7.30 P.M. The light from the western sky is stronger still than that of the moon, which has not yet quite filled her horns. When I hold up my hand, the west side is lighted while the side toward the moon is comparatively dark.
But now that I have put this dark wood (Hubbard's) between me and the west, I see the moonlight plainly on my paper; I am even startled by it. One star, too, - is it Venus ? - I see in the west. Starlight! that would be a good way to mark the hour, if we were precise.
I hear the clock striking eight faintly. I smell the late shorn meadows. And now I strike the road at the causeway. It is hard, and I hear the sound of my steps. The fireflies are not so numerous as they have been. There is no dew as yet.
The planks and railing of Hubbard's Bridge are removed. I walk over on the string-pieces, resting in the middle until the moon comes out of a cloud, that I may see my path, for between the next piers the string pieces also are removed and there is only a rather narrow plank, let down three or four feet. I essay to cross it, but it springs a little and I mistrust myself, whether I shall not plunge into the river. I put out my foot, but I am checked, as if some power had laid a hand on my breast and chilled me back. Nevertheless, I cross, stopping at first, and gain the other side.
On Conantum I sit awhile in the shade of the woods and look out on the moonlit fields. The air is warmer than the rocks now. It is perfectly warm and I am tempted to stay out all night and observe each phenomenon of the night until day dawns. I could lie out here on this pinnacle rock all night without cold.
To lie here on your back with nothing between your eye and the stars, - nothing but space, - they your nearest neighbors on that side, who could ever go to sleep under these circumstances ?
I hear the nine o'clock bell ringing in Bedford. Pleasantly sounds the voice of one village to another. Since I sat here a bright star has gone behind the stem of a tree, proving that my machine is moving, - proving it better for me than a rotating pendulum. I hear a solitary whip-poor-will, and a bullfrog on the river, - fewer sounds than in spring. The gray cliffs across the river are plain to be seen.
And now the star appears on the other side of the tree, and I must go. The woods and the separate trees cast longer shadows than by day, for the moon goes lower in her course at this season.
Some dew at last in the meadow. As I recross the string-pieces of the bridge, I see the water-bugs swimming briskly in the moonlight and scent the Roman wormwood in the potato fields.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 8, 1851
The air is warmer than the rocks now. See May
16, 1851(“ Lay on a rock near a meadow, which had absorbed and retained
much heat, so that I could warm my back on it, it being a cold night.”);June
11, 1851 (“The rocks do not feel warm to-night,
for the air is warmest; ”); July 16, 1850 (“The rocks retain the warmth of the sun.”); August 12, 1851 (“The sand is cool on the surface but warm two or three inches beneath, and the rocks are quite warm to the hand, so that he sits on them or leans against them for warmth.")
To lie here on your back with nothing between your eye and the stars, - nothing but space. See August 5, 1851 ("As the twilight deepens and the moonlight is more and more bright, I begin to distinguish myself, who I am and where. I become more collected and composed, and sensible of my own existence, as when a lamp is brought into a dark apartment and I see who the company are.")
August 8. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 8
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
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