There was nothing but she.

June 19.

The other day I rowed in my boat a free, even lovely young lady, and, as I plied the oars, she sat in the stern, and there was nothing but she between me and the sky.

Ellen Sewall

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 19, 1840

See  October 27, 1851 ("She who was as the morning light to me is now neither the morning star nor the evening star.");  See also To the Maiden in the East from The Dial (October 1842) and A Week:

On this same stream a maiden once sailed in my boat, thus unattended but by invisible guardians, and as she sat in the prow there was nothing but herself between the steersman and the sky. I could then say with the poet: 

"Sweet falls the summer air
Over her frame who sails with me;
Her way like that is beautifully free,
Her nature far more rare,
And is her constant heart of virgin purity."

At evening still the very stars seem but this maiden's emissaries and reporters of her progress. 

Low in the eastern sky 

Is set thy glancing eye; 

And though its gracious light 

Ne'er riseth to my sight 

Yet every star that climbs 

Above the gnarled limbs 

          Of yonder hill, 

Conveys thy gentle will.

 
Believe I knew thy thought, 

And that the zephyrs brought 

Thy kindest wishes through, 

As mine they bear to you, 

That some attentive cloud 

Did pause amid the crowd 

          Over my head, 

While gentle things were said.

 
Believe the thrushes sung, 

And that the flower bells rung, 

That herbs exhaled their scent, 

And beasts knew what was meant, 

The trees a welcome waved, 

And lakes their margins laved, 

          When thy free mind 

To my retreat did wind.

 
It was a summer eve, 

The air did gently heave, 

While yet a low hung cloud 

Thy eastern skies did shroud; 

The lightning's silent gleam, 

Startling my drowsy dream, 

          Seemed like the flash

Under thy dark eyelash.

 
Still will I strive to be 

As if thou wert with me; 

Whatever path I take, 

It shall be for thy sake, 

Of gentle slope and wide 

As thou wert by my side, 

          Without a root 

To trip thy gentle foot .

 
I'll walk with gentle pace, 

And choose the smoothest place, 

And careful dip the oar 

And shun the winding shore, 

And gently steer my boat 

Where water lilies float 

          And cardinal flowers 

Stand in their sylvan bower.

"I have always loved her." ~ HDT to his sister Sophia, as quoted  in 1962 by Ellen Sewell''s daughter,, Louise Osgood Koopman  in . "The Thoreau Romance". 

A-chestnutting with four ladies.

January 10. 

Went a-chestnutting this afternoon to Smith's wood-lot near the Turnpike. 

Carried four ladies. I raked. We got six and a half quarts, the ground being bare and the leaves not frozen. 

The fourth remarkably mild day. 

I found thirty-five chestnuts in a little pile under the end of a stick under the leaves, near — within a foot of — what I should call a gallery of a meadow mouse. These galleries were quite common as I raked. 

There was no nest nor apparent cavity about this store. Aunt M. found another with sixteen in it.

Many chestnuts are still in the burs on the ground. 

Aunt found a twig which had apparently fallen prematurely, with eight small burs, all within the compass of its five or six inches, and all but one full of nuts. 

The galleries above named were evidently permanent and not made by one trip.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 10, 1853


Went a-chestnutting this afternoon carried four ladies.See August 12, 1853 ("To Conantum by boat, berrying, with three ladies.): August 4, 1856 ("Carried party a-berrying to Conantum in boat."); September 25, 1858 ("Go a-graping up Assabet with some young ladies.").

Aunt found a twig with eight small burs, and all but one full of nuts. See October 18, 1856  ("Within this thick prickly bur the nuts are about as safe until they are quite mature, as a porcupine behind its spines."); October 24, 1857 ("To Smith's chestnut grove. . . . I get a couple of quarts of chestnuts by patiently brushing the thick beds of leaves aside with my hand in successive concentric circles till I reach the trunk; . . .It is best to reduce it to a system. Of course you will shake the tree first, if there are any on it. The nuts lie commonly two or three together, as they fell. . . .As I go stooping and brushing the leaves aside by the hour, I am not thinking of chestnuts merely, but I find myself humming a thought of more significance."); December 27, 1852 ("Found chestnuts quite plenty to-day."); December 31, 1852("I was this afternoon gathering chestnuts at Saw Mill Brook. I have within a few weeks spent some hours thus, scraping away the leaves with my hands and feet over some square rods, and have at least learned how chestnuts are planted and new forests raised."); January 25, 1853 ("I still pick chestnuts.")

January 10. 

See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 10

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

Observed the spiders at work at the head of Willow Bay.

September 26.

