The smooth sumach’s lower leaves are bright-scarlet on dry hills.

August 31. 

P. M. — To Flint’s Pond. 

A hot afternoon. We have had but few warmer. 

wood aster
August 31, 2018

I hear and see but few bobolinks or blackbirds for several days past. The former, at least, must be withdrawing. I have not heard a seringo of late, but I see to-day one golden robin. 

The birches have lately lost a great many of their lower leaves, which now cover and yellow the ground. Also some chestnut leaves have fallen. Many brakes inthe woods are perfectly withered. 

At the Pout’s Nest, Walden, I find the Scirpus debilis, apparently in prime, generally aslant; also the Cyperus dentatus, with some spikes changed into leafy tufts; also here less advanced what I have called Juncus acuminatus. 

Ludwigia alternifolia still. Sericocarpus about done. 

High blackberries are abundant in Britton’s field. At a little distance you would not suspect that there were any, — even vines, — for the racemes are bent down out of sight, amid the dense sweet-ferns and sumachs, etc. The berries still not more than half black or ripe, keeping fresh in the shade. Those in the sun are a little wilted and insipid. 

The smooth sumach’s lower leaves are bright-scarlet on dry hills. 

Lobelia Dortmanna is not quite done. 

Some ground-nuts are washed out. 

The Flint’s Pond rush appears to be Cladium mariscoides, twig rush, or, in Bigelow, water bog rush, a good while out of bloom; style three-cleft. It is about three feet high. This, with Eleocharis palustris, which is nearest the shore, forms the dense rushy border of the pond. It extends along the whole of this end, at least about four rods wide, and almost every one of the now dry and brown flower-heads has a cobweb on it. I perceive that the slender semicircular branchlets so fit to the grooved or flattened culm as still, when pressed against it, to make it cylindrical! —very neatly. 

The monotropa is still pushing up. Red choke-berry, apparently not long. 

At Goose Pond I scare up a small green bittern. It plods along low, a few feet over the surface, with limping flight, and alights on a slender water-killed stump, and voids its excrement just as it starts again, as if to lighten itself. 

Edward Bartlett brings me a nest found three feet from the ground in an arbor-vitae, in the New Burying Ground, with one long-since addled egg in it. It is a very thick, substantial nest, five or six inches in diameter and rather deep; outwardly of much coarse stubble with its fine root-fibres attached, loose and dropping off, around a thin casing of withered leaves; then finer stubble within, and a lining of fine grass stems and horse hair. 

The nest is most like that found on Cardinal Shore with an addled pale-bluish egg, which I thought a wood thrush’s at first, except that that has no casing of leaves. It is somewhat like a very large purple finch’s nest, or perchance some red-wing’s with a hair lining. 

The egg is three quarters of an inch long, rather broad at one end (or for length), greenish-white with brown dashes or spots, becoming a large conspicuous purple-brown blotch at the large end; almost exactly like — but a little greener (or bluer) and a little smaller — the egg found on the ground in R. W. E.’s garden. 

Do the nest and egg belong together? Was not the egg dropped by a bird of passage in another’s nest? Can it be an indigo-bird’s nest? I take it to be too large.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 31, 1858

The birches have lately lost a great many of their lower leaves, which now cover and yellow the ground.  See August 13, 1854 (“At Thrush Alley, I am surprised to behold how many birch leaves have turned yellow, — every other one, — while clear, fresh, leather-colored ones strew the ground with a pretty thick bed under each tree.”); August 31, 1856 (“The birches on Wheeler's meadow have begun to yellow, apparently owing to the [high] water.”)

High blackberries are abundant in Britton’s field. At a little distance you would not suspect that there were any. See note to August 31, 1857 (“An abundance of fine high blackberries behind Britton's old camp on the Lincoln road, now in their prime there, which have been overlooked.”)

Some ground-nuts are washed out. See August 31, 1857  (“Am surprised to see on the bottom and washing up on to the shore many little farinaceous roots or tubers like very small potatoes, in strings. . . . I never saw so many ground-nuts before.”)

A small green bittern plods along low, a few feet over the surface, with limping flight.  See  May 16, 1855  ("A green bittern with its dark-green coat and crest, sitting watchful, goes off with a limping peetweet flight.”); August 2, 1856 ("A green bittern comes, noiselessly flapping, with stealthy and inquisitive looking to this side the stream and then that, thirty feet above the water.") and note to July 30, 1856 ("A green bittern. . .with heavy flapping flight, its legs dangling")

This is the sound which Farmer hears.

August  30. 

P. M. — To bayonet rush by river. Find at Dodd’s shore: Eleocharis obtusa, some time out of bloom (fresh still at Pratt’s Pool); also Juncus acumiuatus (?), just done (also apparently later and yet in bloom at Pout’s Nest);  also what I called Juncus scirpoides, but which  appears to be Juncus paradoxus, with seeds tailed at both ends, (it is fresher than what I have seen before, and smaller), not done. Some of it with few flowers! A terete leaf rises above the flower. It looks like a small bayonet rush.

The Juncus militaris has been long out of bloom. The leaf is three feet long; the whole plant, four or five. It grows on edge of Grindstone Meadow and above. It would look more like a bayonet if the leaf were shorter than the flowering stem, which last is the bayonet part. This is my rainbow rush. 

All over Ammannia Shore and on bare spots in meadows generally, Fimbristylis autumnalis, apparently in prime; minute, two to five inches high, with aspect of F. capillaris. 

