The reflection enchants us, just as an echo does. The rhyme makes even what was odd.

November 23.

6 A. M. – To Swamp Bridge Brook mouth.

The cocks are the only birds I hear, but they are a host. They crow as freshly and bravely as ever, while poets go down the stream, degenerate into science and prose.

I have not seen a flock of small birds, either tree sparrows or F. hyemalis or white-in-tails, etc., for about a fortnight. There is now no sound of early birds on the leafless trees and bushes -- willows and alders -- along this watercourse. The few that are left probably roost in the evergreen woods.

Yet I hear, or seem to hear, the faintest possible lisp or creak from some sparrow, as if from a crack in the mist-clad earth, or some ox-yoke or distant wain. I suspect that the song sparrow lingers as late, here and there alone, as any migrating bird.

By 8 o'clock the misty clouds disperse, and it turns out a pleasant, calm, and springlike morning.

The water, going down, but still spread far over the meadows, is seen from the window perfectly smooth and full of reflections.  

What lifts and lightens and makes heaven of the earth is the fact that you see the reflections of the humblest weeds against the sky, but you cannot put your head low enough to see the substance so.  The reflection enchants us, just as an echo does.

If I would preserve my relation to nature, I must make my life more moral, more pure and innocent. The problem is as precise and simple as a mathematical one. I must not live loosely, but more and more continently.

What an engineer this water is! It comes with its unerring level, and reveals all the inequalities of the meadow. The farmer may see now what route to take to get the driest and firmest ground for his hay - carts, how to cut his ditches, and where to drop more sand. It is an obvious piece of geometry in nature.

Every peculiar curve in the limbs of the trees is doubly conspicuous seen both above and beneath, yet the rhyme makes even what was odd, regular what was irregular.

For a week or more there has been no freezing day or night.

The springs and swamps are getting filled.

The Indian summer itself, said to be more remarkable in this country than elsewhere, no less than the reblossoming of certain flowers, the peep of the hylodes, and sometimes the faint warble of some birds, is the reminiscence, or rather the return, of spring, the year renewing its youth.

At 5 P. M. I saw, flying southwest high overhead, a flock of geese, and heard the faint honking of one or two. They were in the usual harrow form, twelve in the shorter line and twenty four in the longer, the latter abutting on the former at the fourth bird from the front. I judged hastily that the interval between the geese was about double their alar extent, and, as the last is, according to Wilson, five feet and two inches, the former may safely be called eight feet.  I hear they were fired at with a rifle from Bunker Hill the other day. This is the sixth flock I have seen or heard of since the morning of the 17th, i.e. within a week.

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

I suspect that the song sparrow lingers as late, here and there alone, as any migrating bird. See  October 26, 1855 ("The song sparrow still sings on a button-bush."): October 27, 1853 ("These, methinks, are song sparrows flitting about, with the three spots on breast"): December 9, 1858 ("At New Bedford. See a song sparrow"): January 15, 1857 (" As I passed the south shed at the depot, observed what . . . must be a song sparrow, it having the usual marks on its breast and no bright-chestnut crown. The snow is nine or ten inches deep, and it appeared to have taken refuge in this shed, where was much bare ground exposed by removing the wood."): January 22, 1857 ("Minott tells me that Sam Barrett told him once when he went to mill that a song sparrow took up its quarters in his grist-mill and stayed there all winter"): January 28, 1857 ("Am again surprised to see a song sparrow sitting for hours on our wood-pile in the yard, in the midst of snow in the yard.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Song Sparrow (Fringilla melodia)

You see the reflections of the humblest weeds against the sky, but you cannot put your head low enough to see the substance so. The reflection enchants us, just as an echo does. See  September 2, 1852 ("We see things in the reflection which we do not see in the substance. In the reflected woods of Pine Hill there is a vista through which I see the sky, but I am indebted to the water for this advantage, for from this point the actual wood affords no such vista. "); November 30, 1853 (Though frequently we could not see the real bush in the twilight against the dark bank, in the water it appeared against the sky. We were thus often enabled to steer clear of the overhanging bushes");  December 8, 1853 (“I saw from the peak the entire reflection of large white pines very distinctly against a clear white sky, though the actual tree was completely lost in night against the dark distant hillside.”); December 9, 1856 ("I perceive that more or other things are seen in the reflection than in the substance."); October 14, 1857 ("The reflection is never a true copy or repetition of its substance, but a new composition, and this may be the source of its novelty and attractiveness, and of this nature, too, may be the charm of an echo."); November 2, 1857 ("The water tells me how it looks to it seen from below.”); November 27, 1857 ("I think that Ruskin is wrong about reflections . . .He says . . . 'Whatever you can see from the place in which you stand, of the solid objects so reversed under the water, you will see in the reflection’”).

