All creatures are more awake than ever.

May 11.

While at the Falls, I feel the air cooled and hear the muttering of distant thunder in the northwest and see a dark cloud in that direction indistinctly through the wood. That distant thunder-shower very much cools our atmosphere. I make haste through the woods homeward via Hubbard's Close.

Hear the evergreen-forest note. 

The true poet will ever live aloof from society, wild to it, as the finest singer is the wood thrush, a forest bird.

The shower is apparently going by on the north. There is a low, dark, blue-black arch, crescent-like, in the horizon, sweeping the distant earth there with a dusky, rainy brush. There is an uncommon stillness here, disturbed only by a rush of the wind from time to time.

All men, like the earth, seem to wear an aspect of expectation. In the village I meet men making haste to their homes, for, though the heavy cloud has gone quite by, the shower will probably strike us with its tail. Now I have got home there is at last a still cooler wind with a rush, and at last a smart shower, slanting to the ground, without thunder.

The rain is over. There is a bow in the east. The earth is refreshed; the grass is wet. The air is warm again and still. The rain has smoothed the water to a glassy smoothness. The breadth of the flood not yet diminished. It is very beautiful on the water now.

It is surprising what an electrifying effect this shower appears to have had. It is like the christening of the summer. I suspect that summer weather may be always ushered in in a similar manner, — thunder-shower, rainbow, smooth water, and warm night.

A rainbow on the brow of summer. 

Nature has placed this gem on the brow of her daughter. Not only the wet grass looks many shades greener in the twilight, but the old pine-needles also. The toads are heard to ring more generally and louder than before. All creatures are more awake than ever.

Now, some time after sunset, the robins scold and sing, the Maryland yellow-throat is heard amid the alders and willows by the waterside, and the peetweet and black birds, and sometimes a kingbird, and the tree-toad.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 11, 1854

The true poet will ever live aloof from society, wild to it, as the finest singer is the wood thrush, a forest bird. See May 11, 1853 ("The different moods or degrees of wildness and poetry of which the song of birds is the keynote.")

I suspect that summer weather may be always ushered in in a similar manner, — thunder-shower, rainbow, smooth water, and warm night. See May 17, 1852 (' Does not summer begin after the May storm?") See also March 13, 1855 ("Rainbow in east this morning."); April 9, 1855 ("With April showers, me thinks, come rainbows. Why are they so rare in the winter?"); April 18, 1855 ("Am overtaken by a sudden sun-shower, after which a rainbow. ");May 10, 1857 (" Before night a sudden shower with some thunder and lightning; the first."); May 13, 1860 ("The third sultry evening in my chamber. A faint lightning is seen in the north horizon."); May 20, 1856 ("Was awaked and put into sounder sleep than ever early this morning by the distant crashing of thunder, and now ... I hear it in mid-afternoon, muttering, crashing in the muggy air in mid-heaven,... like the tumbling down of piles of boards, and get a few sprinkles in the sun. Nature has found her hoarse summer voice again. . .")

Shad-bush in blossom

May 10

 To Tall's Island, taking boat at Cliffs. 

May 10, 2023

Rain about daylight makes the weather uncertain for the day. Damp, April-like mistiness in the air. I take an umbrella with me. 

The wind is southwest, and I have to row or paddle up. The shad-bush in blossom is the first to show like a fruit tree on the hill sides, seen afar amid gray twigs, before even its own leaves are much expanded.

I drag and push my boat over the road at Deacon Farrar's brook, carrying a roller with me. It is warm rowing with a thick coat. 

I make haste back with a fair wind and umbrella for sail.  

A sprinkling rain ceases when I reach Bittern Cliff, and the water smooths somewhat. I see many red maple  blossoms on the surface.  Their keys now droop gracefully about the stems.

A fresh, growing scent comes from the moistened earth and vegetation, and I perceive the sweetness of the willows on the causeway. 

Above the railroad bridge I see a kingfisher twice sustain himself in one place, about forty feet above the meadow, by a rapid motion of his wings, somewhat like a devil's-needle, not progressing an inch, apparently over a fish.

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

The shad-bush in blossom is the first to show like a fruit tree on the hillsides.  See May 9, 1852 ("The first shad-bush, Juneberry, or service-berry (Amclanchier canadensis), in blossom.");  May 12, 1855 ("I now begin to distinguish where at a distance the Amelanchier Botryapium, with its white against the russet, is waving in the wind."); May 13, 1852 ("The amelanchiers are now the prevailing flowers in the woods and swamps and sprout-lands, a very beautiful flower, with its purplish stipules and delicate drooping white blossoms. The shad-blossom days in the woods.")

