The poet naturalist

June 30.

Nature must be viewed humanly to be viewed at all; that is, her scenes must be associated with humane affections, such as are associated with one's native place, for instance. 

She is most significant to a lover. 

A lover of Nature is preeminently a lover of man. If I have no friend, what is Nature to me? She ceases to be morally significant.

7.30 p. m. — To stone bridge over Assabet. 

Moon nearly full; rose a little before sunset. 

Cat-mint (Nepeta cataria) in bloom.

The moon appears full. At first a mere white cloud. As soon as the sun sets, begins to grow brassy or obscure golden in the gross atmosphere. 

It is starlight about half an hour after sunset to-night; i. e. the first stars appear. The moon is now brighter, but not so yellowish. 

Ten or fifteen minutes after, the fireflies are observed, at first about the willows on the Causeway, where the evening is further advanced. 

Sparrows quite generally, and occasionally a robin sings. (I heard a bobolink this afternoon.) The creak of the crickets is more universal and loud, and becomes a distinct sound. 

The oily surface of the river in which the moon is reflected looks most attractive at this hour. I see the bright curves made by the water-bugs in the moonlight, and a muskrat crossing the river, now at 9 o'clock. 

Finally the last traces of day disappear, about 9.30 o'clock, and the night fairly sets in. 

The color of the moon is more silvery than golden, or silvery with a slight admixture of golden, a sort of burnished cloud. 

The bass tree is budded. 

Haying has commenced. 

Is not this period more than any distinguished for flowers, when roses, swamp-pinks, morning-glories, arethusas, pogonias, orchises, blue flags, epilobiums, mountain laurel, and white lilies are all in blossom at once?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, 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 July 11, 1851 ("[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."); 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.") Compare August 12, 1851 ("She will appear but as a cloud herself, and sink unnoticed into the west.") See also May 3, 1852 ("A great brassy moon going down in the west."); June 1, 1852 ("The moon about full.. . .The moving clouds are the drama of the moonlight nights"); July 20, 1852 (" The crescent moon, meanwhile, grows more silvery, and, as it sinks in the west, more yellowish,")

It is starlight about half an hour after sunset to-night; i. e. the first stars appear. . . .Finally the last traces of day disappear, about 9.30 o'clock, and the night fairly sets in. See August 8, 1851 ("Starlight! that would be a good way to mark the hour, if we were precise.”);May 8, 1852 (“Starlight marks conveniently a stage in the evening, i. e. when the first star can be seen. ”); June 28,1852 ("Now it is starlight; perhaps that dark cloud in the west has concealed the evening star before . . .Starlight!. . .. That is an epoch, when the last traces of daylight have disappeared and the night (nox) has fairly set in.”); July 12, 1852 (“Now, a quarter after nine, as I walk along the river-bank, long after starlight, and perhaps an hour or more after sunset, I see some of those high-pillared clouds of the day, in the southwest, still reflecting a downy light from the regions of day, they are so high.”); July 20, 1852 ("Then the cloudlets in the west turn rapidly dark, the shadow of night advances in the east, and the first stars become visible. 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. . . .the last traces of daylight disappear, about 10 o'clock, the same time the moon goes down.")

I see the bright curves made by the water-bugs in the moonlight . . . now at 9 o'clock. See June 2, 1860 (“Water-bugs dimple the surface now quite across the river, in the moonlight, for it is a full moon.”); August 8, 1851 (“As I recross the string-pieces of the bridge, I see the water-bugs swimming briskly in the moonlight . . .”)

Haying has commenced. See June 30, 1851 ("Haying has commenced.”)

Arethusas, pogonias, orchises, blue flags, epilobiums. See June 20, 1859 ("Great purple fringed orchis."); July 2, 1857 (“Pogonia ophioglossoides apparently in a day or two.”); July 7,1856 (The snake-head arethusa is now abundant amid the cranberries there [Gowings Swamp].”); July 8, 1857 (“Find a Pogonia ophioglossoides with a third leaf and second flower an inch above the first flower.”); July 24,, 1857 (“ great fields of epilobium or fire-weed, a mass of color. . . .”); August 1, 1856 ("Snake-head arethusa still in the meadow”); June 30,1851 ("The blue flag (Iris versicolor) enlivens the meadow.”)

The wind exposes the red under sides of the white lily pads

June 29.