Every peculiar curve in the limbs of the trees is doubly conspicuous seen both above and beneath, yet the rhyme makes even what was odd, regular what was irregular. See April 11, 1852 (". At this season the reflections of deciduous trees are more remarkable than when they are in leaf, because, the branches being seen, they make with their reflections a more wonderful rhyme.. . .a kind of geometrical figure.")

What an engineer this water is! It comes with its unerring level . . . an obvious piece of geometry in nature. See November 11, 1855 ("At the Hemlocks I see a narrow reddish line of hemlock leaves and, half an inch below, a white line of saw dust, eight inches above the present surface, on the upright side of a rock, both mathematically level.");. April 1, 1860 ("The river being so low, we see lines of sawdust perfectly level and parallel to one another on the side of the steep dark bank at the Hemlocks. . . .reminding you of a coarse chalk line made by snapping a string, not more than half an inch wide much of it, but more true than that would be.")

I saw, flying southwest high overhead, a flock of geese, and heard the faint honking of one or two. They were in the usual harrow form, . . . This is the sixth flock I have seen or heard of since the morning of the 17th, i.e . within a week. See November 18, 1854 ("Sixty geese go over the Great Fields, in one waving line, broken from time to time by their crowding on each other and vainly endeavoring to form into a harrow, honking all the while.”);. November 20, 1853 ("Methinks the geese are wont to go south just before a storm, and, in the spring, to go north just after one, say at the end of a long April storm");. November 22, 1853 ("Geese went over yesterday, and to-day also");. November 24, 1855 ("Geese went over on the 13th and 14th, on the 17th the first snow fell, and the 19th it began to be cold and blustering"); November 30, 1857 ("The air is full of geese. I saw five flocks within an hour, about 10 A. M., containing from thirty to fifty each, and afterward two more flocks, making in all from two hundred and fifty to three hundred at least") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Geese in Autumn

Weeds against the sky –

in reflection enchants us

just as an echo.

Nature works by contraries

February 11. 

P. M. — To Ball’s Hill over ice. 

February 11, 2019

Among the common phenomena of the ice are those triangular points of thick ice heaved up a couple of feet where the ice has recently settled about a rock. The rock looks somewhat like a dark fruit within a gaping shell or bur. 

Also, now, as often after a freshet in cold weather, the ice which had formed around and frozen to the trees and bushes along the shore, settling, draws them down to the ground or water, often breaking them extensively. It reminds you of an alligator or other evil genius of the river pulling the trees and bushes which had come to drink into the water. 

If a maple or alder is unfortunate enough to dip its lower limbs into the freshet, dallying with it, their fate is sealed, for the water, freezing that night, takes fast hold on them like a vise, and when the water runs out from beneath, an irresistible weight brings them down to the ground and holds them there. Only the spring sun will soften the heart of this relentless monster, when, commonly, it is too late. How the ice far in the meadows, thus settling, spreads the clumps — of willows, etc., on every side! 

Nature works by contraries. That which in summer was most fluid and unresting is now most solid and motionless. If in the summer you cast a twig into the stream it instantly moved along with the current, and nothing remained as it was. Now I see yonder a long row of black twigs standing erect in mid-channel where two months ago a fisherman set them and fastened his lines to them. They stand there motionless as guide-posts while snow and ice are piled up about them. 

Such is the cold skill of the artist. He carves a statue out of a material which is fluid as water to the ordinary workman. His sentiments are a quarry which he works. 

I see only the chain of sunken boats passing round a tree above the ice. 

The south side of Ball’s Hill, which is warm and half bare, is tracked up with partridges, and I start several there. So is it next Sunday with the Hill shore, east of Fair Haven Pond. These birds are sure to be found now on such slopes, where only the ground and dry leaves are exposed. 

The water lately went down, and the ice settled on the meadows, and now rain has come, and cold again, and this surface is alternate ice and snow. 