I perceive the sweetness of the willows on the causeway.. See May 12, 1855 ("I perceive the fragrance of the Salix alba, now in bloom, more than an eighth of a mile distant. They now adorn the causeways with their yellow blossoms and resound with the hum of bumblebees, . . ."); May 14, 1852 ("Going over the Corner causeway, the willow blossoms fill the air with a sweet fragrance, and I am ready to sing, ")

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

Shad-bush in blossom

seen afar amid gray twigs

before its own leaves.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Shad-bush in blossom

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-540510

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?")


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


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.”)

Red maple in bloom lightly tingeing the landscape as becomes the season.

May 7.

Our principal rain this spring was April 28th, 29th, and 30th, and again, May 3d and 4th . . . 

P. M. — To Cliffs. The causeways being flooded, I have to think before I set out on my walk how I shall get back across the river. 

The earliest flowers might be called May-day flowers. A white-throated sparrow still (in woods). Viburnum Lentago and nudum are both leafing. Cress at the Boiling Spring, one flower. As I ascend Cliff Hill, the two leaves of the Solomon's-seal now spot the forest floor, pushed up amid the dry leaves. Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum leafing.

Flowers  are self-registering indicators of fair weather. I remember how I waited for the hazel catkins to become relaxed and shed their pollen, but they delayed, till at last there came a pleasanter and warmer day and I took off my greatcoat while surveying in the woods, and then, when I went to dinner at noon, hazel catkins in full flower were dangling from the banks by the roadside and yellowed my clothes with their pollen. If man is thankful for the serene and warm day, much more are the flowers. 

From the Cliffs I again admire the flood, — the now green hills rising out of it. It is dark-blue, clay, slate, and light-blue, as you stand with regard to the sun. With the sun high on one side it is a dirty or clayey slate; directly in front, covered with silvery sparkles far to the right or north, dark-blue; farther to the southwest, light-blue.

At sunset across the flooded meadow to Nawshawtuct. The water becoming calm. The sun just disappearing as I reach the hilltop, and the horizon's edge appears with distinctness. As the twilight approaches, the mountains assume a deeper blue. 

As yet the aspect of the forest at a distance is not changed from its winter appearance, except where the maple-tops in blossom in low lands tinge it red. A spreading red maple in bloom, seen against a favorable background, as water looking down from a hillside,  presenting not a dense mass of color but an open, graceful and ethereal top of light crimson or scarlet, not too obvious and staring, slightly tingeing the landscape as becomes the season.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 7, 1854


I have to think before I set out on my walk how I shall get back across the river. See April 29, 1860 ("I had to pause a moment and cipher it out in my mind")

A spreading red maple in bloom ... presenting . . .an open, graceful and ethereal top of light crimson or scarlet, . . . slightly tingeing the landscape as becomes the season. See May 1, 1856 ("It is the red maple’s reign now,. . . you see dimly defined crescents of bright brick red above and amid a maze of ash-colored branches.”); April 26, 1855 ("The blossoms of the red maple..  . .  are now most generally conspicuous and handsome scarlet crescents over the swamps. “);  April 28, 1855 ("The red maples, now in bloom, are quite handsome at a distance over the flooded meadow . . . The abundant wholesome gray of the trunks and stems beneath surmounted by the red or scarlet crescents.”); April 24, 1857 ("I see the now red crescents of the red maples in their prime . . . above the gray stems.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Red Maple

The sun just disappearing as I reach the hilltop . . .the horizon's edge appears with distinctness . . .the mountains assume a deeper blue. See June 2, 1852 ("Now I have reached the hill top above the fog at a quarter to five, about sunrise, and all around me is a sea of fog, level and white, reaching nearly to the top of this hill, only the tops of a few high hills appearing as distant islands in the main. It resembles nothing so much as the ocean."); August 2, 1853 ("Sundown. — To Nawshawtuct. "); December 10, 1856 (" See the sun set from the side of Nawshawtuct, and make haste to the post-office with the red sky over my shoulder.")  See also March 29, 1853 ("A pleasant short voyage is that to the Leaning Hemlocks on the Assabet, just round the Island under Nawshawtuct Hill . . .  This is a favorite voyage for ladies to make, down one stream and up the other, plucking the lilies by the way and landing on the Island, and concluding with a walk on Nawshawtuct Hill..") 

