Midsummer

August 2. 

That fine z-ing of locusts in the grass which I have heard for three or four days is an August sound. It suggests a certain maturity in the year -- a certain moral and physical sluggishness and standstill at midsummer.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 2, 1859

moral and physical sluggishness and standstill at midsummer. See July 31, 1856 (" As I make my way amid rank weeds still wet with the dew, the air filled with a decaying musty scent and the z-ing of small locusts, I hear the distant sound of a flail, and thoughts of autumn occupy my mind, and the memory of past years. ") and A Book of the Seasons: Midsummer midlife blues


Aug. 2. I try the current above Dodd's. There is a southwest breeze. A loose board moves faster than one with a sunk box, but soon drifts diagonally across and lodges at fifty feet. The box, sunk fourteen inches below the board, floats one hundred feet in nine minutes; sunk two and a half feet, in nine and a quarter minutes; sunk five and a half feet, it is not half-way in thirteen minutes, or, allowing for its starting this time a little out of the wind and current, say it is twenty minutes in going a hundred feet. 

I should infer from this that the swiftest and most uninterrupted current under all conditions was neither at the surface nor the bottom, but nearer the surface than the bottom. If the wind is down-stream, it is at the surface; if up-stream, it is beneath it, and at a depth proportionate to the strength of the wind. I think that there never ceases to be a downward current. 

Rudely calculating the capacity of the river here and comparing it with my boat's place, I find it about as two to one, and such is the slowness of the current, viz. nine minutes to four and a half to a hundred feet.

If you are boating far it is extremely important to know the direction of the wind. If it blows strong up-stream, there will be a surface current flowing upward, another beneath flowing downward, and a very feeble one (in the lake-like parts) creeping downward next the bottom. A wind in which it is not worth the while to raise a sail will often blow your sailless boat up-stream. 

The sluggishness of the current, I should say, must be at different places as the areas of cross-sections at those places. 

That fine z-ing of locusts in the grass which I have heard for three or four days is, methinks, an August sound and is very inspiriting. It is a certain maturity in the year which it suggests. My thoughts are the less crude for it. There is a certain moral and physical sluggishness and standstill at midsummer.

 I think that clams are chiefly found at shallow and slightly muddy places where there is a gradually shelving shore. Are not found on a very hard bottom, nor in deep mud. 

All of the river from the southwest of Wayland to off the Height of Hill [sic] below Hill's Bridge is meadowy. This is the true Musketaquid. 

The buttonwood bark strews the streets, — curled pieces. Is it not the effect of dry weather and heat? As birds shed their feathers, or moult, and beasts their hair. Neat rolls of bark (like cinnamon, but larger), light and dark brown.

What are these things?

November 21.

I saw Fair Haven Pond with its island, and meadow between the island and the shore, and a strip of perfectly still and smooth water in the lee of the island, and two hawks, fish hawks perhaps, sailing over it. I did not see how it could be improved.

Yet i do not know what these things can be.

The hawks and the ducks keep so aloof! and Nature is so reserved!

I begin to see only when I cease to understand.

How adapted these forms and colors to my eye! A meadow and an island! I am made to love the pond and the meadow, as the wind is made to ripple the water.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 21, 1850  (see also 

Visions Illuminations Inspirations)

These forms and colors

so adapted to my eye

cannot be improved.

We are made to love

pond and meadow as the wind

to ripple water.

November 21, 1850

Fair Haven Pond with its island, and meadow between the island and the shore, and a strip of perfectly still and smooth water in the lee of the island, and two hawks. . . See February 14, 1851 ("One afternoon in the fall, November 21st, I saw Fair Haven Pond with its island and meadow; between the island and the shore, a strip of perfectly smooth water in the lee of the island; and two hawks sailing over it; and something more I saw which cannot easily be described . . ."); .April 14, 1852 ("Fair Haven Pond -- the pond, the meadow beyond the button-bush and willow curve, the island, and the meadow between the island and mainland with its own defining lines -- are all parted off like the parts of a mirror. A fish hawk is calmly sailing over all . . . "); See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Fair Haven Pond

Yet i do not know what these things can be. . . .Nature is so reserved! See November 30, 1858 ("In my account of this bream I cannot go a hair's breadth beyond the mere statement that it exists."); May 1850 ("In all my rambles I have seen no landscape which can make me forget Fair Haven. I still sit on its Cliff in a new spring day, and look over the awakening woods and the river, and hear the new birds sing, with the same delight as ever. It is as sweet a mystery to me as ever, what this world is.")

