Tuesday . 9 A.M. - Up river in boat to the bend above the Pantry . It is pleasant to embark on a voyage , if only for a short river excursion , the boat to be your home for the day , especially if it is neat and dry .
A sort of moving studio it becomes , you can carry so many things with you . It is almost as if you put oars out at your windows and moved your house along . A sailor , I see , easily becomes attached to his vessel . How continually we [ are ] thankful to the boat if it does not leak ! We move now with a certain pomp and circumstance , with planetary dignity . The pleasure of sailing is akin to that which a planet feels . It seems a more complete adventure than a walk . We make believe embark our all , - our house and furniture . We are further from the earth than the rider ; we receive no jar from it . We can carry many things with us .
This high water will retard the blossoming of the Bidens Beckii , perhaps . The pads are covered for the most part ; only those which have very long stems are on the surface , the white lilies oftenest . Here and there is seen a blue spike of a pontederia still , but I do not see a single white lily . I should think this would put an end to them . It is a bright and breezy day . I hear the note of goldfinches . The shore is whitened in some places with dense fields of the Polygonum hydropiperoides , now in its prime , but the smaller rose - colored polygonum , also in blossom , is covered . The mikania still covers the banks , and imparts its fragrance to the whole shore , but it is past its prime , as also is the trumpet - weed . The purple gerardias are very fresh and handsome next the water , behind Hubbard's or Den- nis's . I see crows feeding on the meadow , large and black . I rigged my mast by putting a post across the boat , and putting the mast through it and into a piece of a post at the bottom , and lashing and bracing it , and so sailed most of the way . The water , methinks , has a little of the fall sparkle on it after the rain . It has run over the meadows considerably and drowned the flowers . I feel as if it was a month later than it was a week ago . A few days ago some saw a circular rainbow about the sun at midday . Singular phenomenon . Is not this the season when conventions are held ? Or do they not appoint conventions , temperance or political , at such times as the farmers are most at leisure ? There is a silvery light on the washed willows this morning , and the shadows under the wood - sides appear deeper , perchance by contrast , in the brilliant air . Is not the air a little more bracing than it was ? Looking up the sparkling river , whose waves are flashing in the sun , it appears to be giving off its pure silver from the amal- gam . The sky is more beautiful , a clearer blue , me- thinks , than for some time past , with light and downy clouds sailing all round a quarter of the way up it . The fields of bulrushes are now conspicuous , being left alone above the water . The balls of the button - bush have lost their bloom . From the shore I hear only the creak of crickets . The winds of autumn begin to blow . Now I can sail . The cardinal - flowers , almost drowned in a foot or two of water , are still very brilliant . The wind is Septemberish . That rush , reed , or sedge with the handsome head rises above the water . I pass boats now far from the shore and full of water . I see and hear the kingfisher with his disproportionate black [ sic ] head or crest . The pigeon woodpecker darts across the valley ; a catbird mews in the alders ; a great bittern flies sluggishly away from his pine tree perch on Tupelo Cliff , digging his way through the air . These and crows at long intervals are all the birds seen or heard . How much he knows of the wind , its strength and direction , whose steed it is , - the sailor . With a good gale he advances rapidly ; when it dies away he is at a standstill . The very sounds made by moving the furniture of my boat are agreeable , echoing so distinctly and sweetly over the water ; they give the sense of being abroad . I find myself at home in new scenery . I carry more of myself with me ; I am more entirely abroad , as when a man takes his children into the fields with him . I carry so many me's with [ me ] . This large basket of melons , umbrella , flowers , hammer , etc. , etc. , all go with me to the end of the voyage without being the least incumbrance , and preserve their relative distances . Our capacity to carry our furniture with us is so much increased . There is lit- tle danger of overloading the steed . We can go com- pletely equipped to fields a dozen miles off . The tent and the chest can be taken as easily as not . We em- bark ; we go aboard a boat ; we sit or we stand . If we sail , there is no exertion necessary . If we move in the opposite direction , we nevertheless progress . And if we row , we sit to an agreeable exercise , akin to flying . A student , of course , if it were perfectly convenient , would always move with his escritoire and his library about him . If you have a cabin and can de- scend into that , the charm is double . Landed near the bee tree . A bumblebee on a cow- wheat blossom sounded like the engine's whistle far over the woods ; then like an æolian harp . Then walked through the damp , cellar - like , fungus woods , with bare , damp , dead leaves and no bushes for their floor , where the corallorhiza grows , now out of bloom . The fall dandelion yellows the meadows . What is that bird like a large peetweet that flew away with a kind of whistle from a grass spit in the Sudbury meadows ? A larger sandpiper ? Probably a yellow - legs . Lunched on Rice's Hill . I see some yellow pump- kins from afar in the field next his house . This sight belongs to the season . It has all clouded up again , so that I scarcely see the sun during the day . I find , on bathing , that the water has been made very cold by the rain - storm , so that I soon come out . It must affect the fishes very much . All the fields and meadows are shorn . I would like to go into perfectly new and wild country where the meadows are rich in decaying and rustling vegetation , present a wilder luxuriance . I wish to lose myself amid reeds and sedges and wild grasses that have not been touched . If haying were omitted for a season or two , a voyage up this river in the fall , methinks , would make a much wilder impression . I sail and paddle to find a place where the bank has a more neglected look . I wish to bury myself amid reeds . I pine for the luxuriant vegetation of the river - banks . I ramble over the wooded hill on the right beyond the Pantry . The bushy gerardia is now very conspicuous with its great yellow trumpets , on hillsides on sprout - lands . Sometimes you come upon a large field of them . The buds or closed tubes are as handsome , at least , as the flowers . The various kinds of lespedezas are now in bloom . The panicled desmodium is going to seed and adheres to the clothes , with only a few flowers left . The strong contrast of the bright - pink ( hard ) and blue ( soft and ripe ) berries of the Viburnum nudum . Here are some irregularly globular or apple- shaped and larger than the common , which are more elliptical . The rustling of aspen leaves ( grandidentata ) this cloudy day startled me as if it were rain - drops on the leaves . Here are great pyrus berries in dense clusters falling over in wreaths and actually blackening the ground . I have rarely seen any kind of berries so thick . As big as small cherries . The great Bidens chrysanthemoides , now in blossom , like a sunflower , two inches in diameter , is for the most part far under water , blossoms and all . I see its drowned flowers far beneath the surface . Gunners out with their pants tucked into their boots . Pigeons fly over , and ducks . Poke berries ripe for some time . The various beauties of this plant now appear . Its stem is ripe , too , as if full of purple wine . It is so florid that the whole plant blossoms . In the fall , after so much sun , all leaves turn to petals and blossoms .
The evening of the year is colored like the sunset.
The evening of the year is colored like the sunset.
I land at Lee's Cliff
in Fair Haven Pond
and sit on the Cliff.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal,
August 31, 1852
I land at Lee's Cliff, in Fair Haven Pond, and sit on the Cliff. Late in the afternoon . . . See February 14, 1851 ("One afternoon in the fall, November 21st, I saw Fair Haven Pond with its island and meadow; between the island and the shore, a strip of perfectly smooth water in the lee of the island; and two hawks sailing over it; and something more I saw which cannot easily be described . . ."); April 14, 1852 ("Fair Haven Pond -- the pond, the meadow beyond the button-bush and willow curve, the island, and the meadow between the island and mainland with its own defining lines -- are all parted off like the parts of a mirror. A fish hawk is calmly sailing over all . . . "); November 1, 1852 ("As I approached their edge, I saw the woods beneath, Fair Haven Pond, and the hills across the river, — which, owing to the mist, was as far as I could see, and seemed much further in consequence. I saw these between the converging boughs of two white pines a rod or two from me on the edge of the rock; and I thought that there was no frame to a landscape equal to this, — to see, between two near pine boughs, whose lichens are distinct, a distant forest and lake, the one frame, the other picture.")
Evening is pensive. The serenity is far more remarkable to those who are on the water. See August 31, 1851 ("I saw the seal of evening on the river.")
Upside down shadow: see also October 18, 1853("Returning late, we see a double shadow of ourselves and boat, one, the true, quite black, the other directly above it and very faint, on the willows and high bank."); August 16, 1854 ("At the steam mill sand-bank is the distinct shadow of our shadows, — first on the water, then the double one on the bank bottom to bottom, one being upside down, — three in all, — one on water, two on land or bushes."); November 2, 1854 ("Sailing past the bank above the railroad, just before a clear sundown, close to the shore on the east side I see a second fainter shadow of the boat, sail, myself, and paddle, etc., directly above and upon the first on the bank. What makes the second? At length I discovered that it was the reflected sun which cast a higher shadow like the true one. As I moved to the west side, the upper shadow rose, grew larger and less perceptible; and at last when I was so near the west shore that I could not see the reflected sun, it disappeared; but then there appeared one upside down in its place!") and Walden, The Pond in Winter ("Sometimes, also, when the ice was covered with shallow puddles, I saw a double shadow of myself, one standing on the head of the other, one on the ice, the other on the trees or hillside.”)