Looking from this hill toward the sun, they are seen to be handsomely watered all over with alternate waves of shining ice and white snow-crust, literally “watered” on the grandest scale, —this palace floor.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  February 11, 1859

The south side of Ball’s Hill, which is warm and half bare, is tracked up with partridges, and I start several there.See February 11, 1855 ("The dog scares up some partridges out of the soft snow under the apple trees in the Tommy Wheeler orchard."); February 11, 1856 ("See a partridge by the riverside, opposite Fair Haven Hill, which at first I mistake for the top of a fence-post above the snow, amid some alders. . . .Within three rods, I see it to be indeed a partridge, to my surprise, standing perfectly still, with its head erect and neck stretched upward. It is as complete a deception as if it had designedly placed itself on the line of the fence and in the proper place for a post. It finally steps off daintily with a teetering gait and head up, and takes to wing")


I see only the chain of sunken boats passing round a tree above the ice. See December 15, 1856 (“I observe B 's boat left out at the pond, as last winter. When I see that a man neglects his boat thus, I do not wonder that he fails in his business. It is not only shiftlessness or unthrift, but a sort of filthiness to let things go to wrack and ruin thus.”); January 5, 1856 ("Boats . . . half filled with ice and almost completely buried in snow, so neglected by their improvident owners . . ."); April 22, 1857 (“We pass a dozen boats sunk at their moorings, at least at one end, being moored too low.”).

Looking from this hill toward the sun . . . waves of shining ice and white snow-crust. See February 29, 1852 (" From Pine Hill, looking westward, I see the snowcrust shine in the sun as far as the eye can reach . . . Where day before yesterday was half the ground bare, is this sheeny snow-crust to-day.")

The green of the ice and water begins to be visible about half an hour before sunset.

January 20. 

A second remarkably pleasant day like the last. 

P. M. — Up river. 

I see a large white oak perfectly bare. 

Among four or five pickerel in a “well” on the river, I see one with distinct transverse bars as I look down on its back, — not quite across the back, but plain as they spring from the side of the back, — while all the others are uniformly dark above. Is not the former Esox fasciatus? There is no marked difference when I look at them on their sides. 

I see in various places on the ice and snow, this very warm and pleasant afternoon, a kind of mosquito perhaps, a feeble flyer, commonly resting on the ice.

The green of the ice and water begins to be visible about half an hour before sunset. Is it produced by the reflected blue of the sky mingling with the yellow or pink of the setting sun?

What a singular element is this water! I go shaking the river from side to side at each step, as I see by its motion at the few holes. 

I learn from J. Farmer that he saw to-day in his wood lot, on removing the bark of a dead white pine, an immense quantity of mosquitoes, moving but little, in a cavity between the bark and the wood made probably by some other insect. These were probably like mine. 

There were also wasps and what he calls lightning-bugs there.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 20, 1859

Among four or five pickerel I see one with distinct transverse bars as I look down on its back, — while all the others are uniformly dark above.  See April 6, 1858 (“ I asked him to let me see the fish he had caught. It was a little pickerel five inches long, and appeared to me strange, being transversely barred, and reminded me of the Wrentham pond pickerel; but I could not remember surely whether this was the rule or the exception; but when I got home I found that this was the one which Storer does not name nor describe, but only had heard of. Is it not the brook pickerel?”); April 18, 1858 ("I saw in those ditches many small pickerel, landlocked, which appeared to be transversely barred!”); May 27, 1858 ("De Kay describes the Esox fasciatus, which is apparently mine of May 11th.”); May 11, 1858 ("Thickly barred transversely with broken dark greenish brown lines, alternating with golden ones. The back was the dark greenish brown with a pale-brown dorsal line.”); See also Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History ("[Mr. Putnam] exhibited specimens of the young and adult pickerel, to show that the "short-nosed pickerel " is specifically distinct from the "long-nosed " — the Esox reticulatus — and said that the " short-nosed " species is the Esox fasciatus of Dekay, which is not the young of the Esox reticulates”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Pickerel

The green of the ice and water begins to be visible about half an hour before sunset. See January 7, 1856 (“Returning, just before sunset, the few little patches of ice look green as I go from the sun (which is in clouds). It is probably a constant phenomenon in cold weather when the ground is covered with snow and the sun is low, morning or evening, and you are looking from it.”); December 25, 1858 (“The sun getting low now, say at 3.30, I see the ice green, southeast.”); February 12, 1860 ("Returning just before sunset, I see the ice beginning to be green...”)

The green of the ice

begins to be visible

just before sunset.

January 20, 1859

What a singular element is this water! See March 14, 1860 ("No sooner has the ice of Walden melted than the wind begins to play in dark ripples over the surface of the virgin water. Ice dissolved is the next moment as perfect water as if melted a million years.”)

