The distant crashing of thunder.

May 20

Fir-balsam (ours in grove) apparently two or three days, for it [is] almost entirely effete; cones white, one inch long nearly. 

Was awaked and put into sounder sleep than ever early this morning by the distant crashing of thunder, and now, — P. M. (to Beck Stow’s),— I hear it in mid-afternoon, muttering, crashing in the muggy air in mid-heaven, a little south of the village as I go through it, like the tumbling down of piles of boards, and get a few sprinkles in the sun. 

Nature has found her hoarse summer voice again, like the lowing of a cow let out to pasture. It is Nature’s rutting season. Even as the birds sing tumultuously and glance by with fresh and brilliant plumage, so now is Nature’s grandest voice heard, and her sharpest flashes seen. The air has resumed its voice, and the lightning, like a yellow spring flower, illumines the dark banks of the clouds. All the pregnant earth is bursting into life like a mildew, accompanied with noise and fire and tumult. Some oestrus stings her that she dashes headlong against the steeples and bellows hollowly, making the earth tremble. She comes dropping rain like a cow with overflowing udder. The winds drive her; the dry fields milk her. 

It is the familiar note of another warbler, just arrived, echoing amid the roofs. I see, on a locust in the burying-ground, the Sylvia striata, or black-poll warbler, busily picking about the locust buds and twigs. Black head and above, with olive (green) wings and two white bars; white all beneath, with a very distinct black line from throat to shoulders; flesh-colored legs; bill, dark above, light beneath. Hear no note. Saw it well. 

At Moore’s Swamp on Bedford road, myriads of pollywogs half an inch long darken or blacken the shore, chiefly head as yet. 

Bank swallows are very lively about the low sand-bank just beyond, in which are fifty holes.

I now see distinctly the chestnut-sided warbler (of the 18th and 17th), by Beck Stow’s. It is very lively on the maples, birches, etc., over the edge of the swamp. Sings eech eech eech | wichy wichy | tchea or itch itch itch | witty witty |  tchea. Yet this note I represented on the 18th by tche tche tche | tchut tchutter we. 

The andromeda has apparently been out several days, but no buck-bean there yet, nor will for a day or two. 

See and hear a stake-driver in the swamp. It took one short pull at its pump and stopped. 

Two marsh hawks, male and female, flew about me a long time, screaming, the female largest, with ragged wings, as I stood on the neck of the peninsula. This induced me to climb four pines, but I tore my clothes, got pitched all over, and found only squirrel; yet they have, no doubt, a nest thereabouts. 

Haynes the carpenter calls that large glaucous puff that grows on the Andromeda paniculata, swamp-apple; says he has eaten as much as three bushels (!) of them when he was a boy, and likes them. That is what he was raised on. 

After I got him home, I observed a large leech on the upper shell of my great turtle. He stoutly resisted being turned over, by sinking his claws into the ground; was aware that that was his weak side, and, when turned, would instantly run out his head and turn himself back. No wonder the Orientals rested the world on such a broad back. 

Such broad health and strength underlies Nature.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  May 20, 1856

I hear it in mid-afternoon, muttering, crashing in the muggy air in mid-heaven. . . .Nature has found her hoarse summer voice again. Compare May 20, 1854 ("See the lightning, but can not hear the thunder.”);  May 17, 1853 ("Does not summer begin after the May storm?”)

At Moore’s Swamp on Bedford road, myriads of pollywogs. See note to May 19, 1857 ("See myriads of minute pollywogs, recently hatched, in the water of Moore's Swamp.”)

I see, on a locust in the burying-ground, the Sylvia striata, or black-poll warbler, busily picking about the locust buds and twigs. See  May 27, 1860 ("The Sylvia striata are the commonest bird in the street, as I go to the post-office, for several days past. I see six (four males, two females) on one of our little fir trees; are apparently as many more on another close by."); June 4,1860 ("The black-poll warblers (Sylvia striata) appear to have left, and some other warblers, if not generally, with this first clear and bright and warm, peculiarly June weather, immediately after the May rain. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Black-poll Warbler