As I am now returning over Lily Bay, I hear behind me a singular loud stertorous sound which I thought might have been made by a cow out of order, twice sounded. Looking round, I saw a blue heron flying low, about forty rods distant, and have no doubt the sound was made by him. Probably this is the sound which Farmer hears.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 30, 1858


The sound which Farmer hears. See August 29, 1858 ("He hears — heard a week ago — the sound of a bird flying over, like cra-a-ack, cr-r-r-a-k, only in the night, and thinks it may be a blue heron") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Blue Heron

My knowledge now becomes communicable and grows by communication.

August  29. 

I hear this morning one eat it potter from a golden robin. They are now rarely seen. 

The ghost-horse (Spectrum) is seen nowadays, — several of them. 

All these high colors in the stems and leaves and other portions of plants answer to some maturity in us. I presume if I am the wiser for having lived this season through, such plants will emblazon the truth of my experience over the face of nature, and I shall be aware of a beauty and sweetness there. 

Has not the mind, too, its harvest? Do not some scarlet leaves of thought come scatteringly down, though it may be prematurely, some which, perchance, the summer’s drought has ripened,and the rain loosened? Are there my mind ?

 I remember when boiled green corn was sold piping hot on a muster-field in this town, and my father says that he remembers when it used to be carried about the streets of Boston in large baskets on the bare heads of negro women, and gentlemen would stop, buy an ear, and eat it in the street. 

Ah! what a voice was that hawk’s or eagle’s of the 22d! Think of hearing, as you walk the earth, as usual in leaden shoes, a fine, shrill scream from time to time, which you would vainly endeavor to refer to its truje source if you had not watched the bird in its upward flight. It comes from yonder black spot on the bosom of a cloud. I should not have suspected that sound to have issued from the bosom of a cloud if I had not seen the bird. What motive can an eagle have for screaming among the clouds, unobserved by terrestrial creatures? We walk invested by sound, -— the cricket in the grass and the eagle in the clouds. And so it circled over, and I strained my eyes to follow it, though my ears heard it without effort. ,

Almost the very sands confess the ripening influence of the August sun, and, methinks, with the slender grasses waving over them, reflect a purple tinge. The empurpled sands. Such is the consequence of all this sun shine absorbed into the pores of plants and of the earth. All sap or blood is wine-colored. The very bare sands, methinks, yield a purple reflection. At last we have not only the purple sea, but the purple land

P. M. — To J. Farmer’s via Assabet. 

As, standing up in my boat, I am watching some minnows at the Prichard bend steadily stemming the current in the sunny water between the waving potamogeton, right under my face, I see a musquash gliding along above the sand directly beneath them, a perfect denizen of the water as much as they. This rat was a pale brown, as light as pale-brown paper or perfectly withered white oak leaves. Its coat is never of this color out of water, and I suppose it was because it was completely coated with air. This makes it less visible on a sandy bottom. 

Is not that Eleocharis tenuis, long since out of bloom, growing in the water along the Merrick shore, near the oak; round culms, fifteen inches to two feet high? A spiked rush, without a leaf, and round. I can hardly find a head left on it. Yet Flint says this blooms in August! It grows in dense fields like pipes. Did I find it before this year? 

The mikania is apparently in prime or a little past. Perhaps the front-rank polygonum is in prime now, for there is apparently more than before.

I look along Mantatuket Field hedge to see if there are hazelnuts there, but am surprised to find that thereabouts the bushes have been completely stripped by squirrels already and the rich brown burs are strewn on the ground beneath. What a fine brown these dried burs have already acquired, — not chestnut nor hazel! I fear it is already too late for me, though I find some yet quite green in another place. They must have been very busy collecting these nuts and husking them for a fortnight past, climbing to the extremities of the slender twigs. Who witnesses the gathering of the hazelnuts, the hazel harvest? Yet what a busy and important season to the striped squirrel! Now, if ever, he needs to get up a bee. Every nut that I could find left in that field was a poor one. By more frequented paths the squirrels have not worked yet. Take warning from the squirrel, which is already laying up his winter store.

I see some Cornus sericea berries turning. 

The Assabet helianthus (apparently variety of decapetalus), well out some days at least. Are not the petals peculiarly reflexed? 

Small botrychium in the bobolink meadow, not yet. 

Gentiana Andrewsii, one not quite shedding pollen.

Before bathing at the Pokelogan, I see and hear a school of large suckers, which have come into this narrow bay and are swiftly dashing about and rising to the surface, with a bubbling sound, as if to snatch something from the surface. They agitate the whole bay. They [are] great ruddy-looking fellows, limber with life. How intelligent of all watery knowledge! They seem to measure the length, breadth, and depth of that cove — which perhaps they never entered before — with every wave of their fins. They feel it all at once. With what superfluous vigor they seem to move about restlessly in their element! Lift them but six inches, and they would quirk their tails in vain. They are poor, soft fish, however, large as they are, and taste when cooked at present much like boiled brown, paper. 

The wild Monarda fistulosa is apparently nearly done. 

Cicuta maculata, apparently generally done. 

J. Farmer shot a sharp-shinned hawk this morning, which was endeavoring to catch one of his chickens. I bring it home and find that it measures seventeen inches in length and thirty in alar extent, and the tail extends four inches beyond the closed wings. It has a very large head, and the wing is six and a half inches wide at the secondaries. It is dark-brown above, skirted with ferruginous; scapulars, with white spots; legs, bright-yellow; iris, yellow. Has those peculiar pendulous lobes to the feet, which Farmer thinks are to enable it to hold a small bone of its prey between the nail and the lobe, as it feeds, while perching. The breast and belly feathers are shafted with dark-brown pointed spots. Vent white. There are three obvious slate-colored bars to tail, alternating with the black.

F. says that he has seen the nest of a smaller hawk, the pigeon hawk, heretofore, on an oak (in Owl-Nest Swamp), made of sticks, some fifteen feet from ground. R. Rice says that he has found the nest of the pigeon hawk hereabouts. 

