From Strawberry Hill the first glimpse of Nagog Pond.

September 6

September 6, 2022

2 P. M. — To Hapgood's in Acton direct, returning via Strawberry Hill and Smith's Road.

The ripening grapes begin to fill the air with their fragrance.

The vervain will hardly do for a clock, for I perceive that some later and smaller specimens have not much more than begun to blossom, while most have done.

Saw a tall pear tree by the roadside beyond Harris's in front of Hapgood's.

Saw the lambkill (Kalmia angustifolia) in blossom – a few fresh blossoms at the ends of the fresh twigs-on Strawberry Hill, beautiful bright flowers. Apparently a new spring with it, while seed vessels apparently of this year, hung dry below.

From Strawberry Hill the first, but a very slight, glimpse of Nagog Pond by standing up on the wall. That is enough to relate of a hill, methinks, that its elevation gives you the first sight of some distant lake.

The horizon is remarkably blue with mist this afternoon. Looking from this hill over Acton, successive valleys filled with blue mist appear, and divided by darker lines of wooded hills.

The shadows of the elms are deepened, as if the whole atmosphere were permeated by floods of ether.

Annursnack never looked so well as now seen from this hill.

The ether gives a velvet softness to the whole landscape. The hills float in it. A blue veil is drawn over the earth.

The elecampane (Inula Helenium) with its broad leaves wrinkled underneath and the remains of sunflower-like blossoms, in front of Nathan Brooks's, Acton, and near J. H. Wheeler's.

Prenanthes alba; this Gray calls Nabalus albus, white lettuce or rattlesnake-root. Also I seem (?) to have found Nabalus Fraseri, or lion's foot.

Every morning for a week there has been a fog which all disappeared by seven or eight o'clock.

A large field of sunflowers for hens now in full bloom at Temple's, surrounding the house, and now, at 6 o'clock P. M., facing the east.

The larches in the front yards, both Scotch and American, have turned red. Their fall has come.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 6, 1851

The ripening grapes begin to fill the air with their fragrance. See August 29, 1853 ("Walking down the street in the evening, I detect my neighbor’s ripening grapes by the scent twenty rods off"); August 29, 1859 ("The very earliest ripe grapes begin to be scented in the cool nights "); September 8, 1854 (I bring home a half-bushel of grapes to scent my chamber with"; September 8, 1858 (“Gather half my grapes, which for some time have perfumed the house.”)

The vervain will hardly do for a clock. Compare August 21, 1851 ("It is very pleasant to measure the progress of the season by this and similar clocks. So you get, not the absolute time, but the true time of the season.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Blue Vervain

Saw the lambkill (Kalmia angustifolia) in blossom. See September 10, 1857 ("I see lambkill ready to bloom a second time. Saw it out on the 20th; how long?"); September 19, 1852 ("The Viola lanceolata has blossomed again, and the lambkill. "); September 28, 1852 ("This is the commencement, then, of the second spring. Violets, Potentilla Canadensis, lambkill, wild rose, yellow lily, etc., etc., begin again"); September 29, 1853 ("Lambkill blossoms again.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Lambkill (Kalmia augustifolia)

Nabalus albus, white lettuce or rattlesnake-root. Also I seem (?) to have found Nabalus Fraseri, or lion's foot. See August 27, 1858 ("The Nabalus albus has been out some ten days, but N. Fraseri at Walden road will not open, apparently, for some days yet."); September 13, 1857 ("Nabalus Fraseri, top of Cliffs, — a new plant, — yet in prime and not long out. The nabalus family generally, apparently now in prime")

From Strawberry Hill the first, but a very slight, glimpse of Nagog Pond . See July 6, 1851 ("The distant hills look unusually near in this atmosphere. Acton meeting-houses seen to stand on the side of some hills, Nagog or Nashoba, beyond, as never before."); August 15, 1854 ("Cross from top of Annursnack to top of Strawberry Hill. The locomotive whistle, far southwest, sounds like a bell. From Strawberry Hill we steer northeast . . . We are completely lost, and see not one familiar object. At length see steeples which we think Westford, but the monument proves it Acton."); January 30, 1860 ("I see, when I look over our landscape from any eminence as far as the horizon, certain rounded hills, amid the plains and ridges and cliffs, which have a marked family likeness, like eggs that belong to one nest though scattered. They suggest a relation geologically. Such are, for instance, Nashoba, Annursnack, Nawshawtuct, and Ponkawtasset, all which have Indian names, as if the Indian, too, had regarded them as peculiarly distinct. There is also Round Hill in Sudbury, and perhaps a hill in Acton")

Looking from this hill over Acton, successive valleys filled with blue mist appear, and divided by darker lines of wooded hills. See November 9, 1851 ("To-day the mountains seen from the pasture above are dark blue, so dark that they look like new mountains and make a new impression, and the intervening town of Acton is seen against them in a new relation, a new neighborhood.")

