April 17.
Stood by the riverside early this morning. The water has been rising during the night. The sun has been shining on it half an hour. It is quite placid. The village smokes are seen against the long hill. And now I see the river also is awakening, a slight ripple beginning to appear on its surface. It wakens like the village. It proves a beautiful day, and I see that glimmering or motion in the air just above the fields, which we associate with heat. . . .
Observed in the second of the chain of ponds between Fair Haven and Walden a large (for the pond) island patch of the dwarf andromeda, I sitting on the east bank; its fine brownish-red color very agreeable and memorable to behold.
In the last long pond, looking at it from the south, I saw it filled with a slightly grayish shrub which I took for the sweet-gale, but when I had got round to the east side, chancing to turn round, I was surprised to see that all this pond-hole also was filled with the same warm brownish-red-colored andromeda.
The fact was I was opposite to the sun, but from every other position I saw only the sun reflected from the surface of the andromeda leaves, which gave the whole a grayish-brown hue tinged with red; but from this position alone I saw, as it were, through the leaves which the opposite sun lit up, giving to the whole this charming warm, what I call Indian, red color, — the mellowest, the ripest, red imbrowned color; but when I looked to the right or left, i. e. north or south, the more the swamp had the mottled light or grayish aspect where the light was reflected from the surfaces of the leaves.
And afterward, when I had risen higher up the hill, though still opposite the sun, the light came reflected upward from the surfaces, and I lost that warm, rich red tinge, surpassing cathedral windows. Let me look again at a different hour of the day, and see if it is really so.
It is a very interesting piece of magic. . . .
The pond is still half covered with ice, and it will take another day like this to empty it. It is clear up tight to the shore on the south side, — dark-gray cold ice, completely saturated with water. The air from over it is very cold.
The scent of the earliest spring flowers! I smelt the willow catkins to-day, tender and innocent after this rude winter, yet slightly sickening, yet full of vernal promise.
This odor, — how unlike anything that winter affords, or nature has afforded this six months! A mild, sweet, vernal scent, not highly spiced and intoxicating, as some ere long, but attractive to bees, — that early yellow smell. The odor of spring, of life developing amid buds, of the earth's epithalamium.
The first flowers are not the highest-scented, — as catkins, as the first birds are not the finest singers, blackbirds and song sparrows, etc. The beginnings of the year are humble. But though this fragrance is not rich, it contains and prophesies all others in it.
The leaves of the Veratrum viride, American hellebore, now just pushing up.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 17, 1852
Let me look again at a different hour of the day, and see if it is really so. It is a very interesting piece of magic. See April 19 1852 (".The thing that pleases me most within these three days is the discovery of the andromeda phenomenon . .... It is a natural magic. These little leaves are the stained windows in the cathedral of my world.”); January 10,1855 ("As I go toward the sun now at 4 P. M., the translucent leaves are lit up by it and appear of a soft red, more or less brown, like cathedral windows, but when I look back from the sun, the whole bed appears merely gray and brown or less reddish.”); May 5, 1855 ("I can neither get the red cathedral-window light looking toward the now westering sun in a most favorable position, nor the gray colors in the other direction, but it is all a grayish green."); November 24, 1857 (“Looking toward the sun, the andromeda in front of me is a very warm red brown and on either side of me, a pale silvery brown; looking from the sun, a uniform pale brown.”) See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Andromeda Phenomenon
The pond is still half covered with ice, and it will take another day like this to empty it. See April 19, 1852 ("Walden is clear of ice. The ice left it yesterday, then, the 18th") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ice-Out
Observed in the second of the chain of ponds between Fair Haven and Walden a large (for the pond) island patch of the dwarf andromeda, I sitting on the east bank; its fine brownish-red color very agreeable and memorable to behold.
In the last long pond, looking at it from the south, I saw it filled with a slightly grayish shrub which I took for the sweet-gale, but when I had got round to the east side, chancing to turn round, I was surprised to see that all this pond-hole also was filled with the same warm brownish-red-colored andromeda.
The fact was I was opposite to the sun, but from every other position I saw only the sun reflected from the surface of the andromeda leaves, which gave the whole a grayish-brown hue tinged with red; but from this position alone I saw, as it were, through the leaves which the opposite sun lit up, giving to the whole this charming warm, what I call Indian, red color, — the mellowest, the ripest, red imbrowned color; but when I looked to the right or left, i. e. north or south, the more the swamp had the mottled light or grayish aspect where the light was reflected from the surfaces of the leaves.
And afterward, when I had risen higher up the hill, though still opposite the sun, the light came reflected upward from the surfaces, and I lost that warm, rich red tinge, surpassing cathedral windows. Let me look again at a different hour of the day, and see if it is really so.
It is a very interesting piece of magic. . . .
The pond is still half covered with ice, and it will take another day like this to empty it. It is clear up tight to the shore on the south side, — dark-gray cold ice, completely saturated with water. The air from over it is very cold.
The scent of the earliest spring flowers! I smelt the willow catkins to-day, tender and innocent after this rude winter, yet slightly sickening, yet full of vernal promise.
This odor, — how unlike anything that winter affords, or nature has afforded this six months! A mild, sweet, vernal scent, not highly spiced and intoxicating, as some ere long, but attractive to bees, — that early yellow smell. The odor of spring, of life developing amid buds, of the earth's epithalamium.
The first flowers are not the highest-scented, — as catkins, as the first birds are not the finest singers, blackbirds and song sparrows, etc. The beginnings of the year are humble. But though this fragrance is not rich, it contains and prophesies all others in it.
The leaves of the Veratrum viride, American hellebore, now just pushing up.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 17, 1852
The chain of ponds between Fair Haven and Walden. See April 19 1852 ("Crossed by the chain of ponds to Walden. The first, looking back, appears elevated high above Fair Haven between the hills above the swamp, and the next higher yet. Each is distinct, a wild and interesting pond with its musquash house."); December 5, 1852 ("Walden has no visible inlet nor outlet, but it is on the one hand distantly and indirectly related to Flint's Pond, which is more elevated, by a chain of small ponds coming from that quarter, and on the other hand directly and manifestly related to Concord River, which is lower, by a similar chain of ponds, through which in some other geological period it may have flowed"); November 24, 1857 ("These andromeda swamps charmed me more than twenty years ago, — I knew not why, — and I called them “a moccasin-print.”")
Let me look again at a different hour of the day, and see if it is really so. It is a very interesting piece of magic. See April 19 1852 (".The thing that pleases me most within these three days is the discovery of the andromeda phenomenon . .... It is a natural magic. These little leaves are the stained windows in the cathedral of my world.”); January 10,1855 ("As I go toward the sun now at 4 P. M., the translucent leaves are lit up by it and appear of a soft red, more or less brown, like cathedral windows, but when I look back from the sun, the whole bed appears merely gray and brown or less reddish.”); May 5, 1855 ("I can neither get the red cathedral-window light looking toward the now westering sun in a most favorable position, nor the gray colors in the other direction, but it is all a grayish green."); November 24, 1857 (“Looking toward the sun, the andromeda in front of me is a very warm red brown and on either side of me, a pale silvery brown; looking from the sun, a uniform pale brown.”) See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Andromeda Phenomenon
False Hellebore. April 28, 2019
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