P. M. — To Clamshell by boat. 

climbing nightshade/bittersweet 

(Solanum dulcamara)

The Solanum dulcamara berries are another kind which grows in drooping clusters. I do not know any clusters more graceful and beautiful than these drooping cymes of scarlet or translucent cherry-colored elliptical berries with steel-blue (or lead?) purple pedicels (not peduncles) like those leaves on the tips of the branches. These in the water at the bend of the river are peculiarly handsome, they are so long an oval or ellipse. No berries, methinks, are so well spaced and agreeably arranged in their drooping cymes, — some what hexagonally like a honeycomb. Then what a variety of color! The peduncle and its branches are green, the pedicels and sepals only that rare steel-blue purple, and the berries a clear translucent cherry red. They hang more gracefully over the river's brim than any pendants in a lady's ear. The cymes are of irregular yet regular form, not too crowded, elegantly spaced. 

Yet they are considered poisonous! Not to look at, surely. Is it not a reproach that so much that is beautiful is poisonous to us? Not in a stiff, flat cyme, but in different stages above and around, finding ample room in space. But why should they not be poisonous? Would it not be in bad taste to eat these berries which are ready to feed another sense? 

A drooping berry should always be of an oval or pear shape. Nature not only produces good wares, but puts them up handsomely. Witness these pretty-colored and variously shaped skins in which her harvests, the seeds of her various plants, are now being packed away. I know in what bags she puts her nightshade seeds, her cranberries, viburnums, cornels, by their form and color, often by their fragrance; and thus a legion of consumers find them. 

The celtis berries are still green. 

The pontederia is fast shedding its seeds of late. I saw a parcel suddenly rise to the surface of their own accord, leaving the axis nearly bare. Many are long since bare. They float, at present, but probably sink at last. There are a great many floating amid the pads and in the wreck washed up, of these singular green spidery(?)-looking seeds. Probably they are the food of returning water-fowl. They are ripe, like the seeds of different lilies, at the time the fowl return from the north. 

I hear a frog or two, either palusiris or halecina, croak and work faintly, as in spring, along the side of the river. So it is with flowers, birds, and frogs a renewal of spring. 

Hearing a sharp phe-phe and again phe-phe-phe, I look round and see two (probably larger) yellow-legs, like pigeons, standing in the water by the bare, flat ammannia shore, their whole forms reflected in the water. They allow me to paddle past them, though on the alert. 

Heavy Haynes says he has seen one or two fish hawks within a day or two. Also that a boy caught a very large snapping turtle on the meadow a day or two ago. He once dug one up two or three feet deep in the meadow in winter when digging mud. He was rather dormant. Says he remembers a fish-house that stood by the river at Clamshell. 

Observed the spiders at work at the head of Willow Bay. Their fine lines are extended from one flag or bur-reed to another, even six or eight feet, perfectly parallel with the surface of the water and only a few inches above it. I see some, — though it requires a very favorable light to detect them, they are so fine, — blowing off perfectly straight horizontally over the water, only half a dozen inches above it, as much as seven feet, one end fastened to a reed, the other free. They look as stiff as spears, yet the free end waves back and forth horizontally in the air several feet. They work thus in calm and fine weather when the water is smooth. Yet they can run over the surface of the water readily. 

The savage in man is never quite eradicated. I have just read of a family in Vermont who, several of its members having died of consumption, just burned the lungs, heart, and liver of the last deceased, in order to prevent any more from having it. 

How feeble women, or rather ladies, are! They can not bear to be shined on, but generally carry a parasol to keep off the sun.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 26, 1859

The Solanum dulcamara berries are another kind which grows in drooping clusters. See September 4, 1859 ("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.")

But why should they not be poisonous? Would it not be in bad taste to eat these berries which are ready to feed another sense? See September 3, 1853 ("Now is the season for those comparatively rare but beautiful wild berries which are not food for man . [I]t is strange that we do not devote an hour in the year to gathering those which are beautiful to the eye. It behooves me to go a-berrying in this sense once a year at least.")

They are ripe, like the seeds of different lilies, at the time the fowl return from the north. See September 13, 1859 ("The pontederia spike is now generally turned downward beneath the water . . So, too, probably (for I do not see them) the yellow and white lilies are ripening their seeds in the water and mud beneath the surface.")

So it is with flowers, birds, and frogs a renewal of spring. See September 16, 1852 (“Some birds, like some flowers, begin to sing again in the fall.”); September 28, 1852 ("This is the commencement, then, of the second spring."):  October 23, 1853 ("Many phenomena remind me that now is to some extent a second spring, — not only the new-springing and blossoming of flowers, but the peeping of the hylodes for some time, and the faint warbling of their spring notes by many birds.") and note to October 10, 1856 ("Indian summer itself is a similar renewal of the year, with the faint warbling of birds and second blossoming of flowers.")