Dog-days and fogs

July 29

To Fair Haven Hill shore. 

The Cyperus dentatus in bloom on hard sandy parts of meadows now is very interesting and handsome on being inspected now, with its bright chestnut purple sided flat spikelets, -- a plant and color looking toward autumn. Very neat and handsome on a close inspection.

Also in dry sandy soil the little tufts of Fimbristylis capillaris in bloom are quite brown and withered-looking now, -- another yet more autumnal-suggesting sight.

The river is very nearly down to summer level now, and I notice there, among other phenomena of low water by the river, the great yellow lily pads flat on bare mud, the Ranunculus Flammula (just begun), a close but thin green matting now bare for five or six feet in width, bream nests bare and dried up, or else bare stones and sand for six or eight feet. 

The white lilies are generally lifted an inch or two above water by their stems; also the Utricularia vulgaris and purpurea are raised higher above the surface than usual. Rails are lodged amid the potamogetons in midstream and have not moved for ten days. 

Dog-days and fogs. Rocks unsuspected peep out and are become visible. The water milfoil (the ambiguum var. nutans), otherwise not seen, shows itself. This is observed only at lowest water. 

I examined some of these bream nests left dry at Cardinal Shore. These were a foot or two wide and excavated five inches deep (as I measured) in hard sand. The fishes must have worked hard to make these holes. Sometimes they are amid or in pebbles, where it is harder yet. 

There are now left at their bottoms, high and dry, a great many snails (Paludina decisa) young and old, some very minute. They either wash into them or take refuge there as the water goes down. I suspect they die there. 

The fishes really work hard at making their nests — these, the stone-heaps, etc. — when we consider what feeble means they possess. 

Vaccinium vacillans begin to be pretty thick and some huckleberries. 

See large flocks of red-wings now, the young grown. 

Bartonia tenella, how long?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 29, 1859

See large flocks of red-wings now, the young grown. See July 11, 1856 (“See quite a flock of red-wing blackbirds and young (?)”); July 13, 1856 (“See quite a large flock of chattering red-wings, the flight of first broods.”); July 22, 1855 "See small flocks of red-wings, young and old, now, over the willows.”);


Vaccinium vacillans begin to be pretty thick and some huckleberries.  See  July 24, 1853 ("The berries of the Vaccinium vacillans are very abundant and large this year on Fair Haven, where I am now.Indeed these and huckleberries and blackberries are very abundant in this part of the town."); July 31, 1856 (“How thick the berries — low blackberries, Vaccinium vacillans, and huckleberries — on the side of Fair Haven Hill! ”); August 4, 1852 (“Most huckleberries and blueberries and low blackberries are in their prime now.”); August 4, 1854 ("On this hill (Smith's) the bushes are black with huckleberries. ...Now in their prime. Some glossy black, some dull black, some blue; and patches of Vaccinium vacillans inter mixed."); August 4. 1856 ("This favorable moist weather has expanded some of the huckleberries to the size of bullets");See also July 13, 1852 ("It is impossible to say what day — almost what week — the huckleberries begin to be ripe, unless you are acquainted with, and daily visit, every huckleberry bush in the town"); and notes to July 13, 1852 ("Huckleberries, both blue and black,must have been ripe several days.") and July 29, 1858 (The difference between the often confused Huckleberry (Gaylussacia) and Lowbush Blueberry (Vaccinium angustifolium and vacillans) )

July 29. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 29

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

Birding up the Assabet.

July 28.

July 28, 2022

Saw young martins being fed on a bridge-rail yesterday. 

Young purple finches eating mountain-ash berries (ours). 

The kingbirds eat currants. 

I notice that the common greenish rock lichen (Parmelia) grows on the rocks of the Assabet down to within two feet of summer level; i. e., it is submerged perhaps one fourth part of the year. 

The black willows are the children of the river. They do not grow far from the water, not on the steep banks which the river is wearing into, not on the unconverted shore, but on the bars and banks which the river has made. A bank may soon get to be too high for it. It grows and thrives on the river-made shores and banks, and is a servant which the river uses to build up and defend its banks and isles. It is married to the river.

Where an eddy is depositing a sand-bar, anon to be elevated into an island or bank, there especially the black willow flourishes.

Hear part of the song of what sounds and looks like a rose-breasted grosbeak.

The sweet and plaintive note of the pewee (wood pewee) is now prominent, since most other birds are more hushed. I hear young families of them answering each other from a considerable distance, especially about the river.

