A Book of the Seasons: July 14 (gentle rain, yellow butterflies, late roses, a new plant, basswood in bloom, moonlight walks)

 

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

July 14.

Fleets of butterflies

filling the air with yellow

in their zigzag flight.

July 14, 1852

A fine misty rain 

lies on the reddish grass tops 

like morning cobwebs. 

July 14, 1854

July 14, 2014

Awake to day of gentle rain, — very much needed; none to speak of for nearly a month, methinks. July 14, 1854

The cooler and stiller day has a valuable effect on my spirits. July 14, 1854
.
A fine, misty rain falls. It lies on the fine reddish tops of some grasses, thick and whitish like morning cobwebs. July 14, 1854

The stillness is very soothing. July 14, 1854

This is a summer rain. The earth is being bedewed. July 14, 1854

How deep or perhaps slaty sky-blue are those blueberries that grow in the shade in dense drooping clusters under the fresh green of oak and hickory sprouts. July 14, 1852

Saw something blue, or glaucous, in Beck Stow’s Swamp to-day; approached and discovered the Andromeda Polifolia, in the midst of the swamp at the north end, not long since out of bloom. July 14, 1853

This is another instance of a common experience. When I am shown from abroad, or hear of, or in any [way] become interested in, some plant or other thing, I am pretty sure to find it soon. July 14, 1853

There is an abundance of the buck-bean there also. July 14, 1853

See to-day for the first time this season fleets of yellow butterflies in compact assembly in the road like a mackerel fleet with their small hulls and great sails now suddenly dispersing on our approach and filling the air with yellow in their zigzag flight, as when a fair wind calls schooners out of haven and disperses them over the broad ocean. July 14, 1852

I see a rose, now in its prime, by the river, in the water amid the willows and button-bushes, while others, lower on shore, are nearly out of bloom. July 14, 1853

The red capsules of the Hypericum ellipticum, here and there. This one of the fall-ward phenomena in still rainy days. July 14, 1854. 

A very tall ragged orchis by the Heywood Brook, two feet high, almost like a white fringed one. Lower ones I have seen some time.  July 14, 1853

Bass out about two days at Island. July 14, 1856. 

Senecio long gone to seed and dispersed. July 14, 1856. 

While drinking at Assabet Spring in woods, noticed a cherry-stone on the bottom. A bird that came to drink must have brought it half a mile. So the tree gets planted! July 14, 1856

Saw apparently my little ruby(?)-crested wren(?) on the weeds there. July 14, 1856 

The creaking of the crickets seems at the very foundation of all sound. At last I cannot tell it from a ringing in my ears. It is a sound from within, not without. July 14, 1851

If I take the same walk by moonlight an hour later or earlier in the evening, it is as good as a different one. I love the night for its novelty; it is less prophaned than the day. July 14, 1851

Health is a sound relation to nature. July 14, 1854

The voice of a bear was like that of a woman in distress. July 14, 1858

July 14, 2019

*****

See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau: 

The Wild Rose

The Blueberries

The White Fringed Orchis

The Golden Senecio

 The Basswood

St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

the ruby-crowned or crested wren.

 July Moonlight

 July Moods

Yellow Butterflies

at Beck Stow's Swamp

July

*****

May 5, 1859 ("Near the oak beyond Jarvis land, a yellow butterfly, — how hot! this meteor dancing through the air.")

May 28, 1854 (“To be serene and successful we must be at one with the universe”)

June 3, 1857 ("The bass at the Island will not bloom this year.")

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.”)

June 11, 1851 ("Hardly two nights are alike.")

July 3, 1853 ("There are no flowers on bass trees commonly this year.")

July 8, 1858 (“In the course of the afternoon we heard, as we thought, a faint shout, and . . . soon Wentworth decided that it must be a bear, for they make a noise like a woman in distress.”)

July 12, 1851 ("Nature is in as rude health as when Homer sang. We may at last by our sympathies be well.")

July 13, 1854 (“In the midst of July heat and drought.”)

July 16, 1851 ("I see the yellow butterflies now gathered in fleets in the road, and on the flowers of the milkweed.")

July 17, 1852 ("Beck Stow's Swamp! . . . deep and impenetrable, where the earth quakes for a rod around you at every step, with its open water where the swallows skim and twitter, its meadow and cotton-grass, its dense patches of dwarf andromeda, now brownish-green, with clumps of blue berry bushes, its spruces and its verdurous border of woods imbowering it on every side.")

July 17, 1856 ("Hear at distance the hum of bees from the bass with its drooping flowers at the Island, a few minutes only before sunset. It sounds like the rumbling of a distant train of cars")

July 18, 1854 ("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.")

