A Book of the Seasons: The Cedar Swamps

 I think I could write a poem

to be called Concord.

For argument I should have

the River, the Woods,

the Ponds, the Hills, the Fields,

the Swamps and Meadows . . .

Henry Thoreau,  

September 4, 1841

The white cedar swamp –

reddish staminate flowers

ready to open.

April 23, 1856

Go to new trees

like cedars and firs 

and you hear new birds.

April 24, 1854 

April 23. P.M. — To Cedar Swamp via Assabet. Warm and pretty still. Even the riversides are quiet at this hour (3 P.M.) as in summer; the birds are neither seen nor heard. The anthers of the larch are conspicuous, but I see no pollen. White cedar to-morrow. April 23, 1855 

April 23, 2025

April 23. P. M. — Up Assabet to white cedars . . . The white cedar swamp consists of hummocks, now surrounded by water, where you go jumping from one to another. The fans are now dotted with the minute reddish staminate flowers, ready to open. The skunk cabbage leaf has expanded in one open place there; so it is at least as early as the hellebore of yesterday. April 23, 1856

April 24. P. M. — Up Assabet, and thence to Cedar Swamp. . .The white cedar female blossoms are open. Hear amid the white cedars the fine, clear singing warbler of yesterday, whose harsh note I may have heard the 18th,very clear and fast. Go to new trees, like cedars and firs, and you hear new birds.  I have also observed that the early birds are about the early trees, like maples, alders, willows, elms, etc.  New plant (Racemed andromeda)  flower-budded at Cedar Swamp amid the high blueberry, panicled andromeda, clethra, etc. – upright dense racemes of reddish flower-buds on reddish terminal shoots. April 24, 1854 

April 24. P. M. — To Flint’s Pond . . . I can find no red cedar in bloom, but it will undoubtedly shed pollen to-morrow. It is on the point of it. I am not sure that the white cedar is any earlier. The sprigs of red cedar, now full of the buff-colored staminate flowers, like fruit, are very rich. The next day they shed an abundance of pollen in the house. It is a clear buff color, while that of the white cedar is very different, being a faint salmon. It would be very pleasant to make a collection of these powders, – like dry ground paints. They would be the right kind of chemicals to have.  April 24, 1855 

April 25. The red cedar has fairly begun to-day; maybe the first yesterday. Put the red yesterday and the white to-day. April 25, 1854

April 26. The white cedar gathered the 23d does not shed pollen in house till to-day, and I doubt if it will in swamp before to-morrow.

April 26, 1856 

April 26. P. M. — Up Assabet to White Cedar Swamp . . .The white cedar is apparently just out. The higher up the tree, the earlier. April 26, 1857 

April 29. P. M. — To Cedar Swamp . . . The white cedar now sheds pollen abundantly. Many flowers are effete, though many are not open. Probably it began as much as three days ago. I strike a twig, and its peculiar pinkish pollen fills the air. Sat on the knoll in the swamp, now laid bare. How pretty a red maple in bloom (they are now in prime), seen in the sun against a pine wood, like these little ones in the swamp against the neighboring wood, they are so light and ethereal, not a heavy mass of color impeding the passage of the light, and they are of so cheerful and lively a color . . . A pigeon woodpecker alights on a dead cedar top near me. Its cackle, thus near, sounds like eh eh eh eh eh, etc., rapidly and emphatically repeated. Some birch sprouts in the swamp are leafed as much as any shrub or tree.  April 29, 1856

May 1. Hear a golden-crested* wren at Cedar Swamp. May 1, 1854

May 4. P. M. — To Cedar Swamp via Assabet. In the Cedar Swamp Andromeda calyculata abundantly out; how long? Viburnum nudum leafing. Smilacina trifolia recently up; will apparently open in ten or twelve days. May 4, 1856

May 29. P. M. — To Cedar Swamp by Assabet. The white maple keys have begun to fall and float down the stream like the wings of great insects. May 29, 1854

