July 31

Wrote to Martha.

EDK, July 31, 1860

At mid-afternoon caught in a deluging rain

July 31.

Decidedly dog-days, and a strong musty scent, not to be wondered at after the copious rains and the heat of yesterday. 

At mid-afternoon I am caught in a deluging rain as I stand under a maple by the Assabet shore. The considerable shower at first but slightly dimples the water, and I see the differently shaded or lit currents of the river through it all; but anon it begins to rain very hard, and a myriad white globules dance or rebound an inch or two from the surface, where the big drops fall, and I hear a sound as if it rains pebbles or shot.

Looking on a water surface, you can see as well as hear when it rains very hard.

At this season the sound of a gentler rain than this, i. e. the sound of the dripping rain on the leaves, which are now dark and hard, yields a dry sound as if the drops struck on paper, but six weeks ago, when the leaves were so yellowish and tender, methinks it was a softer sound, as was the rustling.

Now, in the still moonlight, the dark foliage stands almost stiff and dark against the sky.

Before it rained hardest I could see in the midst of the dark and smoother water a lighter - colored and rougher surface, generally in oblong patches, which moved steadily down the stream, and this, I think, was the new water from above welling up and making its way down ward amid the old.

The water or currents of a river are thus not homogeneous, but the surface is seen to be of two shades, the smoother and darker water which already fills its bed [?] and the fresh influx of lighter colored and rougher, probably more rapid, currents which spot it here and there; i. e., some water seems to occupy it as a lake to some extent, other is passing through it as a stream, — the lacustrine and the fluviatile water.

These lighter reaches without reflections (?) are, as it were, water wrong side up. But do I ever see these except when it rains? And are they not the rain water which has not yet mingled with the water of the river?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 31, 1860

At mid-afternoon I am caught in a deluging rain. See  July 31, 1858 ("You are liable to be overtaken by a thunder-shower these afternoons. ")

Differently shaded or lit currents Are they not the rain water which has not yet mingled with the water of the river? See April 17, 1856 ("Even in the midst of this rain I am struck by the variegated surface of the water, different portions reflecting the light differently . . . Broad streams of light water stretch away between streams of dark, as if they were different kinds of water unwilling to mingle.)"); June 17, 1859 ("The different-colored currents, light and dark, are seen through it all. At last the whole surface is nicked with the rebounding drops ...”); March 20, 1860 ("In this April rain . . . those alternate dark and light patches on the surface, all alike dimpled with the falling drops. . . . It reminds me of the season when you sit under a bridge and watch the dimples made by the rain.")

July 31.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau July 31

At mid-afternoon

caught in a deluging rain

under a maple.

.

A myriad white

globules dance and rebound

where the big drops fall.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, At mid-afternoon

caught in a deluging rain

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

Summer fruits and berries

July 30.

Am glad to press my way through Miles's Swamp. Thickets of choke-berry bushes higher than my head, with many of their lower leaves already red, alternating with young birches and raspberry, high blueberry andromeda (high and low), and great dense flat beds of Rubus sempervirens. Amid these, perhaps in cool openings, stands an island or two of great dark-green high blueberry bushes, with big cool blueberries, though bearing but sparingly this year.

 

In a frosty hollow in the woods west of this and of the blackberry field, find a thick patch of shad-bush, about a rod and a half long, the bushes about three feet high, and quite interesting now, in fruit. Firm dark-green leaves with short, broad, irregular racemes (cluster-like) of red and dark dull purplish berries intermixed, making considerable variety in the color. The ripest and largest dark-purple berries are just half an inch in diameter. The conspicuous red - for most are red - remind me a little of the wild holly, the berry so contrasts with the dark leaf. These berries are peculiar in that the red are nearly as pleasant-tasted as the more fully ripe dark-purple ones.

