain, and already I hear a robin or two singing their evening song. See April 2, 1854 ("Sitting on the rail over the brook, I hear something which reminds me of the song of the robin in rainy days in past springs.”): April 1, 1854 ("The robin now begins to sing sweet powerfully. . . .April has begun like itself. It is warm and showery, while I sail away with a light southwest wind toward the Rock.”); April 1, 1855 (The month comes in true to its reputation.  . . .warm rain on the roof, and . . .the puddles shining in the road. “)

Late flowers, berries and changing leaves

October 2

P. M. — To Cliffs via Hubbard's meadow. 

Succory still, with its cool blue, here and there, and Hieracium Canadense still quite fresh, with its very pretty broad strap-shaped rays, broadest at the end, alternately long and short, with five very regular sharp teeth in the end of each. 

The scarlet leaves and stem of the rhexia, some time out of flower, makes almost as bright a patch in the meadow now as the flowers did, with its bristly leaves. Its seed-vessels are perfect little cream-pitchers of graceful form. 

The mountain sumach now a dark scarlet quite generally. 

The prinos berries are in their prime, seven sixteenths of an inch in diameter. They are scarlet, some what lighter than the arum berries. They are now very fresh and bright, and what adds to their effect is the perfect freshness and greenness of the leaves amid which they are seen. 

Gerardia purpurea still. 

Brakes in Hubbard's Swamp Wood are withered, quite dry. 

Solidago speciosa completely out, though not a flower was out September 27th, or five days ago; say three or four days. 

The river is still higher, owing to the rain of September 30th, partly covering the meadows; yet they are endeavoring to rake cranberries. After all, I perceive that in some places the greatest injury done by the water to these berries has probably been that it prevented their ripening, but generally it has been by softening them. They carry them home, spread, and dry them, and pick out the spoilt ones. One gets only fifty bushels where he would have had two hundred. 

Eupatorium purpureum is generally done. 

Now and then I see a Hypericum Canadense flower still. The leaves, etc., of this and the angulosum are turned crimson. 

I am amused to see four little Irish boys only five or six years old getting a horse in a pasture, for their father apparently, who is at work in a neighboring field. They have all in a row got hold of a very long halter and are leading him. All wish to have a hand in it. It is surprising that he obeys such small specimens of humanity, but he seems to be very docile, a real family horse. At length, by dint of pulling and shouting, they get him into a run down a hill, and though he moves very deliberately, scarcely faster than a walk, all but the one at the end of the line soon cut and run to right and left, without having looked be hind, expecting him to be upon them. They haul up at last at the bars, which are down, and then the family puppy, a brown pointer, about two-thirds grown, comes bounding to join them and assist. He is as youthful and about as knowing as any of them. The horse marches gravely behind, obeying the faint tug at the halter, or honestly stands still from time to time, as if not aware that they are pulling at all, though they are all together straining every nerve to start him. It is interesting to behold this faithful beast, the oldest and wisest of the company, thus implicitly obeying the lead of the youngest and weakest.

The second lechea radical shoots are one inch long. 

Solidago bicolor considerably past prime. Corydalis still fresh. 

Saw apparently two phœbes on the tops of the dry mulleins. Why so rarely seen for so many months?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 2, 1856

The mountain sumach now a dark scarlet quite generally. See October 2, 1853 (“The smooth sumach is but a dull red.”)

The prinos berries are in their prime. See September 2, 1852 ("The red prinos berries ripe in sunny places.");September 5, 1858 ; September 11, 1859 ("The prinos berries are now seen, red (or scarlet), clustered along the stems, amid the as yet green leaves. A cool red."); September 12, 1851 ("The prinos berries are pretty red."); September 21, 1856 ("Prinos berries."); September 23, 1854 ("Very brilliant and remarkable now are the prinos berries, so brilliant and fresh when most things -- flowers and berries -- have withered.”);  September 25, 1859 ("Prinos berries are fairly ripe for a few days"); September 28, 1856 ("How many fruits are scarlet now! — barberries, prinos, etc.");  September 28, 1851 ("The swamp is bordered with the red-berried alder, or prinos.")  

[Prinos: Ilex verticillata (Prinos verticillatus) Black Alder. Winterberry. Feverbush.
Common winterberry is a shrub usually from 6 to 8 feet high (sometimes much higher) with grayish bark and smooth twigs. The leaves are from 2 to 3 inches long and about an inch wide. They are usually rather thick and sharply toothed. In autumn the leaves turn black. The flowers which appear from May to July, are small and white, the male clusters consisting of 2 to 10 flowers and the female clusters of only 1 to 3. The bright-red, shining fruits about the size of a pea and each containing about six seeds, are clustered around the stem. Branches and twigs of this plant with their bright-red berries are a familiar sight during the Christmas season when they are much used for decorative purposes.]

Solidago bicolor considerably past prime. See August 12, 1852 ("Solidago bicolor, white goldenrod, apparently in good season");  September 21, 1856 ("White goldenrod, now in its prime and swarming with honey-bees.");  October 8, 1856 ("S. bicolor in some places, are common still");   October 11, 1856 ("The white goldenrod is still common here, and covered with bees.");   October 26, 1852 ("The blue-stemmed and white goldenrod apparently survive till winter. – push up and blossom anew.") 

Two phœbes on the tops of the dry mulleins. Why so rarely seen for so many months? See  August 26, 1854 ("I hear part of a phoebe's strain, as I go over the railroad bridge. It is the voice of dying summer."); September 10, 1854 ("Heard my last phoebe August 26th. ")  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Phoebe

October 2. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  October 2

Bright scarlet berries –

prinos in their prime now seen

amid fresh green leaves.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  Bright Scarlet Berries

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2026

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