We go to see a bittern nest by Spencer Brook. F. says they call the cardinal-flower “ slink-weed,” and say that the eating it will cause cows to miscarry. He calls the Viburnum nudum “withe-wood,” and makes a withe by treading on one end and twisting by the other till he cracks it and makes it flexible so that it will bend without breaking. 

The bittern’s nest was close to the edge of the brook, eighteen inches above the water, and was made of the withered sedge that had grown close by (i. e. wool-grass, etc.) and what I have called pages back Eleocharis tenuis. It was quite a deep nest, like and as big as a hen’s nest, deep in the grass. He or his son saw the young about it a month ago. 

He hears — heard a week ago — the sound of a bird flying over, like cra-a-ack, cr-r-r-a-k, only in the night, and thinks it may be a blue heron.

We saw where many cranberries had been frost-bitten, F. thinks the night of the 23d. They are much injured. 

Spiranthes cemua, how long? 

Near the bittern-nest, grows what F. calls blue-joint grass; out of bloom. 

Returning, rather late afternoon, we saw some forty martins sitting in a row and twittering on the ridge of his old house, apparently preparing to migrate. He had never seen it before. Soon they all took to flight and filled the air in the neighborhood. 

The sharp-shinned hawk of to-day is much larger than that of July 21st, though the colors, etc., etc., appear to be essentially the same. Yet its leg is not so stout as that which Farrar gave me, but is at least half an inch longer. The toes, especially, are longer and more slender, but I am not sure whether Farrar’s hawk has those pendulous lobes, the foot is so dry, nor if it had sharp-edged shin, it being eaten away by worms. The inner vanes of the primaries of Farrar’s bird are brighter white with much narrower bars of blackish. The longest primary of Farrar’s bird is about ten inches; that of to day, about eight inches. I find the outside tail-feathers of to-day’s bird much harder to pull than the inside ones!‘

Our black willow is of so peculiar and light a green, so ethereal, that, as I look back forty rods at those by the Heron Rock, their outlines are seen with perfect distinctness against the darker green of maples, etc., three or four rods behind them, as if they were a green cloud or smoke blown by. They are seen as distinctly against these other trees as they would be against the sky. 

Rice tells me a queer story. Some twenty-five years ago he and his brother William took a journey in their wagon into the northwest part of Maine, carrying their guns and fishing-tackle with them. At Fryeburg they visited the scene of Lovewell’s Fight, and, seeing some trout in the stream there, they tried to dig some fishworms for bait, but they could not find any. So they asked a boy where they got fishworms, but he did not know what they meant. “Long, slender worms, angle worms,” said they; but he only answered that he had seen worms in their manure-heap (which were grubs). On inquiring further, they found that the inhabitants had never seen nor heard of angleworms, and one old settler, who had come from Massachusetts and had lived there thirty years, declared that there was no such worm in that neighborhood. 

Mr. Farmer gave me a turtle-shaped bug found by Melvin on a board by the river, some time ago. 

I hear A. W. complained of for overworking his cattle and hired men, but there is this to be said in his favor, that he does not spare himself. They say that he made his horse “Tom” draw twenty-nine hundred of hay to Boston the other day, — or night, — but then he put his shoulder to the wheel at every hill. I hear that since then the horse has died, but W. is alive and working.

How hard one must work in order to acquire his language,—-words by which to express himself! I have known a particular rush, for instance, for at least twenty years, but have ever been prevented from describing some [of] its peculiarities, because I did not know its name nor any one in the neighborhood who could tell me it. With the knowledge of the name comes a distincter recognition and knowledge of'the thing. 

That shore is now more describable, and poetic even. My knowledge was cramped and confined before, and grew rusty be cause not used, — for it could not be used. My knowledge now becomes communicable and grows by communication. I can now learn what others know about the same thing.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 29, 1858

The Assabet helianthus (apparently variety of decapetalus), well out some days at least. Are not the petals peculiarly reflexed? See August 29, 1856 ("To J. Farmer's by river. The Helianthus decapetalus, apparently a variety, with eight petals, about three feet high, leaves petioled, but not wing-petioled")

The sharp-shinned hawk of to-day is much larger than that of July 21st, yet its leg is not so stout as that which Farrar gave me. See July 21, 1858 ("A young man killed one of the young hawks, and I saw it. It was the Falco fuscus, the American brown or slate-colored hawk"); October 11, 1856 (“Farrar gave me a wing and foot of a hawk which he shot about three weeks ago . . . . This foot has a sharp shin and stout claws")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the sharp-shinned hawk.

With the knowledge of the name comes a distincter recognition and knowledge of'the thing. See August 20, 1851 ("Botany is worth studying if only for the precision of its terms, — to learn the value of words and of system."); March 1, 1852 (""There is a certain advantage in these hard and precise terms, such as the lichenist uses.); January 15, 1853 ("I have long known this dust, but, as I did not know the name of it, i. e . what others called it, I therefore could not conveniently speak of it, and it has suggested less to me and I have made less use of it. I now first feel as if I had got hold of it."); March 23, 1853 ("One studies books of science merely to learn the language of naturalists , — to be able to communicate with them.")

The first-fruits of the leafy harvest.

August 28. 

August 28, 2018

Soaking rain last night, straight down. 

When the wind stirs after the rain, leaves that were prematurely ripe or withered begin to strew the ground on the leeward side. Especially the scarlet leaves of the cultivated cherry are seen to have fallen. Their change, then, is not owing to drought, but commonly a portion of them ripens thus early, reminding us of October and November. 

When, as I go to the post-office this morning, I see these bright leaves strewing the moist ground on one side of the tree and blown several rods from it into a neighboring yard, I am reminded that I have crossed the summit ridge of the year and have begun to descend the'other slope. The prospect is now toward winter. 