I am surprised and delighted to see this handsome profusion in hollows usually so barren and bushes commonly so fruitless.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 30, 1860

Thickets of choke-berry bushes higher than my head. See July 18, 1854 ("every bush and bramble bears its fruit; the sides of the road are a fruit garden; blackberries, huckleberries, thimble-berries, fresh and abundant, no signs of drought; all fruits in abundance; the earth teems."); July 18, 1852 ("The Cerasus Virginiana, or choke-cherry, is turning, nearly ripe."); August 5, 1856 ("Choke-cherries near . . . begin to be ripe, though still red. They are scarcely edible, but their beauty atones for it. See those handsome racemes of ten or twelve cherries each, dark glossy red, semi- transparent. You love them not the less because they are not quite palatable."); August 5, 1858 (" Choke-berries, fair to the eye but scarcely palatable, hang far above your head, weighing down the bushes."); August 26, 1860 ("I thread my way through the blueberry swamp in front of Martial Miles's. . . . And now a far greater show of choke-berries is here, rich to see.")

A thick patch of shad-bush. See June 25, 1853 ("Found in the Glade (?) Meadows an unusual quantity of amelanchier berries, – I think of the two common kinds,-one a taller bush, twice as high as my head, with thinner and lighter-colored leaves and larger, or at least somewhat softer, fruit, the other a shorter bush, with more rigid and darker leaves and dark-blue berries, with often a sort of woolliness on them. Both these are now in their prime.")

July 30

Nothing of importance.

Concert on the Common in the evening.

EDK, July 30, 1860

Rain

July 29.

To Lincoln Bridge by railroad. Rain, more or less, by day, and more in the night.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 29. 1860

July 29

Went to church in the forenoon. E.H. Chapin preached. Wallaces in the P. M. (Wash 2 pieces)

EDK, July 29, 1860

Potatoes

July 28.

A man shows me in the street a single bunch of potato-balls (i. e. on one stem) twenty in number, several of them quite an inch in diameter and the whole cluster nearly five inches in diameter as it hangs, to some extent emulating a cluster of grapes. 

The very sight of them supplies my constitution with all needed potash.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 28, 1860

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

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

July 28

Chas. Henry went up to S. Reading

Rec'd from James Bliss 3.00

Paid for board and Washing 3.70

EDK, July 28, 1860

Sail and paddle down river.

July 27.

The water has begun to be clear and sunny, revealing the fishes and countless minnows of all sizes and colors, this year's brood. 

How easy for the young ducks to hide amid the pickerel-weed along our river, while a boat goes by! and this plant attains its height when these water-fowl are of a size to need its shelter. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 27, 1860 

The water has begun to be clear and sunny. See July 28, 1859 ("The season has now arrived when I begin to see further into the water, -- see the bottom, the weeds, and fishes more than before.”); July 30, 1856 ("The water is suddenly clear. . .All the secrets of the river bottom are revealed”). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Season of Sunny Water

July 27

Bot some wine and sent up to my folks.

EDK, July 27, 1860

The bream, appreciated.

November 30.

I see in my mind's eye the little striped breams poised in Walden's water - - the bream that I have just found. How wild it makes the pond and the township to find a new fish in it!

For more than two centuries men have fished here and have not distinguished this permanent settler of the township. When my eyes first rested on Walden the striped bream was poised in it, though I did not see it. But there it dwells and has dwelt permanently, who can tell how long?

In my account of this bream I cannot go a hair's breadth beyond the mere statement that it exists. I can only think of precious jewels, of music, poetry, beauty, and the mystery of life-- ---the miracle of its existence, my contemporary and neighbor, yet so different from me!

I want you to perceive the mystery of the bream.  I have a contemporary in Walden. It has fins where I have legs and arms. I have a friend among the fishes, acquaintance with it is to make my life more rich and eventful. 

What is the amount of my discovery to me?  It is not that I have got one in a bottle, that it has got a name in a book, but that I have a little fishy friend in the pond, a living contemporary, a provoking mystery. 

I can only poise my thought there by its side and try to think like a bream for a moment. I can only see the bream in its orbit, as I see a star. 

The bream, appreciated, floats in the pond as the centre of the system, another image of God. Its life no man can explain more than he can his own.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, November 30, 1858

But there it dwells and has dwelt permanently, who can tell how long? See July 10, 1853 (“So it has poised here and watched its ova before this New World was known to the Old.”); November 28, 1858 ("And all the years that I have known Walden these striped breams have skulked in it without my knowledge!")