The shadows of the elms are deepened. See June 2, 1852 ("The elms now hold a good deal of shade and look rich and heavy with foliage. You see darkness in them.")

I scare up large flocks of sparrows in the garden.

September 23

Notwithstanding the fog, the fences this morning are covered with so thick a frost that you can write your name anywhere with your nail.

The partridge and the rabbit, — they still are sure to thrive like true natives of the soil, whatever revolutions occur. If the forest is cut off, many bushes spring up which afford them concealment, and they become more numerous than ever.

The sumach are among the reddest leaves at present.

The telegraph harp sounds strongly to-day, in the midst of the rain. I put my ear to the trees and I hear it working terribly within, and anon it swells into a clear tone, which seems to concentrate in the core of the tree, for all the sound seems to proceed from the wood. It is if you had entered some world - famous cathedral, resounding to some vast organ.

The fibres of all things have their tension, and are strained like the strings of a lyre. I feel the very ground tremble under my feet as I stand near the post. This wire vibrates with great power, as if it would strain and rend the wood.

What an awful and fateful music it must be to the worms in the wood! No better vermifuge were needed. No danger that worms will attack this wood; such vibrating music would thrill them to death.

I scare up large flocks of sparrows in the garden.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 23, 1851

The partridge and the rabbit, — they still are sure to thrive like true natives of the soil, whatever revolutions occur. See  February 14, 1856 ("In all the little valleys in the woods and sprout-lands, and on the southeast sides of hills, the oak leaves which have blown over the crust are gathered in dry and warm-looking beds. . . No doubt they are of service to conceal and warm the rabbit and partridge and other beasts and birds."); March 17, 1860 ("The rabbit and partridge can eat wood; therefore they abound and can stay here all the year."); November 18, 1851 (".Here hawks also circle by day, and chickadees are heard, and rabbits and partridges abound. . . .You must be conversant with things for a long time to know much about them,. . . as the partridge and the rabbit are acquainted with the thickets and at length have acquired the color of the places they frequent."); Walden (" All day the sun has shone on the surface of some savage swamp, where the single spruce stands hung with usnea lichens, and small hawks circulate above, and the chickadee lisps amid the evergreens, and the partridge and rabbit skulk beneath”); December 1, 1856 ("Well named shrub oak. Low, robust, hardy, indigenous. Well known to the striped squirrel and the partridge and rabbit"); December 11, 1854 ("A gray rabbit scuds away over the crust in the swamp on the edge of the Great Meadows beyond Peter’s. A partridge goes off, and, coming up, I see where she struck the snow first with her wing,"); December 11, 1858 ("Already, in hollows in the woods and on the sheltered sides of hills, the fallen leaves are collected in small heaps on the snow-crust, simulating bare ground and helping to conceal the rabbit and partridge, etc"); December 31, 1855 ("I see many partridge-tracks in the light snow, where they have sunk deep amid the shrub oaks; also gray rabbit and deer mice tracks");

.

I scare up large flocks of sparrows in the garden. See August 25, 1859 ("I see, after the rain, when the leaves are rustling and glistening in the cooler breeze and clear air, quite a flock of (apparently) Fringilla socialis in the garden"); September 1, 1854 (" A still, cloudy, misty day, through which has fallen a very little rain this forenoon already. Now I notice a few faint-chipping sparrows, busily picking the seeds of weeds in the garden."); September 17, 1858 ("Methinks, too, that there are more sparrows in flocks now about in garden, etc");September 25, 1859 (" The very crab-grass in our garden is for the most part a light straw-color and withered. . . and hundreds of sparrows (chip-birds ?) find their food amid it. "); October 2, 1858 ("The garden is alive with migrating sparrows these mornings")

Fog

November 18. 

Fog this morning and yesterday morning, lasting till about 10 A. M.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 18, 1859

[and more on John Brown]

What is that small conyza-like aster,?

July 19. 

Clematis has been open a day or two. 

The alisma will open to-morrow or next day. 

This morning a fog and cool.

What is that small conyza-like aster, with flaccid linear leaves, in woods near Boiling Spring? 

Some woodbine, cultivated, apparently long since flowered. The same of some on Lee's Cliff, where it is early.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 19, 1853

Clematis has been open a day or two. See July 14, 1853 ('The Clematis  [by the Heywood Brook](near the water-plantain) will open in a day or two.")

This morning a fog and cool. See July 22, 1851 ("The season of morning fogs has arrived. . . .These are our fairest days, which are born in a fog."); July 22, 1854 ("Fogs almost every morning now."); July 25, 1852 ("the sun having risen, I see great wreaths of fog far northeast, revealing the course of the river.")

