I hear the sound of distant thunder. The perception of beauty. The succession of wildflowers; the history of a hillside.

June 21. 

June 21, 2020

Monday. 7 p.m. — To Cliffs via Hubbard Bathing-Place.

Cherry-birds. I have not seen, though I think I have heard them before, — their fine seringo note, like a vibrating spring in the air. They are a handsome bird, with their crest and chestnut breasts. There is no keeping the run of their goings and comings, but they will be ready for the cherries when they shall be ripe. 

The adder's-tongue arethusa smells exactly like a snake. How singular that in nature, too, beauty and offensiveness should be thus combined! 

In flowers, as well as men, we demand a beauty pure and fragrant, which perfumes the air. The flower which is showy but has no, or an offensive, odor expresses the character of too many mortals. 

The swamp-pink bushes have many whitish spongy excrescences. 

Elder is blossoming; flowers opening now where black berries will be by and by. 

Panicled andromeda, or privet andromeda. 

Nature has looked uncommonly bare and dry to me for a day or two. With our senses applied to the surrounding world we are reading our own physical and corresponding moral revolutions. Nature was so shallow all at once I did not know what had attracted me all my life. I was therefore encouraged when, going through a field this evening, I was unexpectedly struck with the beauty of an apple tree. The perception of beauty is a moral test. 

When, in bathing, I rush hastily into the river the clamshells cut my feet. It is dusky now. Men are fishing on the Corner Bridge. 

I hear the veery and the huckleberry-bird and the catbird. 

It is a cool evening, past 8 o'clock.

I see the tephrosia out through the dusk; a handsome flower. 

What rich crops this dry hillside has yielded! First I saw the Viola pedata here, and then the lupines and the snapdragon covered it; and now the lupines are done and their pods are left, the tephrosia has taken their place. 

This small dry hillside is thus a natural garden. I omit other flowers which grow here, and name only those which to some extent cover it or possess it. No eighth of an acre in a cultivated garden would be better clothed, or with a more pleasing variety, from month to month, and while one flower is in bloom you little suspect that which is to succeed and perchance eclipse it. It is a warmly placed dry hillside beneath a wall, very thinly clad with grass. Such spots there are in nature, natural flower gardens. Of this succession I hardly know which to admire the most. 

It would be pleasant to write the history of one hillside for one year. First and last you have the colors of the rainbow and more, and the various fragrances, which it has not. Blackberries, roses, and dogsbane also are now in bloom here.

I hear neither toads nor bullfrogs at present; they want a warmer night. 

I hear the sound of distant thunder, though no cloud is obvious, muttering like the roar of artillery. That is a phenomenon of this season. As you walk at evening, you see the light of the flashes in the horizon and hear the muttering of distant thunder, where some village is being refreshed with the rain denied to Concord. We say that showers avoid us, that they go down the river, i. e. go off down the Merrimack, or keep to the south. 

Thunder and lightning are remarkable accompaniments to our life, as if to remind us that there always is or should be a kind of battle waging. The thunder is signal guns to us. 

The dwarf orchis (O. herbiola (Bigelow), Platanthera flava (Gray)) at the bathing-place in Hubbard's meadow, not remarkable. 

The purple orchis is a good flower to bring home. It will keep fresh many days, and its buds open at last in a pitcher of water. 

Obtuse galium. 

I observe a rose (called by some moss rose), with a bristly reddish stem; another, with a smooth red stem and but a few prickles; another, with many prickles and bristles. 

Found the single-flowered broom-rape in Love Lane, under the oak.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 21, 1852


The swamp-pink bushes have many whitish spongy excrescences. See June 20, 1853 ("Those great greenish-white puffs on the panicled andromeda are now decaying.On the swamp-pink they are solid.")

The adder's-tongue arethusa smells exactly like a snake. Compare July 26, 1856 ("The pod of the ellipticum, when cut, smells like a bee.") See July 7, 1852 ("The Arethusa bulbosa, "crystalline purple;" Pogonia ophioglossoides, snake-mouthed arethusa, "pale purple;" and the Calopogon pulchellus, grass pink, "pink purple," make one family in my mind, — next to the purple orchis, or with it, — being flowers par excellence, all flower, all color, with inconspicuous leaves, naked flowers, . . .the pogonia has a strong snaky odor."); see also July 2, 857 ("Pogonia ophioglossoides apparently in a day or two. "); to July 7, 1856 ("the snake-head arethusa is now abundant amid the cranberries. there [Gowings Swamp]");July 8, 1857 ("Find a Pogonia ophioglossoides with a third leaf and second flower an inch above the first flower."); August 1, 1856 ("Snake-head arethusa still in the meadow. “)..Coompare Arethusa bulbosa, May 30, 1854 ("I am surprised to find arethusas abundantly out in Hubbard's Close, maybe two or three days ... This high-colored plant shoots up suddenly, all flower, in meadows where it is wet walking. A superb flower.”); June 10, 1854 (“The fragrance of the arethusa is like that of the lady's-slipper, or pleasanter.”).  See also  June 19, 1852 ("These are peculiar days when you find the purple orchis and the arethusa, too, in the meadows."); June 30, 1852 ("Is not this period more than any distinguished for flowers, when roses, swamp-pinks, morning-glories, arethusas, pogonias, orchises, blue flags, epilobiums, mountain laurel, and white lilies are all in blossom at once?")