June 3.  P. M. — To White Cedar Swamp . . .The racemed andromeda (Leucothoe) has been partly killed, — the extremities of the twigs, — so that its racemes are imperfect, the lower parts only green. It is not quite out; probably is later for this injury. The ground of the cedar swamp, where it has been burnt over and sprouts, etc., have sprung up again, is covered with the Marchantia polymorpha. Now shows its starlike or umbrella-shaped fertile flowers and its shield-shaped sterile ones. It is a very rank and wild- looking vegetation, forming the cuticle of the swamp's foundation. June 3, 1857

June 8.  P. M. -— To Cedar Swamp . . . I find no Andromeda racemosa in flower. It is dead at top and slightly leafed below. Was it the severe winter, or cutting off the protecting evergreens?. . . At Cedar Swamp, saw the pe-pe catching flies like a wood pewee, darting from its perch on a dead cedar twig from time to time and returning to it. It appeared to have a black crown with some crest, yellowish (?) bill, gray-brown back, black tail, two faint whitish bars on wings, a dirty cream-white throat, and a gray or ash white breast and beneath, whitest in middle. June 8, 1856

June 10. We continued on, round the head of “Cedar Swamp,” and may say that we drank at the source of it or of Saw Mill Brook, where a spring is conducted through a hollow log to a tub for cattle. . . .What shall this great wild tract over which we strolled be called? Many farmers have pastures there, and wood-lots, and orchards. It consists mainly of rocky pastures. It contains what I call the Boulder Field, the Yellow Birch Swamp, the Black Birch Hill, the Laurel Pasture, the Hog-Pasture, the White Pine Grove, the Easterbrooks Place, the Old Lime-Kiln, the Lime Quarries, Spruce Swamp, the Ermine Weasel Woods; also the Oak Meadows, the Cedar Swamp, the Kibbe Place, and the old place northwest of Brooks Clark‘s. Ponkawtasset bounds it on the south. There are a few frog-ponds and an old mill-pond within it, and Bateman‘s Pond on its edge. What shall the whole be called? June 10, 1853

November 3.  P. M. — To Annursnack . . . Returning, I see at the very northwest end of the White Cedar Swamp a little elder, still quite leafy and green, near the path on the edge of the swamp. Its leafets are commonly nine, and the lower two or more are commonly divided. This seemed peculiarly downy beneath, even “sub-pubescent,” as Bigelow describes the Sambucus pubens to be. Compare it with the common. Also by it is Viburnum nudum, still quite fresh and green, the slender shoots from starting plants very erect and straight. The lower leaves of the water andromeda are now red, and the lambkill leaves are drooping (is it more than before?) and purplish from the effect of frost in low swamps like this.   November 3, 1858

November 14. Went through the white cedar swamp. There are white cedars, larch (now bare), spruce, etc.; cedars two feet through, the only ones I know in Concord. It was here were cut the cedar posts which Alcott put into Emerson's summer-house. They could not be spared even for that. It is a stout tree here, tapering with singular abruptness. Its small flattish leaves, dispersed crosswise and at other or different angles with each other, give it a peculiarly light, fantastic look. Myriads of little ones are springing in the more open parts of the swamp. They are turned a reddish green now. The large trees have a very rough bark, regularly furrowed perpendicularly, and a bright-yellow resin between the furrows. I find that the inner bark makes a good lye. Is this used by the Indians? Methinks these are flower-buds which are formed at the ends of the leafets and will open early in the spring. This swamp must be visited in midsummer. You see great shelf-shaped fungi, handsomely buttressed and perfectly horizontal , on the under side of slanting dead trees, at different stages one above another. November 14, 1853

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cedar Swamps

 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 © 2009-2026

 

According to Thoreau Place Names "Cedar Swamp" is a large swampt hat straddles the notrhern boundary between Concord and Carlisle, with the southern portion in what Thoreau called "Easterbrook Country.  See June 10, 1853. A distinct "White Cedar Swamp" likely was a swampy area now a pond about 400 meters due north of the former residence of George M. Barrett on Mill Road right where College Road starts. "Gleason misplaces Cedar Swamp somewhat on his map placing it in a wetland about 500 meters northeast of the pond/ex-swamp.

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-cedar

A Book of the Seasons: Elms and the Purple Finch

I would make a chart of our life,

know  why just this circle of creatures completes the world.

Observe all kinds of coincidences,

as what kinds of birds come with what flowers.

Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852

I hear the clear loud

whistle of a purple finch

from the Whiting's elm.