P. M. — On North River.

Leonurus Cardiaca, motherwort, a nettle-like plant by the street-side. 

The Rana halecina (?), shad frog, is our handsomest frog, bronze striped, with brown spots, edged and inter mixed with bright green; does not regard the fly that sits on him. 

The frogs and tortoises are striped and spotted for their concealment.  The painted tortoise's throat held up above the pads, streaked with yellowish, makes it the less obvious. The mud turtle is the color of the mud, the wood frog and the hylodes of the dead leaves, the bullfrogs of the pads, the toad of the earth. The tree-toad of the bark.

In my experience nothing is so opposed to poetry — not crime — as business. It is a negation of life.

The wind exposes the red under sides of the white lily pads. This is one of the aspects of the river now.

The bud-bearing stem of this plant is a little larger, but otherwise like the leaf-stem, and coming like it directly from the long, large root. It is interesting to pull up the lily root with flowers and leaves attached and see how it sends its buds upward to the light and air to expand and flower in another element.

How interesting the bud's progress from the water to the air! So many of these stems are leaf-bearing, and so many flower-bearing.

Then consider how defended these plants against drought, at the bottom of the water, at most their leaves and flowers floating on its surface. How much mud and water are required to support their vitality!

It is pleasant to remember those quiet Sabbath mornings by remote stagnant rivers and ponds, when pure white water-lilies, just expanded, not yet infested by insects, float on the waveless water and perfume the atmosphere.

Nature never appears more serene and innocent and fragrant.

A hundred white lilies, open to the sun, rest on the surface smooth as oil amid their pads, while devil's-needles are glancing over them.

It requires some skill so to pull a lily as to get a long stem.

The great yellow lily, the spatter-dock, expresses well the fertility of the river.

The Sparganium ramosum, or bur-reed, amid the flags now. It is associated with the reed-mace by sys- tematists. 

One flower on a spike of the Pontederia cordata just ready to expand.

Children bring you the early blueberry to sell now. It is considerably earlier on the tops of hills which have been recently cut off than on the plains or invales.

The girl that has Indian blood in her veins and picks berries for a living will find them out as soon as they turn.

The yellow water ranunculus is hardly to be seen in the river now.

The Anemone Virginiana, tall anemone, looking like a white buttercup, on Egg Rock, cannot have been long in bloom.

I see the columbine lingering still.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 29, 1852

The wind exposes the red under sides of the white lily pads. This is one of the aspects of the river now. See June 24, 1853 ("remarkably windy this afternoon, showing the under sides of the leaves and the pads, the white now red beneath and all green above."); June 30, 1859 ("The pads blown up by it already show crimson, it is so strong, but this not a fall phenomenon yet."); July 30, 1856 ("I am struck with the splendid crimson-red under sides of the white lily pads where my boat has turned them, at my bath place near the Hemlocks.”); August 24,1854 ("The bright crimson-red under sides of the great white lily pads, turned up by the wind in broad fields on the sides of the stream, are a great ornament to the stream. It is not till August, methinks, that they are turned up conspicuously.”)

In search of lost time.

The man on a precipice of anticipation
leaps directly into memory,
missing the moment.
A life of regret.
Tomorrow was a time for everything.

zphx

To Bear Hill, Lincoln.

June 27.

June 27.

I meet the partridge with her brood in the woods, a perfect little hen. She spreads her tail into a fan and beats the ground with her wings fearlessly within a few feet of me, to attract my attention while her young disperse; but they keep up a faint, wiry kind of peep, which betrays them, while she mews and squeaks as if giving them directions.

Looking from Bear Hill, I am struck by the yellowish green of meadows, almost like an ingrained sunlight. Perhaps they have that appearance because the fields generally incline now to a reddish-brown green. The freshness of the year in most fields is already past. The tops of the early grass are white, killed by the worm. 

It is somewhat hazy, yet I can just distinguish Monadnock.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 27,1852

I meet the partridge with her brood in the woods. See June 27, 1860 ("See on the open grassy bank and shore, just this side the Hemlocks, a partridge with her little brood."); June 26, 1857(" See a pack of partridges as big as robins at least."); July 1, 1860 (I see young partridges not bigger than robins fly three or four rods. . .”); July 5, 1856 ("Young partridges (with the old bird), as big as robins, make haste into the woods from off the railroad.") See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge

It is somewhat hazy, yet I can just distinguish Monadnock  Compare  February 21, 1855 ("Could not distinguish Monadnock till the sun shone on it."); March 28, 1858 ("turning my glass toward the mountains, I can see the sun reflected from the rocks on Monadnock, and I know that it would be pleasant to be there too to-day as well as here")

Wonder, awe, innocence, serenity -- lightning.