With our senses applied to the surrounding world we are reading our own physical and corresponding moral revolutions.See  June 25, 1852 ("There is a flower for every mood of the mind."); May 23, 1853 ("The poet must bring to Nature the smooth mirror in which she is to be reflected. Every new flower that opens, no doubt, expresses a new mood of the human mind.”) August 7, 1853 ("Is it not as language that all natural objects affect the poet? He sees a flower or other object, and it is beautiful or affecting to him because it is a symbol of his thought. . .The objects I behold correspond to my mood.”);  June 6, 1857 (“Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind.”); August 30, 1851 ("The fall of each humblest flower marks the annual period of some phase of human life experience. I can be said to note the flower's fall only when I see in it the symbol of my own change. When I experience this, then the flower appears to me.)


Nature was so shallow all at once I did not know what had attracted me all my life. See November 18, 1857 ("I lost for the time my rapport or relation to nature. ")

I was unexpectedly struck with the beauty of an apple tree. The perception of beauty is a moral test. See  December 11. 1855 ("Beauty and music are not mere traits and exceptions. They are the rule and character. It is the exception that we see and hear "); January 17, 1852 (“As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind. Some see only clouds there; some behold there serenity, purity, beauty ineffable.”); May 17, 1853 ("I was surprised, on turning round, to behold the serene and everlasting beauty of the world, it was so soothing. I saw that I could not go home to supper and lose it. It was so much fairer, serener, more beautiful, than my mood had been."); July 26, 1852 ("The mind that perceives clearly any natural beauty is in that instant withdrawn from human society."); December 11. 1855 ("It is only necessary to behold thus the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair’s breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance."); November 18, 1857 ("You cannot perceive beauty but with a serene mind."); October 4, 1859 ("You have got to be in a different state from common.") Autumnal Tints ("There is just as much beauty visible to us in the landscape as we are prepared to appreciate")

Panicled andromeda, or privet andromeda. See June 21, 1854 ("(panicled andromeda, which loves dry places, now in blossom")

I see the tephrosia out through the dusk; a handsome flower. See July 10, 1857 ("The tephrosia, which grows by Peter's road in the woods, is a very striking and interesting, if I may not say beautiful, flower, especially when, as here, it is seen in a cool and shady place, its clear rose purple contrasting very agreeably with yellowish white, rising from amidst a bed of finely pinnate leaves.")

A natural garden. Blackberries, roses, and dogsbane also are now in bloom here. See June 30, 1852 (" Is not this period more than any distinguished for flowers, when roses, swamp-pinks, morning-glories, arethusas, pogonias, orchises, blue flags, epilobiums, mountain laurel, and white lilies are all in blossom at once?")

We say that showers avoid us, that they go down the river, i. e. go off down the Merrimack, See May 16, 1853 ("At 5 P. M., dark, heavy, wet-looking clouds are seen in the northern horizon, perhaps over the Merrimack Valley, and we say it is going down the river and we shall not get a drop."); June 15, 1860 (“A thunder-shower in the north goes down the Merrimack.”)  See also June 16, 1860 ("Thunder-showers show themselves about 2 P.M. in the west, but split at sight of Concord and go east on each side.”); June 16, 1854 ("Three days in succession, — the 13th, 14th, and 15th, — thunder-clouds, with thunder and lightning, have risen high in the east, threatening instant rain, and yet each time it has failed to reach us.”); June 17, 1852 ("A small thunder-shower comes up . . . We see the increasing outline of the slate-colored falling rain from the black cloud. It passes mainly to the south. Also see note to June 9, 1860 ("We have half a dozen showers to-day, distinct summer showers from black clouds suddenly wafted up from the west and northeast; also some thunder and hail, - large white stones.")

The dwarf orchis Platanthera flava (Gray) at the bathing-place in Hubbard's meadow, not remarkable.  See June 18, 1854 ("Platanthera flava at the Harrington Bathing - Place, possibly yesterday , — an unimportant yellowish - green spike of flowers.")

The purple orchis is a good flower to bring home. It will keep fresh many days, and its buds open at last in a pitcher of water. See June 19, 1852 ("The orchis keeps well. One put in my hat this morning, and carried all day, will last fresh a day or two at home"); June 16, 1854 (" It is eight days since I plucked the great orchis; one is perfectly fresh still in my pitcher. It may be plucked when the spike is only half opened, and will open completely and keep perfectly fresh in a pitcher more than a wee") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Fringed Orchids

I observe a rose (called by some moss rose), with a bristly reddish stem.See June 21, 1854 ("Again I am attracted by the deep scarlet of the wild moss rose half open in the grass , all glowing with rosy light."); See also June 12, 1853 ("A wild moss rose in Arethusa Meadow, where are arethusas lingering still.")

The indistinct trail of wild animals — foxes, etc. — and sportsmen.

September 19

Sunday. P. M. -— To Cassandra Ponds. 

We go through Sedge Hollow. See a small hole, perhaps a skunk’s, in that hollow, and, about the mouth, fragments of a hornets’ or wasps’ nest. I knew that foxes were said to tear in pieces these nests for the sake of the grubs or old hornets left in them. Perhaps the skunk does. 