April 11, 1853

Splendid purple finch –

its glowing redness revealed

when it lifts its wings.

April 12, 1856

The arrival of the purple finches

appears to be coincident with

the blossoming of the elm,

on whose blossom it feeds.

 April 15, 1854 

The Purple Finch

 

April 3.  Going down-town this morning, I am surprised by the rich strain of the purple finch from the elms. Three or four have arrived and lodged against the elms of our street, which runs east and west across their course, and they are now mingling their loud and rich strains with that of the tree sparrows, robins, bluebirds, etc. The hearing of this note implies some improvement in the acoustics of the air. It reminds me of that genial state of the air when the elms are in bloom.  They sit still over the street and make a business of warbling. They advertise me surely of some additional warmth and serenity. How their note rings over the roofs of the village! You wonder that even the sleepers are not awakened by it to inquire who is there, and yet probably not another than myself in all the town observes their coming, and not half a dozen ever distinguished them in their lives. April 3, 1858 

April 4.  Methinks I heard the purple finch. The birds are eager to sing, as the flowers to bloom, after raw weather has held them in check. April 4, 1860

April 6.  The Ulmus Americana is apparently just out here, or possibly yesterday. The U. fulva not yet, of course. The large rusty blossom-buds of the last have been extensively eaten and mutilated, probably by birds, leaving on the branches which I examine mostly mere shells.  April 6, 1858

April 7.  The Cheney elm looks as if it would shed pollen to-morrow.  April 7, 1859 

April 7.  The purple finch, — if not before.  April 7, 1860

April 9.  Elm blossoms now in prime. Their tops heavier against the sky, a rich brown; their outlines further seen. April 9 1853

April 10.  Cheney elm, many anthers shed pollen, probably 7th.  April 10, 1860

April 10.  Purple Finch.  April 10, 1861 

April 11.  I hear the clear, loud whistle of a purple finch, somewhat like and nearly as loud as the robin, from the elm by Whiting's. April 11, 1853

April 12.   Still falls a little snow and rain this morning, though the ground is not whitened. I hear a purple finch, nevertheless, on an elm, steadily warbling and uttering a sharp chip from time to time. April 12, 1855 

April 12.   There suddenly flits before me . . . a splendid purple finch. Its glowing redness is revealed when it lifts its wings.  April 12, 1856 

April 12.   Elm bud-scales have begun to strew the ground, and the trees look richly in flower.  April 12. 1860

April 13.  Snowed all day, till the ground was covered eight inches deep . . . The elm buds begin to show their blossoms.   April 13, 1852

April 13.  Heard a purple finch on an elm, like a faint robin. April 13, 1854

April 13.  The streets are strewn with the bud-scales of the elm, which they, opening, have lost off, and their tops present a rich brown already. I hear a purple finch on one.  April 13, 1859 

 April 15. The broad flat brown buds on Mr. Cheney's elm, containing twenty or thirty yellowish-green threads, surmounted with little brownish-mulberry cups, which contain the stamens and the two styles, -- these are just expanding or blossoming now. April 15, 1852 

April 15.  I see the white under sides of many purple finches, busily and silently feeding on the elm blossoms within a few feet of me, and now and then their bloody heads and breasts. They utter a faint, clear chip. Their feathers are much ruffled. The arrival of the purple finches appears to be coincident with the blossoming of the elm, on whose blossom it feeds.   April 15, 1854 

April 15.  The purple finch is singing on the elms about the house, together with the robins, whose strain its resembles, ending with a loud, shrill, ringing chili chilt chilt chilt.  April 15, 1856 

April 16.  Cheney’s elm shows stamens on the warm side pretty numerously.  April 16, 1856 

April 17.  I look up, these snowy days, and see purple finches silently feeding on the elms, when I have heard no sound.  April 17, 1854

April 17.  The flowers of the common elm at Lee’s are now loose and dangling, apparently well out a day or two in advance of Cheney’s, but I see no pollen.  April 17, 1855 

April 21.  The song of the purple finch on the elms (he also frequents firs and spruce) is rich and continuous, like  but fainter and more rapid than, that of a robin, some of the cherruwit in it and a little of the warble of the martin.  April 21, 1854

