July 24.
Sunday. 4.30 A. M. – By boat to Island.
Robins, larks, peawais, etc., as in the spring, at this hour.
The mikania to-morrow or next day.
The zizania, some days.
The low, front-rank polygonums are still imbrowned in many places; as I think, have not recovered from the effect of late frosts.
Mr. Pratt asked me to what animal a spine and broken skull found in the wall of James Adams’s shop belonged, — within the partition.
I found by its having but two kinds of teeth, and they incisive and molar, that it belonged to the order Rodentia, which, with us, consists of the Beaver, Hare, Rat ( including squirrels ), and Porcupine families.
From its having “ incisors 3, molars 3 ” and “ molars with a flat crown and zigzag plates of enamel, ” I knew it to be a muskrat, which probably got into the building at a time of high water.
The molars appeared like one long tooth, their flat, smooth tops zigzagged with the edges of hard plates of 1 in this and some but after looking long and sharply with a microscope, though on the side I could not distinguish the separate teeth, I made out, by tracing about the edges of the enamel which intertwined and m broke joints curiously for strength, three separate inclosures, and, with full faith in this and in science, I told Pratt it was a muskrat, and gave him my proofs; but he could not distinguish the three molars even with a glass, or was still plainly uncertain, for he had thought them one tooth, when, taking his pincers, he pulled one out and was convinced, much to his and to my satisfaction and our confidence in science ! How very hard must be the teeth of this animal whose food is clams!
What keeps his incisors so sharp?
Look at this strong head, with its upper jaw and incisor curved somewhat like a turtle’s beak.
What an apparatus for cutting, holding, crushing ! What a trap to be caught in ! It is amusing to think what grists have come to this mill, though now the upper and nether stones fall loosely apart, and the brain-chamber above, where the miller lodged, is now empty ( passing under the portcullis of the incisors ), and the windows are gone.
With or without reason, I find myself associating with the idea of summer a certain cellar-like coolness, resulting from the depth of shadows and the luxuriance of foliage.
I think that after this date the crops never suffer so severely from drought as in June, because of their foliage shading the ground and producing dews.
We had fog this morning, and no doubt often the last three weeks, which my surveying has prevented my getting up to see.
It is the palmer-worm which has attacked the apple trees this year.
Surveying one very hot day, a week or two ago, and having occasion to strip a sapling of its bark, I was surprised to observe how cool the freshly exposed and sappy wood was, as if it extracted coolness from the cool cellars of the earth.
Sophia's Viola pedata, taken up in the spring, blossomed again a day or two ago.
I perceive the peculiar scent of corn-fields.
Yesterday a dew-like, gentle summer rain.
You scarcely know if you are getting wet.
At least two kinds of grass as tall as the zizania have preceded it along the river.
One has long since gone to seed, and looks flavid or yellowish now.
The other is still in blossom, its chaff ( ? ) being remarkably and regularly on one side of the glume (?).
For a week or more I have perceived that the evenings were considerably longer and of some account to sit down and write in.
Ate an early-harvest apple of my own raising yesterday; not quite ripe.
The scent of some very early ones which I have passed in my walks, imparting some ripeness to the year, has excited me somewhat.
It affects me like a performance, a poem, a thing done; and all the year is not a mere promise of Nature’s.
How far behind the spring seems now, — farther off, perhaps, than ever, for this heat and dryness is most opposed to spring.
Where most I sought for flowers in April and May I do not think to go now; it is either drought and barrenness or fall there now.
The reign of moisture is long since over.
For a long time the year feels the influence of the snows of winter and the long rains of spring, but now how changed! It is like another and a fabulous age to look back on, when earth’s veins were full of moisture, and violets burst out on every hillside.
Spring is the reign of water; summer, of heat and dryness; winter, of cold.
Whole families of plants that lately flourished have disappeared.
Now the phenomena are tropical.
Let our summer last long enough, and our land would wear the aspect of the tropics.
The luxuriant foliage and growth of all kinds shades the earth and is con verting every copse into a jungle.
Vegetation is rampant.
There is not such rapid growth, it is true, but it slumbers like a serpent that has swallowed its prey.
Summer is one long drought.
Rain is the exception.
All the signs of it fail, for it is dry weather.
Though’it may seem so, the current year is not peculiar in this respect.
It is a slight labor to keep count of all the showers, the rainy days, of a summer.
You may keep it on your thumb nail.
P. M.--To Corner Spring and Fair Haven Hill.
Mimulus ringens at Heywood Brook, probably several days.
The fruit of the skunk-cabbage is turned black.
At Hubbard’s Bathing-Place I tread on clams all across the river in mid-channel, flattening them down, for they are on their edges.
The small linear leaved hypericum (H. Canadense) shows red capsules.
The black choke-berry, probably some days.
The dark indigo-blue (Sophia says), waxy, and like blue china blue berries of the clintonia are already well ripe. For some time, then, though a few are yet green. They are numerous near the edge of Hubbard’s lower meadow. They are in clusters of half a dozen on brittle stems eight or ten inches high, oblong or squarish round, the size of large peas with a dimple atop.
Seen thus, above the handsome, regular green leaves which are still perfect in form and color and which, here growing close together, checker the ground, and also in the dense shade of the copse, there is something peculiarly celestial about them. This is the plant’s true flower, for which it has preserved its leaves fresh and unstained so long.