These dry, sedgy hollows are peculiar and interesting to me. The fine, thick sedge makes a soft bed to recline on, and is recurved and lodging like a curly head. These dry hollows, side by side with the deeper and wet ones, are surrounded by hazel bushes and panicled andromeda instead of alders and willows. There is this sort of analogy to the wet ones, or ponds. In the lowest part, even here, I perceive that a different and coarser kind of sedge grows. 

Along the middle and bottom of the hollows is the indistinct trail of wild animals — foxes, etc. — and sportsmen. C. thinks this might be called Fox Path.

As I stand on the shore of the most westerly Cassandra Pond but one, I see in the air between me and the sun those interesting swarms of minute light-colored gnats, looking like motes in the sun. These may be allied to the winter gnat of Kirby and Spence. Do they not first appear with cooler and frosty weather, when we have had a slight foretaste of winter? Then in the clear, cool air they are seen to dance. These are about an eighth of an inch long, with a greenish body and two light-colored plumes in front; the wings not so long as the body. So I think they are different from those over the river in the spring. I see a dozen of these choirs within two or three rods, their centres about six feet above the surface of the water andromeda. These separate communities are narrow horizontally and long vertically, about eighteen inches wide and densest in the middle, regularly thinning to nothing at the edges. These individuals are constantly gyrating up and down, cutting figures of 8 like the water-bug, but keeping nearly about the same place. It is to me a very agreeable reminder of cooler weather. 

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. In spring it makes its due impression, and for a long time will not have done echoing, as it were, through our minds. It is even as if the atmosphere were in an unfavorable condition for this kind of music. Every musician knows how much depends on this. 

Going through low woods I see a white, dusty or mealy-looking mildew on the leaves, — oaks, etc., — the effects of the dog-days or mould season.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 19, 1858

These dry, sedgy hollows are peculiar and interesting to me. Surrounded by hazel bushes and panicled andromeda there is this sort of analogy to the wet ones, or ponds. See November 24, 1857 ("You have clear open water, but shallow; then, in course of time, a shallow lake with much sedge standing in it; then, after a while, a dense andromeda bed with blueberry bushes and perhaps a wet border of sedge (as here at present); and finally, a maple swamp.")

I see in the air between me and the sun those interesting swarms of minute light-colored gnats, looking like motes in the sun. These may be allied to the winter gnat. See October 19, 1856 ("I noticed, two or three days ago, after one of those frosty mornings, half an hour before sunset of a clear and pleasant day, a swarm, — were they not of winter gnats ? — between me and the sun like so many motes,. . .Each insect was acting its part in a ceaseless dance, rising and falling a few inches while the swarm kept its place. Is not this a forerunner of winter? "); March 19, 1858 ("Are not these the winter gnat? 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)

Hear a chewink’s chewink. But how ineffectual is the note of a bird now! See 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.")

A pinkish patch on side-hill.

July 28. 

July 28, 2018

P. M.—-To Conantum. 

From wall corner saw a pinkish patch on side-hill west of Baker Farm, which turned out to be epilobium, a rod across. Through the glass it was as fine as a moss, but with the naked eye it might have been mistaken for a dead pine bough. This pink flower was distinguished perhaps three quarters of a mile.

Heard a kingfisher, which had been hovering over the river, plunge forty rods off. 

The under sides of maples are very bright and conspicuous nowadays as you walk, also of the curled panicled andromeda leaves. Some grape leaves, also, are blown up.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 28, 1858

A pinkish patch on side-hill  west of Baker Farm, which turned out to be epilobium, distinguished perhaps three quarters of a mile. See July 28, 1852 ("Epilobium coloratum, roadside just this side of Dennis's"); August 21, 1858 ("I still see the patch of epilobium on Bee Tree Hill as plainly as ever, though only the pink seed-vessels and stems are left"): See also July 24, 1857 (“Great fields of epilobium or fire-weed, a mass of color.); July 31, 1856 (“Dense fields of the great epilobium now in its prime, like soldiers in the meadow, resounding with the hum of bees.”)

Heard a kingfisher, which had been hovering over the river, plunge forty rods off. See June 12, 1854 (“As he flies off, he hovers two or three times thirty or forty feet above the pond, and at last dives ”); August 6, 1858 ("The kingfisher is seen hovering steadily over one spot, or hurrying away with a small fish in his mouth, sounding his alarum nevertheless.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. The Kingfisher

July 28. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 28

From wall corner saw 

a pinkish patch on side-hill 

west of Baker Farm

turned out to be 

epilobium

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

On the side of the meadow moraine just north of the boulder field.

February 24. 

February 24, 2018

I see, at Minot Pratt’s, rhodora in bloom in a pitcher with water andromeda. 

Went through that long swamp northeast of Boaz’s Meadow. Interesting and peculiar are the clumps, or masses, of panicled andromeda, with light-brown stems, topped uniformly with very distinct yellow brown recent shoots, ten or twelve inches long, with minute red buds sleeping close along them. This uniformity in such masses gives a pleasing tinge to the swamp's surface. Wholesome colors, which wear well. 

I see quite a number of emperor moth cocoons attached to this shrub, some hung round with a loose mass of leaves as big as my two fists.

What art in the red-eye to make these two adjacent maple twigs serve for the rim of its pensile basket, in weaving them! Surely it finds a place for itself in nature between the two twigs of a maple. 