April 21. The puddles have dried off along the road and left thick deposits or water-lines of the dark-purple anthers of the elm, coloring the ground like sawdust. You could collect great quantities of them. April 21, 1858 

April 24.  The elms are now fairly in blossom.  April 24, 1852

May 13.   I suspect the purple finches are all gone within a few days. May 13, 1854

May 24. Hear a purple finch sing more than one minute without pause, loud and rich, on an elm over the street. May 24, 1855

July 7. The purple finch still sings over the street.  July 7, 1856

October 10.  There are many small birds in flocks on the elms in Cheney's field, faintly warbling, – robins and purple finches and especially large flocks of small sparrows. October 10, 1853

 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Elms and the Purple Finch

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 ©  2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-purplefinch

A Book of the Seasons: the Kingfisher

 

I would make a chart of our life,

know why just this circle of creatures completes the world.

Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852

A kingfisher flies

in the ricochet manner

across the water.

 April 10, 1859 

Its motions when on wing consist of a Series of flaps,

about five or six in number, followed by a direct glide,

without any apparent undulation.

It moves in the same way when flying closely over the water. 

If, in the course of such excursions, the bird passes over a small pool,

it suddenly checks itself in its career, poises itself in the air,

like a Sparrow Hawk or Kestril, and inspects the water beneath,

to discover whether there may be fishes in it suitable to its taste.

Should it find this to be the case, it continues poised for a few seconds,

dashes spirally headlong into the water, seizes a fish,

and alights on the nearest tree or stump,

where it swallows its prey in a moment . . .

It is not unusual to hear the hard, rapid, rattling notes of our Kingfisher,

even amongst the murmuring cascades of our higher mountains.

When the bird is found in such sequestered situations,

well may the angler be assured that trout is abundant. 

~ JJ Audubon

April 1. A kingfisher seen and heard. April 1, 1860

April 10.   See a kingfisher flying very low, in the ricochet manner, across the water.  April 10, 1859 

April 11. Saw a kingfisher on a tree over the water. Does not its arrival mark some new movement in its finny prey? He is the bright buoy that betrays it!  April 11, 1856

April 15. See and hear a kingfisher—do they not come with the smooth waters of April? — hurrying over the meadow as if on urgent business.  April 15, 1855

April 17. See several kingfishers.  April 17, 1858

April 22. The bluish band on the breast of the kingfisher leaves the pure white beneath in the form of a heart.   April 22, 1855

April 23.  A kingfisher with his crack, — cr-r-r-rack.  April 23, 1854

April 24. The kingfisher flies with a crack cr-r-r-ack and a limping or flitting flight from tree to tree before us, and finally, after a third of a mile, circles round to our rear. He sits rather low over the water. Now that he has come I suppose that the fishes on which he preys rise within reach. April 24, 1854

April 25. Saw the first kingfisher, and heard his most unmusical note. April 25, 1852

April 30. Hear a kingfisher at Goose Pond. April 30, 1857

May 10. 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.  May 10, 1854

June 6.   Hear of a kingfisher's nest, just found in a sand bank behind Abner Buttrick's, with six fresh eggs, of which I have one. The boy said it was six or seven feet deep in the bank. June 6, 1859

June 9. The air is now full of shad-flies, and there is an incessant sound made by the fishes leaping for their evening meal, . . .Meanwhile the kingfishers are on the lookout for the fishes as they rise. I see one dive in the twilight and go off uttering his cr-r-ack, cr-r-rack. June 9, 1854

June 12. Scare a kingfisher on a bough over Walden. As he flies off, he hovers two or three times thirty or forty feet above the pond, and at last dives and apparently catches a fish, with which he flies off low over the water to a tree. June 12, 1854

June 16.  Examined a kingfisher's nest, — though there is a slight doubt if I found the spot. It was formed singularly like that of the bank swallow, i. e. flat-elliptical, some eight inches, as I remember, in the - largest diameter, and located just like a swallow's, in a sand-bank, some twenty inches below the surface. Could feel nothing in it, but it may have been removed. Have an egg from this. June 16, 1859

July 22. Here is a kingfisher frequenting the Corner Brook Pond. They find out such places. July 22, 1852