Hearing a sharp phe-phe and again phe-phe-phe, I look round and see two (probably larger) yellow-legs. See August 5, 1855 ("Hear a yellow-legs flying over,—phe' phe phe, phe' phe phe.”); September 14, 1854 ("A flock of thirteen tell tales, great yellow-legs, start up with their shrill whistle from the midst of the great Sudbury meadow, and away they sail in a flock. . .to alight in a more distant place.”);September 25, 1858 ("Melvin says . . . that he sometimes sees the larger yellow-legs here. Goodwin also"); October 20, 1859 ("Scare up a yellow-legs, apparently the larger, on the shore of Walden. It goes off with a sharp phe phe, phe phe.")

Observed the spiders at work at the head of Willow Bay. Their fine lines are extended from one flag or bur-reed to another, even six or eight feet, perfectly parallel with the surface of the water and only a few inches above it. Compare September 12, 1858 ("In Hubbard’s ditched meadow, this side his grove, I see a great many large spider’s webs stretched across the ditches, about two feet from bank to bank, though the thick woven part is ten or twelve inches. They are parallel, a few inches or a foot or more apart, and more or less vertical, and attached to a main cable stretched from bank to bank. They are the yellow-backed spider, commonly large and stout but of various sizes. I count sixty-four such webs there, and in each case the spider occupies the centre, head downward.")

September 26. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, September 26

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

Go a-graping up Assabet with some young ladies.

September 25. 

A smart white frost last night, which has killed the sweet potato vines and melons. 

P. M. — Go a-graping up Assabet with some young ladies. 

The zizania fruit is green yet, but mostly dropped or plucked. Does it fall, or do birds pluck it? 

The Gentiana Andrewsii are now in prime at Gentian Shore. Some are turned dark or reddish-purple with age. 

There is a very red osier-like cornel on the shore by the stone-heaps. 

Edward Hoar says he found last year Datum Stramomlum in their garden. Add it, then, to our plants. 

In the evening Mr. Warren brings me a snipe and a pectoral sandpiper. This last, which is a little less than the snipe but with a longer wing, must be much like T. solitarius, and I may have confounded them. The shaft of the first primary is conspicuously white above. 

The catbird still mews occasionally, and the chewink is heard faintly. 

Melvin says he has found the pigeon hawk’s nest here (distinct from partridge hawk’s); also that he sometimes sees the larger yellow-legs here. Goodwin also says the last.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 25, 1858

Go a-graping up Assabet with some young ladies. See August 12, 1853 ("To Conantum by boat, berrying, with three ladies.")

The Gentiana Andrewsii are now in prime at Gentian Shore. See  August 29, 1858  ("Gentiana Andrewsii, one not quite shedding pollen.")

The catbird still mews occasionally, and the chewink is heard faintly. See October 4, 1857 ("Hear a catbird and chewink, both faint."); also September 21, 1854 ("Hear the chewink and the cluck of the thrasher.");  September 25, 1855 ("Meanwhile the catbird mews in the alders by my side"); September 21, 1856 ("I hear of late faint chewink notes in the shrubbery, as if they were meditating their strains in a subdued tone against another year."); ; September 19, 1858 ("Hear a chewink’s chewink. But how ineffectual is the note of a bird now! We hear it as if we heard it not, and forget it immediately.")

Melvin says that he sometimes sees the large yellow-legs here. See September 14, 1854 ("A flock of thirteen tell tales, great yellow-legs, start up with their shrill whistle from the midst of the great Sudbury meadow")

Two ladies in a boat and a profusion of berries

August 4

P. M. — Carried party a-berrying to Conantum in boat. 

Lespedeza violacea, perhaps the largest-leafed variety, leafets one inch by one third inch, petioled, well out on side of Blackberry Steep. 

Scare up a young apparently summer duck, floating amid the pads, and the same again, coming within gunshot. I think it young because it is not very shy. 

Have heard the alder cricket some days. The turning-point is reached. 

Conantum hillside is now literally black with berries. What a profusion of this kind of food Nature provides, as if to compensate for the scarcity last year!

Fortunate that these cows in their pasture do not love them, but pass them by. The blackberries are already softening, and of all kinds there are many, many more than any or all creatures can gather. They are literally five or six species deep. 