July 19, 1851("I see yellow butterflies in pairs, pursuing each other a rod or two into the air, and now, as he had bethought himself of the danger of being devoured by a passing bird, he descends with a zigzag flight to the earth, and the other follows.") 

July 19, 1856 ("It is the Hypericum ellipticum . . . whose red pods are noticed now.")

July 19, 1856 ("Fleets of yellow butterflies on road.")

July 22, 1853 ("Yellow butterflies in the road.")

July 23, 1860 ("The late rose is now in prime along the river, a pale rose-color but very delicate, keeping up the memory of roses.")

July 26, 1854 ("Today I see in various parts of the town the yellow butterflies in fleets in the road, on bare damp sand, twenty or more collected within a diameter of five or six inches in many places.")

July 26, 1856 ("The pod of the ellipticum, when cut, smells like a bee.")

August 19, 1854 ("There is now a remarkable drought.")

August 19, 1852 ("The small fruits of most plants are now generally ripe or ripening, and this is coincident with the flying in flocks of such young birds now grown as feed on them.").

August 23, 1853 ("For all Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. She exists for no other end. Do not resist her. "Nature" is but another name for health, and the seasons are but different states of health.”)

Walden ("Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength.”)

September 1, 1860 ("See how artfully the seed of a cherry is placed in order that a bird may be compelled to transport it. . . .The bird is bribed with the pericarp to take the stone with it and do this little service for Nature. Thus a bird's wing is added to the cherry-stone which was wingless, and it does not wait for winds to transport it."); 

September 21, 1860 ("I suspect that ... those [seeds] the wind takes are less generally the food of birds and quadrupeds than the heavier and wingless seeds")

October 26, 1857.(My moods are thus periodical, not two days in my year alike.)

November 18, 1857 ("Sympathy with nature is an evidence of perfect health.”)

December 16, 1853 ("Would you be well, see that you are attuned to each mood of nature")

January 9, 1855 (“Make a splendid discovery this afternoon. Walking through Holden’s white spruce swamp,  I see peeping above the snow-crust some slender delicate evergreen shoots very much like the Andromeda Polifolia, amid sphagnum, lambkill, Andromeda calyculata, blueberry bushes, etc., though there is very little to be seen above the snow. It is, I have little doubt, the Kalmia glauca var. rosmarinifolia.”)

January 23, 1858 ("To insure health, a man’s relation to Nature must come very near to a personal one; . . . I do not see that I can live tolerably without affection for Nature.")

July 14, 2022

If you make the least correct 

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853 

July 13 < <<<<<  July 14  >>>>> July 15

A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 14

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/HDT14JULY

The moon is full, and I walk alone.

July 12.

July 12, 2012

8 P. M. Now at least the moon is full, and I walk alone, which is best by night, if not by day always.

Your companion must sympathize with the present mood. The conversation must be located where the walkers are, and vary exactly with the scene and events and the contour of the ground. 

Farewell to those who will talk of nature unnaturally, whose presence is an interruption. I know but one with whom I can walk. I might as well be sitting in a bar-room with them as walk and talk with most. We are never side by side in our thoughts, and we cannot hear each other's silence. Indeed, we cannot be silent. We are forever breaking silence, that is all, and mending nothing.

How can they keep together who are going different ways! 

I start a sparrow from her three eggs in the grass, where she had settled for the night.

The earliest corn is beginning to show its tassels now, and I scent it as I walk, — its peculiar dry scent.

(This afternoon I gathered ripe blackberries, and felt as if the autumn had commenced. )

Now perchance many sounds and sights only remind me that they once said something to me, and are so by association interesting. I go forth to be reminded of a previous state of existence, if perchance any memento of it is to be met with hereabouts.

I have no doubt that Nature preserves her integrity. Nature is in as rude health as when Homer sang. We may at last by our sympathies be well.

I see a skunk on Bear Garden Hill stealing noiselessly away from me, while the moon shines over the pitch pines, which send long shadows down the hill.  Now, looking back, I see it shining on the south side of farmhouses and barns with a weird light, for I pass here half an hour later than last night.

I smell the huckleberry bushes.

I hear a human voice, — some laborer singing after his day's toil, which I do not often hear.  Loud it must be, for it is far away. Methinks I should know it for a white man's voice.

Some strains have the melody of an instrument.

Now I hear the sound of a bugle in the Corner,  reminding me of poetic wars; a few flourishes and the bugler has gone to rest.

At the foot of the Cliff hill I hear the sound of the clock striking nine, as distinctly as within a quarter of a mile usually, though there is no wind.

The moonlight is more perfect than last night; hardly a cloud in the sky, — only a few fleecy ones. There is more serenity and more light.

I hear that sort of throttled or chuckling note as of a bird flying high, now from this side, then from that.

