September 2.
P. M. – To Walden.
The seringo, too, has long been silent like other birds.
The red prinos berries ripe in sunny places.
Rose hips begin to be handsome.
Small flocks of pigeons are seen these days. Distinguished from doves by their sharper wings and bodies.
August has been a month of berries and melons, small fruits.
First in the descent from summer's culminating-point.
There is a stillness in nature for want of singing birds, commenced a month or more ago; only the crickets’ louder creak to supply their place.
I have not heard a bullfrog this long time.
The small cornel, or bunch-berry, is in bloom now (!!) near the pond.
What great tuft-like masses the cow-wheat makes now in sprout-lands!
The seringo, too, has long been silent like other birds.
The red prinos berries ripe in sunny places.
Rose hips begin to be handsome.
Small flocks of pigeons are seen these days. Distinguished from doves by their sharper wings and bodies.
August has been a month of berries and melons, small fruits.
First in the descent from summer's culminating-point.
There is a stillness in nature for want of singing birds, commenced a month or more ago; only the crickets’ louder creak to supply their place.
I have not heard a bullfrog this long time.
The small cornel, or bunch-berry, is in bloom now (!!) near the pond.
What great tuft-like masses the cow-wheat makes now in sprout-lands!
As I look over the pond now from the eastern shore, I am obliged to employ both my hands to defend my eyes against the reflected as well as the true sun, for they appear equally bright; and between my hands I look over the smooth and glassy surface of the lake.
The skaters make the finest imaginable sparkle.
Otherwise it is literally as smooth as glass, except where a fish leaps into the air or a swallow dips beneath its surface.
Sometimes a fish describes an arc of three or four feet in the air, and there is a bright flash where it emerges and another where it strikes the water.
The skaters make the finest imaginable sparkle.
Otherwise it is literally as smooth as glass, except where a fish leaps into the air or a swallow dips beneath its surface.
Sometimes a fish describes an arc of three or four feet in the air, and there is a bright flash where it emerges and another where it strikes the water.
A slight haze at this season makes the shore-line so much the more indistinct.
Looking across the pond from the Peak toward Fair Haven, which I seem to see, all the earth beyond appears insulated and floated, even by this small sheet of water, the heavens being seen reflected, as it were beneath it, so that it looks thin.
The scenery of this small pond is humble though very beautiful, and does not approach to grandeur, nor can it much concern one who has not long frequented it, or lived by its shore.
Looking across the pond from the Peak toward Fair Haven, which I seem to see, all the earth beyond appears insulated and floated, even by this small sheet of water, the heavens being seen reflected, as it were beneath it, so that it looks thin.
The scenery of this small pond is humble though very beautiful, and does not approach to grandeur, nor can it much concern one who has not long frequented it, or lived by its shore.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 2, 1852
August has been a month of berries and melons. See August 10, 1853 ("August, royal and rich. Green corn now, and melons have begun. That month, surely, is distinguished when melons ripen.");August 12, 1854 ("It takes all the heat of the year to produce these yellow flowers. It is the 3 o'clock p. m. of the year when they begin to prevail, — when the earth has absorbed most heat, when melons ripen and early apples and peaches. It is already the yellowing year.")
First in the descent from summer's culminating-point. See June 6, 1857 ("Each season is but an infinitesimal point. It no sooner comes than it is gone. It has no duration."); July 5, 1852 ("We have become accustomed to the summer. It has acquired a certain eternity.") July 15, 1854 ("We seem to be passing a dividing line between spring and autumn, and begin to descend the long slope toward winter"); July 19, 1851 ("Yesterday it was spring, and to-morrow it will be autumn."); July 24, 1852 ("When the first crop of grass is off, and the aftermath springs, the year has passed its culmination."); July 26, 1853 ("This the afternoon of the year. How apt we are to be reminded of lateness, even before the year is half spent!");; July 28, 1854 ("Methinks the season culminated about the middle of this month, — . . . and, having as it were attained the ridge of the summer, commenced to descend the long slope toward winter, the afternoon and down-hill of the year"); August 5, 1854 ("It is one long acclivity from winter to midsummer and another long declivity from midsummer to winter."); August 6, 1852 ("Methinks there are few new flowers of late. An abundance of small fruits takes their place. Summer gets to be an old story. Birds leave off singing, as flowers blossoming."); August 6, 1852 ("Has not the year grown old ? . . . It is the signs of the fall that affect us most. It is hard to live in the summer content with it."); August 7, 1854 ("There is a light on the earth and leaves, as if they were burnished. It is the glistening autumnal side of summer."); August 7, 1854 (" Do you not feel the fruit of your spring and summer beginning to ripen?") August 18, 1853 ("What means this sense of lateness that so comes over one now, — as if the rest of the year were down-hill.") August 19, 1851("Nature rests no longer at her culminating point than at any other. If you are not out at the right instant, the summer may go by and you not see it.”); August 23, 1858 ("There is no plateau on which Nature rests at midsummer, but she instantly commences the descent to winter."); August 28, 1858 ("When. . . I see these bright leaves strewing the moist ground . . .I am reminded that I have crossed the summit ridge of the year and have begun to descend the other slope."
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