A Book of the Seasons: Basho's Commentary

If you make the least correct 

observation of nature . . . 

the season and life itself is prolonged.

  Henry Thoreau, April 7, 1853 

March. The frogs are now heard leaping into the ditches on your approach . . . I see the dimples where the croakers which were on the surface have dived . . . They are very wary, and instantly dive to the bottom . . . Later, in a pool behind Lee's Cliff, I hear them, – the waking up of the leafy pools.

The frogs are now heard

leaping into the ditches

on your approach. 

HDT ~ March 30, 1858

An old pond

a frog jumps in —

sound of water.

~ Basho

May.  Near Jenny Dugan’s, perceive that unaccountable fugacious fragrance, as of all flowers, bursting forth in air . . .It is the general fragrance of the year. I am almost afraid I shall trace it to some particular plant. It surpasses all particular fragrances. I am not sitting near any flower that I can perceive.

Unaccountable

flowery fragrance– yet not

near any flower.

HDT ~ May 6, 1855

From which tree's bloom

it comes, I do not know —

this fragrance.

~ Basho

May. Young blueberries every where in bloom, and Viola pedata along the woodland paths, in high land.  Sorrel in bloom, beginning. I am eager to taste a handful.

Viola pedata

along the woodland paths

in high land.

HDT ~ May 21, 1852

On mountain path

greeted by

a wild violet.

~ Basho

June. All the phenomena of nature need be seen from the point of view of wonder and awe, like lightning; and, on the other hand, the lightning itself needs to be regarded with serenity, as the most familiar and innocent phenomena are.

Wonder awe

innocence serenity –

lightning!

HDT ~  June 27, 1852

How admirable!

to see lightning and not think

life is fleeting.

~ Basho

July. Before I rise I hear the song of birds from out the fog, like the bursting of its bubbles with music, the bead on liquids just uncorked . . . I am older than last year; the mornings are further between; the days are fewer.  

Birds from out the fog,

I am older than last year –

the days are fewer.

HDT ~ July 7, 1852

This autumn

why am I aging so?

Bird in a cloud.

~ Basho

August. The little bees have gone to sleep amid the clethra blossoms in the rain and are not yet aroused.

The little bees sleep

amid blossoms in the rain

and are not aroused.

HDT ~ August 4, 1852

A bee

staggers out

of the peony.

~Basho

August. It is the turning-point between afternoon and evening. The few sounds now heard, far or near, are delicious. It is not more dusky and obscure, but clearer than before. Each sound has a broad and deep relief of silence.

Clearer than before 

each sound has a broad and deep 

relief of silence. 

HDT  ~ August 11, 1853

The silence –

the voice of the cicadas

penetrates the rocks.

~ Basho

September. I hear from my chamber a screech owl about Monroe’s house this bright moonlight night, — a loud, piercing scream, much like the whinny of a colt perchance, a rapid trill, then subdued or smothered a note or two.

This bright moonlight night

an owl heard from my chamber —

a loud, piercing scream.

HDT ~  September 23, 1855

autumn wind

through an open door –

a piercing cry

~ Basho

September. I see the very peak, — there can be no mistake, — but how much I do not see . . .What is it but a faint blue cloud, a mist that may vanish?

That far blue mountain

is but a faint blue cloud – a

mist that may vanish.

HDT ~ September 27, 1852

How intriguing! —

Mount Fuji is veiled all day

in the misty rain.

~ Basho (after Uedo)

October. One crow lingers on a limb of the dead oak till I am within a dozen rods. There is strong and blustering northwest wind, and when it launches off to follow its comrades it is blown up and backward still nearer to me. 

One crow lingers

on a limb of the dead oak . . .

strong blustering wind.

HDT ~ October 6, 1860

On a bare branch 

a solitary crow –

autumn evening.

~ Basho 

October. The moon beginning to wane . . . The forest has lost so many leaves that its floor and paths are much more checkered with light. I hear no sound but the rustling of the withered leaves, and, on the wooded hilltops, the roar of the wind. Each tree resounds all night.