June 25. I observe many kingfishers at Walden and on the Assabet, very few on the dark and muddy South Branch. June 25, 1854 

July 28. Heard a kingfisher, which had been hovering over the river, plunge forty rods off.  July 28, 1858

August 6. The kingfisher is seen hovering steadily over one spot, or hurrying away with a small fish in his mouth, sounding his alarum nevertheless. August 6, 1858

August 22.  A kingfisher, with his white collar, darted across the river and alighted on an oak. August 22, 1853

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau The Kingfisher

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 ©  2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-kingfisher

 

A Book of the Seasons: The White-Headed Eagle

 I would make a chart of our life,

know why just this circle of creatures

completes the world.

Henry Thoreau,

April 18, 1852

White-headed eagle

edgewise like a black ripple

concealed in the sky.

We who live this plodding life here below

never know how many eagles fly over us.

April 23, 1854

March 29. Crows, by their swift flight and scolding, reveal to me some large bird of prey hovering over the river. I perceive by its markings and size that it cannot be a hen-hawk, and now it settles on the topmost branch of a white maple, bending it down. Its great armed and feathered legs dangle helplessly in the air for a moment, as if feeling for the perch, while its body is tipping this way and that. It sits there facing me some forty or fifty rods off, pluming itself but keeping a good lookout. At this distance and in this light, it appears to have a rusty-brown head and breast and is white beneath, with rusty leg feathers and a tail black beneath. When it flies again it is principally black varied with white, regular light spots on its tail and wings beneath, but chiefly a conspicuous white space on the forward part of the back; also some of the upper side of the tail or tail coverts is white. It has broad, ragged, buzzard-like wings, and from the white of its back, as well as the shape and shortness of its wings and its not having a gull-like body, I think it must be an eagle. It lets itself down with its legs somewhat helplessly dangling, as if feeling for something on the bare meadow, and then gradually flies away, soaring and circling higher and higher until lost in the downy clouds. This lofty soaring is at least a grand recreation, as if it were nourishing sublime ideas. I should like to know why it soars higher and higher so, whether its thoughts are really turned to earth, for it seems to be more nobly as well as highly employed than the laborers ditching in the meadow beneath or any others of my fellow townsmen. March 29, 1858

April 3. Returning, when off the hill am attracted by the noise of crows, which betray to me a very large hawk, large enough for an eagle, sitting on a maple beneath them. Now and then they dive at him, and at last he sails away low round the hill, as if hunting. April 3, 1855

April 6. As I am going along the Corner Road by the meadow mouse brook, hear and see, a quarter of a mile north west, on those conspicuous white oaks near the river in Hubbard’s second grove, the crows buffeting some intruder. The crows had betrayed to me some large bird of the hawk kind which they were buffeting. I suspected it before I looked carefully. I saw several crows on the oaks, and also what looked to my naked eye like a cluster of the palest and most withered oak  leaves with a black base about as big as a crow. Looking with my glass, I saw that it was a great bird. The crows sat about a rod off, higher up, while another crow was occasionally diving at him, and all were cawing. The great bird was just starting. It was chiefly a dirty white with great broad wings with black tips and black on other parts, giving it the appearance of dirty white, barred with black.  I am not sure whether it was a white-headed eagle or a fish hawk.  There appeared much more white than belongs to either, and more black than the fish hawk has. It rose and wheeled, flapping several times, till it got under way; then, with its rear to me, presenting the least surface, it moved off steadily in its orbit over the woods northwest, with the slightest possible undulation of its wings, — a noble planetary motion, like Saturn with its ring seen edgewise.  It is so rare that we see a large body self sustained in the air. While crows sat still and silent and confessed their lord.  Through my glass I saw the outlines of this sphere against the sky, trembling with life and power as it skimmed the topmost twigs of the wood toward some more solitary oak amid the meadows.  To my naked eye it showed only so much black as a crow in its talons might. Was it not the white-headed eagle in the state when it is called the sea eagle? Perhaps its neck-feathers were erected. April 6, 1856