In my account of this bream I cannot go a hair's breadth beyond the mere statement that it exists. See October 4, 1859 ("To conceive any natural object with a total apprehension you must approach it as something totally strange. . . . simply to perceive that such things are.”)

I cannot but see still in my mind’s eye those little striped breams poised in Walden’s glaucous water. ‘They balance all the rest of the world in my estimation at present, for this is the bream that I have just found, and for the time I neglect all its brethren and am ready to kill the fatted calf on its account. For more than two centuries have men fished here and have not distin guished this permanent settler of the township. It is not like a new bird, a transient visitor that may not be seen again for years, but there it dwells and has dwelt permanently, who can tell how long? When my eyes first rested on Walden the striped bream was poised in it, though I did not see it, and when Tahatawan paddled his canoe there. How wild it makes the pond and the township to find a new fish in it! America re news her youth here. But in my account of this bream I cannot go a hair’s breadth beyond the mere statement that it exists, — the miracle of its existence, my contem porary and neighbor, yet so different from me! I can only poise my thought there by its side and try to think like a bream for a moment. I can only think of precious jewels, of music, poetry, beauty, and the mystery of life. I only see the bream in its orbit, as I see a star, but I care not to measure its distance or weight. The bream, appreciated, floats in the pond as the centre of the sys tem, another image of God. Its life no man can ex plain more than he can his own. I want you to perceive the mystery of the bream. I have a contemporary in Walden.l It has fins where I have legs and arms. I 'have a friend among the fishes, at least a new acquaint ance. Its character will interest me, I trust, not its clothes and anatomy. I do not want it to eat. Acquaint ance with it is to make my life more rich and eventful. It is as if a poet or an anchorite had moved into the town, whom I can see from time to time and think of yet oftener. Perhaps there are a thousand of these striped bream which no one had thought of in that pond, —— not their mere impressions in stone, but in the full tide of the bream life.

To Walden

July 26. 

I see a bream swimming about in that smaller pool by Walden in Hubbard's Wood, though entirely cut off from the pond now. So they may be well off in the Wyman meadow or Pout's Nest.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 26, 1860

I see a bream swimming about in that smaller pool by Walden in Hubbard's Wood. See June 21, 1854 ("In the little meadow pool, or bay, in Hubbard's shore, I see two old pouts tending their countless young close to the shore. . . . I think also that I see the young breams in schools hovering over their nests while the old are still protecting them.")

In November, 1858 Thoreau had discovered a new species of bream in Walden pond. See November 26, 1858 (" a great many minnows about one inch long . . . shaped like bream, but had the transverse bars of perch.”); November 27, 1858 ("I got seventeen more of those little bream of yesterday. “);November 30, 1858 (“How wild it makes the pond and the township to find a new fish in it!”)

So they may be well off in the Wyman meadow or Pout's Nest. ["Pout’s Nest": HDT's name for Wyman's Meadow near Walden. Place Names of Henry David Thoreau in Concord,] Complare June 7, 1858 ("Pouts, then, make their nests in shallow mud-holes or bays, in masses of weedy mud, or probably in the muddy bank; and the old pout hovers over the spawn or keeps guard at the entrance. Where do the Walden pouts breed when they have not access to this meadow?")

July 26. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 26

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

July 26

Recd a letter form Laura today and answered the same.

EDK, July 26, 1860

Collecting the Little Auk

July 25.

At Mr. Bradshaw's, Wayland, with Ed Hoar I am surprised to see among the birds which Bradshaw has obtained the little auk of Nuttall (Mergulus alle, or common sea-dove), which he says that he shot in the fall on the pond of the Assabet at Knight's factory. There were two, and the other was killed with a paddle. 

Nuttall says its appearance here is always solitary; driven here by stress of weather; that it has been seen in Fresh Pond, and Audubon found a few breeding in Labrador. Ross's party fed on them on the west coast of Greenland. 

Peabody says: "In hardiness and power of enduring cold, no bird exceeds them . . . . In Newfoundland they are called the Ice-bird, from the presumption that, unless extreme cold were approaching, they would not come so far from home. Those that are found in this state are generally exhausted by their long flight; some have quietly submitted to be taken by the hand.”