What is that small conyza-like aster, with flaccid linear leaves?. See July 18, 1854 ("Methinks the asters and goldenrods begin, like the early ripening leaves, with midsummer heats."); July 26, 1853 ("I mark again, about this time when the first asters open. . . This the afternoon of the year."); July 28, 1852 ("Goldenrod and asters have fairly begun; i. e. there are several kinds of each out. ") [Note; Conyza (horseweed, butterweed or fleabane) is a genus of flowering plants in the sunflower family.

Woodbine, long since flowered. See September 12, 1851 ("What we call woodbine is the Vitis hederacea, or common creeper, or American ivy.")

The season when you sit under a bridge and watch the dimples made by the rain.

March 20 . 

Worm-piles in dooryard this morning. 

A foggy morning; turns to some April-like rain, after east wind of yesterday. 

A. Buttrick says he saw and heard woodcocks the 5th of March this year, or much earlier than ever before. Thinks they are now laying. His dog put them up at the brushy point below Flint's,– one pair there. Is an other pair at Hunt’s Pond, another at Eleazer Davis's Hill. 

He says that he caught three skunks and a crow last week in his traps baited with muskrat for mink. Says a fox will kill a skunk and eat him greedily before he smells, but nothing will eat a mink. 

2 P.M. — Thermometer about 49. 

This is a slight, dripping, truly April-like rain. You hardly know whether to open your umbrella or not. More mist than rain; no wind, and the water perfectly smooth and dark, but ever and anon the cloud or mist thickens and darkens on one side, and there is a sudden rush of warm rain, which will start the grass. 

I stand on Hunt's Bridge and, looking up- stream, see now first, in this April rain, the water being only rippled by the current, those alternate dark and light patches on the surface, all alike dimpled with the falling drops. (The ground now soaks up the rain as it falls, the frost being pretty commonly out.) It reminds me of the season when you sit under a bridge and watch the dimples made by the rain. 

I see where some one has lately killed a striped snake. 

The white maple by the bridge is abundantly out, and of course did not open this rainy day. Yesterday, at least, it began.

I observed on the 18th a swarm of those larger tipulidæ, or fuzzy gnats , dancing in a warm sprout-land, about three feet above a very large white pine stump which had been sawed off quite smoothly and was conspicuous. They kept up their dance directly over this, only swaying to and fro slightly, but always recovering their position over it. 

This afternoon, in the sprinkling rain, I see a very small swarm of the same kind dancing in like manner in a garden, only a foot above the ground but directly over a bright tin dish,— apparently a mustard-box, — and I suspect that they select some such conspicuous fixed point on the ground over which to hover and by which to keep their place, finding it for their convenience to keep the same place. These gyrate in the air as water-bugs on the water.  [ For same , March 10 , 1859]

Methinks this gentle rainy day reminds me more of summer than the warmest fair day would. 

A. Buttrick said to-day that the black ducks come when the grass begins to grow in the meadows, i.e. in the water. 

Perhaps calm weather and thermometer at about 50, the frost being commonly out and ground bare, may be called an April-like rain. The 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th were very pleasant and warm days, the thermometer standing at 50°  55° , 56° , 56°, and 51° (average 53 1/2°), - quite a spell of warm weather (succeeding to cold and blustering), in which the alders and white maples, as well as many more skunk-cabbages, bloomed, and the hazel catkins became relaxed and elongated. 

A. Buttrick says he has seen ground squirrels some time. 

I hear that the first alewives have been caught in the Acushnet River.

Our own mistakes often reveal to us the true colors of objects better than a conscious discrimination. Coming up the street the other afternoon, I thought at first that I saw a smoke in Mr. Cheney's garden. It was his white tool-house.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 20, 1860

Worm-piles in dooryard this morning. See April 9, 1861 ("Worm-piles in grass."); April 14, 1859 (“There are many worm holes or piles in the door-yard this forenoon. How long?”); April 26, 1856 (“Worm-piles about the door-step this morning; how long?”)

You hardly know whether to open your umbrella or not. March 21, 1858 ("This first spring rain is very agreeable. I love to hear the pattering of the drops on my umbrella, and I love also the wet scent of the umbrella. ")

The season when you sit under a bridge and watch the dimples made by the rain. See March 21, 1858 ("Standing by that pool, it is pleasant to see the dimples made on its smooth surface by the big drops, after the rain has held up a quarter of an hour."); July 31, 1860 ("The differently shaded or lit currents of the river through it all; but anon it begins to rain very hard, and a myriad white globules dance or rebound an inch or two from the surface, where the big drops fall, and I hear a sound as if it rains pebbles or shot.")

These gyrate in the air as water-bugs on the water. See March 19, 1858 ("They keep up a circulation in the air like water-bugs on the water.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Fuzzy Gnats (tipulidæ) 

The flowers I see at present are autumn flowers..

August 28. 