Methinks when I turn my head I see Wachusett from the side of the hill.

I smell the butter-and-eggs as I walk.

I am startled by the rapid transit of some wild animal across my path, a rabbit or a fox, — or you hardly know, if it be not a bird.

Looking down from the cliffs, the leaves of the tree-tops shine more than ever by day.

Here and there a lightning-bug shows his greenish light over the tops of the trees.

As I return through the orchard, a foolish robin bursts away from his perch unnaturally, with the habits of man.

The air is remarkably still and unobjectionable on the hilltop, and the whole world below is covered as with a gossamer blanket of moonlight. It is just about as yellow as a blanket. It is a great dimly burnished shield with darker blotches on its surface. You have lost some light, it is true, but you have got this simple and magnificent stillness, brooding like genius.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 12, 1851

The moon is full, and I walk alone. See July 16, 1850 ("Many men walk by day; few walk by night. It is a very different season. Instead of the sun, there are the moon and stars; instead of the wood thrush, there is the whip-poor-will; instead of butterflies, fireflies, winged sparks of fire!"); August  31?, 1850 ("My friends wonder that I love to walk alone in solitary fields and woods by night . ")

I pass here half an hour later than last night. See July 11, 1851 ("We go toward Bear Garden Hill. The sun is setting. . . . The moon is silvery still, not yet inaugurated.")

(This afternoon I gathered ripe blackberries, and felt as if the autumn had commenced.) See August 18, 1856 ("As I go along the hillsides in sprout-lands, amid the Solidago stricta, looking for the blackberries left after the rain, the sun warm as ever, but the air cool nevertheless, I hear the steady (not intermittent) shrilling of apparently the alder cricket, clear, loud, and autumnal, a season sound. Hear it, but see it not. It reminds me of past autumns and the lapse of time, suggests a pleasing, thoughtful melancholy, like the sound of the flail. Such preparation, such an outfit has our life, and so little brought to pass.")

I smell the huckleberry bushes. See August 12, 1851 ("How wholesome the taste of huckleberries, when now by moonlight I feel for them amid the bushes!")

I hear a human voice, — some laborer singing after his day's toil. See August 15, 1851 ("I hear now from Bear Garden Hill — I rarely walk by moonlight without hearing — the sound of a flute, or a horn, or a human voice.")

Here and there a lightning-bug shows his greenish light over the tops of the trees. See August 5, 1851 ("I see a solitary firefly over the woods".)

July 12. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, July 12

Now at least the moon 

is full, and I walk alone, 

which is best by night.

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 © 2009-2021

I pluck the blossom of the milkweed in the twilight and find how sweet it smells.

July 11. Friday. 

July 11, 2013

At 7.15 P. M. with W. E. C. go forth to see the moon, the glimpses of the moon.

We think she is not quite full; we can detect a little flatness on the eastern side.

Shall we wear thick coats? The day has been warm enough, but how cool will the night be? It is not sultry, as the last night. As a general rule, it is best to wear your thickest coat even in a July night.

Which way shall we walk? Northwest, that we may see the moon returning?  But on that side the river prevents our walking in the fields, and on other accounts that direction is not so attractive. 
We go toward Bear Garden Hill.

The sun is setting.

The meadow-sweet has bloomed.

These dry hills and pastures are the places to walk by moonlight.

The moon is silvery still, not yet inaugurated.

The tree-tops are seen against the amber west. I seem to see the outlines of one spruce among them, distinguishable afar.

My thoughts expand and flourish most on this barren hill, where in the twilight I see the moss spreading in rings and prevailing over the short, thin grass, carpeting the earth, adding a few inches of green to its circle annually while it dies within.

As we round the sandy promontory, we try the sand and rocks with our hands. The sand is cool on the surface but warmer a few inches beneath, though the contrast is not so great as it was in May. The larger rocks are perceptibly warm.

I pluck the blossom of the milkweed in the twilight and find how sweet it smells.

The white blossoms of the Jersey tea dot the hillside, with the yarrow everywhere.

Some woods are black as clouds; if we knew not they were green by day, they would appear blacker still.

When we sit, we hear the mosquitoes hum.

The woodland paths are not the same by night as by day; if they are a little grown up, the eye cannot find them, but must give the reins to the feet, as the traveller to his horse.

So we went through the aspens at the base of the Cliffs, their round leaves reflecting the lingering twilight on the one side, the waxing moonlight on the other.

Always the path was unexpectedly open.

Now we are getting into moonlight.

We see it reflected from particular stumps in the depths of the darkest woods, and from the stems of trees, as if it selected what to shine on— a silvery light.

It is a light, of course, which we have had all day, but which we have not appreciated, and proves how remarkable a lesser light can be when a greater has departed.