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 25, 1860

Bradshaw has obtained the little auk. See July 12, 1860 ("Mr. Bradshaw, taxidermist, carpenter, etc., etc., of Wayland"); November 19, 1860 ("Mr. Bradshaw says that he got a little auk in Wayland last week, and heard of two more.”)

... and the other was killed with a paddle. . . .See JJ Audubon (“In the course of my voyages across the Atlantic, I have often observed the Little Guillemots in small groups, rising and flying to short distances at the approach of the ship, or diving close to the bow and re-appearing a little way behind. I have often thought how easy it would be to catch these tiny wanderers of the ocean with nets thrown expertly from the bow of a boat, for they manifest very little apprehension of danger from the proximity of one, insomuch that I have seen several killed with the oars. ")

July 25

Very pleasant but cool.

Trade very good.

EDK, July 25, 1860

July 24

T.B. Collins Dr.

to 1 Bl Rum 43 1/2 q @.50      21.75

carting                                       .25

                                             22.00

rec'd from James Bliss              18.00

EDK, July 24, 1860

See Aug 30

A remarkably cool day.

July 24.

July 24.

Many a field where the grass has been cut shows now a fresh and very lit-up light green as you look toward the sun. 

This is a remarkably cool day. Thermometer 72° at 2 p. m.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 24, 1860

See July 24, 1852 (“. . .there is a short, fresh green on the shorn fields . . . the year has passed its culmination.”)

By boat to Conantum.

July 23.

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

One of the most noticeable phenomena of this green-leaf season is the conspicuous reflection of light in clear breezy days from the silvery under sides of some leaves. All trees and shrubs which have light-colored or silvery under sides to their leaves, but especially the swamp white oak and the red maple, are now very bright and conspicuous in the strong wind after the rain of the morning.

In a maple swamp every maple-top stands now distinguished from the birches in their midst. Before they were confounded, but a wind comes and lifts their leaves, showing their lighter under sides, and suddenly, as by magic, the maple stands out from the birch.

There is a great deal of life in this landscape. What an airing the leaves get!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 23, 1860

The late rose is now in prime along the river, a pale rose-color but very delicate. See July 18, 1853 ("The late, or river, rose spots the copses over the water, — a great ornament to the river's brink now.”) See also Farewell, my friend:

Along the river

the memory of roses --

late rose now in prime.

All trees and shrubs which have light-colored or silvery under sides to their leaves, but especially the swamp white oak and the red maple, are now very bright and conspicuous in the strong wind after the rain of the morning. See June 11, 1860 ("I now first begin to notice the silvery under sides of the red maple and swamp white oak leaves, turned up by the wind.")

July 23. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 23

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

July 23

Returned from Malden in the morn.

Recd a letter from TB. Collins.

EDK, July 23, 1860

To Annursnack

July 22.

Yesterday having been a rainy day, the air is now clear and cool. Rarely is the horizon so distinct. 

I stand in Heywood's pasture and, leaning over the wall, look westward. The surface of the earth, - grass grounds, pastures, and meadows, - is remarkably beautiful. All things are peculiarly fresh on account of the copious rains.

The next field, as I look over the wall, is a sort of terrestrial rainbow. First dark-green, where white clover has been cut; next along the edge of the meadow is a strip of red-top, uncut, perfectly distinct; then the cheerful bright-yellow sedge of the meadow; then a corresponding belt of red-top on its upper edge, quite straight and rectilinear like the first; then a glaucous-green field of grain still quite low; and, in the further corner of the field, a much darker square of green than any yet -- all brilliant in this wonderful light.

First locust heard.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 22, 1860

A sort of terrestrial rainbow all brilliant in this wonderful light. See July 15, 1860 (“The rich green of young grain now, of various shades; the flashing blades of corn; the yellowing tops of ripening grain; the dense uniform red of red-top; the purple of the fowl-meadow along the low river-banks; the very dark and shadowy green of herd's-grass as if clouds were always passing over it; the fresh light green where June-grass has been cut; the fresh dark green where clover has been cut; the hard, dark green of pastures; the cheerful yellowish green of the meadows where the sedges prevail, with darker patches and veins of grass in the higher and drier parts.”)

