A Book of the Seasons: June 27 (cool, clear and windy, the luna moth, a partridge with her brood, Monadnock)

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

June 27 

June 27, 2014

To see lightning with

serenity, all nature

with wonder and awe.

June 27, 1852

Attacus luna.

Frail creature rarely met with –

though not uncommon.

June 27, 1859

To-day it is cool 

and clear and windy and the 

river more sparkling.

June 27, 1860

June 27, 2014

All the phenomena of nature need be seen from the point of view of wonder and awe, like lightning; and, on the other hand, the lightning itself needs to be regarded with serenity, as the most familiar and innocent phenomena are. June 27,1852

To-day it is cool and clear and quite windy, and the black willow down is now washed up and collected against the alders and weeds, and the river looking more sparkling.  June 27, 1860 

Looking from Bear Hill, I am struck by the yellowish green of meadows, almost like an ingrained sunlight. It is some what hazy, yet I can just distinguish Monadnock. June 27, 1852

See apparently a young bobolink fluttering over the meadow. June 27, 1857

See an Attacus luna in the shady path, smaller than I have seen before. At first it appears unable or unwilling to fly, but at length it flutters along and upward two or three rods into an oak tree, and there hangs inconspicuous amid the leaves.  June 27, 1858 

At the further Brister's Spring, under the pine, I find an Attacus luna, half hidden under a skunk-cabbage leaf, with its back to the ground and motionless, on the edge of the swamp. The underside is a particularly pale hoary green. It is somewhat greener above with a slightly purplish brown border on the front edge of its front wings, and a brown, yellow, and whitish eye-spot in the middle of each wing. It is very sluggish and allows me to turn it over and cover it up with another leaf, — sleeping till the night come. It has more relation to the moon by its pale hoary-green color and its sluggishness by day than by the form of its tail. A frail creature, rarely met with, though not uncommon. June 27, 1859

I meet the partridge with her brood in the woods, a perfect little hen. She spreads her tail into a fan and beats the ground with her wings fearlessly within a few feet of me, to attract my attention while her young disperse; but they keep up a faint, wiry kind of peep, which betrays them, while she mews and squeaks as if giving them directions. June 27, 1852

See on the open grassy bank and shore, just this side the Hemlocks, a partridge with her little brood. Being in my boat, I go within three rods, and they are hardly scared at all. The young are but little bigger than chickens four or five days old, yet could fly two or three rods. The partridge now takes out her brood to feed, all the country over; and what an extensive range they have! June 27, 1860

Find two wood pewees’ nests, made like the one I have. One on a dead horizontal limb of a small oak, fourteen feet from ground, just on a horizontal fork and looking as old as the limb, color of the branch, three eggs far advanced. The other, with two eggs, was in a similar position exactly over a fork, but on a living branch of a slender white oak, eighteen feet from ground; lichens without, then pine-needles, lined with usnea, willow down. Both nests three to five feet from main stem. June 27, 1858

The dogsbane is one of the more interesting little flowers. June 27, 1853

June 27, 2016

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau:

 

To Know Nature's June Moods

Serene as the Sky.

the Luna Moth (Attacus luna)

 the Propogation of the Willow.

 The Eastern Wood Pewee

the Bobolink

the Partridge

Summer

 June.

All the phenomena of nature need be seen from the point of view of wonder and awe, like lightning. See December 26, 1853 (“I passed by the pitch pine that was struck by lightning. I was impressed with awe on looking up and seeing that broad, distinct spiral mark, more distinct even than when made eight years ago, as one might groove a walking-stick, — mark of an invisible and in tangible power, a thunderbolt, mark where a terrific and resistless bolt came down from heaven, out of the harmless sky, eight years ago. It seemed a sacred spot.”)