These are among the first-fruits of the leafy harvest. 

The sharp whistling note of a downy woodpecker, which sounds rare; perhaps not heard since spring.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 28, 1858


These are among the first-fruits of the leafy harvest. See August 29, 1852 (The first leaves begin to fall; a few yellow ones lie in the road this morning, loosened by the rain and blown off by the wind.")

I have crossed the summit ridge of the year and have begun to descend the other slope. See August 18, 1853 (" as if the rest of the year were down-hill "); July 15, 1854 ("We seem to be passing a dividing line between spring and autumn, and begin to descend the long slope toward winter"); July 28, 1854 (“ . . . having as it were attained the ridge of the summer, commenced to descend the long slope toward winter, the afternoon and down-hill of the year”) ; August 5, 1854 ("It is one long acclivity from winter to midsummer and another long declivity from midsummer to winter.")

The sharp whistling note of a downy woodpecker. See September 17, 1852 ("I hear the downy woodpecker whistle, and see him looking about the apple trees as if to bore him a hole."); December 5, 1853 ("See and hear a downy woodpecker on an apple tree. Have not many winter birds, like this and the chickadee, a sharp note like tinkling glass or icicles?"); January 5, 1860 ("I see where the downy woodpecker has worked lately by the chips of bark and rotten wood scattered over the snow, though I rarely see him in the winter. Once to-day, however, I hear his sharp voice, ");

Robins fly in flocks.

August 27. 

P. M. — To Walden. 

Dog-day weather again to-day, of which we had had none since the 18th, — i. e. clouds without rain. 

Wild carrot on railroad, apparently in prime. 
Hieracium Canadense, apparently in prime, and perhaps H. scabrum.

Lactuca, apparently much past prime, or nearly done. 

The Nabalus albus has been out some ten days, but N. Fraseri at Walden road will not open, apparently, for some days yet. 

I see round-leaved cornel fruit on Heywood Peak, now half China-blue and half white, each berry. 

Rhus Toxicodendron there is half of it turned scarlet and yellow, as if we had had a severe drought, when it has been remarkably wet. It seems, then, that in such situations some plants will always assume this prematurely withered autumnal aspect. 

Orchis lacera, probably done some time. 

Robins fly in flocks. 

Apparently Juncus tenuis, some time out of bloom, by depot wood-piles, i. e. between south wood-shed and good apple tree; some fifteen inches high. More at my boat’s shore.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 27, 1858

N. Fraseri at Walden road will not open, apparently, for some days yet. See September 13, 1857 (“Nabalus Fraseri, top of Cliffs, — a new plant, ”); September 23, 1857 (“Varieties of nabalus grow along the Walden road in the woods; also, still more abundant, by the Flint's Pond road in the woods.”)

Cornel fruit on Heywood Peak, now half China-blue and half white, each berry. See August 28, 1856 ("The bright china-colored blue berries of the Cornus sericea begin to show themselves along the river. .”)

Rhus Toxicodendron there is half of it turned scarlet and yellow, as if we had had a severe drought.  See September 30, 1857 (“Rhus Toxicodendron turned yellow and red, handsomely dotted with brown.”)

Orchis lacera, probably done some time. See July 13, 1856 ("Orchis lacera, apparently several days, lower part of spike, willow-row, Hubbard side, opposite Wheildon's land")

Each humblest plant, or weed, as we call it, stands there to express some thought or mood of ours,

August 26. 

P. M. — To Great Meadows. 

The Solidago arguta is apparently in its prime. 

Hips of moss rose not long scarlet. 

The Juncus effusus, a long [time] withered (the upper part). 

The liatris is about (or nearly) in prime. 

Aster loevis, how long? 

Two interesting tall purplish grasses appear to be the prevailing ones now in dry and sterile neglected fields and hillsides, — Andropogon furcatus, forked beard grass, and apparently Andropogon scoparius, purple wool grass, though the last appears to have three awns like an Aristida. 

The first is a very tall and slender-culmed grass,with four or five purple finger-like spikes, raying upward from the top. It is very abundant on the hillside behind Peter’s. The other is also quite slender, two to three or four feet high, growing in tufts and somewhat curving, also commonly purple and with pretty purple stigmas like the last, and it has purple anthers. When out of bloom, its appressed spikes are re curving and have a whitish hairy or fuzzy look. 

These are the prevailing conspicuous flowers where I walk this afternoon in dry ground. 

I have sympathy with them because they are despised by the farmer and occupy sterile and neglected soil. They also by their rich purple reflections or tinges seem to express the ripeness of the year. It is high-colored like ripe grapes, and expresses a maturity which the spring did not suggest. Only the August sun could have thus burnished these culms and leaves. 

The farmer has long since done his upland haying, and he will not deign to bring his scythe to where these slender wild grasses have at length flowered thinly. You often see the bare sand between them. I walk encouraged between the tufts of purple wool grass, over the sandy fields by the shrub oaks, glad to recognize these simple contemporaries. 

These two are almost the first grasses that I have learned to distinguish. I did not know by how many friends I was surrounded. The purple of their culms excites me like that of the pokeweed stems. 

Think what refuge there is for me before August is over, from college commencements and society that isolates me! I can skulk amid the tufts of purple wood grass on the borders of the Great Fields! Wherever I walk this afternoon the purple-fingered grass stands like a guide-board and points my thoughts to more poetic paths than they have lately travelled. 

A man shall, perchance, rush by and trample down plants as high as his head, and cannot be said to know that they exist, though he may have cut and cured many tons of them for his cattle. Yet, perchance, if he ever favorably attend to them, he may be overcome by their beauty. 