How simply and naturally the moon presides!

It is true she was eclipsed by the sun, but now she acquires an almost equal respect and worship by reflecting and representing him, with some new quality, perchance, added to his light, showing how original the disciple may be who still in midday is seen, though pale and cloud-like, beside his master. Such is a worthy disciple.

In his master's presence he still is seen and preserves a distinct existence; and in his absence he reflects and represents him, not without adding some new quality to his light, not servile and never rival.

As the master withdraws himself, the disciple, who was a pale cloud before, begins to emit a silvery light, acquiring at last a tinge of golden as the darkness deepens, but not enough to scorch the seeds which have been planted or to dry up the fertilizing dews which are falling.

Passing now near Well Meadow Head toward Baker's orchard.

The sweet-fern and indigo-weed fill the path up to one's middle, wetting us with dews so high. The leaves are shining and flowing. We wade through the luxuriant vegetation, seeing no bottom.

Looking back toward the Cliffs, some dead trees in the horizon, high on the rocks, make a wild New Hampshire prospect.

There is the faintest possible mist over the pond-holes, where the frogs are eructating, like the falling of huge drops, the bursting of mephitic air-bubbles rising from the bottom, a sort of blubbering, — such conversation as I have heard between men, a belching conversation, expressing a sympathy of stomachs and abdomens.

The peculiar appearance of the indigo-weed, its misty massiveness, is striking.

In Baker's orchard the thick grass looks like a sea of mowing in this weird moonlight, a bottomless sea of grass.

Our feet must be imaginative, must know the earth in imagination only, as well as our heads.

We sit on the fence, and, where it is broken and interrupted, the fallen and slanting rails are lost in the grass (really thin and wiry) as in water.

We even see our tracks a long way behind, where we have brushed off the dew.

The clouds are peculiarly wispy to-night, somewhat like fine flames, not massed and dark nor downy, not thick, but slight, thin wisps of mist.

I hear the sound of Heywood's Brook falling into Fair Haven Pond, inexpressibly refreshing to my senses. It seems to flow through my very bones. I hear it with insatiable thirst. It allays some sandy heat in me. It affects my circulations; methinks my arteries have sympathy with it. What is it I hear but the pure water falls within me, in the circulation of my blood, the streams that fall into my heart?

What mists do I ever see but such as hang over and rise from my blood?

The sound of this gurgling water, running thus by night as by day, falls on all my dashes, fills all my buckets, overflows my float-boards, turns all the machinery of my nature, makes me a flume, a sluice-way, to the springs of nature. Thus I am washed; thus I drink and quench my thirst. Where the streams fall into the lake, if they are only a few inches more elevated, all walkers may hear.

On the high path through Baker's wood I see, or rather feel, the tephrosia.

Now we come out into the open pasture.

And under those woods of elm and buttonwood, where still no light is seen, repose a family of human beings. By night there is less to distinguish this locality from the woods and meadows we have threaded. We might go very near to farmhouses covered with ornamental trees and standing on a highroad, thinking that (we) were in the most retired woods and fields still. Having yielded to sleep, man is a less obtrusive inhabitant of nature.

Now, having reached the dry pastures again, we are surrounded by a flood of moonlight.

The dim cart-path over the sward curves gracefully through the pitch pines, ever to some more fairy-like spot. The rails in the fences shine like silver.

We know not whether we are sitting on the ruins of a wall, or the materials which are to compose a new one.

I see, half a mile off, a phosphorescent arc on the hillside, where Bartlett's Cliff reflects the moonlight.

Going by the shanty, I smell the excrements of its inhabitants, which I had never smelt before.

And now, at half-past 10 o'clock, I hear the cockerels crow in Hubbard's barns, and morning is already anticipated. It is the feathered, wakeful thought in us that anticipates the following day. This sound is wonderfully exhilarating at all times. These birds are worth far more to me for their crowing and cackling than for their drumsticks and eggs.

How singular the connection of the hen with man, that she leaves her eggs in his barns always! She is a domestic fowl, though still a little shyish of him. I cannot [help] looking at the whole as an experiment still and wondering that in each case it succeeds.

There is no doubt at last but hens may be kept. They will put their eggs in your barn by a tacit agreement. They will not wander far from your yard.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 11, 1851

[We] go forth to see the moon, the glimpses of the moon. We think she is not quite full.  See July 12, 1859 ("In the evening, the moon being about full, I paddle up the river to see the moonlight and hear the bullfrogs.")