Wheels of the storm chariots.

January 5.

One of the coldest mornings. Thermometer —9°, say some. 

P. M. — Up river to Hubbard’s Bridge. 

January 5, 2022

It has been trying to snow all day, but has not succeeded; as if it were too cold. Though it has been falling all day, there has not been enough to whiten the coat of the traveller. 

I come to the river, for here it is the best walking. The snow is not so deep over the ice. Near the middle, the superincumbent snow has so far been converted into a coarse snow ice that it will bear me, though occasionally I slump through intervening water to another ice below. 

Also, perhaps, the snow has been somewhat blown out of the river valley. At any rate, by walking where the ice was frozen last, or over the channel, I can get along quite comfortably, while it is hard travelling through this crusted snow in the fields. 

Generally, to be sure, the river is but a white snow-field, indistinguishable from the fields, but over the channel there is a thread, commonly, of yellowish porous-looking snow ice. 

The hardback above the snow has this form: Should not that meadow where the first bridge was built be called Hardhack Meadow? Also there are countless small ferns, with terminal leafet only left on, still rising above the snow, —for I notice the herbage of the riverside now,—thus, like the large ones in swamps: 

What with the grasses —that coarse, now straw-colored grass—and the stems of the button-bushes, the snow about the button-bushes forms often broad, —several rods broad,— low mounds, nearly burying the bushes, along which the tops of the button-bushes and that broad-bladed, now straw colored grass still rise, with masses of thin, now black-looking balls, erect or dangling. 

The black willows have here and there still a very few little curled and crispy leaves. 

The river is last open, methinks, just below a bend, as now at the Bath Place and at Clamshell Hill; and quite a novel sight is the dark water there. 

How little locomotive now look the boats whose painted sterns I just detect where they are half filled with ice and almost completely buried in snow, so neglected by their improvident owners, —some frozen in the ice, opening their seams, some drawn up on the bank. This is not merely improvidence; it is ingratitude. 

Now and then I hear a sort of creaking twitter, maybe from a passing snow bunting. This is the weather for them. 

I am surprised that Nut Meadow Brook has overflowed its meadow and converted it into that coarse yellowish snow ice. Otherwise it had been a broad snow-field, concealing a little ice under it. There is a narrow thread of open water over its channel. 

The thin snow now driving from the north and lodging on my coat consists of those beautiful star crystals, not cottony and chubby spokes, as on the 13th December, but thin and partly transparent crystals. They are about a tenth of an inch in diameter, perfect little wheels with six spokes without a tire, or rather with six perfect little leaflets, fern-like, with a distinct straight and slender midrib, raying from the centre.  On each side of each midrib there is a transparent thin blade with a crenate edge.

How full of the creative genius is the air in which these are generated! I should hardly admire more if real stars fell and lodged on my coat. 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. 

Soon the storm increases, — it was already very severe to face, —and the snow comes finer, more white and powdery. Who knows but this is the original form of all snowflakes, but that when I observe these crystal stars falling around me they are but just generated in the low mist next the earth?

I am nearer to the source of the snow, its primal, auroral, and golden hour or infancy, but commonly the flakes reach us travel-worn and agglomerated, comparatively without order or beauty, far down in their fall, like men in their advanced age. 

As for the circumstances under which this phenomenon occurs, it is quite cold, and the driving storm is bitter to face, though very little snow is falling. It comes almost horizontally from the north. Methinks this kind of snow never falls in any quantity.

A divinity must have stirred within them before the crystals did thus shoot and set. Wheels of the storm chariots. The same law that shapes the earth-star shapes the snow-star. As surely as the petals of a flower are fixed, each of these countless snow-stars comes whirling to earth, pronouncing thus, with emphasis, the number six.   Order, κóσμos. 

On the Saskatchewan, when no man of science is there to behold, still down they come, and not the less fulfill their destiny, perchance melt at once on the Indian’s face. 

What a world we live in! where myriads of these little disks, so beautiful to the most prying eye, are whirled down on every traveller’s coat, the observant and the unobservant, and on the restless squirrel’s fur, and on the far-stretching fields and forests, the wooded dells, and the mountain-tops. 

Far, far away from the haunts of man, they roll down some little slope, fall over and come to their bearings, and melt or lose their beauty in the mass, ready anon to swell some little rill with their contribution, and so, at last, the universal ocean from which they came. There they lie, like the wreck of chariot-wheels after a battle in the skies. 