Each humblest plant, or weed, as we call it, stands there to express some thought or mood of ours, and yet how long it stands in vain! 

I have walked these Great Fields so many Augusts and never yet distinctly recognized these purple companions that I have there. I have brushed against them and trampled them down, for sooth, and now at last they have, as it were, risen up and blessed me. 

Beauty and true wealth are always thus cheap and despised. Heaven, or paradise, might be defined as the place which men avoid. Who can doubt that these grasses which the farmer says are of no account to him find some compensation in my appreciation of them? 

I may say that I never saw them before, or can only recall a dim vision of them, and now wherever I go I hardly see anything else. It is the reign and presidency only of the andropogons.

I walk down the Great Meadows on the upland side. They are still mowing, but have not got more than half, and probably will not get nearly all. I see where the tufts of Arum peltandrum have been cut off by the mower, and the leaves are all gone, but the still green fruit, which had curved downward close to the ground on every side amid the stubble, was too low for his scythe, and so escaped. Thus this plant is perpetuated in such localities, though it may be cut before the seed is mature. 

The wool-grass, black-bracted, of these meadows long since went out of bloom, and is now not merely withered at top but wasted half away, and is quite gray, while that which I examine in another meadow, green-bracted, has but recently ceased to bloom. Looking from this side, the meadow appears to be filled almost exclusively with wool-grass, yet very little has any culm or has blossomed this year. 

I notice, however, one tract, in the midst of the rest, an oblong square with perfectly straight sides, reaching from the upland toward the river, where it has quite generally blossomed and the culms still stand as high as my head. This, plainly, is because the land of a particular proprietor has been subjected to a peculiar treatment. 

Minott tells me that once, one very dry summer, when but part of these meadows had been cut, Moore and Hosmer got the owners to agree to have them burnt over, in the expectation that it would improve the quality of the grass, and they made quite an affair of it, — had a chowder, cooked by Moore’s boys, etc.; but the consequence was that this wool-grass came in next year more than ever. 

Some come a good way for their meadow-grass, even from Lincoln. George Baker has some in this meadow and some in the Sudbury meadows. But Minott says they want to get rid of their river meadow now, since they can get more and very much better grass off their redeemed swamps, or meadows of their own making, near home. 

Hardhack, meadow-sweet, alders, maples, etc., etc., appear to be creeping into the meadow. 

M. says they used to mow clean up to the ditch by the hard land. He remembers how he used to suffer from the heat, working out in the sun on these broad meadows, and when they took their luncheon, how glad he was to lie along close to the water, on the wet ground under the white maples by the riverside. And then one would swim a horse over at the Holt go up to Jack Buttrick’s (now Abner’s), where there was a well of cool water, and get one or two great jugs full, with which he recrossed on the horse. He tells of one fellow who trod water across there with a jug in each hand! 

He has seen young woodcocks in the nest there, i. e. on the ground where he had mowed, the middle of August; and used to see the summer ducks perched on the maples, on some large limb close up to the main stem, since they cannot cling to a small twig.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 26, 1858

Hips of moss rose not long scarlet. See August 27, 1852 ("Hips of the early roses are reddening.”); August 27, 1856 (“The large depressed globular hips of the moss rose begin to turn scarlet in low ground ”); August 29, 1854 ("The moss rose hips will be quite ripe in a day or two.”)

The farmer has long since done his upland haying, and he will not deign to bring his scythe to where these slender wild grasses have at length flowered thinly. See August 12, 1858 (“That very handsome high-colored fine purple grass grows particularly on dry and rather unproductive soil just above the edge of the meadows, on the base of the hills, where the hayer does not deign to swing his scythe. He carefully gets the meadow-hay and the richer grass that borders it, but leaves this fine purple mist for the walker’s harvest”); September 1, 1857 ("Landing at Bittern Cliff, I see that fine purple grass; how long? "); October 9, 1857 ("Under the pines by the Clamshell, that fine purple grass is now withered and faded to a very light brown which reflects the autumnal light.”)

Each humblest plant, or weed, as we call it, stands there to express some thought or mood of ours. See May 23, 1853 ("Every new flower that opens, no doubt, expresses a new mood of the human mind.”); August 30, 1851 ("The fall of each humblest flower marks the annual period of some phase of human life experience. I can be said to note the flower's fall only when I see in it the symbol of my own change. When I experience this, then the flower appears to me."); August 7, 1853 ("Is it not as language that all natural objects affect the poet? He sees a flower or other object, and it is beautiful or affecting to him because it is a symbol of his thought. . .The objects I behold correspond to my mood.”);  June 6, 1857 (“A year is made up of a certain series and number of sensations and thoughts which have their language in nature. Now I am ice, now I am sorrel. Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind. ”)

Botanizing the grasses and sedges

August 25. 

It has been cool and especially windy from the northwest since the 19th, inclusive, but is stiller now.

The note of a warbling vireo sounds very rare. 

P. M. — To Lupine Hill and beyond. 

I see a mouse on the dry hillside this side of Clamshell. 

It is evidently the short-tailed meadow mouse, or Arvicola hirsuta. Generally above, it is very dark brown, almost blackish, being browner forward. It is also dark beneath. Tail but little more than one inch long. Its legs must be very short, for I can hardly glimpse them. Its nose is not sharp. It endeavors to escape down the hill to the meadow, and at first glides along in a sort of path (?), methinks. It glides close to the ground under the stubble and tries to conceal itself. 

I gather from Nut Meadow Brook, not far below the road, a potamogeton (perhaps P. Clayton heterophylus of Gray), which Russell said was the one by road at Jenny Dugan’s). It is still out. Has handsome broad, grassy immersed leaves and somewhat elliptic floating ones. 

