Saturday, June 11, 2022

My moods are periodical.




The other day I rowed in my boat a free even lovely young lady and as I plied the oars she sat in the stern and there was nothing but she between me and the sky. June 19, 1840

What if we feel a yearning to which no breast answers?
I walk alone. My heart is full. 
Feelings impede the current of my thoughts. 
I knock on the earth but no friend appears –
perhaps none
 is dreaming of me.
June 11, 1855

Hardly two nights are alike. 
 I seem to be nearer to the origin of things.
 My spiritual side takes a more distinct form,
 like my shadow which I see accompanying me
I ask, “Who is this?”
 as I am about to
 sit down on a rock. 

No one,
 to my knowledge,
 has observed the minute differences in the seasons.
 A book of the seasons, 
each page of which should be written
 in its own season and out-of-doors, 
or in its own locality 
wherever it may be. 
June 11, 1851


I think of you as an angel there.
I love you like I love the stars,
I want to give you every one.
Zphx 20220611
See 18510611, 18571026

Thursday, June 9, 2022

A Book of the Seasons: The Maple Keys


 

The keys of the white maple
are more than half an inch long,
not including stem;
a dull-purplish cottony white.
They make no such show as the red.
The keys of the red
are longer-stemmed
but as yet much smaller. 
May 7, 1853
As I sat in my boat near the Bath Rock at Island,
I saw a red squirrel steal slyly up a red maple,
as if he were in search of a bird’s nest (though it is early for most),
and I thought I would see what he was at.
He crept far out on the slender branches and, reaching out his neck,
nibbled off the fruit-stems, sometimes bending them within reach with his paw;
and then, squatting on the twig, he voraciously devoured the half-grown keys,
using his paws to direct them to his mouth, as a nut.
Bunch after bunch he plucked and ate, letting many fall,
and he made an abundant if not sumptuous feast,
the whole tree hanging red with fruit around him.
It seemed like a fairy fruit as I sat looking toward the sun
and saw the red keys made all glowing and transparent by the sun
between me and the body of the squirrel.
 It was certainly a cheering sight,
a cunning red squirrel
perched on a slender twig
between you and the sun,
feasting on the handsome red maple keys.
He nibbled voraciously,
as if they were a sweet and luscious fruit to him.
What an abundance and variety of food is now ready for him!
May 13, 1858

White or Sugar Maple Keys

The white maple keys
fall and float down the stream like
wings of great insects

May 1.  The sugar maple keys (or buds?) hang down one inch, quite.  May 1, 1860
May 6. Maple keys an inch and a half long. May 6, 1860
May 7. The keys of the white maple are more than half an inch long, not including stem; a dull-purplish cottony white. They make no such show as the red. May 7, 1853
May 10. Are those the young keys of sugar maples that I see?  May 10, 1852
May 12. The white maple keys have not fallen. May 12, 1858
May 17. The large green keys of the white maples are now conspicuous, looking like the wings of insects. May 17, 1854
May 21. The white maple keys are nearly two inches long by a half-inch wide, in pairs, with waved inner edges like green moths ready to bear off their seeds. May 21, 1853
May 28. See already one or two (?) white maple keys on the water  May 28, 1858
May 29. P. M. — To Cedar Swamp by Assabet. The white maple keys have begun to fall and float down the stream like the wings of great insects. May 29, 1854
May 30. The white maple keys falling and covering the river.  May 30, 1853
June 2 White maple keys conspicuous. June 2, 1856
June 2.  From that cocoon of the Attacus cecropia which I found. . . came out this forenoon a splendid moth. June 2, 1855  
June 6. The white maple keys are about half fallen. It is remarkable that this happens at the time the emperor moth (cecropia) comes out. June 6, 1855
June 9.    White maple keys are abundantly floating.   June 9, 1858
June 10. By the 30th of May, at least, white maple keys were falling. How early, then, they had matured their seed! June 10, 1853

