The long slope toward winter.

July 15.

Rained still in forenoon; now cloudy. Fields comparatively deserted to-day and yesterday. Hay stands cocked in them on all sides. Some, being shorn, are clear for the walker. It is but a short time that he has to dodge the haymakers. 

This cooler, still, cloudy weather after the rain is very autumnal and restorative to our spirits. The robin sings still, but the goldfinch twitters over oftener, and I hear the link link of the bobolink, and the crickets creak more as in the fall. All these sounds dispose our minds to serenity.  

We seem to be passing, or to have passed, a dividing line between spring and autumn, and begin to descend the long slope toward winter. 

On the shady side of the hill I go along Hubbard's walls toward the bathing-place, stepping high to keep my feet as dry as may be. All is stillness in the fields. My thoughts are driven inward, even as clouds and trees are reflected in the still, smooth water. 

There is an inwardness even in the mosquitoes' hum, while I am picking blueberries in the dank wood.

The stems and leaves of various asters and golden-rods, which ere long will reign along the way, begin to be conspicuous.  

There are many butterflies, yellow and red, about the Asclepias incarnata now. 

Many birds begin to fly in small flocks like grown-up broods. 

Green grapes and cranberries also remind me of the advancing season.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 15, 1854

I hear the link link of the bobolink . . . See July 15, 1856 ("Bobolinks are heard — their link, link — above and amid the tall rue which now whitens the meadows”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Bobolink

We seem to be passing a dividing line between spring and autumn, and begin to descend the long slope toward winter. See July 28, 1854 (“Methinks the season culminated about the middle of this month, — that the year was of indefinite promise before, but that, after the first intense heats, we postponed the fulfillment of many of our hopes for this year, and, having as it were attained the ridge of the summer, commenced to descend the long slope toward winter, the afternoon and down-hill of the year.”); see also   July 19, 1851 ("Yesterday it was spring, and to-morrow it will be autumn. Where is the summer then?")

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