June 27.

See a very large white ash tree, three and a half feet in diameter, in front of the house which White formerly owned, under this hill, which was struck by lightning the 22d, about 4 P.M. . The lightning apparently struck the top of the tree and scorched the bark and leaves for ten or fifteen feet downward, then began to strip off the bark and enter the wood, making a ragged narrow furrow or crack, till, reaching one of the upper limbs, it apparently divided, descending on both sides and entering deeper and deeper into the wood. 

At the first general branching, it had got full possession of the tree in its centre and tossed off the main limbs butt foremost, making holes in the ground where they struck; and so it went down in the midst of the trunk to the earth, where it apparently exploded, rending tire trunk into six segments, whose tops, ten or twenty feet long, were rayed out on every side at an angle of about 30° from a perpendicular, leaving the ground bare directly under where the tree had stood, though they were still fastened to the earth by their roots.

The lightning appeared to have gone off through the roots, furrowing them as the branches, and through the earth, making a furrow like a plow, four or five rods in one direction, and in another passing through the cellar of the neighboring house, about thirty feet distant, scorching the tin milk-pans and throwing dirt into the milk, and coming out the back side of the house in a furrow, splitting some planks there. The main body of the tree was completely stripped of bark, which was cast in every direction two hundred feet; and large pieces of the inside of the tree, fifteen feet long, were hurled with tremendous force in various directions, one into the side of a shed, smashing it, another burying itself in a wood-pile. The heart of the tree lay by itself. 

Probably, a piece as large as a man's leg could not have been sawn out of the trunk which would not have had a crack in it, and much of it was very finely splintered. 

The windows in the house were broken and the inhabitants knocked down by the concussion. 

All this was accomplished in an instant by a kind of fire out of the heavens called lightning, or a thunderbolt, accompanied by a crashing sound. For what purpose?

Why should trees be struck? Science assumes to show why the lightning strikes a tree, but it does not show us the moral why any better than our instincts do. Science answers, Non scio, I am ignorant. Science affirms too much. It is full of presumption. It is not enough to say because they are in the way. 

All the phenomena of nature need be seen from the point of view of wonder and awe, like lightning; and, on the other hand, the lightning itself needs to be regarded with serenity, as the most familiar and innocent phenomena are.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 27,1852

All the phenomena of nature need be seen from the point of view of wonder and awe, like lightning. See December 26, 1853 (“I passed by the pitch pine that was struck by lightning. I was impressed with awe on looking up and seeing that broad, distinct spiral mark, more distinct even than when made eight years ago, as one might groove a walking-stick, — mark of an invisible and in tangible power, a thunderbolt, mark where a terrific and resistless bolt came down from heaven, out of the harmless sky, eight years ago. It seemed a sacred spot.”)

Green next the shore

June 26. 

Walden; June, 2012

The earliest water surfaces, as I remember, as soon as the ice is melted, present as fair and matured scenes, as soft and warm, reflecting the sky through the clear atmosphere, as in midsummer, -- far in advance of the earth. 

The earliest promise of the summer, - is it not in the smooth reflecting surface of woodland lakes in which the ice is just melted? Those liquid eyes of nature, blue or black or even hazel, deep or shallow, clear or turbid; green next the shore, the color of their iris.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 26, 1852

Green next the shore . . .See September 1, 1852 ("Viewed from the hilltop, [Walden] reflects the color of the sky. Beyond the deep reflecting surface, near the shore, it is a vivid green."); August 27, 1852("Viewed from a hilltop, it is blue in the depths and green in the shallows, but from a boat it is seen to be a uniform dark green.”) and Walden ("Walden is blue at one time and green at another, even from the same point of view. Lying between the earth and the heavens, it partakes of the color of both. Viewed from a hill top it reflects the color of the sky, but near at hand it is of a yellowish tint next the shore where you can see the sand, then a; light green, which gradually deepens to a uniform dark green in the body of the pond. In some lights, viewed even from a hilltop, it is of a vivid green next the shore.”)