The season has now arrived when I begin to see further into the water, -- see the bottom, the weeds, and fishes more than before. I can see the bottom when it is five and a half feet deep even, see the fishes scuttling in and out amid the weeds.

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

Saw young martins being fed on a bridge-rail yesterday. See July 29, 1858 ("I see nowadays young martins perched on the dead tops of high trees; also young swallows on the telegraph wire.")

Young purple finches eating mountain-ash berries. See June 25, 1853 ("I think it must be the purple finch, — with the crimson head and shoulders, — which I see and hear singing so sweetly and variedly in the gardens"); July 7, 1856 (" The purple finch still sings over the street."); August 25, 1859 ("Mountain-ash berries partly turned. Again see, I think, purple finch eating them.")

The kingbirds eat currants. See August 5, 1858 (" [Black willows] resound still with the sprightly twitter of the kingbird, that aerial and spirited bird hovering over them, swallow-like, which loves best, methinks, to fly where the sky is reflected beneath him.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Kingbird

I notice that the common greenish rock lichen (Parmelia) grows on the rocks of the Assabet. SeeA Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Lichens and the lichenst

The black willows are the children of the river. See  August 25, 1856 ("Why is the black willow so strictly confined to the bank of the river? "); August 5, 1858 ("These willows appear to grow best on elevated sand-bars or deep sandy banks, which the stream has brought down"); August 19, 1858 ("The willow grows especially and almost exclusively in places where the drift is most likely to lodge, as on capes and points and concave sides of the river"). See alsoA Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Propogation of the Black Willow.

Hear part of the song of what sounds and looks like a rose-breasted grosbeak. See May 25, 1854 ("The rose-breasted grosbeak, a handsome bird with a loud and very rich song, in character between that of a robin and a red-eye. It sings steadily like a robin. Rose breast, white beneath, black head and above, white on shoulder and wings. "); July 25, 1859 ("Flagg is informed by Fowler that the rose-breasted grosbeak often sings in the light of the moon. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Rose-breasted Grosbeak

The sweet and plaintive note of the pewee is now prominent. See August 6, 1858 ("The note of the wood pewee is now more prominent, while birds generally are silent."):August 9, 1856 (“The notes of the wood pewee and warbling vireo are more prominent of late, and of the goldfinch twittering over.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Wood-Pewee

The season has now arrived when I begin to see further into the 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 30, 1856 ("The wonderful clearness of the water, enabling you to explore the river bottom and many of its secrets now”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Season of Sunny Water

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

Now is the season

I begin to see further

into the 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

Wet summer ends

July 27.
Now dry weather calls.
The Taliban mows the lawn
long since overgrown.

ZPHX 7/27/09



Before the early star
I turn round;
there shines the moon
silvering small clouds.

HDT, 7/27/52

On the River Rolls

July 24.
We examine the rapids below. Large rocks have fallen from the walls—great, angular blocks, which have rolled down the talus, and are strewn along the channel. Among these rocks, in chutes, whirlpools, and great waves, with rushing breakers and foam, the water finds its way, still tumbling down.

We are compelled to make three portages in succession. We stop for the night, only three fourths of a mile below the last camp. A very hard day's work has been done. At evening I sit on a rock by the edge of the river, to look at the water, and listen to its roar.

The waves are rolling, with crests of foam so white they seem almost to give a light of their own. Near by, a chute of water strikes the foot of a great block of limestone, fifty feet high, and the waters pile up against it, and roll back. 

Where there are sunken rocks, the water heaps up in mounds, or even in cones. At a point where rocks come very near the surface, the water forms a chute above, strikes, and is shot up ten or fifteen feet, and piles back in gentle curves, as in a fountain.

Darkness comes. The river tumbles and rolls on.

John Wesley Powell, Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries, July 24, 1869

See On the River Rolls II

A bittern's croak

July 22.

Start just before 8 A.M. and sail to the Falls of Concord River. We are early enough to see the light reflected from the sides of the gyrating water-bugs.

Heard from a bittern, a peculiar hoarse, grating note, lazily uttered as it flew over the meadows. A bittern's croak: a sound perfectly becoming the bird, as far as possible from music.

***

For the last mile above the Falls the river becomes rocky, the rocks gradually increasing in number, until at the Falls its bed is crowded with them. Some of the rocks are curiously water-worn.

***

These are just above the Fordway. There are two pleasant old houses near the Fordway on the east side. 

