Just after sunrise

 August 15.

August 15, 2022

5.15 a. m. — To Hill by boat. 

By 5.30 the fog has withdrawn from the channel here and stands southward over the Texas Plain, forty or fifty feet high.

Some birds, after they have ceased to sing by day, continue to sing faintly in the morning now as in spring. 

On the top of the Hill I see the goldfinch eating the seeds of the Canada thistle. I rarely approach a bed of them or other thistles nowadays but I hear the cool twitter of the goldfinch about it. 

I hear a red squirrel's reproof, too, as in spring, from the hickories. 

Now, just after sunrise, I see the western steeples with great distinctness, — tall white lines. 

The fog eastward over the Great Meadows appears indefinitely far, as well as boundless.  It is interesting when the fluviatile trees begin to be seen through it and the sun is shining above it. By 6 o'clock it has risen up too much to be interesting. 

The button-bush is now nearly altogether out of bloom, so that it is too late to see the river's brink in its perfection. It must be seen between the blooming of the mikania and the going out of bloom of the button bush – before you feel this sense of lateness in the year, before the meadows are shorn and the grass of hills and pastures is thus withered and russet.

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

By 5.30 the fog has withdrawn . . .and stands. . . forty or fifty feet high.. . .By 6 o'clock it has risen up too much to be interesting. See July 25, 1852 ("Birds are heard singing from the midst of the fog. And in one short hour this sea will all evaporate and the sun be reflected from farm windows")

Some birds . . . continue to sing faintly in the morning. See August 1, 1852 ("Singing birds are scarce."); August 6, 1852 ("Birds leave off singing."); August 21, 1852 ("There are as few or fewer birds heard than flowers seen "); August 22, 1853 ("I hear but few notes of birds these days")

I see the goldfinch eating the seeds of the Canada thistle. See August 9, 1856 (The goldfinch twittering over. . . already feeding on the thistle seeds”); August 12, 1854 (“I see goldfinches nowadays on the lanceolate thistles, apparently after the seeds. ”); August 14, 1858 ("The Canada thistle down is now begun to fly, and I see the goldfinch upon it."); September 4, 1860 (“The goldfinch is very busy pulling the thistle to pieces.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau the Goldfinch and also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Thistles

I hear a red squirrel's reproof, too, as in spring. See March 30, 1859 ("Hear a red squirrel chirrup at me by the hemlocks (running up a hemlock), all for my benefit"). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red Squirrel

Now, just after sunrise, I see the western steeples with great distinctness. See October 20, 1854 ("This [sunrise] is the time to look westward. All the villages, steeples, and houses on that side were revealed; but on the east all the landscape was a misty and gilded obscurity.")

It must be seen between the blooming of the mikania and the going out of bloom of the button bush, before you feel this sense of lateness in the year,  See July 26, 1853 ("How apt we are to be reminded of lateness, even before the year is half spent! This the afternoon of the year"); July 30 1852 ("After midsummer we have a belated feeling . . . just as in middle age man anticipates the end of life"); August 2, 1860 (" The button-bush is about in prime . . .Mikania begun, and now, perhaps, the river's brink is at its height."); August 5, 1854 ("The river's brim is in perfection, after the mikania is in bloom and before the pontederia and pads and the willows are too much imbrowned, and the meadows all shorn."); August 11, 1853 (" Button-bush and mikania now in prime,"); August 18, 1853 (“What means this sense of lateness that so comes over one now?"); August 22, 1858 ("Now that the mikania begins to prevail the button-bush has done.")

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

Just after sunrise

I see the western steeples

with great distinctness

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Just after sunrise

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

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

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2024

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