Eupatorium pubescens at Hubbard’s burnt meadow.
There is much near his grove.
Also Epilobium molle there (put it with the coloratum), and coloratum and the common still in blossom.
There is erechthites there, budded.
Also Lysimachia ciliata and, by the causeway near, the ovate-leaved, quite distinct from the lanceolate, — I think not so early as the last.
At the Corner Spring the berries of the trillium are already pink.
The medeola is still in flower, though with large green berries.
The swamp-pink still blooms and the morning-glory is quite fresh; it is a pure white, like a lady’s morning gown.
The aspect of vegetation about the spring reminds me of fall.
The angelica, skunk-cabbage, trillium, arum, and the lodged and flattened grass are all phenomena of the fall.
A spikenard just beyond the spring has already pretty large green berries, though a few flowers. Say July 10th.
It is a great plant, six feet high, seven long, with the largest pinnate leaves of this kind I think of. More than two feet by two, with single leafets eleven inches by nine.
The two-leaved convallaria and the Smilacina racemosa show ripening clusters.
I hear incessantly a cricket or locust, inspired by the damp, cool shade, telling of autumn.
I have not observed it more than a week.
Scutellaria galericulata, maybe some time.
The berries of the Vaccinium vacillans are very abundant and large this year on Fair Haven, where I am now.
Indeed these and huckleberries and blackberries are very abundant in this part of the town.
Nature does her best to feed man.
The traveller need not go out of the road to get as many as he wants; every bush and vine teems with palatable fruit.
Man for once stands in such relation to Nature as the animals that pluck and eat as they go.
The fields and bills are a table constantly spread.
Wines of all kinds and qualiities, of noblest vintage, are bottled up in the skins of countless berries, for the taste of men and animals.
To men they seem offered not so much for food as for sociality, that they may picnic with Nature, — diet drinks, cordials, wines.
We pluck and eat in remembrance of Her.
It is a sacrament, a communion.
The not-forbidden fruits, which no serpent tempts us to taste.
Slight and innocent savors, which relate us to Nature, make us her guests and entitle us to her regard and protection.
It is a Saturnalia, and we quaff her wines at every turn.
This season of berrying is so far respected that the children have a vacation to pick berries, and women and children who never visit distant hills and fields and swamps on any other errand are seen making baste thither now, with half their domestic utensils in their hands.
The woodchopper goes into the swamp for fuel in the winter; his wife and children for berries in the summer.
The late rose, — R. Carolina, swamp rose, – I think has larger and longer leaves; at any rate they are duller above (light beneath), and the bushes higher.
The shaggy hazelnuts now greet the eye, always an agreeable sight to me, with which when a boy I used to take the stains of berries out of my hands and mouth.
These and green grapes are found at berry time.
High blueberries, when thick and large, bending the twigs, are a very handsome cool, rich, acid berry.
On Fair Haven a quarter of an hour before sunset.
— How fortunate and glorious that our world is not roofed in, but open like a Roman house, — our skylight so broad and open! We do not climb the hills in vain.
It is no crystal palace we dwell in.
The windows of the sky are always open, and the storms blow in at them.
The field sparrow sings with that varied strain.
The night wind rises.
On the eastern side of this hill it is already twilight.
The air is cooler and clearer.
The mountains which were almost invisible grow more distinct.
The various heights of our hills are plainly shown by the more or less of the mountain bases seen * from them.
The atmosphere of the western horizon is impurpled, tingeing the mountains.
A golden sheen is reflected from the river so brightly that it dazzles me as much as the sun.
The now silver-plated river is burnished gold there, and in midst of all I see a boat ascending with regular dip of its seemingly gilt oars.
That which appears a strip of smooth, light silvery water on each side of the stream, not reflecting the sky, is the reflection of light from the pads.
From their edges, there stream into the smooth channel sharp blue serrations or ripples of various lengths, sometimes nearly across, where seemingly a zephyr gliding off the pads strikes it.
A boy is looking after his cows, calling “ker ker ker ker,” impatient to go home.
The sun is passing under the portcullis of the west.
The nighthawk squeaks, and the chewink jingles his strain, and the wood thrush; but I think there is no loud and general serenade from the birds.
I hear no veery.
How much more swiftly the sun seems to perform the morning and evening portions of his journey, when he is nearest his starting-place or goal!
He is now almost ready to dip, — a round red disk shorn of his beams, — his head shaved like a captive led forth for execution.
Meanwhile the night is rapidly gathering her forces in deepening lines of shade under the east side of the willow causeway and the woods.
Now the sun has dipped into the western ocean.
He is one half below the horizon, and I see lines of distinct forest trees, miles and miles away on some ridge, now revealed against his disk.
It takes many a western woodland — go far enough, a whole Iowa-to span it.
Now only the smallest segment of its sphere, like a coal of fire rising above the forest, is seen sending a rosy glow up the horizon sky.
The illustrious traveller with whom we have passed a memorable day has gone his way, and we return slowly to our castle of the night.
But for some minutes the glowing portal clouds are essentially unchanged.
Pycnanthemum muticum behind Wheeler’s cottages; put it with the earliest of its class
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 24, 1853
A golden sheen is reflected from the river so brightly that it dazzles me as much as the sun. See October 19 1855 ("if there were eyes enough to occupy all the east shore, the whole pond would be seen as one dazzling shimmering lake of melted gold.")
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