The bright crimson-red undersides of the great white lily pads turned up by the wind.

August 24.

August 24, 2019

To Fair Haven Pond by boat. A strong wind from the south-southwest, which I expect will waft me back. So many pads are eaten up and have disappeared that it has the effect of a rise of the river drowning them. This strong wind against which we row is quite exhilarating after the stiller summer. Yet we have no rain, and I see the blue haze between me and the shore six rods off. 

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. Many are now turned over completely. After August opens, before these pads are decayed (for they last longer than the nuphars of both kinds), the stronger winds begin to blow and turn them up at various angles, turning many completely over and exposing their bright crimson-red under sides with their ribs. The surface being agitated, the wind catches under their edges and turns them up and holds them commonly at an angle of 45°. 

It is a very wholesome color, and, after the calm summer, an exhilarating sight, with a strong wind heard and felt, cooling and condensing your thoughts. This has the effect of a ripening of the leaf on the river. Not in vain was the under side thus colored, which at length the August winds turn up. 

The Soft pads eaten up mostly; the pontederias crisped and considerably blackened, only a few flowers left. 

It is surprising how the maples are affected by this drought. Though they stand along the edge of the river, they appear to suffer more than any trees except the white ash. Their leaves — and also those of the alders and hickories and grapes and even oaks more or less — are permanently curled and turned up on the upper three quarters of the trees; so that their foliage has a singularly glaucous hue in rows along the river. At a distance they have somewhat of the same effect with the silvered tops of the swamp white oak. The sight suggests a strong wind constantly blowing. I went ashore and felt of them. They were more or less crisped and curled permanently. It suggests what to a slight extent occurs every year. 

On the Cliffs so many young trees and bushes are withered that from the river it looks as if a fire had run over them. At Lee's Cliff larger ash trees are completely sere and brown, — burnt up. The white pines are parti-colored there.

Now, methinks, hawks are decidedly more common, beating the bush and soaring. I see two circling over the Cliffs. 

See a blue heron standing on the meadow at Fair Haven Pond. At a distance before you, only the two waving lines appear, and you would not suspect the long neck and legs. 

Looking across the pond, the haze at the water's edge under the opposite woods looks like a low fog. To-night, as for at least four or five nights past, and to some extent, I think, a great many times within a month, the sun goes down shorn of his beams, half an hour before sunset, round and red, high above the horizon. There are no variegated sunsets in this dog-day weather.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 24, 1854

A strong wind from the south-southwest, which I expect will waft me back. See August 12, 1854 ("To-day there is an uncommonly strong wind, against which I row, yet in shirt-sleeves, trusting to sail back. It is southwest.); May 28, 1855 ("Yesterday left my boat at the willow opposite this Cliff, the wind northwest. Now it is southeast, and I can sail back.")

The bright crimson-red under sides of the great white lily pads. See 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"); June 30, 1859 ("The pads blown up by it already show crimson, it is so strong, but this not a fall phenomenon yet."); August 12, 1854 ("As I look down-stream from southwest to northeast, I see the red under sides of the white lily pads about half exposed, turned up by the wind to [an] angle of 45 ° or more. These hemispherical red shields are so numerous as to produce a striking effect on the eye")

Now, methinks, hawks are decidedly more common, beating the bush and soaring. I see two circling over the Cliffs. See August 24, 1860 ("See a large hen-hawk . .. soaring very high and toward the north. At last it returns southward, at that height impelling itself steadily and swiftly forward, with its wings set without apparent motion, it thus moves half a mile directly.") See also September 16, 1852 ("What makes this such a day for hawks? ") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau ,The hen-hawk

  

See a blue heron standing on the meadow at Fair Haven Pond.  See  August 12, 1853 ("See the blue herons opposite Fair Haven Hill, as if they had bred here.”);  August 19, 1858  ("The blue heron has within a week reappeared in our meadows. "); August 22, 1854 ("Thus the drought serves the herons, etc., confining their prey within narrower limits.");  August 22, 1858 ("See one or two blue herons every day now, driving them far up or down the river before me.");  September 5, 1854 ("Now at sundown, a blue heron flaps away from his perch on an oak over the river before me, just above the rock. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Blue Heron

Looking across the pond, the haze at the water's edge under the opposite woods looks like a low fog. . . There are no variegated sunsets in this dog-day weather. See August 22, 1854 ("The haze is so thick that we can hardly see more than a mile."); August 25, 1854 ("The sun is shorn of his beams by the haze before 5 o'clock P.M., round and red, and is soon completely concealed, apparently by the haze alone.This blue haze is not dissipated much by the night, but is seen still with the earliest light."); see also August 24, 1861 ("This and yesterday very foggy, dogdayish days. Yesterday the fog lasted till nine or ten, and to-day, in the afternoon, it amounts to a considerable drizzling rain.") andA Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Locust, Dogdayish Days

Crimson undersides

of the great white lily pads

turned up by the wind.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Great white lily pads turned up by the wind

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 ©  2009-2024

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