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
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| July 18, 2012 |
I first hear the locust sing
so dry and piercing
by the side of the pine woods
in the heat of the day
July 18, 1851
so dry and piercing
by the side of the pine woods
in the heat of the day
July 18, 1851
A crisis in the season
like midnight revealed
by bed-curtains shoved aside
a deepened shade
a sultry languid look --
hot midsummer day.
This hot afternoon
sheltered in shadow of ferns --
woodcock on cool mud.
July 18, 2014
If the sun rises on you slumbering, if you do not hear the morning cock-crow, if you do not witness the blushes of Aurora, if you are not acquainted with Venus as the morning star, what relation have you to your Creator? July 18, 1851
5 A. M. Whence these fogs and this increase of moisture in the air? The kingbird, song sparrows, and quail are lively. July 18, 1854.
There are dewy cob webs on the grass; so this is a fit morning for any adventure. It is one of those everlasting mornings, with cobwebs on the grass, which are provided for long enterprises. July 18, 1852
5 A. M. Whence these fogs and this increase of moisture in the air? The kingbird, song sparrows, and quail are lively. July 18, 1854.
There are dewy cob webs on the grass; so this is a fit morning for any adventure. It is one of those everlasting mornings, with cobwebs on the grass, which are provided for long enterprises. July 18, 1852
As we push away from Monroe's shore, the robins are singing and the swallows twittering. There is hardly a cloud in the sky. July 18, 1852
The river is now in all its glory, adorned with water-lilies on both sides. Walkers and sailers ordinarily come hither in the afternoon, when the lilies are shut, and so never see the river in its pride. July 18, 1852
We take a bath at Hubbard's Bend. The water seems fresher, as the air, in the morning. July 18, 1852
Again under weigh, we scare up the great bittern amid the pontederia, and, rowing to where he alights, come within three feet of him and scare him up again. He flies sluggishly away plowing the air with the coulter of his breast-bone, and alighting ever higher up the stream. We scare him up many times in the course of an hour. July 18, 1852
We take a bath at Hubbard's Bend. The water seems fresher, as the air, in the morning. July 18, 1852
Again under weigh, we scare up the great bittern amid the pontederia, and, rowing to where he alights, come within three feet of him and scare him up again. He flies sluggishly away plowing the air with the coulter of his breast-bone, and alighting ever higher up the stream. We scare him up many times in the course of an hour. July 18, 1852
Again scare up a woodcock, apparently seated or sheltered in shadow of ferns in the meadow on the cool mud in the hot afternoon. July 18, 1856.
These meadows, with their meandering stream, through whose weeds it is hard to push a boat, are very wild. The stake-driver and the virescens rise and go off with sluggish flight from time to time July 18, 1853.
These meadows, with their meandering stream, through whose weeds it is hard to push a boat, are very wild. The stake-driver and the virescens rise and go off with sluggish flight from time to time July 18, 1853.
By a natural law a river, instead of flowing straight through its meadows, meanders from side to side and fertilizes this side or that, and adorns its banks with flowers. The river has its active and its passive side, its right and left breast. July 18, 1852
You see almost everywhere on the muddy river bottom . . . the Utricularia vulgaris, with its black or green bladders, and the two lesser utricularias in many places July 18, 1856Three utricularias and perhaps the horned also common now. July 18, 1853
I do not know why the water should be so remarkably clear and the sun shine through to the bottom of the river, making it so plain. . . . On all sides, as I float along, the recesses of the water and the bottom are unusually revealed, and I see the fishes and weeds and shells. I look down into the sunny water. July 18, 1854
We see the sun shining on Fair Haven Hill behind a sun-born cloud, while we are in shadow, -- a misty golden light, yellow, fern-like, with shadows of clouds flitting across its slope, -- and horses in their pasture standing with outstretched necks to watch us; and now they dash up the steep in single file, as if to exhibit their limbs and mettle. July 18, 1852
The Asclepias Cornuti is abundantly visited nowadays by a large orange-brown butterfly with dark spots and with silver spots beneath. Wherever the asclepias grows you see them. July 18, 1860
Methinks the asters and goldenrods begin, like the early ripening leaves, with midsummer heats. Now look out for these children of the sun. July 18, 1854
Where I looked for early spring flowers I do not look for midsummer ones. July 18, 1854
Methinks the asters and goldenrods begin, like the early ripening leaves, with midsummer heats. Now look out for these children of the sun. July 18, 1854
Where I looked for early spring flowers I do not look for midsummer ones. July 18, 1854
Rhexia, a day or two. July 18, 1853
The petals of the rhexia have a beautiful clear purple with a violet tinge. July 18, 1852
The petals of the rhexia have a beautiful clear purple with a violet tinge. July 18, 1852
Now are the days to go a-berrying. July 18, 1853
As I go along the Joe Smith road, every bush and bramble bears its fruit; the sides of the road are a fruit garden; blackberries, huckleberries, thimble-berries, fresh and abundant, no signs of drought; all fruits in abundance; the earth teems. July 18, 1854.