Tell the story of your love.

May 6.

To-day it has spit a little snow and is very windy (northwest) and cold enough for gloves. 

Is not that the true spring when the F. hyemalis and tree sparrows are with us singing in the cold mornings with the song sparrows, and ducks and gulls are about?

There is no such thing as pure objective observation. Your observation, to be interesting, i. e. to be significant, must be subjective. The sum of what the writer of whatever class has to report is simply some human experience, whether he be poet or philosopher or man of science. 

The man of most science is the man most alive, whose life is the greatest event. Senses that take cognizance of outward things merely are of no avail. It matters not where or how far you travel, — the farther commonly the worse, — but how much alive you are. If it is possible to conceive of an event outside to humanity, it is not of the slightest significance, though it were the explosion of a planet. 

Every important worker will report what life there is in him. All that a man has to say or do that can possibly concern mankind, is in some shape or other to tell the story of his love, — to sing; and, if he is fortunate and keeps alive, he will be forever in love. This alone is to be alive to the extremities.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 6, 1854

Is not that the true spring when the F. hyemalis and tree sparrows are with us singing in the cold mornings. See March 20, 1855 ("At my landing I hear the F. hyemalis, in company with a few tree sparrows. They take refuge from the cold wind, half a dozen in all, behind an arbor-vitae hedge, and there plume themselves with puffed-up feathers.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Dark-eyed Junco

Your observation, to be interesting, i. e. to be significant, must be subjective.  See September 2, 1851 ("A writer, a man writing, is the scribe of all nature; he is the corn and the grass and the atmosphere writing. It is always essential that we love to do what we are doing, do it with a heart.”). June 30, 1852 ("Nature must be viewed humanly to be viewed at all; her scenes must be associated with humane affections... She is most significant to a lover."); May 10, 1853 ("I pray for such inward experience as will make nature significant"); August 7, 1853 ("The objects I behold correspond to my mood"); February 20, 1857("If I were to discover that a certain kind of stone by the pond-shore was affected, say partially disintegrated, by a particular natural sound, as of a bird or insect, I see that one could not be completely described without describing the other. I am that rock by the pond-side. “); November 5, 1857 (“The object I caught a glimpse of as I went by haunts my thoughts a long time, is infinitely suggestive, and I do not care to front it and scrutinize it, for I know that the thing that really concerns me is not there, but in my relation to that. That is a mere reflecting surface. . . .I think that the man of science makes this mistake, and the mass of mankind along with him: that you should coolly give your chief attention to the phenomenon which excites you as something independent on you, and not as it is related to you. The important fact is its effect on me. . . . It is the subject of the vision, the truth alone, that concerns me. . . . the point of interest is somewhere between me and them (i. e. the objects)')

Poet or philosopher or man of science. See April 28, 1856 ("Again, as so many times, I am reminded of the advantage to the poet, and philosopher, and naturalist, and whomsoever, of pursuing from time to time some other business than his chosen one, — seeing with the side of the eye."); September 14, 1856 ("Let the traveller bethink himself, elevate and expand his thoughts somewhat, that his successors may oftener hereafter be cheered by the sight of an Aster Novae-Angliae or spectabilis here and there, to remind him that a poet or philosopher has passed this way. "); October 21, 1857("Is not the poet bound to write his own biography? Is there any other work for him but a good journal? We do not wish to know how his imaginary hero, but how he, the actual hero, lived from day to day."); October 27, 1857 ("The real facts of a poet's life would be of more value to us than any work of his art."); April 2, 1858 ("It is not important that the poet should say some particular thing, but should speak in harmony with nature"); September 9, 1858 ("How differently the poet and the naturalist look at objects! A man sees only what concerns him. A botanist absorbed in the pursuit of grasses does not distinguish the grandest pasture oaks.")

Every important worker will report what life there is in him . . . tell the story of his love, — to sing. See  September 2, 1851 ("We cannot write well or truly but what we write with gusto . . . Expression is the act of the whole man . . . It is always essential that we love to do what we are doing, do it with a heart.”) Compare July 5, 1852 ("Some birds are poets and sing all summer. They are the true singers. Any man can write verses during the love season.")

The peculiarly beautiful clean and tender green of the grass there! –The grassy season's beginning

May 5

May 3d and 4th, it rained again, especially hard the night of the 4th, and the river is now very high, far higher than in any other freshet this year; will reach its height probably tomorrow.

Hear what I should call the twitter and mew of a goldfinch  and see the bird go over with ricochet flight. 