Meanwhile the meadow mouse shoves them aside in his gallery, the schoolboy casts them in his snowball, or the woodman’s sled glides smoothly over them, these glorious spangles, the sweeping of heaven’s floor. 

And they all sing, melting as they sing of the mysteries of the number six,—six, six, six. 

He takes up the water of the sea in his hand, leaving the salt; He disperses it in mist through the skies; He recollects and sprinkles it like grain in six-rayed snowy stars over the earth, there to lie till He dissolves its bonds again. 

Found on a young red maple near the water, in Hubbard’s riverside grove, a nest, perhaps a size bigger than a summer yellowbird’s, chiefly of bark shreds, bound and lined with lint and a little of something like dried hickory blossoms. 

A little feather, yellow at the extremity, attached to the outside. It was on a slanting twig or small branch about eighteen feet high, and I shook it down. The rim of fine shreds of grape-vine bark chiefly, the outer edge being covered with considerable of the droppings of the young birds. I thought it the same kind with that found December 30th ult. Can it be a red start, or is it  one of the vireos possibly? or a gold finch? which would account for the yellow-tipped feather. 

In the blueberry swamp near by, which was cut down by the ice, another, perhaps a little smaller, of very similar materials but more of the hickory (?) blossoms on the outside beneath, but this was in a nearly upright fork of a red maple about seven feet high. 

The little nest of June 26th, 1855, looks like the inside of one of these. Upon these two nests found to-day and on that of the 30th December, I find the same sort of dried catkin (apparently not hickory) connected with a little sort of brown bud, maybe birch or alder. This makes me suspect they may be all one kind, though the last was in an upright fork and had no droppings on it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 5, 1856

Boats . . . half filled with ice and almost completely buried in snow, so neglected by their improvident owners, — . . . This is not merely improvidence; it is ingratitude. See December 15, 1856 ("When I see that a man neglects his boat thus, I do not wonder that he fails in his business.")

The thin snow now driving from the north and lodging on my coat consists of those beautiful star crystal, . . .  perfect little wheels with six spokes . . . countless snow-stars comes whirling to earth, pronouncing thus, with emphasis, the number six. See 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.") 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 6, 1858 ("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."); 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.”); 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.")

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand. See January 6, 1858 ("What a world we live in! . . .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.")

Order, κóσμos. See August 6, 1852 ("All men beholding a rainbow begin to understand the significance of the Greek . . .  name for the world, —  Kosmos, or beauty")

Countless snow-stars come

whirling to earth pronouncing

thus the number six. 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Wheels of the storm chariots.

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-560105

Water full of reflections

Standing on the shore

of the silver-plated stream

at evening I see

the advantage of

separation from the land.

Floating on a stream

surrounded by water

is like embarking on a

train of thought itself.

Silver-plated stream --

water full of reflections.

H. D. Thoreau, August 14, 1854

Standing on the shore

I now see that sailing or 

floating down a smooth 

stream at evening

surrounded by water so 

agreeable to

imagination

is like embarking on a

train of thought itself.

Silver-plated stream

full of reflections.

August 14, 1854

Standing on the shore

I now see that in sailing

or floating down a

smooth silver-plated

stream at evening it is

an advantage to

the fancy to be

thus slightly separated

from  the land. To be

slightly removed from

the commonplace of earth.

To float thus on the

silver-plated stream

is like embarking on a

train of thought itself.

You are surrounded

by water full of reflections

and you see the

earth at a distance

very agreeable to the

imagination.

August 14, 1854

.

I smoke the earth.

August 14.

No rain, — only the dusty road spotted with the few drops which fell last night, but there is quite a high and cool wind this morning. Since August came in, we have begun to have considerable wind, as not since May, at least. The roads nowadays are covered with a light-colored, powdery dust several inches deep, which also defiles the grass and weeds and bushes, and the traveller is deterred from stepping in it. The dusty weeds and bushes leave their mark on your clothes. 

6 p.m. — To Hubbard Bath and Fair Haven Hill. Though yesterday was quite a hot day, I find by bathing that the river grows steadily cooler, as yet for a fortnight, though we have had no rain here. Is it owing solely to the cooler air since August came in, both day and night, or have rains in the southwest cooled the stream within a week? 

I now, standing on the shore, see that in sailing or floating down a smooth stream at evening it is an advantage to the fancy to be thus slightly separated from the land. It is to be slightly removed from the common place of earth. To float thus on the silver-plated stream is like embarking on a train of thought itself. You are surrounded by water, which is full of reflections; and you see the earth at a distance, which is very agreeable to the imagination. 