To-day it is cool and clear and quite windy, and  the river looking more sparkling. See June 30, 1860 ("Standing on the side of Fair Haven Hill the verdure generally appears at its height, the air clear, and the water sparkling after the rain of yesterday. Seen through this clear, sparkling, breezy air, the fields, woods, and meadows are very brilliant and fair.")

The black willow down is now washed up and collected against the alders and weeds. See June 26, 1859 ("The black willow down is now quite conspicuous on the trees, giving them a parti-colored or spotted white and green look, quite interesting, like a fruit. It also rests on the water by the sides of the stream, where caught by alders, etc., in narrow crescents ten and five feet long, at right angles with the bank, so thick and white as to remind me of a dense mass of hoar-frost crystals.") 

A young bobolink fluttering over the meadow. See July 2, 1855 (". Young bobolinks are now fluttering over the meadow, but I have not been able to find a nest, so concealed in the meadow-grass.")

Two wood pewees’ nests, made like the one I have. See June 26, 1855 ("C. has found a wood pewee’s nest on a horizontal limb of a small swamp white oak, ten feet high, with three fresh eggs, cream-colored with spots of two shades in a ring about large end."); see also August 13, 1858 ("I come to get the now empty nests of the wood pewees found June 27th.)  

It is somewhat hazy, yet I can just distinguish Monadnock.  See March 31, 1853 ("When the air is a little hazy, the mountains are particularly dark blue. It is affecting to see a distant mountain-top, like the summits of Uncanoonuc, well seen from this hill, whereon you camped for a night in your youth, which you have never revisited, still as blue and ethereal to your eyes as is your memory of it.") Compare February 21, 1855 ("Could not distinguish Monadnock till the sun shone on it."); March 28, 1858 ("I can see the sun reflected from the rocks on Monadnock, and I know that it would be pleasant to be there too to-day as well as here") See also June 28, 1852("I have camped out all night on the tops of four mountains, — Wachusett, Saddle-back, Ktaadn, and Monadnock, — and I usually took a ramble over the summit at midnight by moonlight. I remember the moaning of the wind on the rocks, and that you seemed much nearer to the moon")

The dogsbane is one of the more interesting little flowers. See April 24, 1856 (“See a dog’s-bane with two pods open and partially curved backward on each side, but a third not yet open. This soon opens and scatters its down and seeds in my chamber. The outside is a dull reddish or mahogany-color, but the inside is a singularly polished very pale brown. The inner bark of this makes a strong twine like that of the milkweed.”); June 15, 1852 (“Dogsbane is just ready to open.”); June 21, 1852 (“It would be pleasant to write the history of one hillside for one year . . . Blackberries, roses, and dogsbane also are now in bloom here.”); July 2, 1858 (“the A. androsoemifolium, quite downy beneath.”); July 3, 1853 ("Dogsbane and Jersey tea are among the prevailing flowers now."); August 1, 1858 (“the common apocynum (also in bloom as well as going and gone to seed) are very common.”);  August 16, 1856 ("I find the dog's-bane (Apocynum androsoemifolium) bark not the nearly so strong as that of the A. cannabinum”); August 21, 1852 (“The leaves of the dogsbane are turning yellow”) See also notes to August 5, 1856 (“At the Assabet stone bridge, apparently freshly in flower, — though it may have been out nearly as long as the androscemifolium, — apparently the Apocynum var. hypericifolium (?)”) and to September 2, 1856 ("Some years ago I sought for Indian hemp (Apocynum cannabinum) hereabouts in vain, and concluded that it did not grow here. A month or two ago I read again, as many times before, that its blossoms were very small, scarcely a third as large as those of the common species, and for some unaccountable reason this distinction kept recurring to me, and I regarded the size of the flowers I saw, though I did not believe that it grew here; and in a day or two my eyes fell on it, aye, in three different places, and different varieties of it.")

June 27, 2012

Wonder, awe

innocence, serenity –

lightning!

June 27,1852

If you make the least correct 

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853 

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A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, June 27 

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 ©  2009-2022 

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