I distinguish these plants this afternoon: 

• Cyperus filiculmis (mariscoides, or tuberous cyperus of Bigelow) in arid, sandy pastures, with globular green heads and slender, commonly slanting culms, five to twelve inches long. It is perhaps getting stale. 

• The prevalent grass in John Hosmer’s meadow I take to be cut-grass? [no] Long since done, and the leaves now commonly purplish, reflecting that color in the sun from a distance. 

• The Paspalum setaceum (ciliatifolium), my saw-grass, which I have seen for some time, commonly cut off by the mowers, apparently in prime or past. 

• Eragrostis pectinacea (Poa hirsuta), hair spear-grass, perhaps not quite so bright as heretofore. Money-Diggers’ Hollow has the most of it. Say a week in prime. 

• Fimbrystilis capillaris (Scirpus capillaris), that little scirpus turning yellowish in sandy soil, as our garden and Lupine Hill sand. Some time in prime. 

• Cyperus strigosus under Clamshell Hill, that yellowish fuzzy headed plant, five to twelve inches high, now apparently in prime. Also in Mrs. Hoar’s garden. 

• Also Cyperus phymatodes, very much like last, in Mrs. Hoar’s garden, which has little tubers at a distance from the base; apparently in prime. 

• Cyperus dentatus (?), with flat spikelets, under Solidago rigida Bank, apparently in prime; also Pout’s Nest, with round fascicles of leaves amid spikes. 

• Juncus scirpoides (?)[Is it not paradoxes? Vide Aug. 30] (polycephalus, many-headed of Bigelow), at Alder Ditch and in Great Meadows, etc., perhaps some time. 

• Andropogon furcatus, forked beard grass, Solidago rigida Bank, a slender grass three to seven feet high on dry soil, apparently in prime with digitate purple spikes, all over hillside behind Caesar’s. 

• Setaria glauca, glaucous panic grass, bottle grass, sometimes called fox-tail, tawny yellow, going to seed, Mrs. Hoar’s garden. 

• Setaria viridis, green bottle grass, in garden, some going to seed, but later than the last. These two I have called millet grass. 

• Aristida dichotomy  poverty grass, slender, curving, purplish, in tufts on sterile soil, looking White fuzzy as it goes to seed; apparently in prime.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 25, 1858

The note of a warbling vireo sounds very rare. See August 9, 1856 (“The notes of the wood pewee and warbling vireo are more prominent of late, and of the goldfinch twittering over.”)

My stub sail frightens a haymakers’ horse tied under a maple.

August 24.

August 24, 2018

Edward Hoar brings Cassia Chamoecrista from Greenport, L. I., which must have been out a good while. 

P. M. —Sail to Ball’s (?) Hill.

It is a strong but fitful northwest wind, stronger than before. Under my new sail the boat dashes off like a horse with the bits in his teeth. Coming into the main stream below the island, a sudden flaw strikes me, and in my efforts to keep the channel I run one side under, and so am compelled to beach my boat there and bail it. 

They are haying still in the Great Meadows; indeed, not half the grass is cut, I think. 

I am flattered because my stub sail frightens a haymakers’ horse tied under a maple while his masters are loading. His nostrils dilate; he snorts and tries to break loose. He eyes with terror this white wind steed. No wonder he is alarmed at my introducing such a competitor into the river meadows. Yet, large as my sail is, it being low I can scud down for miles through the very meadows in which dozens of haymakers are at work, and they may not detect me. 

The zizania is the greater part out of bloom; i. e., the yellowish-antlered (?) stamens are gone; the wind has blown them away. 

The Bidens Beckii has only begun a few days, it being rather high water. 

No hibiscus yet.

The white maples in a winding row along the river and the meadow’s edge are rounded hoary-white masses, as if they showed only the under sides of their leaves. Those which have been changed by water are less bright than a week ago. They now from this point (Abner Buttrick’s shore) are a pale lake, mingling very agreeably with the taller hoary-white ones. This little color in the hoary meadow edging is very exhilarating to behold and the most memorable phenomenon of the day. It is as when quarters of peach of this color are boiled with white apple-quarters. Is this anything like murrey color? In some other lights it is more red or scarlet. 

Climbing the hill at the bend, I find Gerardia Pedicularia, apparently several days, or how long? 

Looking up and down the river this sunny, breezy afternoon, I distinguish men busily haying in gangs of four or five, revealed by their white shirts, some two miles below, toward Carlisle Bridge, and others still, further up the stream. They are up to their shoulders in the grassy sea, almost lost in it. I can just discern a few white specks in the shiny grass, where the most distant are at work. 

What an adventure, to get the hay from year to year from these miles on miles of river meadow! You see some carrying out the hay on poles, where it is too soft for cattle, and loaded carts are leaving the meadows for distant barns in the various towns that border on them. 

I look down a straight reach of water to the hill by Carlisle Bridge, —and this I can do at any season, — the longest reach we have. It is worth the while to come here for this prospect, — to see a part of earth so far away over the water that it appears islanded between two skies. If that place is real, then the places of my imagination are real. 

Desmodium Marylandicum apparently in prime along this Ball’s (?) Hill low shore, and apparently another kind, Dillenii (??) or rigidum (??), the same. These and lespedezas now abound in dry places. 

Carrion flower fruit is blue; how long? 

Squirrels have eaten hazelnuts and pitch pine cones for some days. Now and of late we remember hazel bushes, —we become aware of such a fruit-bearing bush. They have their turn, and every clump and hedge seems composed of them. The burs begin to look red on their edges. 

I notice, in the river, opposite the end of the meadow path, great masses of ranunculus stems, etc., two or three feet through by a rod or more long, which look as if they had been washed or rolled aside by the wind and waves, amid the potamogeton. 