First locust heard. See June 14, 1854 ("Harris's other kind, the dog-day cicada (canicularis), or harvest-fly. He says it begins to be heard invariably at the beginning of dog-days; he (Harris) heard it for many years in succession with few exceptions on the 25th of July."); July 17, 1856 (“A very warm afternoon. Thermometer at 97° at the Hosmer Desert. I hear the early locust.”); July 18, 1851 ("I first heard the locust sing, so dry and piercing, by the side of the pine woods in the heat of the day.”); July 19, 1854 ("The more smothering, furnace-like heats are beginning, and the locust days."); July 26, 1854 ("It is a windy day like yesterday, yet almost constantly I hear borne on the wind from far, mingling with the sound of the wind, the z-ing locust, scarcely like a distinct sound.”); July 26, 1853 (“I mark again, about this time when the first asters open, the sound of crickets or locusts that makes you fruitfully meditative, helps condense your thoughts, like the mel dews in the afternoon. This the afternoon of the year.”); July 31, 1856 (“This dog-day afternoon [a]s I make my way amid rank weeds still wet with the dew, the air filled with a decaying musty scent and the z-ing of small locusts, I hear the distant sound of a flail, and thoughts of autumn occupy my mind, and the memory of past years.”); August 14, 1853 ("Locust days, — sultry and sweltering. I hear them even till sunset. The usually invisible but far-heard locust."); August 16, 1852 ("These are locust days. I hear them on the elms in the street, but cannot tell where they are."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Locust, Dogdayish Days

July 22

Sunday. At Malden all day.

Went to Meeting in the P.M.

EDK, July 22, 1860

After the rain

July 21.

A rainy day; half an inch of rain falls, spoiling much hay. Thus is so wet a season that the grass is still growing fast and most things are very fresh.

6 P. M. - Up Assabet.

Now, after the rain, the sun coming forth brightly, the swallows in numbers are skimming low over the river just below the junction.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 21, 1860

A rainy day; half an inch of rain falls, spoiling much hay. Thus is so wet a season. Compare July 14, 1854 (“Awake to day of gentle rain, — very much needed; none to speak of for nearly a month, methinks”)

After the rain, the sun coming forth brightly, the swallows in numbers are skimming low over the river.  See April 29, 1854 (" The barn swallows are very numerous, flying low over the water in the rain.”)

July 21

Went out to Malden to see George.

EDK, July 21, 1860

July 20

Mr. James Emery Dr.

to 10 Galls rum [@] .52                5.20

" 1 keg for "                                 .85

Carting                                        .25

                                                 6.30

Amount of old bill                         .50

Paid August 6, 1860                    6.80

EDK, July, 20, 1860

A very dark cloud

July 19.

A very dark cloud came up from the west this forenoon, - a dark curtain rolled up, with a grayish light beneath it, - which so darkened the streets and houses that seamstresses complained that they could not see to thread a needle, and for a few minutes rain fell in a deluge, the gutters ran full, and there was a whirlpool at every grating.

This month has been remarkably wet, and the haymakers are having very catching weather.

2 P. M. — Up river in boat.

The pontederia is now generally conspicuous and handsome, – a very fresh blue, — with no stale flowers.

You now see great beds of polygonums above the surface getting ready to bloom, and the dulichium stands thick in shallow water, while in the cultivated ground the pigweed, butterweed, and Roman wormwood, and amaranth are now rank and conspicuous weeds.

One troublesome rank weed in the garden now is the Panicum Crus-galli, - its great rather flat spreading branches. I see one just out.

I hear now that very fine pittering sound of a locust or cricket in the grass.

The Juncus militaris is commonly, but freshly, out.

We come to a standstill and study the pads in the J. Hosmer bulrush bog.

There are on the pads, eating them, not only many black slugs or grubs, but a great many small dark - brown beetles, a quarter of an inch long, with a pale-brown edge, copulating; also other beetles, skaters, and flies ( small brownish, large-winged flies in numbers together ), and a variety of eggs are fastened to the pads, many in little round pinkish patches.

I see one purplish patch exactly in the form of the point of a leaf, with a midrib, veins, and a bristle like point, calculated to deceive; this lying on the pad.

Some small erect pontederia leaves are white with eggs on the under side as if painted.