I see the blue smoke of a burning meadow. 

The clethra must be one of the most conspicuous flowers not yellow at present. 

I sit three-quarters up the hill. The crickets creak strong and loud now after sunset. No word will spell it. It is a short, strong, regular ringing sound, as of a thousand exactly together, — though further off some alternate, — repeated regularly and in rapid time, perhaps twice in a second. Methinks their quire is much fuller and louder than a fortnight ago. 

Ah! I need solitude. 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. Their mere distance and unprofanedness is an infinite encouragement. It is with infinite yearning and aspiration that I seek solitude, more and more resolved and strong; but with  a certain genial weakness that I seek society ever. 

I hear the nighthawk squeak and a whip-poor-will sing. 

I hear the tremulous squealing scream of a screech owl in the Holden Woods. 

Now at 7.45, perhaps a half-hour after sunset, the river is quite distinct and full of light in the dark landscape, — a silver strip of sky, of the same color and brightness with the sky.

As I go home by Hayden's I smell the burning meadow. I love the scent. It is my pipe. I smoke the earth.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, 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. . . .See June 5, 1854 ("I have come to this hill to see the sun go down, to recover sanity and put myself again in relation with Nature.”); January 7, 1857 “This stillness, solitude, wildness of nature is . . . what I go out to seek. It is as if I always met in those places some grand, serene, immortal, infinitely encouraging, though invisible, companion, and walked with him”)

A day of sunny water.

August 8. 

August 8, 2014

This is a day of sunny water. As I walk along the bank of the river, I look down a rod and see distinctly the fishes and the bottom.

Lobelia cardinalis

The cardinals are in perfection, standing in dark recesses of the green shore, or in the open meadow. They are fluviatile, and stand along some river or brook, like myself.

The foliage of most trees is now not only most dense, but a very dark green. 

I see one large white maple crisped and tinged with a sort of rosaceous tinge, just above the Golden Horn. 

The surface is very glassy there.   

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 8, 1854

I look down a rod and see distinctly the fishes and the bottom.  See August 8, 1859 ("The river, now that it is so clear and sunny, is better than any aquarium."); see also July 30, 1856 ("The wonderful clearness of the water, enabling you to explore the river bottom and many of its secrets now...”); July 28, 1859 ("The season has now arrived when I begin to see further into the water"); July 27, 1860 ("The water has begun to be clear and sunny, revealing the fishes and countless minnows of all sizes and colors”) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Season of Sunny Water

The cardinals are in perfection. See July 27, 1852 ("The cardinal-flower just opened, close to the water's edge, remarkable for its intense scarlet color, contrasting with the surrounding green."); August 6, 1851 ("I see cardinal-flowers, with their red artillery, reminding me of soldiers . . It is remarkable for its intensely brilliant scarlet color. You are slow to concede to it a high rank among flowers, but ever and anon, as you turn your eyes away, it dazzles you and you pluck it."); August 6, 1852 ("I love to follow up the course of the brook and see the cardinal-flowers. . . their brilliant scarlet the more interesting in this open, but dark, cellar-like wood,"); August 16, 1858 ("I am surprised to find that where of late years there have been so many cardinal-flowers, there are now very few. So much does a plant fluctuate from season to season.")

The foliage of most trees is now not only most dense, but a very dark green. See August 6, 1854 ("As I look westward up the stream, the oak, etc., on Ponkawtasset are of a very dark green, almost black, which, methinks, they have worn only since midsummer"

I see one large white maple crisped and tinged with a sort of rosaceous tinge. See August 6, 1854 ("I see some smaller white maples turned a dull red, — crimsonish, — a slight blush on them. "); August 15, 1858 (“The smaller white maples are very generally turned a dull red, and their long row, seen against the fresh green of Ball’s Hill, is very surprising.”); August 22, 1856 (“I notice three or four clumps of white maples, at the swamp up the Assabet, which have turned as red (dull red) as ever they do, fairly put on their autumnal hue.”)

The surface is very glassy there. See June 11, 1854 (" A sheet of water . . . revealed by its reflections, a smooth, glassy mirror, reflecting the light sky and the dark and shady woods.") See also note to August 4, 1852 ("A pleasant time to behold a small lake in the woods is in the intervals of a gentle rain-storm at this season, when the air and water are perfectly still, but the sky still overcast.")

August 8. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 8

Along the river

a day of sunny water –

I see the fishes.