Those liquid eyes of nature, blue or black or even hazel. See May 27, 1859 ("The dark river, now that shades are increased, is like the dark eye of a maiden.”); May 29, 1857 ("Looking into the light and dark eye of the lake"); See also note to June 6, 1855 ("The dark eye and shade of June”)

A morning rainbow. A moonlit walk. A flower for every mood of the mind.

June 25.

Just as the sun rises this morning, under clouds, I see a rainbow in the west horizon, the lower parts quite bright. 

A few moments after, it rains heavily for a half-hour; and it continues cloudy as well as cool most of the day.

I observe that young birds are usually of a duller color and more speckled than old ones, as if for their protection in their tender state. They have not yet the markings (and the beauty) which distinguish their species, and which betray it often, but by their colors are merged in the variety of colors of the season.

To Cliffs, 4 P.M. 

It is cool and cloudy weather in which the crickets, still heard, remind you of the fall, -a clearer ring to their creak. . . .

Sometimes the lambkill flowers form a very even rounded, close cylinder, six inches long and two and a half in diameter, of rich red saucer-like flowers, the counterpart of the latifolia in flowers and flower- buds, but higher colored. I regard it as a beautiful flower neglected. It has a slight but not remarkable scent. 

The Convolvulus sepium, bindweed; morning-glory is the best name. It always refreshes me to see it. Some saw it the 19th. In the morning and cloudy weather, says Gray. I associate it with holiest morning hours. It may preside over my morning walks and thoughts. 

There is a flower for every mood of the mind.

Methinks roses oftenest display their high colors, colors which invariably attract all eyes and betray them, against a dark ground, as the dark green or the shady recesses of the bushes and copses, where they show to best advantage. Their enemies do not spare the open flower for an hour. Hence, if for no other reason, their buds are most beautiful. Their promise of perfect and dazzling beauty, when their buds are just beginning to expand, — beauty which they can hardly contain, — as in most youths, commonly surpasses the fulfillment of their expanded flowers. The color shows fairest and brightest in the bud. The expanded flower has no higher or deeper tint than the swelling bud exposed. This raised a dangerous expectation. 

The season when wild roses are in bloom should have some preeminence, methinks.


Agreeable is this cool cloudy weather, favorable to thought, after the sultry days. 

The air is clear, as if a cool, dewy brush had swept the vales and meadows of all haze. A liquid coolness invests them, as if their midnight aspect were suddenly revealed to midday. 

The mountain outline is remarkably distinct, and the intermediate earth appears more than usually scooped out, like a vast saucer sloping up ward to its sharp mountain rim. The mountains are washed in air. 

The sunshine, now seen far away on fields and hills in the northwest, looks cool and whole some, like the yellow grass in the meadows.

I am too late for the white pine flowers. The cones are half an inch long and greenish, and the male flowers effete.

The sun now comes out bright, though westering, and shines on Fair Haven, rippled by the wind.

8.30 p. m. — To Conantum. 

Moon half full. Fields dusky; the evening star and one other bright one near the moon. It is a cool but pretty still night. 

Methinks I am less thoughtful than I was last year at this time. The flute I now hear from the Depot Field does not find such caverns to echo and resound in in my mind, — no such answering depths. Our minds should echo at least as many times as a Mammoth Cave to every musical sound. It should awaken reflections in us. 

I hear not many crickets. 

Some children calling their kitten home by some endearing name. 

Now his day's work is done, the laborer plays his flute, — only possible at this hour. 

Contrasted with his work, what an accomplishment! Some drink and gamble. He plays some well-known march. But the music is not in the tune; it is in the sound. It does not proceed from the trading nor political world. He practices this ancient art. 

There are light, vaporous clouds overhead; dark, fuscous ones in the north. The trees are turned black. As candles are lit on earth, stars are lit in the heavens. I hear the bullfrog's trump from afar. 

Now I turn down the Corner road. At this quiet hour the evening wind is heard to moan in the hollows of your face, mysterious, spirit-like, conversing with you. It can be heard now only. The whip-poor-will sings. 

I hear a laborer going home, coarsely singing to himself. Though he has scarcely had a thought all day, killing weeds, at this hour he sings or talks to himself. His humble, earthy contentment gets expression. It is kindred in its origin with the notes or music of many creatures. A more fit and natural expression of his mood, this humming, than conversation is wont to be. 