On the side of the meadow moraine just north of the boulder field, I see barberry bushes three inches in diameter and ten feet high. What a surprising color this wood has! It splits and splinters very much when I bend it. I cut a cane and, shaving off the outer bark, it is of imperial yellow, as if painted, fit for a Chinese mandarin.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 24, 1858

I see, at Minot Pratt’s, rhodora in bloom in a pitcher. See May 17, 1853 (“The rhodora is peculiar for being, like the peach, a profusion of pink blossoms on a leafless stem.”); May 18, 1857 ("Pratt says he saw the first rhodora . . . out yesterday")

Boaz's Meadow. See  February 5, 1858 ("There is a plenty of that handsome-seeded grass which I think Tarbell called goose grass . . . at Boaz’s Meadow"); November 11, 1857 ("That cellar-hole off northwest of Brooks Clark’s is where Boaz Brown used to live, and the andromeda swamp behind is “Boaz's (pronounced Boze's) meadow,” says Jacob Farmer, who has seen corn growing in the meadow. "); November 18, 1857 ("There is the meadow behind Brooks Clark’s . . .. The stream which drains this empties into the Assabet at Dove Rock. A short distance west of this meadow, but a good deal more elevated, is Boaz's meadow, whose water finds its way, naturally or artificially, northeast ward around the other.")

Panicled andromeda, with light-brown stems, topped uniformly with very distinct yellow brown recent shoots . . . with minute red buds sleeping close along them. See November 23, 1857 ("The panicled andromeda is upright, light-gray, with a rather smoother bark, more slender twigs, and small, sharp red buds lying close to the twig"); December 11, 1855 ("I thread the tangle of the spruce swamp, admiring . . . the great yellow buds of the swamp-pink, the round red buds of the high blueberry, and the fine sharp red ones of the panicled andromeda."); January 25, 1858 ("The round red buds of the blueberries; the small pointed red buds, close to the twig, of the panicled andromeda; the large yellowish buds of the swamp pink."); February 13, 1858 (" I observed that the swamp was variously shaded, or painted even, like a rug, with the sober colors running gradually into each other, by the colored recent shoots of various shrubs which grow densely, as the red blueberry, and the yellowish-brown panicled andromeda")  See also February 17, 1854 ("In these swamps, then, you have three kinds of andromeda. The main swamp is crowded with high blueberry, panicled andromeda, prinos, swamp-pink, etc.. . . and then in the middle or deepest part will be an open space not yet quite given up to water, where the Andromeda calyculata and a few A. Polifolia reign almost alone. These are pleasing gardens.")

Emperor moth cocoons attached to this shrub, some hung round with a loose mass of leaves. See February 19, 1854 (“The light ash-colored cocoons of the A. Promethea, with the withered and faded leaves wrapped around them so artfully and admirably secured by fine silk wound round the leaf-stalk and the twig they are taken at a little distance for a few curled and withered leaves left on.”)

What art in the red-eye to make these two adjacent maple twigs serve for the rim of its pensile basket. See January 13, 1856 ("What a wonderful genius it is that leads the vireo to select the tough fibres of the inner bark, instead of the more brittle grasses, for its basket, the elastic pine-needles and the twigs, curved as they dried to give it form, and, as I suppose, the silk of cocoons, etc., etc., to bind it together with!"); May 27, 1854 ("I find the pensile nest of a red-eye between a fork of a shrub chestnut near the path.")  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Red-eyed Vireo

On the side of the meadow moraine just north of the boulder field.  See November 3, 1857 (“Follow up the Boulder Field northward, and it terminates in that moraine.”); March 8, 1855 (“I cross through the swamp south of Boulder Field toward the old dam.”); April 21, 1852 ("In the pasture beyond the brook, where grow the barberries, huckleberries, — creeping juniper, etc., are half a dozen huge boulders, which look grandly now in the storm, covered with greenish-gray lichens, alternating with the slatish-colored rock. Slumbering, silent, . . .I look down on some of them as on the backs of oxen. A certain personality, or at least brute life, they seem to have."); November 3, 1857 (" It would be something to own that pasture with the great rocks in it")

February 24. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 24

February 24, 2018

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,

On the side of the meadow moraine just north of the boulder field.

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

  

How often vegetation is either yellow or red!

February 13

Last night said to have been a little colder than the night before, and the coldest hitherto.

P. M. – Ride to Cafferty's Swamp.

The greatest breadth of the swamp appears to be northeasterly from Adams's. There is much panicled andromeda in it, some twelve feet high, and, as I count, seventeen years old, with yellowish wood. I saw three tupelos in the swamp, each about one foot in diameter and all within two rods.

In those parts of the swamp where the bushes were not so high but that I could look over them, I observed that the swamp was variously shaded, or painted even, like a rug, with the sober colors running gradually into each other, by the colored recent shoots of various shrubs which grow densely, as the red blueberry, and the yellowish-brown panicled andromeda, and the dark-brown or blackish Prinos verticillatus, and the choke-berry, etc.

Standing on a level with those shrubs, you could see that these colors were only a foot or so deep, according to the length of the shoots. So, too, oftener would the forests appear if we oftener stood above them.

How often vegetation is either yellow or red! as the buds of the swamp-pink, the leaves of the pitcher-plant, etc., etc., and to-day I notice yellow-green recent shoots of high blueberry.