P. M. — To Walden.

A cool day; wind northwest. Need a half -thick coat. Thus gradually we withdraw into winter quarters. It is a clear, flashing air, and the shorn fields now look bright and yellowish and cool, tinkled and twittered over by bobolinks, goldfinches, sparrows, etc. 

You feel the less inclined to bathing this weather, and bathe from principle, when boys, who bathe for fun, omit it. 

Thick fogs these mornings. We have had little or no dog-days this year, it has been so dry.

Pumpkins begin to be yellow. 

White cornel berries mostly fallen. 

The arrowhead is still a common flower and an important one. I see some very handsome ones in Cardinal Ditch, whose corollas are an inch and a half in diameter. The greater part, however, have gone to seed. 

The flowers I see at present are autumn flowers, such as have risen above the stubble in shorn fields since it was cut, whose tops have commonly been clipped by the scythe or the cow; or the late flowers, as asters and goldenrods, which grow in neglected fields and along ditches and hedgerows. 

The rhexia in Ebby Hubbard's field is considerably past prime, and it is its reddish chalices which show most at a distance now. I should have looked ten days ago. Still it is handsome with its large yellow anthers against clear purple petals. It grows there in large patches with hardhack. 

I hear that some of the villagers were aroused from their sleep before light by the groans or bellowings of a bullock which an unskillful butcher was slaughtering at the slaughter-house. What morning or Memnonian music was that to ring through the quiet village ? What did that clarion sing of? What a comment on our village life! Song of the dying bullock! But no doubt those who heard it inquired, as usual, of the butcher the next day, "What have you got to-day?" "Sirloin, good beefsteak, rattleran," etc. 

I saw a month or more ago where pine-needles which had fallen (old ones) stood erect on low leaves of the forest floor, having stuck in, or passed through, them. They stuck up as a fork which falls from the table. Yet you would not think that they fell with sufficient force. 

The fruit of the sweet-gale is yellowing.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 28, 1859


Thick fogs these mornings. See July 22, 1851 ("The season of morning fogs has arrived. A great crescent over the course of the river, the fog retreats, and I do not see how it is dissipated, leaving this slight, thin vapor to curl over the surface of the still, dark water, still as glass. These are our fairest days, which are born in a fog."); August 7, 1860 ("If we awake into a fog it does not occur to us that the inhabitants of a neighboring town may have none)

White cornel berries mostly fallen. See August 28, 1856 ("The panicled cornel berries are whitening, but already mostly fallen."); August 28, 1852 ("The berries of the alternate leaved cornel have dropped off mostly.")

The rhexia in Ebby Hubbard's field is considerably past prime, and it is its reddish chalices which show most at a distance now.Still it is handsome with its large yellow anthers against clear purple petals. See.August 27, 1856 (“The rhexia greets me in bright patches on meadow banks.”); September 14, 1851 (" The chalices of the Rhexia Virginica, deer-grass or meadow beauty, are literally little reddish chalices now, though many still have petals, little cream pitchers. "); October 2, 1856 (“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,”) See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Rhexia Virginica (meadow-beauty)

August 28. See A Book of the Seasons, August 28

A clear flashing air –

 shorn fields bright and yellowish –

bobolinks, goldfinch.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  eautumn flowers.

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

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

The vertebrae and talons of a partridge in the dry excrement of a fox, left on a rock.

June 11 

Saturday. Another fog this morning. 

The mosquitoes first troubled me a little last night. 

On the river at dusk I hear the toads still, with the bullfrogs. 

The black willow, having shed its fuzzy seeds and expanded its foliage, now begins to be handsome, so light and graceful. 

The upland fields are already less green where the June-grass is ripening its seeds. They are greenest when only the blade is seen. 

In the sorrel-fields, also, what lately was the ruddy, rosy cheek of health, now that the sorrel is ripening and dying, has become the tanned and imbrowned cheek of manhood. 

Probably blackbirds were never less numerous along our river than in these years. They do not depend on the clearing of the woods and the cultivation of or chards, etc. Streams and meadows, in which they delight, always existed. Most of the towns, soon after they were settled, were obliged to set a price upon their heads. In 1672, according to the town records of Concord, instruction was given to the selectmen, "That incorigment be given for the destroying of blackbirds and jaies." (Shattuck, page 45.) 

Murder will out. I find, in the dry excrement of a fox left on a rock, the vertebrae and talons of a partridge (?) which he has consumed. They are memoires pour servir. 

I remember Helen's telling me that John Marston of Taunton told her that he was on board a vessel during the Revolution, which met another vessel, — and, as I think, one hailed the other, — and a French name being given could not be understood, whereupon a sailor, probably aboard his vessel, ran out on the bowsprit and shouted "La Sensible,"  and that sailor's name was Thoreau. 

["La Sensible," was] the vessel in which John Adams was being brought back from or carried out to France. My father has an idea that he stood on the wharf and cried this to the bystanders.] 