The fireflies appear to be flying, though they may be stationary on the grass stems, for their perch and the nearness of the ground are obscured by the darkness, and now you see one here and then another there, as if it were one in motion. Their light is singularly bright and glowing to proceed from a living creature. Nature loves variety in all things, and so she adds glow-worms to fireflies, though I have not noticed any this year. 

The great story of the night is the moon's adventures with the clouds. What innumerable encounters she has had with them! 

When I enter on the moonlit causeway, where the light is reflected from the glistening alder leaves, and their deep, dark, liquid shade beneath strictly bounds the firm damp road and narrows it, it seems like autumn. The rows of willows completely fence the way and appear to converge in perspective, as I had not noticed by day. 

The bullfrogs are of various tones. Some horse in a distant pasture whinnies; dogs bark; there is that dull, dumping sound of frogs, as if a bubble containing the lifeless sultry air of day burst on the surface, a belching sound. When two or more bullfrogs trump together, it is a ten-pound-ten note. 

In Conant's meadow I hear the gurgling of unwearied water, the trill of a toad, and go through the cool, primordial liquid air that has settled there. As I sit on the great door-step, the loose clapboards on the old house rattle in the wind weirdly, and I seem to hear some wild mice running about on the floor, and sometimes a loud crack from some weary timber trying to change its position. 

On Conantum-top, all white objects like stones are observed, and dark masses of foliage, at a distance even. How distant is day and its associations! 

The light, dry cladonia lichens on the brows of hills reflect the moon light well, looking like rocks. The night wind comes cold and whispering, murmuring weirdly from distant mountain-tops. No need to climb the Andes or Himalayas, for brows of lowest hills are highest mountain-tops in cool moonlight nights. 

Is it a cuckoo's chuckling note I heard? Occasionally there is something enormous and monstrous in the size and distance of objects. A rock, is it? or an elephant asleep? Are these trees on an upland or a lowland? Or do they skirt the brink of a sea-beach? When I get there, shall I look off over the sea? 

The whiteweed is the only obvious flower. I see the tops of the rye wave, and grain-fields are more interesting than by day. The water is dull-colored, hardly more bright than a rye-field. There is dew only in the low grounds. 

What were the firefly's light, if it were not for darkness? The one implies the other. 

You may not suspect that the milk of the cocoanut which is imported from the other side of the world is mixed. So pure do some truths come to us, I trust. 

What a mean and wretched creature is man! By and by some Dr. Morton may be filling your cranium with white mustard seed to learn its internal capacity. Of  all ways invented to come at a knowledge of a living man, this seems to me the worst, as it is the most belated. You would learn more by once paring the toe nails of the living subject. There is nothing out of which the spirit has more completely departed, and in which it has left fewer significant traces.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 25, 1852

The mountain outline is remarkably distinct, the earth appears like a vast saucer sloping upward to its sharp mountain rim. See November 30, 1852 (“The country seems to slope up from the west end of Walden to the mountain.”)

The fireflies appear to be flying . . . now you see one here and then another there, as if it were one in motion. See August 2, 1854 (“A few fireflies in the meadows. I am uncertain whether that so large and bright and high was a firefly or a shooting star.”)

The Convolvulus sepium, bindweed; morning-glory is the best name. It always refreshes me to see it.") See  June 21, 1853 ("The morning-glory still fresh at 3 P.M.  A fine, large, delicate bell with waved border, some pure white ,some reddened. The buds open perfectly in a vase I find them open when I wake at 4 A .M. Is not this one of the eras or culminating places in the flower season? Not this till the sultry mornings come."); July 19, 1851("The wild morning-glory or bindweed, with its delicate red and white blossoms.")

There is a flower for every mood of the mind. See May 23, 1853 (" Every new flower that opens, no doubt, expresses a new mood of the human mind.”); August 7, 1853 ("The objects I behold correspond to my mood.”); May 6, 1854 ("I can be said to note the flower's fall only when I see in it the symbol of my own change. When I experience this, then the flower appears to me.”); June 6, 1857 (“Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Moods and Seasons of the Mind.