Observed a coarse, dense-headed grass in the meadow at Stow's old swamp lot. What did the birds do for horsehair here formerly?

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

The red blueberry. See November 6, 1853 (“The remarkable roundish, plump red buds of the high blueberry.”); November 23, 1857 (“You distinguish it by its gray spreading mass; its light-gray bark, rather roughened; its thickish shoots, often crimson; and its plump, roundish red buds.”); November 20, 1857 ("the bright-crimson shoots of high blueberry . . . have a very pretty effect, a crimson vigor to stand above the snow.")

The yellowish-brown panicled andromeda. See November 23, 1857 ("The panicled andromeda is upright, light-gray, with a rather smoother bark, more slender twigs, and small, sharp red buds lying close to the twig."); December 6, 1856 ("The rich brown fruit of the panicled andromeda growing about the swamp, hard, dry, inedible, suitable to the season. The dense panicles of the berries are of a handsome form, made to endure, lasting often over two seasons, only becoming darker and gray")

How often vegetation is either yellow or red! as the buds of the swamp-pink See December 1, 1852 (“The large bright yellowish and reddish buds of the swamp-pink,"); December 11, 1855 ("The great yellow buds of the swamp-pink, the round red buds of the high blueberry, and the fine sharp red ones of the panicled andromeda"); January 25, 1858 ("The round red buds of the blueberries; the small pointed red buds, close to the twig, of the panicled andromeda; the large yellowish buds of the swamp pink.")

The leaves of the pitcher-plant. See September 28, 1851 ("These leaves are of various colors from plain green to a rich striped yellow or deep red. No plants are more richly painted and streaked than the inside of the broad lips of these."); November 11, 1858 ("In the meadows the pitcher-plants are bright-red"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Pitcher Plant

Old growth blueberry bushes.

February 8.

 P. M. — To Walden and Goose Pond. 

The ground is so completely bare this winter, and therefore the leaves in the woods so dry, that on the 5th there was a fire in the woods by Walden (Wheeler’s), and two or three-acres were burned over, set probably by the engine. Such a burning as commonly occurs in the spring. 

The ice which J. Brown is now getting for his ice house from S. Barrett’s is from eight to nine plus inches thick, but I am surprised to find that Walden ice is only six inches thick, or even a little less, and it has not been thicker. You can almost drive an axe through it at one blow. In many places about the shore it is open a dozen feet wide, as when it begins to break up in the spring. 

I observe, as usual, the shore heaved up near where my house was. It is evidently the result of its thawing. It is lifted up with an abrupt, nearly perpendicular edge nearly a foot high (but looks as if it had been crowded up by the ice), while the part under water probably has not been frozen, or has not been thawed. But in the water close to the shore I observe singular dimples in the sand, sometimes perfectly circular tunnels, etc., as if a stone had been turned round and round and then lifted out. Perhaps this ridge thus lifted up remains somewhat loose through the summer, not falling entirely back, and the next winter, therefore, freezes yet deeper and is heaved up yet higher, and so gains a little from year to year. Thus a pond may create a barrier for itself along an adjacent meadow. When it thus lifts up the shore, it lifts the trees with it, and they are upset.

 At Little Goose Pond, where I am surprised to find the ice no thicker than at Walden, I raked in the middle and brought up the branches of white pines two inches thick, but perfectly sound, four rods or more from the shore. The wood has been cut about seventeen years on one side, and at least twelve or fourteen on the other, pines that formerly fell into the pond. They would long since decayed on land.

I walked about Goose Pond, looking for the large blueberry bushes. I see many which have thirty rings of annual growth. These grow quite on the edge, where they have escaped being cut with the wood, and have all the appearance of age, gray and covered with lichens, commonly crooked, zigzag, and intertwisted with their neighbors,— so that when you have cut one off it is hard to extract it, —and bending over nearly to the ice, with lusty young shoots running up straight by their sides. I cut one, which measured eight and a half inches in circumference at the butt, and I counted pretty accurately forty-two rings. From another I cut a straight and sound club, four feet long and six and a half inches in circumference at the small end. It is a heavy and close-grained wood. 

This is the largest of the Vaccinieoa which grows here, or is described in Gray’s Botany. Some may have borne fruit before I was born, or forty and odd years ago. Older than my cultivated fruit trees. Nobody could tell me what kind of wood it was. 

The biggest panicled andromeda that I saw thereabouts was only a little more than an inch in diameter and apparently not half as old. It has a much more yellow wood, with a twist to its grain. 

Mrs. Monroe says that her mother respected my grandfather very much, because he was a religious man. She remembers his calling one day and inquiring where blue vervain grew, which he wanted, to make a syrup for his cough, and she, a girl, happening to know, ran and gathered some.

H. D. Thoreu, Journal, February 8, 1858

The ground is so completely bare this winter.  See February 8, 1857 ("The snow is gone off very rapidly in the night, and much of the earth is bare, and the ground partially thawed. ")

Two or three-acres were burned over, set probably by the engine. Such a burning as commonly occurs in the spring. See April 4, 1856 ("Already I hear of a small fire in the woods in Emerson’s lot, set by the engine, the leaves that are bare are so dry.")