I was surprised to see on the upright sides of these rocks, one or two feet above the present  water, very distinct white spots, looking like white paint across the river. Examining, I found them to be three fourths to one inch in diameter of an oval or circular form; the white coating spreading on to the rock in an irregular fringe like the feet of an insect, increasing their resemblance to a bug, and they were raised one eighth or one tenth of an inch and finely dotted with the contained ova, reminding me of coins, — shaped like bugs or coins, — and I at first bent to read the inscriptions as if they were a work of art. They were full of ova with much water in them or other liquid.

The shores at the Falls are firm and rocky, though for the most part covered densely with bushes, — maples, alders, grape-vines, cat-briars, etc. There is no space for the river to expand in, and it is withal very much contracted in capacity by the rocks in it. Its bed is more or less strewn with rocks for some sixty rods, the largest forming rocky isles with soil and bushes and trees on them, though only some five or maybe six (?) feet high. 

There is water six and a half feet deep between the Fordway and the narrowest place below. 

I was surprised to see on the rocks, densely covering them, though only in the midst of the fall, where was the swiftest water, a regular seaweed, growing just like rock-weed and of the same olive-green color, — "Podostemon Ceratophyum, River-weed," — still in bloom, though chiefly gone to seed. Gray says it is " attached to loose stones," and Torrey says it "adheres to pebbles," but here it covered the rocks under water in the swiftest place only, and was partly uncovered by the fall of the water. 

I found, in what I gathered, a little pout which had taken refuge in it. Though the botanist, in obedience to his rules, puts it among phaenogamous plants, I should not hesitate to associate it with the rockweed. It is the rockweed of our river. I have never seen it else where in the river, though possibly it grows at the factory or other swift places. 

It seemed as if our river had there for a moment anticipated the sea, suffered a sea-change, mimicked the great ocean stream. I did not see it a few rods above or below, where the water is more sluggish. So far as I know, then, it grows only in the swiftest water, and there is only one place, and that the Falls, in Concord River where it can grow. 

Gray only speaks of it as growing at " the bottom of shallow streams," Torrey says "at the bottom of shallow pebbly streams," and Bigelow only says it is attached to stones at the bottom. 

Yet apparently our sluggish river is only a stream, and sufficiently like ordinary rippling streams to admit of its growth at this one spot. A careless observer might confound it with the rockweed of the sea. It covers the rocks in exactly the same manner, and when I tore it off, it brought more or less of the thin, scaly surface of the rocks with it. It is a foretaste of the sea. 

It is very interesting and remarkable that at this one point we have in our river a plant which so perfectly represents the rockweed of the seashore. This is from four to eight or nine inches long. It has the peculiar strong fresh-water scent. 

The west end of Hill's Bridge is (upper side of planking) eight feet eleven inches above summer level, under side of string-piece seven feet eight inches. I cannot hear that it ever rises on to this bridge, but there is a good deal of fresh drift stuff on the top of the abutment under the string-piece at seven feet eight inches above summer level, apparently washed on in the spring. The upper side of planking at east end is about nine feet eight inches above summer level.

***

It is remarkable how the river, even from its very source to its mouth, runs with great bends or zigzags regularly recurring and including many smaller ones, first northerly, then northeasterly, growing more and more simple and direct as it descends, like a tree; as if a mighty current had once filled the valley of the river, and meandered in it according to the same law that this small stream does in its own meadows. 

A river of this character can hardly be said to fall at all: it rather runs over the extremity of its trough, being filled to overflowing. Its only fall at present (above the Falls and this side Framingham) is like the fall produced by a dam, the dam being in this case the bottom in a shallow. 

If, after flowing twenty miles, all the water has got to rise as high as it was when it started, or rather if it has got to pass over a bottom which is as high as that was where it started, it cannot be said to have gained anything or have fallen at all. It has not got down to a lower level. You do not produce a fall in the channel or bottom of a trough by cutting a notch in its edge. The bottom may lose as much as the surface gains. 

Rocks which are covered by freshets a week or more will have lichens on them, as that on my old plan just below the Hemlocks. 

If our river had been dry a thousand years, it would be difficult to guess even where its channel had been without a spirit level. I should expect to find water- worn stones and a few muddy pools and small swamps.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 22, 1859

A bittern's croak. See September 20, 1855 (“The great bittern, as it flies off from near the railroad bridge. . . utters a low hoarse kwa kwa”); September 25, 1855 ("Scare up the usual great bittern above the railroad bridge, whose hoarse qua qua, as it flies heavily off, a pickerel-fisher on the bank imitates.”)