The oak leaves apparently hang on till the buds fairly expand.  

Thalictrum anemonoides by Brister's Spring on hillside.

False Hellebore. April 28, 2019

Some skunk-cabbage leaves are now eight or nine inches wide near there. These and the hellebore make far the greatest show of any herbs yet.

The peculiarly beautiful clean and tender green of the grass there!  

May 5, 2022

Green herbs of all kinds, — tansy, buttercups, etc., etc., etc., now make more or less show. Put this with the grassy season's beginning.  

Have not observed a tree sparrow for four or five days.

The Emerson children found blue and white violets May 1st at Hubbard's Close, probably Viola ovata and blanda; but I have not been able to find any yet.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 5, 1854

The river is now very high, far higher than in any other freshet this year; will reach its height probably tomorrow. See May 7, 1854 ("Our principal rain this spring was April 28th, 29th, and 30th, and again, May 3d and 4th . . . The causeways being flooded, I have to think before I set out on my walk how I shall get back across the river.")

Have not observed a tree sparrow for four or five days. See April 23, 1854 ("A rain is sure to bring the tree sparrow and hyemalis to the gardens."); May 4, 1855 ("See no gulls, nor F. hyemalis nor tree sparrows now.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Tree Sparrow

Thalictrum anemonoides [Rue Anemone] by Brister's Spring on hillside. See note to May 1, 1856 ("Thalictrum anemonoides well out, probably a day or two . . .by the apple trees. ")

Skunk-cabbage leaves . . .a nd the hellebore make far the greatest show of any herbs yet. See note to April 26, 1860 ("The hellebore now makes a great garden of green under the alders and maples there, five or six rods long and a foot or more high.It grows thus before these trees have begun to leaf, while their numerous stems serve only to break the wind but not to keep out the sun. It is the greatest growth, the most massive, of any plant's; now ahead of the cabbage. Before the earliest tree has begun to leaf it makes conspicuous green patches a foot high."). See allso A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Skunk Cabbage

Green herbs of all kinds . . . now make more or less show. See May 6, 1860 ("As the leaves are putting forth on the trees, so now a great many herbaceous plants are springing up in the woods and fields.")

The grassy season's beginning. See April 9, 1854 ("As yet the landscape generally wears its November russet."); April 14, 1854 ("There is a general tinge of green now discernible through the russet on the bared meadows and the hills, the green blades just peeping forth amid the withered ones"); April 23, 1854 ("How thickly the green blades are starting up amid the russet! The tinge of green is gradually increasing in the face of the russet earth."); April 28, 1854 ("Perhaps the greenness of the landscape may be said to begin fairly now . . . during the last half of April the earth acquires a distinct tinge of green, which finally prevails over the russet."); May 26, 1854 (" The season of grass, now everywhere green and luxuriant.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Brown Season

The Emerson children found blue and white violets May 1st at Hubbard's Close, probably Viola ovata and blanda; but I have not been able to find any yet. See April 23, 1858 ("Saw a Viola blanda in a girl's hand."); April 19, 1858 (Viola ovata . . . Edith Emerson found them there yesterday"); May 7, 1852 ("That little early violet close to the ground in dry fields and hillsides, which only children's eyes detect"); February 5, 1852 ("I suspect that the child plucks its first flower with an insight into its beauty and significance which the subsequent botanist never retains.")

May 5. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 5

The peculiarly

beautiful clean and tender

green of the grass there!

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The grassy season's beginning

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, 

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-540505

Song of the wood thrush

between evening rain showers

and white trillium.

Zphx20240505.

The water is strewn with myriads of wrecked shad-flies

May 1.

May 1, 2014

A fine, clear morning after three days of rain, - our principal rain-storm this year, - raising the river higher than it has been yet. 

9 a. m. — To Cliffs and thence by boat to Fair Haven. Snakes are now common on warm banks. At Lee's Cliff find the early cinquefoil. I think that the columbine cannot be said to have blossomed there before to-day, —  the very earliest. A choke-cherry is very strongly flower-budded and considerably leaved out there.

I sail back with a fair southwest wind. The water is strewn with myriads of wrecked shad-flies, erect on the surface, with their wings up like so many schooners all headed one way. What an abundance of food they must afford to the fishes! Now and then they try to fly, and fall on the water again. They apparently reach from one end of the river to the other, one to a square yard or two.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 1, 1854

Snakes are now common on warm banks. See April 20, 1854 ("A striped snake on a warm, sunny bank.")