The ice which J. Brown is now getting for his ice house from S. Barrett’s is from eight to nine plus inches thick, but I am surprised to find that Walden ice is only six inches thick. See January 27, 1854 ("Cut this afternoon a cake of ice out of Walden and brought it home in a pail, another from the river, and got a third, a piece of last year's ice from Sam Barrett's Pond, at Brown's ice-house, and placed them side by side . . .”); January 23, 1856 ("Brown is filling his ice-house. The clear ice is only from one and a half to four inches thick; all the rest, or nearly a foot, is snow ice, ")

I walked about Goose Pond, looking for the large blueberry bushes. See December 27, 1857 ("I cut a blueberry bush this afternoon, a venerable looking one bending over Goose Pond, . . . some of those old gray blueberry bushes which overhang the pond-holes have attained half the age of man.")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 8

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 ©  2009-2023

A warm, moist day. A Book of Buds.

January 25. 

Monday. A warm, moist day. Thermometer at 6.30 P.M. at 49°.

What a rich book might be made about buds, including, perhaps, sprouts! — the impregnable, vivacious willow catkins, but half asleep under the armor of their black scales, sleeping along the twigs; the birch and oak sprouts, and the rank and lusty dogwood sprouts; the round red buds of the blueberries; the small pointed red buds, close to the twig, of the panicled andromeda; the large yellowish buds of the swamp pink, etc. 

How healthy and vivacious must he be who would treat of these things! 

You must love the crust of the earth on which you dwell more than the sweet crust of any bread or cake. You must be able to extract nutriment out of a sand-heap. You must have so good an appetite as this, else you will live in vain. 

The creditor is servant to his debtor, especially if he is about paying his due. I am amused to see what airs men take upon themselves when they have money to pay me. No matter how long they have deferred it, they imagine that they are my benefactors or patrons, and send me word graciously that if I will come to their houses they will pay me, when it is their business to come to me.

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

What a rich book might be made about buds.See January 31, 1854 ("In the winter, when there are no flowers and leaves are rare, even large buds are interesting and somewhat exciting. I go a-budding like a partridge. I am always attracted at this season by the buds of the swamp-pink, the poplars, and the sweet-gale."); January 12, 1855 ("Well may the tender buds attract us at this season, no less than partridges, for they are the hope of the year, the spring rolled up. The summer is all packed in them."); January 10, 1856 ("We are reduced to admire buds, even like the partridges, and bark, like the rabbits and mice, —the great yellow and red forward-looking buds of the azalea, the plump red ones of the blueberry, and the fine sharp red ones of the panicled andromeda, sleeping along its stem, the speckled black alder, the rapid-growing dogwood, the pale-brown and cracked blueberry. Even a little shining bud which lies sleeping behind its twig and dreaming of spring, perhaps half concealed by ice, is object enough.")

When my attention was caught by a snowflake on my coat-sleeve.

January 6. 

The first snow-storm of much importance. By noon it may be six inches deep. 

P. M. — Up railroad to North River. 

The main stream, barely skimmed over with snow, which has sunk the thin ice and is saturated with water, is of a dull-brown color between the white fields. 

I detect a very tall and slender tupelo by its thorny looking twigs. It is close by a white oak, at the yellow gerardia up railroad. It is nearly fifty feet high and only one foot through at the ground. 

I derive a certain excitement, not to be refused, even from going through Dennis's Swamp on the opposite side of the railroad, where the poison-dogwood abounds. This simple stemmed bush is very full of fruit, hanging in loose, dry, pale-green drooping panicles. Some of them are a foot long. It impresses me as the most fruitful shrub thereabouts. I cannot refrain from plucking it and bringing home some pretty sprigs. 

Other fruits there are there which belong to the hard season, the enduring panicled andromeda and a few partly decayed prinos berries. I walk amid the bare midribs of cinnamon ferns, with at most a terminal leafet, and here and there I see a little dark water at the bottom of a dimple in the snow, over which the snow has not yet been able to prevail. I was feeling very cheap, nevertheless, reduced to make the most of dry dogwood berries. 

Very little evidence of God or man did I see just then, and life not as rich and inviting an enterprise as it should be, when my attention was caught by a snowflake on my coat-sleeve. It was one of those perfect, crystalline, star-shaped ones, six-rayed, like a flat wheel with six spokes, only the spokes were perfect little pine trees in shape, arranged around a central spangle. This little object, which, with many of its fellows, rested unmelting on my coat, so perfect and beautiful, reminded me that Nature had not lost her pristine vigor yet, and why should man lose heart? 

Sometimes the pines were worn and had lost their branches, and again it appeared as if several stars had impinged on one another at various angles, making a somewhat spherical mass. These little wheels came down like the wrecks of chariots from a battle waged in the sky. There were mingled with these starry flakes small downy pellets also. 

This was at mid-afternoon, and it has not quite ceased snowing yet (at 10 P.M.). 

We are rained and snowed on with gems. I confess that I was a little encouraged, for I was beginning to believe that Nature was poor and mean, and I was now convinced that she turned off as good work as ever. 

What a world we live in! Where are the jewellers’ shops? There is nothing handsomer than a snowflake and a dewdrop. I may say that the maker of the world exhausts his skill with each snowflake and dewdrop that he sends down. We think that the one mechanically coheres and that the other simply flows together and falls, but in truth they are the product of enthusiasm, the children of an ecstasy, finished with the artist's utmost skill. 

