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| August 28, 2014 |
Much cooler this morning, making us think of fire. This is gradually clearing the atmosphere, and, as it is about as dry as ever, I think that haze was not smoke; quite as dry as yesterday.
P. M. By Great Meadows and Bedford meadows to Carlisle Bridge; back by Carlisle and Concord side across lots to schoolhouse. Improve the continued drought to go through the meadows .
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| August 28, 2014 |
There is a cool east wind (it has been east a good deal lately in this drought), which has cleared the air wonderfully, revealing the long-concealed woods and hills in the horizon and making me think of November even.
And now that I am going along the path to the meadow in the woods beyond Peter's, I perceive the fall shine on the leaves and earth. A great deal of light is reflected through the clearer air, which has also a vein of coolness in it.
The farmers improve this dry spell to cut ditches and dig mud in the meadows and pond-holes. I see their black heaps in many places.
The meadow is drier than ever, and new pools are dried up. The breams, from one to two and a half inches long, lying on the sides and quirking from time to time, a dozen together where there is but a pint of water on the mud, are a handsome but sad sight, — pretty green jewels, dying in the sun.
I saved a dozen or more by putting them in deeper pools.
The muddy bottom of these pools dried up is cracked into a sort of regular crystals. In the soft mud, the tracks of the great bittern and the blue heron. Scared up one of the former and saw a small dipper on the river.
We did not come to a fence or wall for about four miles this afternoon. Heard some large hawks whistling much like a boy high over the meadow.
In my experience, at least of late years, all that depresses a man's spirits is the sense of remissness, — duties neglected, unfaithfulness, — or shamming, impurity, falsehood, selfishness, inhumanity, and the like.
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| August 28, 2014 |
From the experience of late years I should say that a man's seed was the direct tax of his race. It stands for my sympathy with my race. When the brain chiefly is nourished, and not the affections, the seed becomes merely excremental.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 28, 1854
I saved a dozen or more by putting them in deeper pools. See April 22, 1857 (“Near Tall's Island, rescue a little pale or yellowish brown snake that was coiled round a willow half a dozen rods from the shore . . . ”); June 6, 1856 (“In the large circular hole or cellar at the turntable on the railroad, which they are repairing, I see a star-nosed mole endeavoring in vain to bury himself in the sandy and gravelly bottom. Some inhuman fellow has cut off his tail. I carry him along to plowed ground, where he buries himself in a minute or two.”); July 23, 1856 ("Saw . . . a small bullfrog in the act of swallowing a young but pretty sizable apparently Rana palustris, . . . I sprang to make him disgorge, but it was too late to save him. "); May 19, 1856 ("saw a small striped snake in the act of swallowing a Rana palustris, within three feet of the water. The snake, being frightened, released his hold, and the frog hopped off to the water. "); August 23, 1851("I saw a snake by the roadside and touched him with my foot to see if he were alive.He had a toad in his jaws, which he was preparing to swallow with his jaws distended to three times his width, but he relinquished his prey in haste and fled; and I thought, as the toad jumped leisurely away with his slime-covered hind-quarters glistening in the sun, as if I, his deliverer, wished to interrupt his meditations, — without a shriek or fainting, — I thought what a healthy indifference he manifested. Is not this the broad earth still? he said.")
I saved a dozen or more by putting them in deeper pools. See April 22, 1857 (“Near Tall's Island, rescue a little pale or yellowish brown snake that was coiled round a willow half a dozen rods from the shore . . . ”); June 6, 1856 (“In the large circular hole or cellar at the turntable on the railroad, which they are repairing, I see a star-nosed mole endeavoring in vain to bury himself in the sandy and gravelly bottom. Some inhuman fellow has cut off his tail. I carry him along to plowed ground, where he buries himself in a minute or two.”); July 23, 1856 ("Saw . . . a small bullfrog in the act of swallowing a young but pretty sizable apparently Rana palustris, . . . I sprang to make him disgorge, but it was too late to save him. "); May 19, 1856 ("saw a small striped snake in the act of swallowing a Rana palustris, within three feet of the water. The snake, being frightened, released his hold, and the frog hopped off to the water. "); August 23, 1851("I saw a snake by the roadside and touched him with my foot to see if he were alive.He had a toad in his jaws, which he was preparing to swallow with his jaws distended to three times his width, but he relinquished his prey in haste and fled; and I thought, as the toad jumped leisurely away with his slime-covered hind-quarters glistening in the sun, as if I, his deliverer, wished to interrupt his meditations, — without a shriek or fainting, — I thought what a healthy indifference he manifested. Is not this the broad earth still? he said.")
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