April 8.  Saw a large bird sail along over the edge of Wheeler's cranberry meadow just below Fair Haven, which I at first thought a gull, but with my glass found it was a hawk and had a perfectly white head and tail and broad or blackish wings. It sailed and circled along over the low cliff, and the crows dived at it in the field of my glass, and I saw it well, both above and beneath, as it turned, and then it passed off to hover over the Cliffs at a greater height. It was undoubtedly a white-headed eagle. It was to the eye but a large hawk.   April 8, 1854

April 23. P. M. — To Lee's Cliff on foot. See my white-headed eagle again, first at the same place, the outlet of Fair Haven Pond. It is a fine sight, he is mainly — i.e. his wings and body — so black against the sky, and they contrast so strongly with his white head and tail. He first flies low over the water; then rises gradually and circles westward toward White Pond. Lying on the ground with my glass, I watch him very easily, and by turns he gives me all possible views of himself. Now I see him edgewise like a black ripple in the air, his white head still as ever turned to earth, and now he turns his under side to me, and I behold the full breadth of his broad black wings, some what ragged at the edges. 

When I observe him edgewise I notice that the tips of his wings curve upward slightly. He rises very high at last, till I almost lose him in the clouds, circling or rather looping along westward, high over river and wood and farm, effectually concealed in the sky. We who live this plodding life here below never know how many eagles fly over us. I think I have got the worth of my glass now that it has revealed to me the white-headed eagle.  April 23, 1854. [See March 13, 1854 ("Bought a telescope to-day for eight dollars.")]

July 26. The note of the white-throated sparrow, a very inspiriting but almost wiry sound, was the first heard in the morning, and with this all the woods rang. This was the prevailing bird in the northern part of Maine . . . We soon passed the island where I had camped four years before, and I recognized the very spot . . . As we were pushing away again, a white-headed eagle sailed over our heads.  The Maine Woods July 26, 1857

July 31.  Soon afterward a white-headed eagle sailed down the stream before us. We drove him several miles, while we were looking for a good place to camp, for we expected to be overtaken by a shower, — and still we could distinguish him by his white tail, sailing away from time to time from some tree by the shore still farther down the stream    The Maine Woods July 31, 1857

August 22. At Baker Farm a large bird rose up near us, which at first I took for a hen-hawk, but it appeared larger. It screamed the same, and finally soared higher and higher till it was almost lost amid the clouds, or could scarcely be distinguished except when it was seen against some white and glowing cumulus. I think it was at least half a mile high, or three quarters, and yet I distinctly heard it scream up there each time it came round, and with my glass saw its head steadily bent toward the ground, looking for its prey. Its head, seen in a proper light, was distinctly whitish, and I suspect it may have been a white headed eagle. It did not once flap its wings up there, as it circled and sailed, though I watched it for nearly a mile. How fit that these soaring birds should be haughty and fierce, not like doves to our race!   August 22, 1858

August 25. The approaching storm . . . came on rapidly, with vivid lightning striking the northern earth and heavy thunder following. Just before, and in the shadow of, the cloud, I saw, advancing majestically with wide circles over the meadowy flood, a fish hawk and, apparently, a black eagle (maybe a young white-head). The first, with slender curved wings and silvery breast, four or five hundred feet high, watching the water while he circled slowly southwesterly. What a vision that could detect a fish at that distance! The latter, with broad black wings and broad tail, thus: hovered only about one hundred feet high; evidently a different species, and what else but an eagle? They soon disappeared southwest, cutting off a bend. The thunder-shower passed off to the southeast. August 25, 1856

September 6.  Saw, sailing over Mason Village about 10 A. M., a white-headed and white-tailed eagle with black wings, —  a grand sight. September 6, 1852

September 16. Now I see a large one perchance an eagle, I say to myself! – down in the valley, circling and circling, higher and wider. This way he comes. How beautiful does he repose on the air, in the moment when he is directly over you, and you see the form and texture of his wings! How light he must make himself, how much earthy heaviness expel, before he can thus soar and sail! September 16, 1852

October 26. My loftiest thought is somewhat like an eagle that suddenly comes into the field of view, suggesting great things and thrilling the beholder, as if it were bound hitherward with a message for me; but it comes no nearer, but circles and soars away, growing dimmer, disappointing me, till it is lost behind a cliff or a cloud.  October 26, 1857

A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau, The White-headed Eagle

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 ©  2009-2026