Perfect cardinals,

fluviatile like myself

standing on the shore.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A day of sunny water

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/hdt-540808

Midsummer's deepened shade; a sultry, languid debauched look.

July 18

July 18, 2014

A hot midsummer day with a sultry mistiness in the air and shadows on land and water beginning to have a peculiar distinctness and solidity. The river, smooth and still, with a deepened shade of the elms on it, like midnight suddenly revealed, its bed-curtains shoved aside, has a sultry languid look.

The atmosphere now imparts a bluish or glaucous tinge to the distant trees. A certain debauched look. This a crisis in the season. 

After this the foliage of some trees is almost black at a distance. 

I do not know why the water should be so remarkably clear and the sun shine through to the bottom of the river, making it so plain. Methinks the air is not clearer nor the sun brighter, yet the bottom is unusually distinct and obvious in the sun. There seems to be no concealment for the fishes. On all sides, as I float along, the recesses of the water and the bottom are unusually revealed, and I see the fishes and weeds and shells. I look down into the sunny water. 

We have very few bass trees in Concord, but walk near them at this season and they will be betrayed, though several rods off, by the wonderful susurrus of the bees, etc., which their flowers attract. It is worth going a long way to hear. I am warned that I am passing one in two instances on the river, —only two I pass, — by this remarkable sound. At a little distance it is like the sound of a waterfall or of the cars; close at hand like a factory full of looms. They are chiefly humblebees, and the great globose tree is all alive with them. I hear the murmur distinctly fifteen rods off. You will know if you pass within a few rods of a bass tree at this season in any part of the town, by this loud murmur, like a water fall, which proceeds from it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 18, 1854

A certain debauched look: See June 16, 1852 ("The earth looks like a debauchee after the sultry night") and July 24, 1851 ("Nature is like a hen panting with open mouth, in the grass, as the morning after a debauch.")

After this the foliage of some trees is almost black at a distance. See July 27, 1859 ("Now observe the darker shades, and especially the apple trees, square and round, in the northwest landscape. Dogdayish.")

Bass tree susurrus:  See July 16, 1852 ("The air is full of sweetness. The tree is full of poetry."); July 17, 1856 ("Hear at distance the hum of bees from the bass with its drooping flowers at the Island,. . . It sounds like the rumbling of a distant train of cars.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Basswood

I look down into the sunny water. See July 27, 1860 ("The water has begun to be clear and sunny, revealing the fishes and countless minnows of all sizes and colors”). July 28, 1859 ("The season has now arrived when I begin to see further into the water.");  July 30, 1856 ("The water is suddenly clear.”); August 8, 1859 ("The river, now that it is so clear and sunny, is better than any aquarium. ")

July 18. See A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Children of the sun and A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 18

.

Hot midsummer day

a crisis in the season

a deepened black shade

like midnight revealed

by bed-curtains shoved aside.

A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Midsummer's deepened shade

A Book of 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/hdt-540718a

This is our black sea.

May 8

A. M. — To Nawshawtuct. 

A female red-wing. I have not seen any before. Hear a yellowbird in the direction of the willows. Its note coarsely represented by che-che-che-char-char-char. No great flocks of blackbirds on tree-tops now, nor so many of robins. 

Saw a small hawk flying low, about size of a robin – tail with black bars– probably a sparrow hawk; probably the same I have seen before. Saw one at Boston next day; mine was the pigeon hawk [No; for that is barred with white. Could mine have been the F. fuscus and so small?], slaty above (the male) and coarsely barred with black on tail. I saw these distinct bars at a distance as mine flew. It appeared hardly larger than a robin. 

Probably this the only hawk of this size that I have seen this season. The sparrow hawk is a rather reddish brown and finely and thickly barred above with black.  [Could the Boston pigeon hawk have been barred with black ?]

I hear the voices of farmers driving their cows past to their up-country pastures now. The first of any consequence go by now. 

P. M. — By boat to Fair Haven.

The water has fallen a foot or more, but I cannot get under the stone bridge, so haul over the road. There is a fair and strong wind with which to sail up stream, and then I can leave my boat, depending on the wind changing to southwest soon. 

It is long since I have sailed on so broad a tide. How dead would the globe seem, especially at this season, if it were not for these water surfaces! We are slow to realize water, — the beauty and magic of it. It is interestingly strange to us forever. Immortal water, alive even in the superficies, restlessly heaving now and tossing me and my boat, and sparkling with life!