My father tells me that, when the war came on, my grandfather, being thrown out of business and being a young man, went a-privateering. I find from his Diary that John Adams set sail from Port Louis at L'Orient in the French frigate Sensible, Captain Chavagnes, June 17th, 1779, the Bonhomme Richard, Captain Jones, and four other vessels being in company at first, and the Sensible arrived at Boston the 2d of August. 

On the 13th of November following, he set out for France again in the same frigate from Boston, and he says that a few days before the 24th, being at the last date "on the Grand Bank of Newfoundland," "we spoke an American privateer, the General Lincoln, Captain Barnes." If the above-mentioned incident occurred at sea, it was probably on this occasion.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 11, 1853

The mosquitoes first troubled me a little last night. At dusk I hear the toads still, with the bullfrogs.  See June 7, 1858 "Mosquitoes quite troublesome here."); June 7, 1854 ("[M]osquitoes are very troublesome in the woods."); June 15, 1860 ("The bullfrogs now commonly trump at night, and the mosquitoes are now really troublesome."); June 16, 1852 ("The sonorous note of bullfrogs is heard a mile off in the river, the loudest sound this evening"). See also June 16, 1860 ("It appears to me that these phenomena occur simultaneously, say June 12th . . .")


A partridge which he has consumed.  See January 27, 1855 ("What a life is theirs, venturing forth only at night for their prey, ranging a great distance, trusting to pick up a sleeping partridge or a hare, and at home again before morning!”); January 1, 1856 (“In the other direction you trace the retreating steps of the disappointed fox until he has forgotten this and scented some new game, maybe dreams of partridges or wild mice.”); June 25, 1860 ("What an unfailing supply of small game it secures that its excrement should be so generally of fur! ")

The French frigate Sensible sailed from L'Orient, France to Boston, Ma between June 17-August 2, 1779, carrying John Adams and his son, and also the french minister to the U.S., Chevalier Anne-Cesar de La Luzerne. See John Adams Journals.  The ship sailed from Boston, MA destination France on November 14, 1779, but a storm damaged the hull and she ended up in Ferrol, Spain on December 8, 1779. John Adams and two suns were traveling with it.  see link.  From Adam's diary:

November 24 1779

We were on the Grand Bank of Newfound Land, and about this time, We spoke with an American Privateer, The General Lincoln Captain Barnes. He came on board and our Captain supplied him with some Wood and other Articles he wanted. 

Jean Thoreau, grandfather of Henry, born at St. Helier's, Jersey, April, 1754, was a sailor on board the American privateer General Lincoln, November, 1779

I hear the quails nowadays while surveying.

May 29. 

May 29, 2019

Fogs this and yesterday morning. 

I hear the quails nowadays while surveying. 

Barberry in bloom, wild pinks, and blue-eyed grass.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal , May 29, 1852

Fogs this and yesterday morning. See May 24, 1854 ("A considerable fog, but already rising and retreating to the river. As I go along the causeway the sun rises red, with a great red halo, through the fog"); July 22, 1851 ("These are our fairest days, which are born in a fog.")

I hear the quails nowadays. See May 20, 1858 ("Hear a quail whistle.");  May 25, 1855 ("Hear a quail and the summer spray frog, amid the ring of toads."); June 1, 1856 (" Heard a quail whistle May 30th."); June 1, 1860 ("Farmer has heard the quail a fortnight. Channing yesterday."); June 3, 1859 ("Quail heard.")

Barberry in bloom. See May 28, 1855 ("Barberry open (probably two or more days at Lee’s)."); May 29, 1857 ("I perceive the buttery-like scent of barberry bloom from over the rock,"); May 29, 1858 ("I mistook dense groves of little barberries in the droppings of cows in the Boulder Field for apple trees at first. So the cows eat barberries, and help disperse or disseminate them exactly as they do the apple! That helps account for the spread of the barberry, then."); June 14, 1856 ("Miss Pratt brings me the fertile barberry from northeast the great yellow birch. The staminate is apparently effete.")

Wild pinks. See June 2, 1855 ("Silene, or wild pink, how long?"); May 31, 1856 ("Pink, common wild, maybe two or three days"); May 26, 1859 ("Geranium (how long?), behind Bittern Cliff, and wild pink.")

Blue-eyed grass. See note to May 27, 1859 ("Blue-eyed grass out.")

A morning of creation.

December 31

It is one of the mornings of creation, and the trees, shrubs, etc., etc., are covered with a fine leaf frost, as if they had their morning robes on, seen against the sun. There has been a mist in the night. 

Now, at 8.30 A. M., I see, collected over the low grounds behind Mr. Cheney’s, a dense fog (over a foot of snow), which looks dusty like smoke by contrast with the snow. Though limited to perhaps twenty or thirty acres, it is as dense as any in August. 

This accounts for the frost on the twigs. It consists of minute leaves, the longest an eighth of an inch, all around the twigs, but longest commonly on one side, in one instance the southwest side. 