I have just read of a woodchuck that came to a boat on Long Island Sound to be taken in! 

Pipes (Equisetum limosum) are brown and half-withered along the river, where they have been injured by water.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 24, 1858

The Bidens Beckii has only begun a few days, it being rather high water. See August 1, 1859 ("The B. Beckii (just beginning to bloom) just shows a few green leafets above its dark and muddy masses, now that the river is low."); August 2, 1856("Very common now are the few green emerald leafets of the Bidens Beckii, which will ere long yellow the shallow parts."); August 9, 1856 ("All the Bidens Beckii is drowned too, and will be delayed, if not exterminated for this year."); August 11, 1853 ("The weeds still covered by the flood, so that we have no Bidens Beckii."); August 12, 1854 ("The Bidens Beckii yellows the side of the river just below the Hubbard Path, but is hardly yet in fullest flower generally."); September 12, 1859 (" much of the Beckii was drowned by the rise of the river");  September 14, 1854 ("The Bidens Beckii is drowned or dried up, and has given place to  the great bidens, the flower and ornament of the riversides at present, and now in its glory, "); September 18, 1856 ("On account of freshet I have seen no Bidens Beckii");  September 25, 1852 ("Found the Bidens Beckii (?) September 1st"); October 20, 1856 ("Owing to the great height of the river, there has been no Bidens Beckii . . . this year,") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Bidens Beckii

Bidens cernua Large-flowered bidens,
or beggar-ticks,or bur-marigold,
now abundant by riverside.
September 19, 1851

 a straight reach of water to the hill by Carlisle Bridge, —— the longest reach we have. See April 10, 1852("This meadow is about two miles long at one view from Carlisle Bridge southward, appearing to wash the base of Pine hill, and it is about as much longer northward and from a third to a half a mile wide."); April 24, 1852 ("The water is still over the causeway on both sides of Carlisle Bridge for a long distance. It is a straight flood now for about four miles")

I look down a straight reach of water to see a part of earth so far away over the water that it appears islanded between two skies. If that place is real, then the places of my imagination are real. See August 23, 1851 ("Our little river reaches are not to be forgotten. I noticed that seen northward on the Assabet from the Causeway Bridge near the second stone bridge. There was [a] man in a boat in the sun, just disappearing in the distance round a bend, lifting high his arms and dipping his paddle as if he were a vision bound to land of the blessed, — far off, as in picture. When I see Concord to purpose, I see it as if it were not real but painted,")

I distinguish men busily haying in gangs of four or five, revealed by their white shirts. See August 18, 1854 ("Men in their white shirts look taller and larger than near at hand.");  See also July 30, 1856 ("I saw haymakers at work dressed simply in a straw hat, boots, shirt, and pantaloons, the shirt worn like a frock over their pants. The laborer cannot endure the contact with his clothes."); August 3, 1859 ("The haymakers are quite busy on the Great Meadows, it being drier than usual. It being remote from public view, some of them work in their shirts or half naked. "); August 5, 1854 ("I find that we are now in the midst of the meadow-haying season, and almost every meadow or section of a meadow has its band of half a dozen mowers and rakers, either bending to their manly work with regular and graceful motion.")

I sometimes remember something which I have told another as worth telling to myself.

August 23. 

Cooler than ever. Some must have fires, and I close my window. 

P. M. —Britton’s camp via Hubbard’s Close. 

The rhexia in the field west of Clintonia Swamp makes a great show now, though a little past prime. 

I go through the swamp, wading through the luxuriant cinnamon fern, which has complete possession of the swamp floor. Its great fronds, curving this way and that, remind me [of] a tropical vegetation. They are as high as my head and about a foot wide; may stand higher than my head without being stretched out. They grow in tufts of a dozen, so close that their fronds interlace and form one green waving mass. There in the swamp cellar under the maples. A forest of maples rises from a forest of ferns. My clothes are covered with the pale-brown wool which I have rubbed off their stems.

See an abundance of pine-sap on the right of Pine-sap Path. It is almost all erect, some eight to nine inches high, and all effete there. Some stems are reddish. It lifts the leaves with it like the Indian-pipe, but is not so delicate as that. The Indian-pipe is still pushing up.

Everywhere in woods and swamps I am already reminded of the fall. 

I see the spotted sarsaparilla leaves and brakes, and, in swamps, the withering and blackened skunk-cabbage and hellebore, and, by the river, the already blackening pontederias and pipes. 

There is no plateau on which Nature rests at midsummer, but she instantly commences the descent to winter.

I see a golden-crowned thrush, but it is silent except a chip; sitting low on a twig near the main stem of a tree, in these deep woods.

High blackberries now in their prime, their great racemes of shining black fruit, mixed with red and green, bent over amid the sweet-fern and sumach on sunny hill sides, or growing more rankly with larger fruit by rich roadsides and in lower ground. 

The chewink note of a chewink (not common), also a cuckoo’s note.

Smooth sumach berries all turned crimson. This fruit is now erect spear-heads, rising from the ample dark-green, unspotted leaves, pointing in various directions. 

I see dense patches of the pearly everlasting, maintaining their ground in the midst of dense green sweet-fern, a striking contrast of snow-white and green. 

Viburnum nudum berries, apparently but a day or two. 

Epilobium angustifolium is abundantly shedding its downy seed, — wands of white and pink. 

Emerson says that he and Agassiz and Company broke some dozens of ale-bottles, one after another, with their bullets, in the Adirondack country, using them for marks! It sounds rather Cockneyish. He says that he shot a peetweet for Agassiz, and this, I think he said, was the first game he ever bagged. He carried a double-barrelled gun, —rifle and shotgun, — which he bought for the purpose, which he says received much commendation, — all parties thought it a very pretty piece. 