The North River is not frozen over. 

I see tree sparrows twittering and moving with a low creeping and jerking motion amid the chenopodium in a field, upon the snow, so chubby or puffed out on account of the cold that at first I took them for the arctic birds, but soon I see their bright-chestnut crowns and clear white bars; as the poet says, “a thousand feeding like one,”  — though there are not more than a dozen here.

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

It was one of those perfect, crystalline, star-shaped ones, six-rayed, like a flat wheel with six spokes rested unmelting on my coat, so perfect and beautiful. See  December 14, 1859 ("Snow-storms might be classified. ...Also I remember the perfectly crystalline or star snows, when each flake is a perfect six-rayed wheel. This must be the chef-d'oeuvre of the Genius of the storm. ...");  January 14, 1853 ("Examined closely, the flakes are beautifully regular six-rayed stars or wheels with a centre disk, perfect geometrical figures in thin scales far more perfect than I can draw."); December 14, 1855 ("Looking more closely at the light snow... I found that it was sprinkled all over ... with regular star-shaped cottony flakes with six points, about an eighth of an inch in diameter and on an average a half an inch apart. It snowed geometry.") January 5, 1856 ("The thin snow now driving from the north and lodging on my coat consists of those beautiful star crystals, . . . thin and partly transparent . . ., perfect little wheels with six spokes . . .countless snow-stars comes whirling to earth, pronouncing thus, with emphasis, the number six.”); January 12, 1860 ("When I look closely I see each snowflake lies as it first fell, delicate crystals with the six rays or leafets more or less perfect, not yet in the least melted by the sun.”).

These little wheels came down like the wrecks of chariots from a battle waged in the sky. See January 5, 1856 (“Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand. . . .A divinity must have stirred within them before the crystals did thus shoot and set. Wheels of the storm chariots.”)

There is nothing handsomer than a snowflake and a dewdrop. I may say that the maker of the world exhausts his skill with each snowflake and dewdrop that he sends down . . . The product of enthusiasm, the children of an ecstasy, finished with the artist's utmost skill. See January 5, 1856 ("Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand. Nothing is cheap and coarse, neither dewdrops nor snowflakes.") See also There was an artist in the city of Kouroo.

I see tree sparrows twittering and moving with a low creeping and jerking motion amid the chenopodium in a field, upon the snow. See January 6, 1857 ("I hear and see an unusual number of merry little tree sparrows about the few weeds that are to be seen. They look very chipper, flitting restlessly about and jerking their long tails.”); January 7, 1858 (“I see some tree sparrows feeding on the fine grass seed above the snow, near the road on the hillside below the Dutch house.. . .")

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2024

tinyurl.com/hdt580106

Remembering the walk of yesterday. I love these bitter cold days when the snow lies deep wading through the swamp.

January 10. 

The weather has considerably moderated; -2° at breakfast time (it was — 8° at seven last evening); but this has been the coldest night probably. 

The kitchen windows were magnificent last night, with their frost sheaves, surpassing any cut or ground glass.

You lie with your feet or legs curled up, waiting for morning, the sheets shining with frost about your mouth. Water left by the stove is frozen thickly, and what you sprinkle in bathing falls on the floor ice. The house plants are all frozen and soon droop and turn black.

I look out on the roof of a cottage covered a foot deep with snow, wondering how the poor children in its garret, with their few rags, contrive to keep their toes warm. I mark the white smoke from its chimney, whose contracted wreaths are soon dissipated in this stinging air, and think of the size of their wood-pile.  

It seems that the snow-storm of Saturday night was a remarkable one, reaching many hundred miles along the coast. It is said that some thousands passed the night in cars. 

Remembering the walk of yesterday.

I love to wade and flounder through the swamp now, these bitter cold days when the snow lies deep on the ground, and I need travel but little way from the town to get to a Nova Zembla solitude, — to wade through the swamps, all snowed up, untracked by man, into which the fine dry snow is still drifting till it is even with the tops of the water andromeda and half way up the high blueberry bushes. I penetrate to islets inaccessible in summer, my feet slumping to the sphagnum far out of sight beneath, where the alder berry glows yet and the azalea buds, and perchance a single tree sparrow or a chickadee lisps by my side, where there are few tracks even of wild animals; perhaps only a mouse or two have burrowed up by the side of some twig, and hopped away in straight lines on the surface of the light, deep snow, as if too timid to delay, to another hole by the side of another bush; and a few rabbits have run in a path amid the blueberries and alders about the edge of the swamp. 

There is but little life and but few objects, it is true. 

We are reduced to admire buds, even like the partridges, and bark, like the rabbits and mice, —the great yellow and red forward-looking buds of the azalea, the plump red ones of the blueberry, and the fine sharp red ones of the panicled andromeda, sleeping along its stem, the speckled black alder, the rapid-growing dogwood, the pale-brown and cracked blueberry. Even a little shining bud which lies sleeping behind its twig and dreaming of spring, perhaps half concealed by ice, is object enough. 

I feel myself upborne on the andromeda bushes beneath the snow, as on a springy basketwork, then down I go up to my middle in the deep but silent snow, which has no sympathy with my mishap. Beneath the level of this snow how many sweet berries will be hanging next August! 