• First, away down in the shade under all you find, still fresh, the great very light blue (i. e. with a very thick blue bloom) Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum in heavy clusters, that early ambrosial fruit, delicate-flavored, thin-skinned, and cool, — Olympian fruit; 
• then, next above, the still denser bunches and clusters of V. vacillans, of various varieties, firm and sweet, solid food; 
• and, rising above these, large blue and also shining black huckleberries (Gaylussacia resinosa) of various flavors and qualities; 
• and over all runs rampant the low blackberry (Rubus Canadensis), weighing down the thicket with its wreaths of black fruit. 
• Also here and there the high blackberry, just beginning, towers over all. 

You go daintily wading through this thicket, picking, perchance, only the biggest of the blackberries — as big as your thumb — and clutching here and there a handful of huckleberries or blueberries, but never, perchance, suspecting the delicious cool blue-bloomed ones under all.  This favorable moist weather has expanded some of the huckleberries to the size of bullets. 

Each patch, each bush, seems fuller and blacker than the last. Such a profusion, yet you see neither birds nor beasts eating them, unless ants and the huckleberry-bug! 

I carried my hands full of bushes to the boat, and, returning, the two ladies picked fully three pints from these alone, casting the bare bushes into the stream.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 4, 1856

Carried party a-berrying to Conantum in boat. See August 12, 1853 ("To Conantum by boat, berrying, with three ladies."); September 25, 1858 Go a-graping up Assabet with some young ladies. See also September 16, 1859 ("Ask me for a certain number of dollars if you will, but do not ask me for my afternoons."); September 26, 1859 ("How feeble women, or rather ladies, are! They can not bear to be shined on, but generally carry a parasol to keep off the sun.")

Lespedeza violacea, perhaps the largest-leafed variety, . . . well out. See August 5, 1855 ("The common small violet lespedeza out, elliptic leaved, one inch long.”); August 13, 1856 (“In Bittern Cliff Woods that (apparently) very oblong elliptical leafed Lespedeza violacea, growing very loose and open on a few long petioles, one foot high by four or five inches wide.")

the scarcity last year. .See August 7, 1855 ("To Tarbell Hill again with the Emersons, a-berrying. Very few berries this year.")

Have heard the alder cricket some days. The turning-point is reached. See August 4, 1851 ("I hear the note of a cricket, and am penetrated with the sense of autumn."); August 4, 1852 (“I hear the cricket. He seems to chirp from a new depth toward autumn, new lieferungs of the fall.”); August 15, 1852 ("That clear ring like an alder locust (is it a cricket ?) for some time past is a sound which belongs to the season.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Cricket in August

Conantum hillside is now literally black with berries. See August 4, 1852 (“Most huckleberries and blueberries and low blackberries are in their prime now.”); August 4, 1854 ("On this hill (Smith's) the bushes are black with huckleberries. ...Now in their prime. Some glossy black, some dull black, some blue; and patches of Vaccinium vacillans intermixed.") Compare July 26, 1854 ("Almost every bush now offers a wholesome and palatable diet to the wayfarer, — large and dense clusters of Vaccinium vacillans, largest in most moist ground, sprinkled with the red ones not ripe; great high blueberries, some nearly as big as cranberries, of an agreeable acid; huckleberries of various kinds, some shining black, some dull-black, some blue; and low blackberries of two or more varieties. The broods of birds just matured find thus plenty to eat.")

August 4. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  August 4 

The low blackberry

weighing down the thicket with  

wreaths of black fruit.

Such a profusion

each patch each bush seems fuller – 

blacker than the last.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025

Now at last, methinks, the most melting season of this year.

August 12

August 12, 2013

To Conantum by boat, berrying, with three ladies. You now see and hear no red-wings along the river as in spring. 

See the blue herons opposite Fair Haven Hill, as if they had bred here. 

This and the last day or two very hot. Now at last, methinks, the most melting season of this year, though I think it is hardly last year's bathing time, because the water is higher. There is very little air over the water, and when I dip my head in it for coolness, I do not feel any coolness.

Carry watermelons for drink. What more refreshing and convenient! This richest wine in a convenient cask, and so easily kept cool! No foreign wines could be so grateful. If you would cool a watermelon, do not put it in water, which keeps the heat in, but cut it open and set it in a cellar or in the shade. If you have carriage, carry these green bottles of wine.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 12, 1853

To Conantum by boat, berrying, with three ladies. See August 4, 1856 ("Carried party a-berrying to Conantum in boat.")

See the blue herons opposite Fair Haven Hill, as if they had bred here. See August 24, 1854 ("See a blue heron standing on the meadow at Fair Haven Pond. "); and note to August 19, 1858 ("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")