The roar of the wind

on the wooded hilltops – each

tree resounds all night.

HDT ~ October 28, 1852

All night long

listening to autumn winds

wandering the mountain.

~ Basho 

November. We had a true November sunset after a dark, cloudy afternoon. The sun reached a clear stratum just before setting, beneath the dark cloud, though ready to enter another on the horizon’s edge, and a cold, yellow sunlight suddenly illumined the withered grass of the fields around, near and far, eastward. 

      

Cold yellow sunlight

illumines the withered fields –

November sunset. 

HDT ~  November 9, 1858

Sick on a journey

my dreams wander

the withered fields.

~ Basho

December.  For years my appetite was so strong that I fed — I browsed — on the pine forest's edge seen against the winter horizon . . . fed my imagination on them, — far-away, ideal trees . . . the value of the forest for me [was] in that line where it was relieved against the sky.

The pine forest's edge –

that far line seen against the

winter horizon.

HDT ~ December 3, 1856  

 

Coolness

the clean lines

of the wild pine.

~ Basho

December. The dear privacy and retirement and solitude which winter makes possible!  This evening for the first time the new moon is reflected from the frozen snow-crust.

Winter solitude –

the new moon reflected from

the frozen snow crust.

HDT ~ December 8, 1850

Winter solitude –

in a world of one color

the sound of wind.

~Basho

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Basho's Commentary

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 © 2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-Basho

A Book of the Seasons: Blue-stemmed goldenrod (solidago caesia)

 I would make a chart of our life, 

know why just this circle of creatures completes the world.

Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852

The blue-stemmed and white

goldenrod survive – push up

and blossom anew.

October 26, 1852

May 30.  Blue-stemmed goldenrod is already a foot high. May 30, 1857

August 7. I see that common gall on goldenrods now on an   S. cæsia. August 7, 1856 

August 24. Blue-stemmed goldenrod, apparently a few days in some places.  The goldenrods which I have observed in bloom this year are (I do not remember the order exactly): (1) stricta, (2) lanceolata, (3) arguta (?), (4) петоralis, (5) bicolor, (6) odora, (7) altissima, (8) ulmifolia (?), (9) cæsia . . . The cæsia ( 9th ) just begun. August 24, 1853

August 27. Blue-stemmed goldenrod, a day or two.  August 27, 1854

September 3, 2023

September 18. Solidago caesia in prime at Bittern Cliff Wood. September 18, 1856

September 20, 2025

September 23. A blue-stemmed goldenrod, its stem and leaves red. September 23, 1852

September 23. I see everywhere in the shady yew wood those pretty round-eyed fungus-spots on the upper leaves of the blue-stemmed goldenrod, contrasting with the few bright-yellow flowers above them, -- yellowish-white rings (with a slate-colored centre), surrounded by green and then dark. September 23, 1860 

September 30.  All the honey-bees we saw were on the blue-stemmed golden-rod (Solidago cæsia), which is late, lasts long, which emitted a sweet agreeable fragrance, not on the asters. September 30, 1852

October 2.  The Aster undulatus and Solidago cæsia and often puberula are particularly prominent now, looking late and bright, attracting bees, etc. I see the S. cæsia so covered with the little fuzzy gnats as to be whitened by them. October 2, 1859

October 19. The most prominent of the few lingering solidagos which I have noticed since the 8th is the S. caesia, though that is very scarce indeed now, hardly survives at all. October 19, 1856

October 20. Canada snapdragon, tansy, white goldenrod, blue-stemmed goldenrod. Aster undulatus, autumnal dandelion, tall buttercup, yarrow, mayweed. October 20, 1852

October 22. The blue-stemmed goldenrod.  October 22, 1852

October 23.  The blue-stemmed, and also the white, solidago on Walden bank. October 23, 1853

October 25. Returning in an old wood-path from top of Pine Hill to Goose Pond, I see many goldenrods turned purple — all the leaves. Some of them are Solidago coesia and some (I think) S. puberula. Many goldenrods, as S. odorata, turn yellow or paler. October 25, 1858
 

