Monday. P. M.— To C. Smith's Hill.
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| September 27, 2019 |
The flashing clearness of the atmosphere. More light appears to be reflected from the earth, less absorbed.
Green lice are still on the birches.
At Saw Mill Brook many finely cut and flat ferns are faded whitish and very handsome, as if pressed, — very delicate.
White oak acorns edible. Everywhere the squirrels are trying the nuts in good season.
The touch-me-not seed-vessels go off like pistols, — shoot their seeds off like bullets. They explode in my hat.
The arum berries are now in perfection, cone-shaped spikes an inch and a half long, of scarlet or vermilion- colored, irregular, somewhat pear-shaped berries springing from a purplish core. They are exactly the color of bright sealing-wax, or, I believe, the painted tortoise's shell; on club-shaped peduncles. The changed leaves of this are delicately white, especially beneath. Here and there lies prostrate on the damp leaves or ground this conspicuous red spike.
The medeola berries are common now, and the large red berries of the panicled Solomon's-seal.
It must have been a turtle dove that eyed me so near, turned its head sideways to me for a fair view, looking with a St. Vitus twitching of its neck, as if to recover its balance on an unstable perch, — that is their way.
From Smith's Hill I looked toward the mountain line.
Who can believe that the mountain peak which he beholds fifty miles off in the horizon, rising far and faintly blue above an intermediate range, while he stands on his trivial native hills or in the dusty high way, can be the same with that which he looked up at once near at hand from a gorge in the midst of primitive woods?
For a part of two days I travelled across lots once, loitering by the way, through primitive wood and swamps over the highest peak of the Peterboro Hills to Monadnock, by ways from which all landlords and stage-drivers endeavored to dissuade us. It was not a month ago.
But now that I look across the globe in an instant to the dim Monadnock peak, and these familiar fields and copsewoods appear to occupy the greater part of the interval, I cannot realize that Joe Eavely's house still stands there at the base of the mountain, and all that long tramp through wild woods with invigorating scents before I got to it.
I cannot realize that on the tops of those cool blue ridges are in abundance berries still, bluer than themselves, as if they borrowed their blueness from their locality.
From the mountains we do not discern our native hills; but from our native hills we look out easily to the far blue mountains, which seem to preside over them.
As I look northwestward to that summit from a Concord corn field, how little can I realize all the life that is passing between me and it, — the retired up-country farmhouses, the lonely mills, wooded vales, wild rocky pastures, and new clearings on stark mountain-sides, and rivers murmuring through primitive woods!
All these, and how much more, I overlook. I see the very peak, — there can be no mistake, — but how much I do not see, that is between me and it! How much I overlook! In this way we see stars.
What is it but a faint blue cloud, a mist that may vanish?
But what is it, on the other hand, to one who has travelled to it day after day, has threaded the forest and climbed the hills that are between this and that, has tasted the raspberries or the blueberries that grow on it, and the springs that gush from it, has been wearied with climbing its rocky sides, felt the coolness of its summit, and been lost in the clouds there?
When I could sit in a cold chamber muffled in a cloak each evening till Thanksgiving time, warmed by my own thoughts, the world was not so much with me.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 27, 1852
The arum berries are now in perfection, cone-shaped spikes an inch and a half long, of scarlet or vermilion- colored, irregular, somewhat pear-shaped berries springing from a purplish core. See September 28, 1856 (“The arum berries are still fresh and abundant, perhaps in their prime. . . .It is one of the most remarkable and dazzling, if not the handsomest, fruits we have.”)
The medeola berries are common now. See May 25, 1852 ("Medeola or cucumber-root in bud, with its two-storied whorl of leaves. "); July 24, 1853 ("The medeola is still in flower, though with large green berries"); August 26, 1859 ("Some medeola is quite withered. Perhaps they are somewhat frost-bitten. "); August 27, 1851 ("The Medeola Virginica, cucumber-root, the whorl-leaved plant, is now in green fruit"); September 1. 1856 ("A few medeola berries ripe"); September 2, 1853 ("The medeola berries are now dull glossy and almost blue-black; about three, on slender threads one inch long, arising in the midst of the cup formed by the purple bases of the whorl of three upper leaves."); September 3, 1853 ("To fill my basket with the neglected but beautiful fruit of the various species of cornels and viburnums, poke, arum, medeola, thorns, etc. Berries which are as beautiful as flowers, but far less known, the fruit of the flower"); September 11, 1859 ('September is the month when various small, and commonly inedible, berries in cymes and clusters hang over the roadsides and along the walls and fences, or spot the forest floor").; September 18, 1859 ("How little observed are the fruits which we do not use!"); October 6, 1858 ("The medeola leaves are a pale straw-color with a crimson centre; perhaps getting stale now.")