I look round with a thrill on this bright fluctuating surface on which no man can walk, whereon is no trace of footstep, unstained as glass. I feel exhilaration, mingled with a slight awe, as I drive before this strong wind over the great black-backed waves, cutting through them, and hear their surging and feel them toss me. I am even obliged to head across them and not get into their troughs, for I can hardly keep my legs. 

They are so black, — as no sea I have seen, — large and powerful, and make such a roaring around me. You see a perfectly black mass about two feet high and perhaps four or five feet thick and of indefinite length, round-backed, or perhaps forming a sharp ridge with a dirty-white crest, tumbling like a whale unceasingly before you. 

They are melainai — what is the Greek for waves? This is our black sea. 

I am delighted to find that our usually peaceful river could toss me so. How much more exciting than to be planting potatoes with those men in the field! What a different world!

Lee's Cliff is now a perfect natural rockery for flowers. These gray cliffs and scattered rocks, with upright faces below, reflect the heat like a hothouse. The ground is whitened with the little white cymes of the saxifrage, now shot up to six or eight inches, and more flower-like dangling scarlet columbines are seen against the gray rocks, and here and there the earth is spotted with yellow crowfoots and a few early cinque-foils (not to mention houstonias, the now mostly effete sedge, the few Viola ovata, — whose deep violet is another kind of flame, as the crowfoot is yellow, — hanging their heads low in the sod, and the as yet inconspicuous veronica); while the early Amelanchier Botryapium overhangs the rocks and grows in the shelves, with its loose, open-flowered racemes, curving downward, of narrow-petalled white flowers, red on the back and innocently cherry-scented, — as if it had drunk cherry-bounce and you smelled its breath. To which is to be added the scent of bruised catnep and the greenness produced by many other forward herbs, and all resounding with the hum of insects. And all this while flowers are rare elsewhere. It is as if you had taken a step suddenly a month forward, or had entered a greenhouse.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 8, 1854

Saw a small hawk flying low, the only hawk of this size that I have seen this season. See October 17, 1858 ("Saw a small hawk come flying over the Assabet, . . . it had a very distinct black head, with apparently a yellowish-brown , breast and beneath and a brown back, — both, however, quite light, — and a yellowish tail with a distinct broad black band at the tip. . . .Could it have been a sparrow hawk?")

There is a fair and strong wind with which to sail up stream, and then I can leave my boat, depending on the wind changing to southwest soon. See  May 28, 1855 (" Yesterday left my boat at the willow opposite this Cliff, the wind northwest. Now it is southeast, and I can sail back.")

 

The beauty and magic of it . . . strange to us forever.  See August 6, 1851 ("After how few steps, how little exertion, the student stands in pine woods . . .in a place still unaccountably strange and wild to him."); March 29, 1853 (“ A man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to...appreciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature.”);  April 24, 1854 ("Go to new trees, like cedars and firs, and you hear new birds.  They increase the strangeness."); June 9, 1854 ("What musicians compose our woodland quire? They must be forever strange and interesting to me.")  June 21, 1854 ("Up the grassy hollows in the sprout-lands north of Goose Pond I feel as if in a strange country, — a pleasing sense of strangeness and distance."); July 24, 1857 ("How unexplored still are the realms of nature. . . We may any day take a walk as strange as Dante's imaginary one to L' Inferno or Paradiso.")

I feel exhilaration, mingled with a slight awe, as I drive before this strong wind over the great black-backed waves. See March 16, 1860 (" I make more boisterous and stormy voyages now than at any season. . . . I vastly increase my sphere and experience by a boat.”); April 29, 1856 ("It is flattering to a sense of power to make the wayward wind our horse and sit with our hand on the tiller. Sailing is much like flying, and from the birth of our race men have been charmed by it.”); October 15, 1851 (“It is delightful to be tossed about in such a harmless storm, and see the waves look so angry and black.”); October 27, 1857 (“It is exciting to feel myself tossed by the dark waves and hear them surge about me. . . .How they run and leap in great droves, deriving new excitement from each other!”) See also A Book of the Seasons  by Henry Thoreau, A Season for Sailing and  June 27, 1852 ("All the phenomena of nature need be seen from the point of view of wonder and awe") 


They are melaina — what is the Greek for waves?-- Greek μελαινα (melaina) meaning "black, dark”. See note  February 10, 1860 (“The river, where open, is very black, as usual when the waves run high, for each wave casts a shadow. [Call it Black Water.] Theophrastus notices that the roughened water is black, and says that it is because fewer rays fall on it and the light is dissipated.”)