So we went through the aspens at the base of the Cliffs, their round leaves reflecting the lingering twilight on the one side, the waxing moonlight on the other. August 5, 1851 (“The light from the western sky is stronger still than that of the moon, and when I hold up my hand, the west side is lighted while the side toward the moon is comparatively dark.”); February 3, 1852 ("The moon is nearly full tonight, and the moment is passed when the light in the east (i. e. of the moon) balances the light in the west.")

I pluck the blossom of the milkweed in the twilight and find how sweet it smells. See July 2, 1851 (“To-day the milkweed is blossoming.”);  July 15, 1854 (“There are many butterflies, yellow and red, about the Asclepias incarnata now.”); July 16, 1851 (“I see the yellow butterflies now gathered in fleets in the road, and on the flowers of the milkweed (Asclepias pulchra) by the roadside, a really handsome flower;”);July 18, 1860 ("The Asclepias Cornuti is abundantly visited nowadays by a large orange-brown butterfly with dark spots and with silver spots beneath. Wherever the asclepias grows you see them."); July 19, 1851 ("The butterflies have swarmed within these few days, especially about the milkweeds."). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Milkweed

The woodland paths are not the same by night as by day; if they are a little grown up, the eye cannot find them, but must give the reins to the feet, as the traveller to his horse. See June 11, 1851 ("The woodland paths are never seen to such advantage as in a moonlight night, opening before me almost against expectation as I walk, as if it were not a path, but an open, winding passage through the bushes, which my feet find.")

Now we are getting into moonlight. We see it reflected from particular stumps in the depths of the darkest woods, and from the stems of trees, as if it selected what to shine on. See Night and Moonlight ("The sweet-fern and indigo in overgrown wood-paths wet you with dew up to your middle. The leaves of the shrub oak are shining as if a liquid were flowing over them. The pools seen through the trees are as full of light as the sky . . . All white objects are more remarkable than by day. A distant cliff looks like a phosphorescent space on a hillside. The woods are heavy and dark.   Nature slumbers. You see the moonlight reflected from particular stumps in the recesses of the forest, as if she selected what to shine on.")

On the high path through Baker's wood I see, or rather feel, the tephrosia. See June 21, 1852 ("I see the tephrosia out through the dusk; a handsome flower. ") and note to July 10, 1857 ("The tephrosia, which grows by Peter's road in the woods, is a very striking and interesting, if I may not say beautiful, flower, especially when, as here, it is seen in a cool and shady place, its clear rose purple contrasting very agreeably with yellowish white, rising from amidst a bed of finely pinnate leaves.")

[The moon] who was a pale cloud before, begins to emit a silvery light, acquiring at last a tinge of golden as the darkness deepens.  See June 30, 1852 ("Moon nearly full; rose a little before sunset. . . . At first a mere white cloud. As soon as the sun sets, begins to grow brassy. See April 30, 1852 ("Then when I turned, I saw in the east, just over the woods, the modest, pale, cloud-like moon, two thirds full, looking spirit-like on these daylight scenes. Such a sight excites me. The earth is worthy to inhabit. “)

July 11. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 11

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 © 2009-2021

A luna moth.

July 8.


P. M. — Down river in boat to the Holt.

The small globose white flower in muddy places by river and elsewhere.

The bass on Egg Rock is just ready to expand.

It is perhaps the warmest day yet.

We held on to the abutments under the red bridge to cool ourselves in the shade. No better place in hot weather, the river rippling away beneath you and the air rippling through beneath the abutments, if only in sympathy with the river, while the planks afford a shade, and you hear all the travel and the travellers' talk without being seen or suspected.

The bullfrog it is, methinks, that makes the dumping sound.

There is generally a current of air circulating over water, always, methinks, if the water runs swiftly, as if it put the air in motion. There is quite a breeze here this sultry day.

Commend me to the sub-pontean, the under-bridge, life.

I am inclined to think bathing almost one of the necessaries of life, but it is surprising how indifferent some are to it.

What a coarse, foul, busy life we lead, compared even with the South-Sea-Islanders, in some respects.

Truant boys steal away to bathe, but the farmers, who most need it, rarely dip their bodies into the streams or ponds.

M was telling me last night that he had thought of bathing when he had done his hoeing, — of taking some soap and going down to Walden and giving himself a good scrubbing, — but something had occurred to prevent it, and now he will go unwashed to the harvesting, aye, even till the next hoeing is over.

Better the faith and practice of the Hindoos who worship the sacred Ganges.

We have not faith enough in the Musketaquid to wash in it, even after hoeing.

Men stay on shore, keep themselves dry, and drink rum.

Pray what were rivers made for? One farmer, who came to bathe in Walden one Sunday while I lived there, told me it was the first bath he had had for fifteen years.

Now what kind of religion could his be? Or was it any better than a Hindoo's? 