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 10, 1856

Remembering the walk of yesterday. See January 10, 1854 (“What you can recall of a walk on the second day will differ from what you remember on the first day.“); January 9, 1856 ("I wade through the swamp, where the snow lies light eighteen inches deep on a level, a few leaves of andromedas, etc., peeping out. (I am a-birds’-nesting.) The mice have been out and run over it. I see one large bush of winter-berries still quite showy.")

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

To wade through the swamps,

all snowed up untracked by man,

admiring the buds.

A blue heron-like bird, but with fawn-colored throat and breast and red feet?

May 16.

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

Trees generally leafing. Black willow leafs. Bass leaf is an inch over; probably began about the 14th. Panicled andromeda leafed in some places, probably a day or two. Grape buds begin to open. Swamp white oak leaf, probably yesterday. Silky cornel leaf, two days or three. 

A woodcock, near river. 

A blue heron-like bird on a tree over river, but with uniformly fawn-colored throat and breast and red feet. 

We hear these last two or three warm days the loud sound of toads borne on or amid the rippling wind. 

A green bittern with its dark-green coat and crest, sitting watchful, goes off with a limping peetweet flight.






H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 16, 1855

Trees generally leafing. See May 17, 1852 ("The woods putting forth new leaves; it is a memorable season. So hopeful! These young leaves have the beauty of flowers")

A heron with red feet ?????  See  Compton, Confusion of Species.

A green bittern with its dark-green coat and crest. . . goes off with a limping peetweet flight. See  August 31, 1858 (“At Goose Pond I scare up a small green bittern. It plods along low, a few feet over the surface, with limping flight, and alights on a slender water-killed stump, and voids its excrement just as it starts again, as if to lighten itself.”) and note to  July 30, 1856 ("A green bittern crosses in my rear with heavy flapping flight . . . looks deep slate-blue above, yellow legs, whitish streak along throat and breast. . .”);

The Andromeda Ponds – This beautiful blushing ice!

January 24

Those Andromeda Ponds are very attractive spots to me. They are filled with a dense bed of the small andromeda, a dull red mass as commonly seen, brighter or translucent red looking toward the sun, grayish looking from it, two feet or more high, as thick as a moss bed, springing out of a still denser bed of sphagnum beneath.

Above the general level rise in clumps here and there the panicled andromeda, with brown clustered fruit, and the high blueberry. But I observe that the andromeda does not quite fill the pond, but there is an open wet place, with coarse grass, swamp loosestrife, and some button-bush, about a rod wide, surrounding the whole.

Dr. Harris spoke of this andromeda as a rare plant in Cambridge. There was one pond-hole where he had found it, but he believed they had destroyed it now getting out the mud. What can be expected of a town where this is a rare plant?

Here is Nature’s parlor; here you can talk with her in the lingua vernacula, if you can speak it,—if you have anything to say, —her little back sitting-room, her withdrawing, her keeping room.

January 24, 2022

I was surprised to find the ice in the middle of the last pond a beautiful delicate rose-color for two or three rods, deeper in spots. It reminded me of red snow, and may be the same. It extended several inches into the ice, at least, and had been spread by the flowing water recently. 

It was this delicate rose tint, with internal bluish tinges like mother-o’-pearl or the inside of a conch. It was quite conspicuous fifteen rods off, and the color of spring-cranberry juice. This beautiful blushing ice! What are we coming to?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 24, 1855

Those Andromeda Ponds are very attractive spots to me. A dull red mass as commonly seen, brighter or translucent red looking toward the sun, grayish looking from it. See April 19 1852 ("That phenomenon of the andromeda seen against the sun cheers me exceedingly."); January 10,1855 ("As I go toward the sun now at 4 P. M., the translucent leaves are lit up by it and appear of a soft red, more or less brown, like cathedral windows, but when I look back from the sun, the whole bed appears merely gray and brown or less reddish.”); November 24, 1857 ("Looking toward the sun, the andromeda in front of me is a very warm red brown and on either side of me, a pale silvery brown; looking from the sun, a uniform pale brown. . . .These andromeda swamps charmed me more than twenty years sgo, — I knew not why") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Andromeda Phenomenon

 Rose-color ice. See January 22, 1860 ("At the west or nesaea end of the largest Andromeda Pond, I see that there has been much red ice, more than I ever saw, but now spoiled by the thaw and snow.");   January 25, 1855 ("I have come with basket and hatchet to get a specimen of the rose-colored ice . . . The redness is all about an inch below the surface, the little bubbles in the ice there for half an inch vertically being coated interruptedly within or without with what looks like a minute red dust when seen through a microscope.");  February 23, 1855 ("See at Walden . . . ice formed over the large square where ice has been taken out for Brown’s ice-house has a decided pink or rosaceous tinge.");  March 4, 1855 ("Returning by the Andromeda Ponds, I am surprised to see the red ice visible still . . . It is melted down to the red bubbles, and I can tinge my finger with it there by rubbing it in the rotted ice."); March 7, 1855 ("The redness in the ice appears mostly to have evaporated, so that, melted, it does not color the water in a bottle."); December 21, 1855 ("Fair Haven is entirely frozen over, probably some days . . . I see, close under the high bank on the east side, a distinct tinge of that red in the ice for a rod.")

Surprised to find ice

a delicate rose-color

like cranberry juice.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, This beautiful blushing ice! 

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-550124