The evening of the year is colored like the sunset. See August, 19, 1853 (" The day is an epitome of the year.”); November 14, 1853 (“October [w]ith respect to its colors and its season, it is the sunset month of the year, when the earth is painted like the sunset sky.”)
in Fair Haven Pond
and sit on the Cliff.
Late in the afternoon.
The wind is gone down
the water is smooth
a serene evening approaches
the clouds disperse.
The
pond so smooth and
full of reflections
after a dark and breezy day
is unexpectedly
beautiful.
There is a little boat on it
schooner-rigged, with three sails,
a
perfect little vessel and
perfectly reflected now in the water.
The boatman is airing
his sails after the storm.
There is hardly a puff of air.
Being in
the reflection
of the opposite woods
the water on which the little boat rests
is absolutely invisible and
it makes an impression
of buoyancy and lightness.
I
float slowly down from Fair Haven
till I have passed the bridge.
The sun comes out just before setting
with a brilliant, warm
light
and there is the slightest undulation
discernible on the water.
The reflections are
perfect.
A bright, fresh green
on fields and trees now after the rain,
spring-like
with the sense of summer past.
The reflections are the more perfect
for the
blackness of the water.
This
is the most glorious part of this day,
the serenest, warmest, brightest part,
and the most suggestive.
Evening is fairer than morning.
Morning is full of promise and vigor.
Evening
is pensive.
The serenity is far more remarkable
to those who are on the water.
I let the boat float
That
part of the sky
just above the horizon
seen reflected
is as light a blue as the actual
but it goes on deepening
as
your eye draws nearer to the boat
until it is lost in the
blackness of the water.
I observe on the willows
on the east shore
the shadow of my boat
and self and oars
upside down.
I land at Lee's Cliff, in Fair Haven Pond, and sit on the Cliff. Late in the afternoon . . . See February 14, 1851 ("One afternoon in the fall, November 21st, I saw Fair Haven Pond with its island and meadow; between the island and the shore, a strip of perfectly smooth water in the lee of the island; and two hawks sailing over it; and something more I saw which cannot easily be described . . ."); April 14, 1852 ("Fair Haven Pond -- the pond, the meadow beyond the button-bush and willow curve, the island, and the meadow between the island and mainland with its own defining lines -- are all parted off like the parts of a mirror. A fish hawk is calmly sailing over all . . . "); November 1, 1852 ("As I approached their edge, I saw the woods beneath, Fair Haven Pond, and the hills across the river, — which, owing to the mist, was as far as I could see, and seemed much further in consequence. I saw these between the converging boughs of two white pines a rod or two from me on the edge of the rock; and I thought that there was no frame to a landscape equal to this, — to see, between two near pine boughs, whose lichens are distinct, a distant forest and lake, the one frame, the other picture.")
Evening is pensive. The serenity is far more remarkable to those who are on the water. See August 31, 1851 ("I saw the seal of evening on the river.")
Upside down shadow: see also October 18, 1853("Returning late, we see a double shadow of ourselves and boat, one, the true, quite black, the other directly above it and very faint, on the willows and high bank."); August 16, 1854 ("At the steam mill sand-bank is the distinct shadow of our shadows, — first on the water, then the double one on the bank bottom to bottom, one being upside down, — three in all, — one on water, two on land or bushes."); November 2, 1854 ("Sailing past the bank above the railroad, just before a clear sundown, close to the shore on the east side I see a second fainter shadow of the boat, sail, myself, and paddle, etc., directly above and upon the first on the bank. What makes the second? At length I discovered that it was the reflected sun which cast a higher shadow like the true one. As I moved to the west side, the upper shadow rose, grew larger and less perceptible; and at last when I was so near the west shore that I could not see the reflected sun, it disappeared; but then there appeared one upside down in its place!") and Walden, The Pond in Winter ("Sometimes, also, when the ice was covered with shallow puddles, I saw a double shadow of myself, one standing on the head of the other, one on the ice, the other on the trees or hillside.”)
The evening of the year is colored like the sunset. See August, 19, 1853 (" The day is an epitome of the year.”); November 14, 1853 (“October [w]ith respect to its colors and its season, it is the sunset month of the year, when the earth is painted like the sunset sky.”)