M said that Abel Heywood told him he had been down to the Great Meadows (river meadows) to look at the grass, and that there wasn't a-going to be much of a crop; in some places there wasn't any grass at all. The great freshet in the spring didn't do it any good. 

Under the Salix nigra var. falcata, near that handsomest one, which now is full of scythe-shaped leaves, the larger six inches long by seven eighths wide, with remarkably broad lunar leafy appendages or stipules at their base, I found a remarkable moth lying flat on the still water as if asleep (they appear to sleep during the day), as large as the smaller birds.

Five and a half inches in alar extent and about three inches long, something like the smaller figure in one position of the wings (with a remarkably narrow lunar-cut tail), of a sea-green color, with four conspicuous spots whitish within, then a red line, then yellowish border below or toward the tail, but brown, brown orange, and black above, toward head; a very robust body, covered with a kind of downy plumage, an inch and a quarter long by five eighths thick.

The sight affected me as tropical, and I suppose it is the northern verge of some species. It suggests into what productions Nature would run if all the year were a July.

By night it is active, for, though I thought it dying at first, it made a great noise in its prison, a cigar-box, at night. When the day returns, it apparently drops wherever it may be, even into the water, and dozes till evening again.

Is it called the emperor moth? [The luna moth.] 

Yesterday I observed the arrow-wood at Saw Mill Brook, remarkably tall, straight, and slender. It is quite likely the Indians made their arrows of it, for it makes just such shoots as I used to select for my own arrows. It appears to owe its straightness partly to its rapid growth, already two feet from the extremities chiefly.

The pontederia begins to make a show now.

The black willow has branches horizontal or curving downward to the water first,  branching at once at the ground.

The Sium latifolium, water parsnip, — except that the calyx-leaves are minute and the fruit ribbed, — close to the edge of the river.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 8, 1852

I am inclined to think bathing almost one of the necessaries of life. See July 9, 1852  ("Bathing is an undescribed luxury. To feel the wind blow on your body, the water flow on you and lave you, is a rare physical enjoyment this hot day.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Luxury of Bathing

  It made a great noise in its prison, a cigar-box, at night. Is it called the emperor moth? See July 26, 1852 ("Dr. Harris says that my great moth is the Attacus luna; may be regarded as one of several emperor moths. They are rarely seen, being very liable to be snapped up by birds. . . . The one I had, being put into a large box, beat itself — its wings, etc. — all to pieces in the night, in its efforts to get out, depositing its eggs, nevertheless, on the sides of its prison.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Luna Moth (Attacus luna)

A Blanding's Turtle on the hot sand of the new road at Beck Stow's Swamp.

July 6 . 

P. M. - To Beck Stow's.

Euphorbia maculata, good while.

Polygonum aviculare, a day or two.

Now a great show of elder blossoms.

Polygala sanguinea, apparently a day or more.

Galium asprellum in shade; probably earlier in sun.

Partridges a third grown.

Veery still sings and toad rings.

On the hot sand of the new road at Beck Stow's, headed toward the water a rod or more off, what is probably Cistudo Blandingii; had some green conferva (?) on its shell and body.

Length of upper shell, 6 inches; breadth behind, 4 5/8 ; tail beyond shell, 2 1/4.

Did not see it shut its box; kept running out its long neck four inches or more; could bend it directly back to the posterior margin of the second [?] dorsal plate.

Ran out its head further and oftener than usual.

The spots pale-yellow or buff.

Upper half of head and neck blackish, the former quite smooth for 13 inches and finely sprinkled with yellowish spots, the latter warty The snout lighter, with five perpendicular black marks.

Eyes large (?), irides dull green-golden.

Under jaw and throat clear chrome-yellow.

Under parts of neck and roots of fore legs duller yellow; inner parts behind duller yellow still.

Fore legs with black scales, more or less yellow spotted above; at root and beneath pale-yellow and yellowish.

Hind legs uniformly black above and but little lighter beneath.

Tail black all round.

No red or orange about the animal.

No hook or notch to jaw.

Plantain, some days, and gnaphalium, apparently two or three days.


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

Beck Stow's. See July 17, 1852 ("Beck Stow's Swamp! What an incredible spot to think of in town or city! . . .deep and impenetrable, where the earth quakes for a rod around you at every step. . . and its verdurous border of woods imbowering it on every side") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, at Beck Stow's Swamp

Partridges a third grown. See July 5, 1856 ("Young partridges (with the old bird), as big as robins, make haste into the woods from off the railroad. ");July 5, 1857 ("Partridges big as quails"); July 7, 1854 ("Disturb two broods of partridges this afternoon, — one a third grown, flying half a dozen rods over the bushes, yet the old, as anxious as ever, rushing to me with the courage of a hen.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge

On the hot sand of the new road at Beck Stow's, what is probably Cistudo Blandingii. See March 13, 1859 (“On the northeast part of the Great Fields, I find the broken shell of a Cistudo Blandingii, on very dry soil. This is the fifth, then, I have seen in the town. All the rest were three in the Great Meadows (one of them in a ditch) and one within a rod or two of Beck Stow's Swamp”)

 A Blanding's Turtle 

on the hot sand of the new 

road at Beck Stow's Swamp

Surveying on the Great Fields to-day.