There are small open spaces amid the pads, — little deeps bottomed and surrounded with brown and ruddy hornwort like coral, — whose every recess is revealed in the sunlight.

Here hundreds of minnows of various sizes and species are poised, comparatively safe from their foes, and commonly a red spider is seen making its way from side to side of the deep.

The rich crimson under sides (with their regularly branching veins) of some white lily pads surpasses the color of most flowers.

No wonder the spiders are red that swim beneath; and think of the fishes that swim beneath this crimson canopy, — beneath a crimson sky.

I can frequently trace the passage of a boat, a pickerel fisher, perhaps, by the crimson under sides of the pads upturned.

The pads crowd and overlap each other in most amicable fashion.

Sometimes one lobe of a yellow lily pad is above its neighbor, while the other is beneath, and frequently I see where a little heart - leaf ( now showing its green spidery rays ) has emerged by the stem, in the sinus of a great nuphar leaf, and is outspread in the very midst of it.

The pads are rapidly consumed, but fresh ones are all the while pushing up and unrolling. They push up and spread out in the least crevice that offers.

Upland haying is past prime, and they are working into the low ground. None mowing on the Great Meadows yet.

I noticed on the 16th that the darkness of the pipes was not obvious, the sedge is now comparatively so dark.

Minott, who sits alone confined to his room with dropsy, observed the other day that it was a cold summer. He knew it was cold; the whip-poor-will told him so. It sung once and then stopped.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 19, 1860

A very dark cloud came up from the west this forenoon. See July 19, 1851("The river and the pond are blacker than the threatening cloud in the south.")

July 19

Recd from Rufus Buck twenty dollars & 28 cents in full of all demands.

Recd from J. Emery four Dollars on account.

EDK, July 19, 1860

Monarch on Milkweed

July 18.

The Asclepias Cornuti is abundantly visited nowadays by a large orange-brown butterfly with dark spots and with silver spots beneath.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 18, 1860

See 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; also the smaller butterfly, with reddish wings, and a larger, black or steel-blue, with wings spotted red on edge, and one of equal size, reddish copper-colored.”); July 19, 1851 ("The butterflies have swarmed within these few days, especially about the milkweeds.")

July 18. See A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 18

A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021

July 18

Eclipse of the Sun.

EDK, July 18, 1860

To Walden. A nearness to the earth

July 17.

The soft sand on the bottom of Walden, as deep as I can wade, feels very warm to my feet, while the water feels cold.

The nighthawk's ripping sound heard overhead suggests a nearness to the earth, as of a low roof echoing back its sounds.

Clean and handsome bullfrogs, with beautiful eyes and fine yellow throats sharply separated from their pickle-green heads by their firmly shut mouths, sit imperturbable out on the stones all around the pond.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 17, 1860

The soft sand on the bottom of Walden, as deep as I can wade, feels very warm to my feet, while the water feels cold. See note to July 23, 1856 ("Bathing in Walden, I find the water considerably colder at the bottom while I stand up to my chin, but the sandy bottom much warmer to my feet than the water.")

The nighthawk's ripping sound, heard overhead these days,[suggests] a nearness to the earth, as of a low roof echoing back its sounds. See September 15, 1860 ("I love to see anything that implies a simpler mode of life and greater nearness to the earth."); June 11, 1851 I hear the nighthawks uttering their squeaking notes high in the air now at nine o ' clock P . M . , and occasionally - what I do not remember to have heard so late — their booming note . It sounds more as if under a cope than by day . . . . echoed hollowly to earth , making the low roof of heaven vibrate ")  See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,, the Nighthawk

The soft sand on the bottom of Walden, as deep as I can wade, feels very warm to my feet, while the water feels cold. This may be partly a mere sensation, but I suspect that the sand is really much warmer than the water and that some creatures take refuge in it accordingly, that much heat passes through the water and is absorbed in the sand. Yet when I let a thermometer he on the bottom and draw it up quickly I detect no difference between the temperature of the bottom and of the water at the surface. Probably it would have been different if the thermometer had been buried in the sand.