Clearing out the paths, which the drifting snow had filled, I find already quite a crust, from the sun and the blowing making it compact; but it is soft in the woods. 

9 A. M. — To Partridge Glade.

I see many partridge-tracks in the light snow, where they have sunk deep amid the shrub oaks; also gray rabbit and deer mice tracks, for the last ran over this soft surface last night. 

In a hollow in the glade, a gray rabbit’s track, apparently, leading to and from a hole in the snow, which, following, and laying open, I found to extend curving about this pit, four feet through and under the snow, to a small hole in the earth, which apparently led down deep. 

At ten the frost leaves are nearly all melted. 

It is invariably the east track on the railroad causeway which has the least snow on it. Though it is nearly all blown off elsewhere on the causeway, Trillium Woods have prevented its being blown off opposite to them. 

The snow-plow yesterday cast the snow six feet one side the edge of the cars, and it fell thick and rich, evenly broken like well-plowed land. It lies like a rich tilth in the sun, with its glowing cottony-white ridges and its shadowy hollows.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 31, 1855

One of the mornings of creation. See January 26, 1860 ("There are from time to time mornings, both in summer and winter, when especially the world seems to begin anew.”)

The trees, shrubs, etc., etc., are covered with a fine leaf frost. See January 6, 1853 ("This morning the weeds and twigs and fences were covered with what I may call a leaf frost."; February 12, 1855 (“All trees covered this morning with a hoar frost, very handsome looking toward the sun, —the ghosts of trees.”); February 14, 1855 ("There is also another leaf or feather frost on the trees, weeds, and rails, — slight leaves or feathers, a quarter to a half inch long by an eighth wide, standing out around the slightest core . . . These ghosts of trees are very handsome and fairy-like.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The weather, New Year's Eve

This [dense fog] accounts for the frost on the twigs. It consists of minute leaves, the longest an eighth of an inch, all around the twigs, but longest commonly on one side, in one instance the southwest side. See December 31, 1859 (''There has evidently been a slight fog generally in the night, and the trees are white with it. The crystals are directed southwesterly, or toward the wind.")

I see many partridge-tracks in the light snow . . . also gray rabbit and deer mice tracks. See December 31, 1854 ("I see mice and rabbit and fox tracks on the meadow. Once a partridge rises from the alders and skims across the river") See also December 27, 1853 ("It is surprising what things the snow betrays . . . no sooner does the snow come and spread its mantle over the earth than it is printed with the tracks of countless mice and larger animals.")

A mist in the night,

frost now seen against the sun –

morning creation.

Much warmer than this time last year.

November 8

November 8, 2025

A quite warm and foggy morning. I can sit with my window open and no fire. Much warmer than this time last year. 

Though there is quite a fog over the river and doubtful weather behind, the reflection of the wool-grass, etc., is quite distinct, the reflection from the fog or mist making the water light for a background.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 8, 1855

I can sit with my window open and no fire. Much warmer than this time last year. See October 26, 1854 ("As warm as summer. Cannot wear a thick coat. Sit with windows open."); October 31, 1854 ("W]e have had remarkably warm and pleasant Indian summer, with frequent frosts in the morning. Sat with open window for a week."); October 21, 1855 ("I sit with an open window, it is so warm."); October 10, 1856 ("This afternoon it is 80°,. . . I lie with window wide open under a single sheet most of the night").

To gaze in any direction and see with new pleasure to distant hillsides and farmhouses and to the mountains in the horizon.

August 30

Another great fog this morning, which lasts till 8.30. After so much dry and warm weather, cool weather has suddenly come, and this has produced these two larger fogs than for a long time.

August 30, 2013

The clearness of the air makes it delicious to gaze in any direction. Though there has been no rain, the valleys are emptied of haze, and I see with new pleasure to distant hillsides and farmhouses and a river-reach shining in the sun, and to the mountains in the horizon. Coolness and clarity go together.

I go along through J. Hosmer's meadow near the river, it is so dry. I walk dry-shod quite to the phalanxes of bulrushes of a handsome blue-green glaucous color. The colors of the rainbow rush are now pretty bright. 

Blue-eyed grass still. Dogwood leaves have fairly begun to turn. A few small maples are scarlet along the meadow. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 30, 1854

The valleys are emptied of haze, and I see with new pleasure to distant hillsides and farmhouses and a river-reach shining in the sun, and to the mountains in the horizon. See August 25, 1854 (“I think I never saw the haze so thick as now . . . The sun is shorn of his beams by the haze before 5 o'clock P.M., round and red, and is soon completely concealed, apparently by the haze alone.”); August 22, 1854 (“The haze, accompanied by much wind, is so thick this forenoon that the sun is obscured as by a cloud. I see no rays of sunlight.. . . The haze is so thick that we can hardly see more than a mile.”); August 19, 1854 (“There is such a haze we see not further than our Annursnack, which is blue as a mountain.”); August 13, 1854 ("Now the mountains are concealed by the dog-day haze.”)