 

July 5. 

Raspberries, some days.

Such a habit have cows in a pasture of moving forward while feeding that, in surveying on the Great Fields to-day, I was interrupted by a herd of a dozen cows, which successively passed before my line of vision, feeding forward, and I had to watch my opportunity to look between them. 

Sometimes, however, they were of use, when they passed behind a birch stake and made a favorable background against which to see it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 5, 1853

Raspberries, some days. See June 30, 1854 ("Rubus triflorus berries, some time, — the earliest fruit of a rubus.The berries are very scarce, light red, semitransparent, showing the seed, — a few (six to ten) large shining grains and rather acid. "); July 2, 1851("Some of the raspberries are ripe, the most innocent and simple of fruits”); July 6, 1857 (“Rubus triflorus well ripe.”)  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Raspberry

Such a habit have cows in a pasture of moving forward while feeding.   See August ("?") 1850 ("I notice that cows never walk abreast , but in single file commonly  making a narrow cow-path "); September 27, 1851 ("The cows have been turned on to the meadow, but they gradually desert it, all feeding one way.") See also July 5, 1852 ("How many virtues have cattle in the fields! They do not make a noise at your approach, like dogs ; they rarely low, but are quiet as nature, — merely look up at you"); See also May 15, 1853 ("Here are ten cows feeding on the hill beside me. Why do they move about so fast as they feed? They have advanced thirty rods in ten minutes"); July 12, 1857 (“It is exceedingly sultry this afternoon, and . . . cows stand up to their bellies in the river, lashing their sides with their tails from time to time.”); July 16, 1851 ("The color of the cows on Fair Haven Hill, how fair a contrast to the hillside! How striking and wholesome their clean brick-red!"); July 17, 1856 ("Cows in their pasture, going to water or elsewhere, make a track four or five inches deep and frequently not more than ten inches wide."); November 15, 1859 ("As I returned over the Corner Bridge I saw cows in the sun half-way down Fair Haven Hill next the Cliff, half a mile off, the declining sun so warmly reflected from their red coats that I could not for some time tell if they were not some still bright-red shrub oaks."); October 5, 1856 (" I think I would rather watch the motions of these cows in their pasture for a day, which I now see all headed one way and slowly advancing, — watch them and project their course carefully on a chart, and report all their behavior faithfully, — than wander to Europe or Asia and watch other motions there; for it is only ourselves that we report in either case, and perchance we shall report a more restless and worthless self in the latter case than in the first.")

To have the leisure

to see the parallax of

cows in a pasture.

zphx20220705

See also January 11, 1852 ("We cannot live too leisurely. Let me . . . ; have leisure to attend to every phenomenon of nature, and to entertain every thought that comes."); December 28, 1852 ("A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book . . . How much, what infinite, leisure it requires, as of a lifetime, to appreciate a single phenomenon! You must camp down beside it as for life, having reached your land of promise, and give yourself wholly to it. It must stand for the whole world to you, symbolical of all things")

I watch as cows pass 

before my line of vision 

to look between them.

To Know Nature's July Moods.

July

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

In the midst of July heat and drought.

The season is trivial as noon.

July 13, 1854

July has been to me a trivial month.

It began hot and continued drying,

then rained some toward the middle,

bringing anticipations of the fall,

and then was hot again about the 20th.

It has been a month of haying, heat, low water, and weeds.

August 2, 1854

I see from this hill

the horizon-edge distinct.

Clear air after rain.

July 1, 1854

Thoughts driven inward

by clouds and trees reflected

in the still, smooth water.

July 15, 1854

Sun warm on my back,

I turn round and shade my face --

a beautiful life.

July 21, 1853

Before the first star

I turn round --

there shines the moon

silvering small clouds.

July 27, 1852

Grand sound of the rain

on the leaves of the forest

-- distant, approaching.

July 30, 1852

July 11, 2015

the sun sets red

July 1. From the hill I perceive that the air is beautifully clear after the rain of yesterday, and not hot; fine grained. The landscape is fine as behind a glass, the horizon-edge distinct. July 1, 1854

July 2. It takes but little distance to make the hills and even the meadows look blue to-day. July 2, 1851

July 3. We will have a dawn, and noon, and serene sunset in ourselves. July 3, 1840

July 4. Rich and luxuriant uncut grass-lands northward, now waving under the easterly wind. Sweeping waves of light and shade over the whole breadth of his land, imparting wonderful life to the landscape, waves of light and shade pursuing each other over the whole breadth of the landscape like waves hastening to break on a shore. July 4, 1860

Waves of light and shade

over the breadth of the land

sweeping the landscape.