Roses oftenest display their high colors. . . fairest and brightest in the bud. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Rose

Sometimes the lambkill flowers form a very even rounded, close cylinder . . . of rich red saucer-like flowers. . . I regard it as a beautiful flower neglected. See June 13, 1852 ('Lambkill is out. I remember with what delight I used to discover this flower in dewy mornings."); June 13, 1854 ("How beautiful the solid cylinders of the lamb-kill now just before sunset, — small ten-sided, rosy-crimson basins, about two inches above the recurved, drooping dry capsules of last year"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Lambkill (Kalmia augustifolia)

Methinks I am less thoughtful than I was last year at this time. See July 7, 1852 "(I am older than last year; the mornings are further between; the days are fewer.")

Dr. Morton filling your cranium with white mustard seed. Samuel George Morton believed that cranial capacity determined intellectual ability, and he used his craniometric evidence in conjunction with his analysis of anthropological literature then available to argue in favor of a racial hierarchy which put Caucasians on the top rung and Africans on the bottom. Morton's "systematic justification" for the separation of races was used by those who favored slavery in the United States.~ wikipedia

July 25. See A Book of the Seasons,, by Henry Thoreau, June 25

The earth is a vast

saucer sloping upward to

its sharp mountain rim.

June 25, 1852

Sunshine now seen far

away looks like the yellow

grass in the meadows.

June 25, 1852

I am too late for

the white pine flowers. -- The cones

are half an inch long.

June 25, 1852

The sun comes out bright

and shines on Fair Haven Pond,

rippled by the wind.

June 25, 1852

There is a flower 

for every mood of the mind –

wild roses in bloom. 

June 25, 1852

Why the firefly's light,

if it were not for darkness?

One implies the other.

June 25, 1852

You see one here and

another there as if it

were one in motion.

June 25, 1852

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

What could a man learn by watching the clouds?

June 24.

The drifting white downy clouds are objects of a large, diffusive interest. Like all great themes, they are always at hand to be considered, or they float over us unregarded. They are unobtrusive. Far away they float in the serene sky, the most inoffensive of objects. What could a man learn by watching the clouds? The objects which go over our heads unobserved are vast and indefinite. They are among the most glorious objects in nature. They are the flitting sails in that ocean whose bounds no man has visited. A sky without clouds is a meadow without flowers, a sea without sails.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 24, 1852

June 24, 2012

The drifting white downy clouds . . . See June 4, 1855 ("Great white-bosomed clouds, darker beneath, float through the cleared sky and are seen against the deliciously blue sky, such a sky as we have not had before."); June 9, 1856 ("There are some large cumuli with glowing downy cheeks floating about"); June 11, 1856 ("Great cumuli are slowly drifting in the intensely blue sky, with glowing white borders”). Also January 13, 1852 (“Here I am on the Cliffs . . .I look up and they are gone, like the steam from the engine in the winter air. Even a considerable cloud is dissolved and dispersed in a minute or two, and nothing is left but the pure ether. Then another comes by magic, is born out of the pure blue empyrean, and now this too has disappeared, and no one knows whither it is gone.”); August 9, 1860 (". . . all at once a small cloud begins to form half a mile from the summit and rapidly grows in a mysterious manner till it drapes and conceals the summit above us for a few moments, then passes off and disappears northeastward just as it had come..Watching these small clouds forming and dissolving about the summit of our mountain, I cast my eyes toward the dim bluish outline of the Green Mountains in the clear red evening sky, and, to my delight, I detect exactly over the summit of Saddleback Mountain, some sixty miles distant, its own little cloud . . . a sort of fortunate isle in the sunset sky, the local cloud of the mountain.”)

There is something in the darkness and the vapors that arise from the head . . .

June 23. 

June 23,2019

I am inclined to think that my hat, whose  lining is gathered in midway so as to make a shelf, is about as good a botany-box as I could have and far more convenient, and there is something in the darkness and the vapors that arise from the head - at least if you take a bath - which preserves flowers through a long walk. Flowers will frequently come fresh out of this botany- box at the end of the day, though they have had no sprinkling.

It is what I call a washing day, such as we sometimes have when buttercups first appear in the spring, an agreeably cool and clear and breezy day, when all things appear as if washed bright and shine, and, at this season especially, the sound of the wind rustling the leaves is like the rippling of a stream, and you see the light-colored under side of the still fresh foliage, and a sheeny light is reflected from the bent grass in the meadows. Haze and sultriness are far off. The air is cleared and cooled by yesterday's thunder-storms. The river too has a fine, cool, silvery sparkle or sheen on it. You can see far into the horizon, and you can hear the sound of crickets with such feelings as in the cool morning.