Blue-eyed grass still. See See A Book of the Seasons, blue-eyed grass

August 30. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 30

Coolness 

and clarity 

go together

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Coolness and clarity go together.

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-540830

Just after sunrise

 August 15.

August 15, 2022

5.15 a. m. — To Hill by boat. 

By 5.30 the fog has withdrawn from the channel here and stands southward over the Texas Plain, forty or fifty feet high.

Some birds, after they have ceased to sing by day, continue to sing faintly in the morning now as in spring. 

On the top of the Hill I see the goldfinch eating the seeds of the Canada thistle. I rarely approach a bed of them or other thistles nowadays but I hear the cool twitter of the goldfinch about it. 

I hear a red squirrel's reproof, too, as in spring, from the hickories. 

Now, just after sunrise, I see the western steeples with great distinctness, — tall white lines. 

The fog eastward over the Great Meadows appears indefinitely far, as well as boundless.  It is interesting when the fluviatile trees begin to be seen through it and the sun is shining above it. By 6 o'clock it has risen up too much to be interesting. 

The button-bush is now nearly altogether out of bloom, so that it is too late to see the river's brink in its perfection. It must be seen between the blooming of the mikania and the going out of bloom of the button bush – before you feel this sense of lateness in the year, before the meadows are shorn and the grass of hills and pastures is thus withered and russet.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 15, 1854

By 5.30 the fog has withdrawn . . .and stands. . . forty or fifty feet high.. . .By 6 o'clock it has risen up too much to be interesting. See July 25, 1852 ("Birds are heard singing from the midst of the fog. And in one short hour this sea will all evaporate and the sun be reflected from farm windows")

Some birds . . . continue to sing faintly in the morning. See August 1, 1852 ("Singing birds are scarce."); August 6, 1852 ("Birds leave off singing."); August 21, 1852 ("There are as few or fewer birds heard than flowers seen "); August 22, 1853 ("I hear but few notes of birds these days")

I see the goldfinch eating the seeds of the Canada thistle. See August 9, 1856 (The goldfinch twittering over. . . already feeding on the thistle seeds”); August 12, 1854 (“I see goldfinches nowadays on the lanceolate thistles, apparently after the seeds. ”); August 14, 1858 ("The Canada thistle down is now begun to fly, and I see the goldfinch upon it."); September 4, 1860 (“The goldfinch is very busy pulling the thistle to pieces.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau the Goldfinch and also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Thistles

I hear a red squirrel's reproof, too, as in spring. See March 30, 1859 ("Hear a red squirrel chirrup at me by the hemlocks (running up a hemlock), all for my benefit"). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red Squirrel

Now, just after sunrise, I see the western steeples with great distinctness. See October 20, 1854 ("This [sunrise] is the time to look westward. All the villages, steeples, and houses on that side were revealed; but on the east all the landscape was a misty and gilded obscurity.")

It must be seen between the blooming of the mikania and the going out of bloom of the button bush, before you feel this sense of lateness in the year,  See July 26, 1853 ("How apt we are to be reminded of lateness, even before the year is half spent! This the afternoon of the year"); July 30 1852 ("After midsummer we have a belated feeling . . . just as in middle age man anticipates the end of life"); August 2, 1860 (" The button-bush is about in prime . . .Mikania begun, and now, perhaps, the river's brink is at its height."); August 5, 1854 ("The river's brim is in perfection, after the mikania is in bloom and before the pontederia and pads and the willows are too much imbrowned, and the meadows all shorn."); August 11, 1853 (" Button-bush and mikania now in prime,"); August 18, 1853 (“What means this sense of lateness that so comes over one now?"); August 22, 1858 ("Now that the mikania begins to prevail the button-bush has done.")

August 15.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 15

Just after sunrise

I see the western steeples

with great distinctness

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Just after sunrise

 "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-540815

The link of the bobolink and goldfinch.

August 10

4.30 a. m. — To Cliffs. A high fog. 

August 10, 2024

As I go along the railroad, I observe the darker green of early-mown fields. 

A cool wind at this hour over the wet foliage, as from over mountain-tops and uninhabited earth. 

The large primrose conspicuously in bloom. Does it shut by day?

The woods are comparatively still at this season. I hear only the faint peeping of some robins (a few song sparrows on my way), a wood pewee, kingbird, crows, before five, or before reaching the Springs. Then a chewink or two, a cuckoo, jay, and later, returning, the link of the bobolink and the goldfinch. 

That is a peculiar and distinct hollow sound made by the pigeon woodpecker's wings, as it flies past near you. At length, as I return along the back road at 6:30, the sun begins to eat through the fog.