The nighthawk's ripping sound, heard overhead these days, reminds us that the sky is, as it were, a roof, and that our world is limited on that side, it being reflected as from a roof back to earth. It does not suggest an infinite depth in the sky, but a nearness to the earth, as of a low roof echoing back its sounds.

The sternothaerus in Walden has a smooth, clean shell, rather prettily marked, it is so clean, and would by many be taken for a different species from that of the river, which is commonly colored with mud and moss. I take two into the boat, and they think it enough when they have merely hidden their heads in a corner.

Also the great bullfrogs which sit out on the stones every two or three rods all around the pond are singularly clean and handsome bullfrogs, with fine yellow throats sharply separated from their pickle-green heads by their firmly shut mouths, and with beautiful eyes. They sit thus imperturbable, often under a pile of brush, at nearly regular intervals.

To Great Meadows by boat.

July 16.

Standing amid the pipes of the Great Meadow, I hear a very sharp creaking peep, no doubt from a rail quite near me, calling to or directing her young, who are meanwhile uttering a very faint, somewhat similar peep, which you would not hear if not very much inclined to hear it, in the grass close around me.

Sometimes the old bird utters two short, sharp creaks. I look sharp, but can see nothing of them. She sounds now here, now there, within two or three rods of me, incessantly running in the grass.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 16, 1860

The mother leads her young with the greatest care among the long grass of the damp meadows, or the weeds growing near the ponds,  into which they run and disperse on the least appearance of danger. When no water is near, the little ones squat in silence and await the call of their parent, something like crek, crek, creek, or creek, creek, creek., to which all at once answer, when they quickly collect once more around her. Being expert ventriloquists, they sometimes seem to be far off, when in fact they are within a few yards of you. JJ Audubon

***




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! who would have believed it?

What kind of life and cool deliberation dwells in a spark of fire in dewy abodes? Every man carries fire in his eye, or in his blood, or in his brain.

Instead of singing birds, the croaking of frogs and the intenser dream of crickets.

The potatoes stand up straight, the corn grows, the bushes loom, and, in a moonlight night, the shadows of rocks and trees and bushes and hills are more conspicuous than the objects themselves.

The slightest inequalities in the ground are revealed by the shadows; what the feet find comparatively smooth appears rough and diversified to the eye.

The smallest recesses in the rocks are dim and cavernous; the ferns in the wood appear to be of tropical size; the pools seen through the leaves become as full of light as the sky.

“The light of day takes refuge in their bosom,” as the Purana says of the ocean.

The woods are heavy and dark.

Nature slumbers.

The rocks retain the warmth of the sun which they have absorbed all night.


July 16, 1850

July 16

Very warm and pleasant..

EDK, July 16, 1860

On Fair Haven Hill

July 15.

July 15

Looking down on a field of red-top now in full bloom, a quarter of a mile west of this hill, at 2.30 P.M. of this very warm and slightly hazy but not dog-dayish day in a blazing sun I am surprised to see a very distinct white vapor like a low cloud drifting along close over the moist coolness of that dense grass-field.

These cultivated grasses now clothe the earth with rich hues. Field after field, densely packed like the squares of a checker-board, all through and about the villages, paint the earth. 

The rich green of young grain now, of various shades; the flashing blades of corn; the yellowing tops of ripening grain; the dense uniform red of red-top; the purple of the fowl-meadow along the low river-banks; the very dark and shadowy green of herd's-grass as if clouds were always passing over it; the fresh light green where June-grass has been cut; the fresh dark green where clover has been cut; the hard, dark green of pastures; the cheerful yellowish green of the meadows where the sedges prevail, with darker patches and veins of grass in the higher and drier parts. 

Knowing where to look, I can just distinguish with my naked eye the darker green of pipes on the peat meadows two miles from the Hill.

The potato-fields are a very dark green.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 15, 1860

The fresh light green where June-grass has been cut. See July 24, 1852 (“There is a short, fresh green on the shorn fields . . . the year has passed its culmination.”); July 24, 1860 ("Many a field where the grass has been cut shows now a fresh and very lit-up light green as you look toward the sun.”) 

July 15. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau July 15

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

July 15

Sunday. Went to Cambridge in the morning to see Merritt. He had returned home. Orville and Maria came in to the city today.