 Bank swallows are very lively about the low sand-bank just beyond, in which are fifty holes. See May 7, 1856 (“A hundred or more bank swallows at 2 P. M. (I suspect I have seen them for some time)”); May 11, 1856 ("There are many swallows circling low over the river behind Monroe’s, — bank swallows, barn, republican, chimney, and white-bellied. These are all circling together a foot or two over the water, passing within ten or twelve feet of me in my boat."); May 12, 1856 ("I see, in the road beyond Luther Hosmer’s, in different places, two bank swallows which were undoubtedly killed by the four days’ northeast rain we have just had."); May 13, 1856 ("In the swallows’ holes behind Dennis’s, I find two more dead bank swallows, and one on the sand beneath, and the feathers of two more which some creature has eaten. This makes at least seven dead bank swallows in consequence of the long, cold northeast rain.")

I now see distinctly the chestnut-sided warbler (of the 18th and 17th), by Beck Stow’s. See May 17, 1860 ("A chestnut - sided warbler , — the handsome bird , — with a bright-yellow crown and yellow and black striped back and bright-chestnut sides, not shy, busily picking about the expanding leaves of a white birch \"); May 18, 1856 (" Also another clear pure white beneath, and vent, and side-head; black above, finely marked with yellow; yellow bars on wings; and golden crown; black bill and legs; with a clear  sweet warble like tche tche tche , tchut tchutter we.  Can this be a chestnut-sided warbler, and I not see the chestnut? [It is. Vide 20th. Saw it also the 17th here.]") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Chestnut-sided Warbler

The andromeda has apparently been out several days. See May 24, 1854 ("Wade into Beck Stow's. . . . Surprised to find the Andromeda Polifolia in bloom and apparently past its prime at least a week or more.")

See and hear a stake-driver in the swamp. It took one short pull at its pump and stopped. See  April 24, 1854("I hear the loud and distinct pump-a-gor of a stake-driver. Thus he announces himself."); April, 25 1858 ("Goodwin says he heard a stake-driver several days ago."); May 9, 1853 ("At sundown paddled up the river. The pump-like note of a stake-driver from the fenny place across the Lee meadow."); May 9, 1857 (" Hear stake-driver."); June 15, 1851 ("The sound of the stake-driver at a distance, — like that made by a man pumping in a neighboring farmyard, watering his cattle, or like chopping wood before his door on a frosty morning, and I can imagine like driving a stake in a meadow. The pumper. . . .before I was further off than I thought, so now I was nearer than I thought"); October 26, 1858 ("[Minott] says that some call the stake-driver “'belcher squelcher,” and some, “wollerkertoot.” I used to call them “pump-er-gor’. ” Some say “slug-toot.”See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, American Bittern (the Stake-Diver)

Two marsh hawks, male and female, flew about me a long time, screaming . . . they have, no doubt, a nest thereabouts. See May 14, 1857 ("See a pair of marsh hawks, the smaller and lighter-colored male, with black tips to wings, and the large brown female, sailing low over J. Hosmer's sprout-land and screaming, apparently looking for frogs or the like. Or have they not a nest near? They hover very near me.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  the Marsh Hawk (Northern Harrier)

My great turtle . . . stoutly resisted being turned over, by sinking his claws into the ground. See May 18, 1856 ("He looked like an antediluvian under that green , shaggy shell , tougher than the rock you mistake it for . . . He was fourteen and one half inches long by twelve at the broadest places, and weighed twenty-five pounds and three ounces. The claws were an inch and a quarter long beyond the skin , and very stout. You had to exert yourself to turn him over on a plane surface, he held down so firmly with his claws, as if grown to it.")

No wonder the Orientals rested the world on such a broad back. See May 4, 1852 ("Hindoos made the world rest on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, and had nothing to put under the tortoise.")

Such broad health and strength underlies Nature. See October 16, 1859 ("The snapping turtle, too, must find a place among the constellations, though . . . if there is no place for him overhead, he can serve us bravely underneath, supporting the earth.") ; See also  August 23, 1853 ("All Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. She exists for no other end"); December 16, 1853 ("Would you be well, see that you are attuned to each mood of nature"); Walden ("Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength")

So now is Nature’s 

grandest voice heard, and her 

sharpest flashes seen.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The distant crashing of thunder

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 © 2009-2026

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