October 26. The blue-stemmed and white goldenrod apparently survive till winter, – push up and blossom anew.  October 26, 1852

November 2.  The leaves which are not withered, whose tints are still fresh and bright, are now remarked in sheltered places. Plucked quite a handsome nosegay from the side of Heywood's Peak, - white and blue-stemmed goldenrods, asters (undulatus and ?).  November 2, 1852

November 10. In the path below the Cliff, I see some blue-stemmed goldenrod turned yellow as well as purple. November 10, 1858

November 23.  The following seen within a fortnight: a late three-ribbed goldenrod of some kind, blue-stemmed goldenrod (these two perhaps within a week), Potentilla argentea, Aster undulatus, Ranunculus repens, Bidens connata, shepherd's-purse, etc., etc. November 23, 1852 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Blue-stemmed Goldenrod (solidago caesia)

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-bluestem

Over the highest hill behind Bangor.

September 23

Friday. Walked down the riverside this forenoon to the hill where they were using a steamshovel at the new railroad cut, and thence to a hill three quarters of a mile further. 

Saw Aster undulatus, Solidago nemoralis, fragrant everlasting, silvery cinquefoil, small white birch, Lobelia inflata, both kinds of primrose, low cudweed, lactuca, Polygonum cilinode (apparently out of bloom), yellow oxalis.

I returned across the fields behind the town, and over the highest hill behind Bangor, and up the Kenduskieg, from which I saw the Ebeeme Mountains in the northwest and hills we had come by. 

The arbor-vitæ is the prevailing shrub.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 23, 1853

Friday. Walked down the riverside. See September 21, 1853 ("Reached Bangor at dark."); September 22, 1853 ("Behind one house, an Indian had nearly finished one canoe and was just beginning another, outdoors")

Aster undulatus. See September 20, 1852 ("Aster undulatus, or variable aster, with a large head of middle-sized blue flowers."); October 6, 1858 ("the Aster undulatus is now very fair and interesting. Generally a tall and slender plant with a very long panicle of middle-sized lilac or paler purple flowers, bent over to one side the path. "); October 19, 1856 ("The A. undulatus is, perhaps, the only [aster] of which you can find a respectable specimen. I see one so fresh that there is a bumblebee on it."); October 25, 1858 ("The Aster undulatus is now a dark purple (its leaves), with brighter purple or crimson under sides.");November 7, 1858 ("Aster undulatus and several goldenrods, at least, may be found yet.")

Solidago nemoralis. See note to September 12, 1859 ("One dense mass of the bright golden recurved wands of the Solidago nemoralis, waving in the wind and turning upward to the light hundreds, if not a thousand, flowerets each.")

Fragrant everlasting, See August 11, 1858 (“I smell the fragrant everlasting concealed in the higher grass and weeds there, some distance off.”); September 19, 1852 ("The fall dandelion and the fragrant everlasting abound")

I saw the Ebeeme Mountains in the northwest and hills we had come by. See Book for the Children of Maine, 19 (1831)   ("The Ebeeme mountains nearly south of Ktaadn, are about four thousand feet high.")

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")

A farmer in his field.

September 23

P. M. — Round by Clematis Brook.

The forget-me-not still.

I observe the rounded tops of the dogwood bushes, scarlet in the distance, on the edge of the meadow (Hubbard's), more full and bright than any flower.

The maples are mostly darker, the very few boughs that are turned, and the tupelo, which is reddening.

The ash is just beginning to turn.

The scarlet dogwood is the striking bush to-day.

I find huckleberries on Conantum still sound and blackening the bushes.

How much longer a mile appears between two blue mountain peaks thirty or more miles off in the horizon than one would expect!

Some acorns and hickory nuts on the ground, but they have not begun to shell.

Is it the nut of the Carya amara, with raised seams, but not bitter, that I perceive?