The tinkling notes of goldfinches and bobolinks which we hear nowadays are of one character and peculiar to the season. They are nuts of sound, – ripened seeds of sound. It is the linking of ripened grains in Nature's basket. It is like the sparkle on water, – sound produced by friction on the crisped air.

For a day or two I have inclined to wear a thicker, or fall, coat.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 10, 1854

The large primrose conspicuously in bloom. Does it shut by day? See July 5, 1856 ("The large evening-primrose below the foot of our garden does not open till some time between 6.30 and 8 P. M. or sundown; August 12, 1856 ("Saw the primrose open at sundown.")

The woods are comparatively still at this season. See August 18, 1852 ("The woods are very still. I hear only a faint peep or twitter from one bird, then the never-failing wood thrush, it being about sunrise.")

A peculiar and distinct hollow sound made by the pigeon woodpecker's wings. See August 12, 1854 ("Hear pigeon woodpecker's wickoff still occasionally."); August 14, 1858 ("The flicker‘s cackle, once of late.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Pigeon Woodpecker (flicker)

The tinkling notes of goldfinches and bobolinks which we hear nowadays are of one character and peculiar to the season. See August 10, 1853 (The goldfinch sings er, twe, trotter trotter . . . Of late, and for long time, only the link, link of bobolink.") See also A Book of the Seasons, the Goldfinch; A Book of the Seasons, the Bobolink

August 10. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 10

The tinkling notes of

goldfinches and bobolinks

one with the season.

Notes like nuts of sound

like the sparkle on water –

friction on crisped air.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, 

The link of the bobolink and goldfinch.

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-540810

Morning fog and melting heat.

July 22.

The hottest night, — the last. It was almost impossible to pursue any work out-of- doors yesterday. There were but few men to be seen out. You were prompted often, if working in the sun, to step into the shade to avoid a sunstroke. 

Fogs almost every morning now. Now clouds have begun to hang about all day, which do not promise rain, as it were the morning fogs elevated but little above the earth and floating through the air all day.

P. M. -- To Assabet Bath. 

There is a cool wind from the east, which makes it cool walking that way while it is melting hot walking westward. 

Gerardia flava, apparently two or three days, Lupine Hillside up railroad, near fence.

Solidago odora, a day or two, Lupine Hillside, and what I will call S. puberula, to-morrow. S. altissima on railroad, a day or two.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 22, 1854

The hottest night, — the last . . . There is a cool wind from the east, which makes it cool walking that way while it is melting hot walking westward. See July 22, 1852 ("A strong west wind, saving us from intolerable heat, accompanied by a blue haze, making the mountains invisible. We have more of the furnace-like heat to-day, after all."); July 22, 1855 (''Dog day weather begins.") See also
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Locust, Dogdayish Days

There were but few men to be seen out. See July 22, 1853 (" I enjoy walking in the fields less at this season than at any other; there are so many men in the fields haying now.")

Fogs almost every morning now. See July 22, 1851 ("The season of morning fogs has arrived.”); See also July 18, 1852 ("Now the fogs have begun, in midsummer and mid-haying time "); July 19, 1853 ("This morning a fog and cool.")

Lupine Hillside.  See July 12, 1857 ("It is always pleasant to go over the bare brow of Lupine Hill and see the river and meadows thence.")

Gerardia flava, apparently two or three days. See July 28, 1853 ("The Gerardia flava in the hickory grove behind Lee's Cliff."); July 28, 1856 (Gerardia flava, apparently several days.) [Gerardia flava now know as Aureolaria flava (smooth false foxglove)]

Solidago. See July 17, 1853 ("Rank weeds begin to block up low wood-paths, — goldenrods, asters, etc."); July 18, 1854 ("Methinks the asters and goldenrods begin, like the early ripening leaves, with midsummer heats."); July 19, 1851 ("Beyond the bridge there is a goldenrod partially blossomed."); July 24, 1856 ("In the low Flint's Pond Path, beyond Britton's, the tall rough goldenrod makes a thicket higher than my head."); July 28, 1852 ("Solidago altissima (?) beyond the Corner Bridge, out some days at least . . . Goldenrod and asters have fairly begun."); August 14, 1856 ("Solidago odora abundantly out.")

July 22. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 22

Fogs every morning. 

Now clouds hang about all day

but it does not rain.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  Melting Heat

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-540722

[At dusk we hike to the view without headlamps on, arriving to a spectacular light show of constant lightning flashes and bolts to the northwest — so far  away we only occasionally  hear the thunder.  we water the dogs and  linger as long as we dare. Loki watches the light show.   my water bottle has dropped somewhere on the trail so we walk back the same route. Little Acorn is on an elastic leach strapped to my waist, her first outing since her surgery 10 day ago. A short hike.  It has been a 90 degree day and two fans so loud  in the family room we do not hear when the deluge hits home a little later.  ~ zphx 20160722]