EDK, July 15, 1860

To Botrychium Swamp.

July 14.

Perceive now the light-colored tops of chestnuts in bloom, and, when I come near them, an offensive, sickening odor, somewhat like that of the barberry blossoms, but worse. Returning, I notice on a large pool of water in A. Heywood's cow-yard a thick greenish-yellow scum mantling it, an exceedingly rich and remarkable color, as if it were covered with a coating of sulphur. This sort of scum seems to be peculiar to cow-yards, and contrasts with that red one by the Moore's Swamp road last summer.

Out of foulness Nature thus extracts beauty. These phenomena are observed only in summer or warm weather, methinks.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 14, 1860

Chestnuts in bloom. See July 19, 1852 ("The chestnuts on Pine Hill being in blossom reveals the rounded tops of the trees")

July 14

Trade very dull. Paid for board 6.00

EDK, July 14, 1860

The vernal freshness of June is passed.

July 13.

The different cultivated fields are like so many different-colored checkers on a checker-board. The various colors or tints of grasses, especially in cloudy weather, supply the place of light and shade.

I especially notice some very red fields where the red-top grass grows luxuriantly and is now in full bloom, - a red purple, passing into brown. First we had the June grass reddish-brown, and the sorrel red, of June; now the red-top red of July.

For a week past - and looking very closely, for a fortnight or more - the season has had a more advanced look, from the reddening, imbrowning, or yellowing, and ripening of many grasses, so the fields and hillsides present a less liquid green than they did.

The vernal freshness of June is passed.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 13, 1860

The vernal freshness of June is passed. See July 13, 1854 ("If there is an interregnum in the flowers, it is when berries begin.") See also July 6, 1851 ("June, the month for grass and flowers, is now past. Now grass is turning to hay, and flowers to fruits."); July 7, 1852 ("And now that there is an interregnum in the blossoming of flowers, so is there in the singing of the birds.") 

July 13.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 13.

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

So the nuthatch breeds here.

July 12.

Hear a nuthatch in the street. So they breed here.

The best way to drink, especially at a shallow spring, or one so sunken below the surface as to be difficult to reach, is through a tube. You can commonly find growing near a spring a hollow reed or weed of some kind suitable for this purpose, such as rue or touch - me not or water saxifrage, or you can carry one in your pocket.

Juncus militaris.

The river at 8 P. M. is eight and three quarters inches above summer level.

Just after the sun is set I observe the dewdrops on the pontederia leaves. (Do not know how early they begin to form.) Even when the leaf stands perpendicular, the drop is collected at the uppermost point, and then, on a slight jar or agitation of the water, runs down the leaf. This is the only broad and thick leaf that rises above the water, and therefore it appears to be the only one that collects the dew thus early.

A Mr. Bradshaw, taxidermist, carpenter, etc., etc., of Wayland, tells me that he finds the long-eared owl there in summer, and has set it up.

H. D. Thoreau Journal, July 12, 1860

The best way to drink, especially at a shallow spring, or one so sunken below the surface as to be difficult to reach, is through a tube. See July 7, 1860 ("Some will have a broken tumbler hid in the grass near, or a rusty dipper hung on a twig near by. Others, again, drink through some hollow weed's stem. ")

Hear a nuthatch in the street. So they breed here. See November 26, 1860 ("I hear the faint note of a nuthatch . . .a phenomenon of the late fall or early winter; for we do not hear them in summer that I remember. ...”); December 1, 1857 ("I thus always begin to hear this bird on the approach of winter, as if it did not breed here, but wintered here.”)  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Nuthatch

Just after the sun is set I observe the dewdrops on the pontederia leaves. See July 18, 1852 ("When near home, just before sundown, the sun still inconveniently warm, we were surprised to observe on the uppermost point of each pontederia leaf a clear drop of dew already formed."); July 21, 1853 ("Ten minutes before sunset I see large clear dewdrops at the tips, or half an inch below the tips, of the pontederia leaves.")

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

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

July 12

Rufus Buck Dr.

to 1 Bl Rum                     14.28

to ... Rum                       21.00

                                      35.28

credit by cash                 15.00

Paid July 19, 1860           20.28

EDK, July 12, 1860