This grassy road now dives into the wood  as if it were entering a cellar or bulkhead, the shadow is so deep. June is the first month for shadows. How is it in July? 

And now I scent the pines. I plucked a blue geranium in a meadow near the Kibbe Place, which appeared to me remarkably fragrant, like lilies and strawberries combined \. 

The path I cut through the swamp late last fall is much more grown up than I expected. The sweet fragrance of swamp-pinks fills all the swamps.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 23, 1852

My hat, whose lining is gathered in midway so as to make a shelf, is about as good a botany-box as I could have. . . See December 4, 1856 ("About half a dozen years ago I found myself again attending to plants with more method, looking out the name of each one and remembering it. I began to bring them home in my hat, a straw one with a scaffold lining to it, which I called my botany- box. I never used any other, and when some whom I visited were evidently surprised at its dilapidated look, as I deposited it on their front entry table, I assured them it was not so much my hat as my botany-box.”)


It is an agreeably cool and clear and breezy day, when all things appear as if washed bright and shine. The river too has a fine, cool, silvery sparkle or sheen on it. You can see far into the horizon. See June 23, 1854 (“The air is beautifully clear, showing the glossy and light-reflecting greenness of the woods. It is a great relief to look into the horizon") See also  June 2, 1860 ("There is a lively and washing northwest wind after the rain. . . .The air is cleansed and clear, and the waves, as I look toward the sun, sparkle with so bright and white a light, - so peculiarly fresh and bright."); June 9, 1852 ("The weather is very clear, and the sky bright. The river shines like silver.”);; ; June 26, 1853 ("Summer returns without its haze. We see infinitely further into the horizon on every side, and the boundaries of the world are enlarged.") and also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Horizon

On the river by Hubbard's meadow.

June 17.

A small thunder-shower comes up in the south-west. The thunder sounds like moving a pile of boards in the attic. We see the increasing outline of the slate-colored falling rain from the black cloud. It passes mainly to the south. We feel only the wind of it at first, but after it appears to back up and we get some rain.  

In the damp, warm evening after the rain, the fireflies appear to be more numerous than ever.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 17, 1852

The fireflies appear to be more numerous than ever. Compare July 20, 1852 ("The stars are few and distant; the fireflies fewer still.”)

The coolness of the morning';the earth-song of the cricket.

June 17.

Thursday. 4 a. m. — To Cliffs.

No fog this morning.

At early dawn, the windows being open, I hear a steady, breathing, cricket-like sound from the chip-bird (?), ushering in the day. Perhaps these mornings are the most memorable in the year, — after a sultry night and before a sultry day, — when, especially, the morning is the most glorious season of the day, when its coolness is most refreshing and you enjoy the glory of the summer gilded or silvered with dews, without the torrid summer's sun or the obscuring haze.

The sound of the crickets at dawn after these first sultry nights seems like the dreaming of the earth still continued into the daylight. I love that early twilight hour when the crickets still creak right on with such dewy faith and promise, as if it were still night, — expressing the innocence of morning, — when the creak of the cricket is fresh and bedewed. While the creak of the cricket has that ambrosial sound, no crime can be committed. It buries Greece and Rome past resurrection.

The earth-song of the cricket ! Before Christianity was, it is. Health! health! health! is the burden of its song.

It is, of course, that man, refreshed with sleep, is thus innocent and healthy and hopeful. When we hear that sound of the crickets in the sod, the world is not so much with us.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 17, 1852

No fog this morning. Compare June 17, 1854 ("A cold fog."); June 17, 1860 ("Quite a fog this morning.")

Perhaps these mornings are the most memorable in the year . . . when, especially, the morning is the most glorious season of the day. See Walden (“The morning is the most memorable season of the day, the awakening hour. ”)

The earth-song of the cricket! See June 13, 1851 ("I listen to the ancient, familiar, immortal, dear cricket sound under all others, and as these cease I become aware of the general earth-song.”); July 14, 1851 (“It is a sound from within, not without.You cannot dispose of it by listening to it. In proportion as I am stilled I hear it. It reminds me that I am a denizen of the earth.”); and note to June 4, 1857 ("One thing that chiefly distinguishes this season from three weeks ago is that fine serene undertone or earth-song as we go by sunny banks and hillsides, the creak of crickets, which affects our thoughts so favorably, imparting its own serenity.")