I first hear the locust sing, so dry and piercing, by the side of the pine woods in the heat of the day. July 18, 1851
A hot midsummer day with a sultry mistiness in the air and shadows on land and water beginning to have a peculiar distinctness and solidity. July 18, 1854
The river, smooth and still, with a deepened shade of the elms on it, like midnight suddenly revealed, its bed-curtains shoved aside, has a sultry languid look. July 18, 1854
The atmosphere now imparts a bluish or glaucous tinge to the distant trees. A certain debauched look. This a crisis in the season July 18, 1854
We have very few bass trees in Concord, but walk near them at this season and they will be betrayed, though several rods off, by the wonderful susurrus of the bees, etc., which their flowers attract. It is worth going a long way to hear. I am warned that I am passing one in two instances on the river, —only two I pass, — by this remarkable sound. At a little distance it is like the sound of a waterfall or of the cars; close at hand like a factory full of looms. They are chiefly humblebees, and the great globose tree is all alive with them. I hear the murmur distinctly fifteen rods off. You will know if you pass within a few rods of a bass tree at this season in any part of the town, by this loud murmur, like a water fall, which proceeds from it. July 18, 1854.
The pontederias are alive with butterflies. July 18, 1852
There are thousands of yellow butterflies on the pontederia flowers, July 18, 1853
The fields of pontederia are in some places four or five rods wide and almost endless. July 18, 1853
There are thousands of yellow butterflies on the pontederia flowers, July 18, 1853
The fields of pontederia are in some places four or five rods wide and almost endless. July 18, 1853
The border of pontederia . . . keeps that side in the meander where the sediment is deposited . . .as I have dotted it, crossing from this side to that as the river meanders
. . . This is the longest line of blue that nature paints with flowers in our fields July 18, 1852
The spikes of flowers are all brought into a dense line, — a heavy line of blue, a foot or more in width, on one or both sides of the river. The pontederias are now in their prime . . .They are very freshly blue. In the sun, when you are looking west, they are of a violaceous blue. July 18, 1852
When near home, just before sundown, the sun still inconveniently warm, we were surprised to observe on the uppermost point of each pontederia leaf a clear drop of dew already formed. And now we see a slight steam like smoke rising from amidst the pontederias. July 18, 1852
In half an hour the river and the meadows are white with fog, like a frosted cake. As you stand on the bank in the twilight, it suddenly moves up in sprayey clouds, moved by an unfelt wind, and invests you where you stand, its battalions of mists reaching even to the road. July 18, 1852
Smoke stretched perfectly horizontal for miles over the sea, and, by its direction, warned me of a change in the wind before we felt it.July 18, 1855
Every poet has trembled on the verge of science. July 18, 1852
May 21, 1854 ("Cobwebs on grass, the first I have noticed.. . .These little dewy nets or gauze, a faery's washing spread out in the night, are associated with the finest days of the year, days long enough and fair enough for the worthiest deeds.")
July 18, 2014
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Season of Sunny Water.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Luxury of Bathing
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Basswood
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Blackberries
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Milkweed
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Yellow Butterflies
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Kingbird
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The American Bittern (the Stake-Diver)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The American Woodcock
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July Moods
May 21, 1854 ("Cobwebs on grass, the first I have noticed.. . .These little dewy nets or gauze, a faery's washing spread out in the night, are associated with the finest days of the year, days long enough and fair enough for the worthiest deeds.")