The large red berries of the panicled Solomon's-seal. See October 20, 1852 ("The small red Solomon's-seal berries spot the ground here and there amid the dry leaves. ")
From Smith's Hill I looked toward the mountain line. See June 3, 1850 ("The most imposing horizons are those which are seen from tops of hills rising out of a river valley. . . . The landscape is a vast amphitheatre rising to its rim in the horizon."); September 12, 1851 ("It is worth the while to see the mountains in the horizon once a day"); November 11, 1851 ("The horizon has one kind of beauty and attraction to him who has never explored the hills and mountains in it, and another ... to him who has."); August 2, 1852 ("In many moods it is cheering to look across hence to that blue rim of the earth, and be reminded of the invisible towns and communities, for the most part also unremembered, which lie in the further and deeper hollows between me and those hills. . . , and be reminded how many brave and contented lives are lived between me and the horizon. . . . These hills extend our plot of earth; they make our native valley or indentation in the earth so much the larger."); August 5, 1852 (" From Smith's Hill beyond, there is as good a view of the mountains as from any place in our neighbor hood, because you look across the broad valley in which Concord lies first of all. The foreground is on a larger scale and more proportionate. The Peterboro Hills are to us as good as mountains. Hence, too, I see that fair river-reach, in the north."): March 31, 1853 ("It is affecting to see a distant mountain-top,. . . still as blue and ethereal to your eyes as is your memory of it.'); February 6, 1854 ("I see great shadows on the northeast sides of the mountains, forty miles off, the sun being in the southwest."); August 14, 1854 (“I have come forth to this hill at sunset to see the forms of the mountains in the horizon.— to behold and commune with something grander than man. “); December 8, 1854 ("Why do the mountains never look so fair as from my native fields?"); October 22, 1857 ("But what a perfect crescent of mountains we have in our northwest horizon! Do we ever give thanks for it? "); November 4, 1857 (" But those grand and glorious mountains, how impossible to remember daily that they are there, and to live accordingly! They are meant to be a perpetual reminder to us, pointing out the way."): March 28, 1858 ("turning my glass toward the mountains, 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"); May 17, 1858 ("I doubt if in the landscape there can be anything finer than a distant mountain-range. They are a constant elevating influence.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, On Smith's Hill; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Mountains in the Horizon
I cannot realize that on the tops of those cool blue ridges are in abundance berries still, bluer than themselves, as if they borrowed their blueness from their locality. See August 5, 1860 ("When we behold this summit at this season of the year, far away and blue in the horizon, we may think of the blueberries as blending their color with the general blueness of the mountain.")
From Smith's Hill I looked toward the mountain line. See June 3, 1850 ("The most imposing horizons are those which are seen from tops of hills rising out of a river valley. . . . The landscape is a vast amphitheatre rising to its rim in the horizon."); September 12, 1851 ("It is worth the while to see the mountains in the horizon once a day"); November 11, 1851 ("The horizon has one kind of beauty and attraction to him who has never explored the hills and mountains in it, and another ... to him who has."); August 2, 1852 ("In many moods it is cheering to look across hence to that blue rim of the earth, and be reminded of the invisible towns and communities, for the most part also unremembered, which lie in the further and deeper hollows between me and those hills. . . , and be reminded how many brave and contented lives are lived between me and the horizon. . . . These hills extend our plot of earth; they make our native valley or indentation in the earth so much the larger."); August 5, 1852 (" From Smith's Hill beyond, there is as good a view of the mountains as from any place in our neighbor hood, because you look across the broad valley in which Concord lies first of all. The foreground is on a larger scale and more proportionate. The Peterboro Hills are to us as good as mountains. Hence, too, I see that fair river-reach, in the north."): March 31, 1853 ("It is affecting to see a distant mountain-top,. . . still as blue and ethereal to your eyes as is your memory of it.'); February 6, 1854 ("I see great shadows on the northeast sides of the mountains, forty miles off, the sun being in the southwest."); August 14, 1854 (“I have come forth to this hill at sunset to see the forms of the mountains in the horizon.— to behold and commune with something grander than man. “); December 8, 1854 ("Why do the mountains never look so fair as from my native fields?"); October 22, 1857 ("But what a perfect crescent of mountains we have in our northwest horizon! Do we ever give thanks for it? "); November 4, 1857 (" But those grand and glorious mountains, how impossible to remember daily that they are there, and to live accordingly! They are meant to be a perpetual reminder to us, pointing out the way."): March 28, 1858 ("turning my glass toward the mountains, 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"); May 17, 1858 ("I doubt if in the landscape there can be anything finer than a distant mountain-range. They are a constant elevating influence.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, On Smith's Hill; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Mountains in the Horizon
I cannot realize that on the tops of those cool blue ridges are in abundance berries still, bluer than themselves, as if they borrowed their blueness from their locality. See August 5, 1860 ("When we behold this summit at this season of the year, far away and blue in the horizon, we may think of the blueberries as blending their color with the general blueness of the mountain.")
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