I suppose that is the Carya tomentosa, or mockernut hickory, with large rounded nuts on Lee's land.

The bitternuts (?), rubbed together, smell like varnish.

The sarothra in bloom.

The wind from the north has turned the white lily pads wrong side up, so that they look red, and their stems are slanted up-stream.

Almost all the yellow ones have disappeared.

September 23, 2018

A blue-stemmed goldenrod, its stem and leaves red.

The woodbine high on trees in the shade a delicate pink.

I gathered some haws very good to eat to-day. I think they must be the senelles of the Canadians.

Hamamelis Virginiana out, before its leaves fall.

A woodchuck out.

The waxwork not opened.

The "feathery tails" of the clematis fruit conspicuous and interesting now.

Yellow lily out (again?) in the pond-holes.

Passing a corn-field the other day, close by a hat and coat on a stake, I recognized the owner of the farm. Any of his acquaintances would. He was only a trifle more weather-[beaten] than when I saw him last. His back being toward me, I missed nothing, and I thought to myself if I were a crow I should not fear the balance of him, at any rate.

In northern latitudes, where other edible fruits are scarce, they make an account of haws and bunch-berries.

The barberry bushes in Clematis Hollow are very beautiful now, with their wreaths of red or scarlet fruit drooping over a rock.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 23, 1852

The scarlet dogwood is the striking bush to-day. See note to September 25, 1852 ("The scarlet of the dogwood is the most conspicuous and interesting of the autumnal colors at present.")

A blue-stemmed goldenrod, its stem and leaves red. See September 23, 1860 ("I see everywhere in the shady yew wood those pretty round-eyed fungus-spots on the upper leaves of the blue-stemmed goldenrod, contrasting with the few bright-yellow flowers above them, -- yellowish-white rings (with a slate-colored centre), surrounded by green and then dark."); See also November 10, 1858 ("In the path below the Cliff, I see some blue-stemmed goldenrod turned yellow as well as purple.") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Blue-stemmed Goldenrod (solidago caesia)

How much longer a mile appears between two blue mountain peaks thirty or more miles off in the horizon. See March 31, 1853 ("It is affecting to see a distant mountain-top,. . . still as blue and ethereal to your eyes as is your memory of it.'); May 17, 1858 ("I doubt if in the landscape there can be anything finer than a distant mountain-range. They are a constant elevating influence."); August 14, 1854 (“I have come forth to this hill at sunset to see the forms of the mountains in the horizon.— to behold and commune with something grander than man. “); August 30, 1854 ("The clearness of the air makes it delicious to gaze in any direction. . . ., and I see with new pleasure to distant hillsides and farmhouses . . and to the mountains in the horizon."); October 20, 1852 ("This is an advantage of mountains in the horizon: they show you fair weather from the midst of foul."); October 22, 1857 ("But what a perfect crescent of mountains we have in our northwest horizon! Do we ever give thanks for it? "); November 4, 1857 ("But those grand and glorious mountains, how impossible to remember daily that they are there, and to live accordingly! They are meant to be a perpetual reminder to us, pointing out the way."): November 22, 1860 ("Simply to see to a distant horizon through a clear air, - the fine outline of a distant hill or a blue mountaintop through some new vista, - this is wealth enough for one afternoon.")  

The wind from the north has turned the white lily pads wrong side up, so that they look red. See June 29, 1852 ("The wind exposes the red undersides of the white lily pads. This is one of the aspects of the river now."); August 24,1854 ("The bright crimson-red under sides of the great white lily pads, turned up by the wind in broad fields on the sides of the stream, are a great ornament to the stream. It is not till August, methinks, that they are turned up conspicuously.”)

Carya amara, bitternut -- Carya tomentosa, mockernut hickory,( North American hickories include:

·        Carya glabra – pignut hickory

·       Carya laciniosa - shagbark hickory

·     Carya ovata – shagbark hickory

·      Carya texana  black hickory

·      Carya tomentosa  – mockernut hickory

·      Carya cordiformis (amara)  – bitternut hickory)