June 13, 1852 ("All things in this world must be seen with the morning dew on them, must be seen with youthful, early-opened, hopeful eyes.")
July 13, 1852 ("Each day now I scare up woodcocks by shady springs and swamps.")
July 15, 1857 ("Scare up . . . two woodcocks in the shady alder marsh at Well Meadow, which go off with a whistling flight.")
July 15, 1854 (“There are many butterflies, yellow and red, about the Asclepias incarnata now.”)
July 13, 1852 ("Each day now I scare up woodcocks by shady springs and swamps.")
July 15, 1857 ("Scare up . . . two woodcocks in the shady alder marsh at Well Meadow, which go off with a whistling flight.")
July 15, 1854 (“There are many butterflies, yellow and red, about the Asclepias incarnata now.”)
July 15, 1854 ("The stems and leaves of various asters and golden-rods, which ere long will reign along the way, begin to be conspicuous.")
July 16, 1851 (“I see the yellow butterflies now gathered in fleets in the road, and on the flowers of the milkweed (Asclepias pulchra) by the roadside, a really handsome flower; also the smaller butterfly, with reddish wings, and a larger, black or steel-blue, with wings spotted red on edge, and one of equal size, reddish copper-colored.”)
July 16, 1854 ("Woodcock by side of Walden in woods.")
July 16, 1854 ("Solidago nemoralis yesterday.")
July 17, 1853( "Rank weeds begin to block up low wood-paths, — goldenrods, asters, etc . . . The Solidago nemoralis (?) in a day or two, - gray goldenrod.")
July 17, 1854 (" I was surprised by the loud humming of bees, etc., etc., in the bass tree; thought it was a wind rising at first. .")
July 17, 1856 ("Hear at distance the hum of bees from the bass with its drooping flowers at the Island, a few minutes only before sunset. It sounds like the rumbling of a distant train of cars.”)
July 17, 1856 ("Hear at distance the hum of bees from the bass with its drooping flowers at the Island, a few minutes only before sunset. It sounds like the rumbling of a distant train of cars.”)
July 17, 1856 (“A very warm afternoon. Thermometer at 97° at the Hosmer Desert. I hear the early locust.”)
July 19, 1854 ("The more smothering, furnace-like heats are beginning, and the locust days.")
July 19, 1851 ("Beyond the bridge there is a goldenrod partially blossomed. . . .Yesterday it was spring, and to-morrow it will be autumn.")
July 19, 1851 ("The butterflies have swarmed within these few days, especially about the milkweeds.")
July 19, 1859 ("It is remarkable how the river, while it may be encroaching on the bank on one side, preserves its ordinary breadth by filling up the other side")
July 19, 1860 ("The pontederia is now generally conspicuous and handsome, – a very fresh blue")
July 20, 1860 ("Just after the sun is set I observe the dewdrops on the pontederia leaves. . .it appears to be the only one that collects the dew thus early.")
July 21, 1853 ("Ten minutes before sunset I see large clear dewdrops at the tips, or half an inch below the tips, of the pontederia leaves.")
July 21, 1859 ("The pontederia on the Assabet is a very fresh and clear blue to-day, and in its early prime, — very handsome to see. ")
July 24, 1853 ("Where most I sought for flowers in April and May I do not think to go now.")
July 24, 1851 ("Nature is like a hen panting with open mouth, in the grass, as the morning after a debauch.")
July 26, 1853 ("I mark again, about this time when the first asters open. . . This the afternoon of the year.")
July 27, 1852 ("Woodcocks have been common by the streams and springs in woods for some weeks.")
July 28, 1852 ("Goldenrod and asters have fairly begun; there are several kinds of each out.")
July 31, 1856 ("As I make my way amid rank weeds still wet with the dew, the air filled with a decaying musty scent and the z-ing of small locusts, I hear the distant sound of a flail, and thoughts of autumn occupy my mind, and the memory of past years.")August 5, 1858 ("I cannot sufficiently admire the rhexia, one of the highest-colored purple flowers, but difficult to bring home in its perfection, with its fugacious petals.")
July 18, 2014
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.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau July 18
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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