Think of Emerson shooting a peetweet (with shot) for Agassiz, and cracking an ale-bottle (after emptying it) with his rifle at six rods! They cut several pounds of lead out of the tree. It is just what Mike Saunders, the merchant’s clerk, did when he was there.  

The writer needs the suggestion and correction that a correspondent or companion is. I sometimes remember something which I have told another as worth telling to myself, i.e. writing in my Journal. 

Channing, thinking of walks and life in the country, says, “You don’t want to discover anything new, but to discover something old,” i.e. be reminded that such things still are.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 23, 1858

There is no plateau on which Nature rests at midsummer, but she instantly commences the descent to winter. See August 5, 1854 ("It is one long acclivity from winter to midsummer and another long declivity from midsummer to winter."); August 19, 1851("Nature rests no longer at her culminating point than at any other. If you are not out at the right instant, the summer may go by and you not see it.”); August 23. 1853 ("Observing the blackness of the foliage, especially between me and the light, I am reminded that. .  now the dark green, or early afternoon, when shadows begin to increase")

High blackberries now in their prime. See August 23, 1856 ("Now for high blackberries"); and note to August 31, 1857 ("An abundance of fine high blackberries behind Britton's old camp on the Lincoln road, now in their prime there, which have been overlooked. Is it not our richest fruit?")

I see dense patches of the pearly everlasting, maintaining their ground in the midst of dense green sweet-fern, a striking contrast of snow-white and green. See August 23, 1856 ("I see a bed of Antennaria margaritacea, now in its prime, by the railroad, and very handsome. . . . dense pearly masses of flowers covered with bees and butterflies")

The boat is like a plow drawn by a winged bull.

August 22. 

P. M. — I have spliced my old sail to a new one, and now go out to try it in a sail to Baker Farm. It is a “square sail,” some five feet by six. I like it much. It pulls like an ox, and makes me think there’s more wind abroad than there is. 

The yard goes about with a pleasant force, almost enough, I would fain imagine, to knock me overboard. 

How sturdily it pulls, shooting us along, catching more wind than I knew to be wandering in this river valley! It suggests a new power in the sail, like a Grecian god. I can even worship it, after a heathen fashion. And then, how it becomes my boat and the river, — a simple homely square sail, all for use not show, so low and broad! Ajacean. 

The boat is like a plow drawn by a winged bull. If I had had this a dozen years ago, my voyages would have been performed more quickly and easily. But then probably I should have lived less in them. I land on a remote shore at an unexpectedly early hour, and have time for a long walk there. Before, my sail was so small that I was wont to raise the mast with the sail on it ready set, but now I have had to rig some tackling with which to haul up the sail. 

As for the beauty of the river’s brim: now that the mikania begins to prevail the button-bush has done, the pontederia is waning, and the willows are already some what crisped and imbrowned (though the last may be none the worse for it); lilies, too, are as good as gone. So perhaps I should say that the brim of the river was in its prime about the 1st of August this year, when the pontederia and button-bush and white lilies were in their glory. 

The cyperus (phgmatodes, etc.) now yellows edges of pools and half-bare low grounds. 

See one or two blue herons every day now, driving them far up or down the river before me. 

I see a mass of bur-reed, etc., which the wind and waves are sweeping down-stream. The higher water and wind thus clear the river for us. 

At Baker Farm a large bird rose up near us, which at first I took for a hen-hawk, but it appeared larger. It screamed the same, and finally soared higher and higher till it was almost lost amid the clouds, or could scarcely be distinguished except when it was seen against some white and glowing cumulus. I think it was at least half a mile high, or three quarters, and yet I distinctly heard it scream up there each time it came round, and with my glass saw its head steadily bent toward the ground, looking for its prey. 

Its head, seen in a proper light, was distinctly whitish, and I suspect it may have been a white headed eagle. It did not once flap its wings up there, as it circled and sailed, though I watched it for nearly a mile. How fit that these soaring birds should be haughty and fierce, not like doves to our race!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 22, 1858

The boat is like a plow drawn by a winged bull.  See August 24, 1858 ("Under my new sail the boat dashes off like a horse with the bits in his teeth."). See also  July 29, 1851 ("The boat is such a living creature, even this clumsy one sailing within five points of the wind. The sailboat is an admirable invention, by which you compel the wind to transport you even against itself. It is easier to guide than a horse; the slightest pressure on the tiller suffices. I think the inventor must have been greatly surprised, as well as delighted, at the success of his experiment."); May 8, 1854 ("I look round with a thrill on this bright fluctuating surface on which no man can walk, whereon is no trace of footstep, unstained as glass. I feel exhilaration, mingled with a slight awe, as I drive before this strong wind over the great black-backed waves, cutting through them, and hear their surging and feel them toss me."); April 29, 1856 ("It is flattering to a sense of power to make the wayward wind our horse and sit with our hand on the tiller. Sailing is much like flying, and from the birth of our race men have been charmed by it.")

Now that the mikania begins to prevail, the button-bush has done [and] the pontederia is waning ...I should say that the brim of the river was in its prime about the 1st of August this year, when the pontederia and button-bush and white lilies were in their glory. See September 7, 1857 ("It occurred to me some weeks ago that the river-banks were not quite perfect. It is too late then, when the mikania is in bloom, because the pads are so much eaten then.")

See one or two blue herons every day now. See August 19, 1858 ("The blue heron has within a week reappeared in our meadows,"); August 22, 1854 ("See a blue heron — apparently a young bird, of a brownish blue — fly up . . . and the feathers they had shed, — some of the long, narrow white neck-feathers of the heron. The tracks of the heron are about six inches long.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Blue Heron