July 4, 1860

July 5.  We have become accustomed to the summer. It has acquired a certain eternity. July 5, 1852

July 6.  June, the month for grass and flowers, is now past. . . . Now grass is turning to hay, and flowers to fruits. Already I gather ripe blueberries on the hills. July 6, 1851

July 6.  

Grass and flowers pass.

Now grass is turning to hay, 

and flowers to fruits. 

July 6, 1851

July 7. I am older than last year; the mornings are further between; the days are fewer. July 7, 1852

July 8. The moon reflected from the rippled surface like a stream of dollars. July 8, 1854

July 9. The jay's note, resounding along a raw wood-side, suggests a singular wildness. July 9, 1852

July 10. Walking up and down a river in torrid weather with only a hat to shade the head. July 10, 1852.

July 11. Another hot day with blue haze, and the sun sets red, threatening still hotter weather, and the very moon looks through a somewhat reddish air at first. July 11, 1859

July 12. This afternoon I gathered ripe blackberries, and felt as if the autumn had commenced. July 12, 1851

Long after starlight

high-pillared clouds of the day

reflect downy light.

July 12, 1852

July 13. The vernal freshness of June is passed. July 13, 1860

July 14. Health is a sound relation to nature. July 14, 1854.

July 15.  We seem to be passing, or to have passed, a dividing line between spring and autumn, and begin to descend the long slope toward winter. . . . All is stillness in the fields. My thoughts are driven inward, even as clouds and trees are reflected in the still, smooth water. July 15, 1854

July 16. This is a still thoughtful day, the air full of vapors which shade the earth, preparing rain for the morrow. The air is full of sweetness. The tree is full of poetry. July 16, 1852

July 19. Yesterday it was spring, and to-morrow it will be autumn. Where is the summer then? Methinks my seasons revolve more slowly than those of nature. July 19, 1851

July 20. It is starlight. You see the first star in the southwest, and know not how much earlier you might have seen it had you looked. July 20, 1852

July 23. The mind is subject to moods, as the shadows of clouds pass over the earth. July 23, 1851

Along the river

the memory of roses.

Late rose now in prime.

July 23, 1860

July 24. The street and fields betray the drought and look more parched than at noon; they look as I feel, -- languid and thin and feeling my nerves. July 24, 1851
.
July 25. The fog rises highest over the channel of the river and over the ponds in the woods which are thus revealed. July 25, 1852


How apt we are to be reminded of lateness, even before the year is half spent! Such little objects check the diffuse tide of our thoughts and bring it to a head, which thrills us. They are such fruits as music, poetry, love, which humanity bears. July 26, 1853


July 26.  By my intimacy with nature I find myself withdrawn from man. My interest in the sun and the moon, in the morning and the evening, compels me to solitude. The grandest picture in the world is the sunset sky. In your higher moods what man is there to meet? You are of necessity isolated. July 26, 1852
.
July 27. On Fair Haven Hill. The slight distraction of picking berries is favorable to a mild, abstracted, poetic mood, to sequestered or transcendental thinking. I return ever more fresh to my mood from such slight interruptions. July 27, 1852

The voice of the loon

in the middle of the night

far over the lake.

July 27, 1857

July 28.   Methinks the season culminated about the middle of this month, — that the year was of indefinite promise before, but that, after the first intense heats, we postponed the fulfillment of many of our hopes for this year, and, having as it were attained the ridge of the summer, commenced to descend the long slope toward winter, the afternoon and down-hill of the year. July 28, 1854

July 29. We walk to the watering hole at sunset, then down the streambed scoured out by rains earlier this summer. Orange glow in the west fades to dusk. Magically, the woods fill with fireflies and the flute of the thrush. July 29, 2013

Magically at dusk

the woods fill with fireflies and

the flute of the thrush.

zphx July 29, 2013

July 30. After midsummer we have a belated feeling as if we had all been idlers, and are forward to see in each sight and hear in each sound some presage of the fall, just as in middle age man anticipates the end of life. July 30, 1852

 July 31. I hear the distant sound of a flail, and thoughts of autumn occupy my mind, and the memory of past years.  July 31, 1856. 

Thoughts of autumn and

the memory of past years

occupy my mind.

July 31, 1856

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, July Moods

See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, July

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July Days

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cricket in July

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, August Moods

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 © 2009-2021