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
The mountains look like
waves on a blue ocean tossed
up by a stiff gale.
We see the first star
and know not if we might have
seen it earlier.
Darting forked lightning
and muttering thunder-cloud
drive me home again.
Riding in the cars
is now like sitting in the
flue of a chimney.
July 20, 2020
A thunder-shower in the night. The clap that wakes me is as if some one is moving lumber in an upper apartment, some vast hollow hall, tumbling it down and dragging it over the floor; and ever and anon the lightning fills the damp air with light. July 20, 1851
A very hot day, a bathing day. Warm days about this. Corn in blossom these days. July 20, 1854
The mountains look like waves on a blue ocean tossed up by a stiff gale. July 20, 1851
A muttering thunder-cloud in northwest gradually rising and with its advanced guard hiding in the sun and now and then darting forked lightning. July 20, 1854
Caught a middle-sized copper-colored devil's-needle (with darker spots on wings), sluggish, on a grass stem, with many dark-colored elliptical eggs packed closely to outside, under its breast. July 20, 1856.
The clouds, as usual, are arranged with reference to the sunset. The sun is gone. An amber light and golden glow. The horns of the moon only three or four days old look very sharp, still cloud like, in the midst of a blue space, prepared to shine a brief half-hour before it sets. July 20, 1852
The redness now begins to fade on eastern clouds, and the western cloudlets glow with burnished copper alloyed with gold. July 20, 1852
Then the cloudlets in the west turn rapidly dark, the shadow of night advances in the east, and the first stars become visible. July 20, 1852
It is starlight. You see the first star in the southwest, and know not how much earlier you might have seen it had you looked. July 20, 1852
We have come round the east side of the hill to see the moon from amid the trees. July 20, 1852 .
The moon was at first eclipsed by a vast black bank of cloud in the east horizon, which seemed to rise faster than it, and threatened to obscure it all the night. July 20, 1853
This is the midsummer night's moon. July 20, 1853
As we looked, a bird flew across the disk of the moon. July 20, 1853
Saw two skunks carrying their tails about some rocks. Singular that, of all the animated creation, chiefly these skunks should be abroad in this moonlight. July 20, 1853
There is a mist very generally dispersed, which gives a certain mellowness to the light, a wavingness apparently, a creaminess. Yet the light of the moon is a cold, almost frosty light, white on the ground. July 20, 1853
Night is seen settling down with mists on Fair Haven Bay. The stars are few and distant; the fireflies fewer still. July 20, 1852
There are a few fireflies about. Green, their light looks sometimes, and crickets are heard. July 20, 1853.
There are a few fireflies about. Green, their light looks sometimes, and crickets are heard. July 20, 1853.
There is a second glow on the few low western cloudlets, when we thought the sun had bid us a final adieu. - Those small clouds, the rearmost guard of day, which were wholly dark, are again lit up for a moment with a dull-yellowish glow and again darken. July 20, 1852
You are pretty sure also to hear some human music, vocal or instrumental, far or near. July 20, 1853
Now the first whip-poor-will sings hollowly in the dark pitch pine wood on Bear Garden Hill. July 20, 1852.
You are pretty sure also to hear some human music, vocal or instrumental, far or near. July 20, 1853
Now the first whip-poor-will sings hollowly in the dark pitch pine wood on Bear Garden Hill. July 20, 1852.
And now, when we had thought the day birds gone to roost, the wood thrush takes up the strain. July 20, 1852.
And now the evening redness deepens till all the west or northwest horizon is red; as if . . .as if the Artist of the world had mixed his red paints on the edge of the inverted saucer of the sky. An exhilarating, cheering redness, most wholesome. July 20, 1852
The crescent moon, meanwhile, grows more silvery, and, as it sinks in the west, more yellowish, and the outline of the old moon in its arms is visible if you do not look directly at it. July 20, 1852
The crescent moon, meanwhile, grows more silvery, and, as it sinks in the west, more yellowish, and the outline of the old moon in its arms is visible if you do not look directly at it. July 20, 1852
Some dusky redness lasts almost till the last traces of daylight disappear, about 10 o'clock, the same time the moon goes down. July 20, 1852
Delayed by fog in night off coast of Maine. July 20, 1857
July 20, 2018
***
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wood Thrush
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Fireflies
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Devil's-needle
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July Moods
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, As the seasons revolve.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Reminiscence and Prompting
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July Moonlight
*****
May 8, 1852 (“Starlight marks conveniently a stage in the evening, i. e. when the first star can be seen.”)
May 29, 1857 ("The crashing thunder sounds like the overhauling of lumber on heaven's loft.")
June 20, 1853 (“ The moon full. . . . Saw a little skunk coming up the river-bank in the woods at the White Oak.”)
June 28,1852 ("Now it is starlight; perhaps that dark cloud in the west has concealed the evening star before . . . Starlight! That would be a good way to mark the hour, if we were precise. That is an epoch, when the last traces of daylight have disappeared and the night (nox) has fairly set in.”)
June 30, 1852 (“It is starlight about half an hour after sunset to-night; i. e. the first stars appear”)
July 12, 1851("Now at least the moon is full, and I walk alone, which is best by night, if not by day always.")
July 12, 1851 ("I see a skunk on Bear Garden Hill stealing noiselessly away from me, while the moon shines over the pitch pines")
July 12, 1852 (“Now, a quarter after nine, as I walk along the river-bank, long after starlight, and perhaps an hour or more after sunset, I see some of those high-pillared clouds of the day, in the southwest, still reflecting a downy light from the regions of day, they are so high.”)
July 14, 1851 ("If I take the same walk by moonlight an hour later or earlier in the evening, it is as good as a different one.")
July 16, 1850 ("Many men walk by day; few walk by night. It is a very different season. Instead of the sun, there are the moon and stars; instead of the wood thrush, there is the whip-poor-will; instead of butterflies, fireflies, winged sparks of fire!")
July 17, 1854 ("I am surprised to see crossing my course in middle of Fair Haven Pond great yellowish devil's-needles, flying from shore to shore.")
July 21, 1852 ("I see the earliest star fifteen or twenty minutes before the red is deepest in the horizon ")
July 23, 1852 ("About three quarters of an hour after sunset the evening red is deepest.")
July 27, 1852 ("I turn round, and there shines the moon, silvering the small clouds which have gathered; she makes nothing red.")
July 23, 1852 ("About three quarters of an hour after sunset the evening red is deepest.")
July 27, 1852 ("I turn round, and there shines the moon, silvering the small clouds which have gathered; she makes nothing red.")
August 5, 1851 ("As the twilight deepens and the moonlight is more and more bright, I begin to distinguish myself, who I am and where . . . sensible of my own existence, as when a lamp is brought into a dark apartment and I see who the company are.")
August 5, 1851 ("I hear now from Bear Garden Hill — I rarely walk by moonlight without hearing — the sound of a flute, or a horn, or a human voice")
August 8, 1851 (“The moon has not yet quite filled her horns”)
August 8, 1851 ("Starlight! that would be a good way to mark the hour, if we were precise.”)
August 8, 1851 (“The moon has not yet quite filled her horns”)
August 8, 1851 ("Starlight! that would be a good way to mark the hour, if we were precise.”)
December 23, 1851 (“I detect, just above the horizon, the narrowest imaginable white sickle of the new moon.”)
December 25, 1858 ("Unless you watch it, you do not know when the sun goes down.")
July 20, 2012
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 20
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
No comments:
Post a Comment