Red Maple Keys
May 6. The [red] maple-tops begin to look red now with the growing keys, at a distance, — crescents of red. May 6, 1853
May 7.  The keys of the red are longer-stemmed but as yet much smaller [than the white].May 7, 1853
May 9.  A large red maple just begun to leaf - its keys an inch and a half long. May 9, 1855
May 10. A sprinkling rain ceases when I reach Bittern Cliff, and the water smooths somewhat. I see many red maple  blossoms on the surface.  Their keys now droop gracefully about the stems. May 10, 1854
May 10. Young red maples are generally later to leaf than young sugar maples; hardly began before yesterday; and large white are not so forward as young sugar. May 10, 1855
May 13. Bunch after bunch he plucked and ate, letting many fall, and he made an abundant if not sumptuous feast,. . . a cunning red squirrel perched on a slender twig between you and the sun, feasting on the handsome red maple keys. May 13, 1858
May 14. The maple-keys are already formed, though the male blossoms (on different trees) are not withered. May 14, 1852
May 14. The prospect from these rocks is early-June-like. You notice the tender light green of the birches, both white and paper, and the brown-red tops of the maples where their keys are.  May 14, 1853
May 15. In swamps, the reddish or reddish-brown crescents of the red maple tops, now covered with keys. May 15, 1854
May 16.  I pass a young red maple whose keys hang down three inches or more and appear to be nearly ripe. This, being in a favorable light (on one side from the sun) and being of a high color, — a pink scarlet, — is a very beautiful object, more so than when in flower. Masses of double samaræ unequally disposed along the branches, trembling in the wind. Like the flower of the shad-bush, so this handsome fruit is seen for the most part now against bare twigs, it is so much in advance of its own and of other leaves. The peduncles gracefully rise a little before they curve downward. They are only a little darker shade than the samaræ. There are sometimes three samaræ together.   May 16, 1860
May 17.  The red maple tops ten days ago looked like red paint scaling off, when seen against houses. Now they have acquired a browner red. May 17, 1858
May 17. Red maple keys are seen at a distance against the tender green of birches and other trees.  May 17, 1854
May 25. The female red maples bearing keys are later to put forth leaves. May 25, 1852
June 2. Red maple seed is partly blown off. Some of it is conspicuously whitish or light-colored on the trees. June 2, 1859 
June 3. The roads now strewn with red maple seed. June 3, 1860.
June 5. Some red maples are much more fertile than others. Their keys are now very conspicuous. But such trees have comparatively few leaves and have grown but little as yet. June 5, 1857
June 7. Red maple seed is still in the midst of its fall; is blown far from the trees. June 7, 1860
July 11.. The shore is strewn with quite a long grove of young red maples two inches high, with the samaræ attached. So they are dispersed. July 11, 1852
August 1. Looking carefully through a dense maple swamp, I  find little maples, a couple of inches high, which have sprung up chiefly on certain spots alone. . . Each little tree is already deeply rooted, while the now useless winged seed lies empty nearby. Two months ago the maple swamp was red with maple seed falling in showers around, but now only a very small number of maple seeds are to be found. Indeed, almost every seed that falls to the earth is picked up by some animal or other whose favorite and perhaps peculiar food it is. August 1, 1860


See also
A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Red Maple

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

Saturday, June 4, 2022

The Bullfrog in Spring

The bullfrog belongs to summer.

That season which is bounded on the north,

 on the spring side at least, by the trump of the bullfrog.

 


April 17. To-day I see . . . and a middling sized bullfrog, I think. April 17, 1855   

April 18. I suspect that all these frogs may be the R. fontinalis, and none of them bullfrogs . . .I doubt if I have seen a bullfrog yet. April 18, 1858

April 23I see the large head apparently of a bullfrog, by the riverside. April 23, 1858

April 27. Apparently a small bullfrog by riverside, though it looks somewhat like a Rana fontinalis. April 27, 1856

May 1. 1 find many apparent young bullfrogs in the shaded pools on the Island Neck. Probably R. fontinalis.”May 1, 1858  (

May 2I doubt if I have heard any sound from a bullfrog in river yet. May 2, 1858

May 10.   I hear in several places the low dumping notes of awakened bullfrogs, what I call their pebbly notes, as if they were cracking pebbles in their mouths; not the plump dont dont or ker dont, but kerdle dont dont. As if they sat round mumbling pebbles. 

     At length, near Ball's Hill, I hear the first regular bullfrog's trump. Some fainter ones far off are very like the looing of cows. This sound, heard low and far off over meadows when the warmer hours have come, grandly inaugurates the summer. I perspire with rowing in my thick coat and wish I had worn a thin one. This trumpeter, marching or leaping in the van of advancing summer, whom I now hear coming on over the green meadows, seems to say, “Take off your coat, take off your coat, take off your coat!” He says, “Here comes a gale that I can breathe. This is some thing like; this is what I call summer.

    I see three or four of them sitting silent in one warm meadow bay. Evidently their breeding-season now begins. But they are soon silent as yet, and it is only an occasional and transient trump that you hear. 
That season which is bounded on the north, on the spring side at least, by the trump of the bullfrog. This note is like the first colored petals within the calyx of a flower. It conducts us toward the germ of the flower summer. He knows no winter. I hear in his tone the rumors of summer heats. By this note he reassures the season. Not till the air is of that quality that it can support this sound does he emit it. It requires a certain sonorousness. 

    The van is led by the croaking wood frog and the little peeping hylodes, and at last comes this pursy trumpeter, the air growing more and more genial, and even sultry, as well as sonorous. As soon as Nature is ready for him to play his part, she awakens him with a warmer, perchance a sultry, breath and excites him to sound his trombone. It reminds me at once of tepid waters and of bathing. His trump is to the ear what the yellow lily or spatter-dock is to the eye. He swears by the powers of mud. 

    It is enough for the day to have heard only the first half-trump of an early awakened one from far in some warm meadow bay. It is a certain revelation and anticipation of the livelong summer to come. It gives leave to the corn to grow and to the heavens to thunder and lighten. It gives leave to the invalid to take the air. Our climate is now as tropical as any. It says, Put out your fires and sit in the fire which the sun has kindled. I hear from some far meadow bay, across the Great Meadows, the half-sounded trump of a bullfrog this warm morning. 

    It is like the tap of a drum when human legions are mustering. It reminds me that summer is now in earnest mustering her forces, and that ere long I shall see their waving plumes and glancing armor and hear the full bands and steady tread. The bullfrog is earth's trumpeter, at the head of the terrene band. He replies to the sky with answering thunder. May 10, 1858

May 25. I hear the first troonk of a bullfrog. May 25, 1852

May 25.  Heard the first regular bullfrog’s trump on the 18th; none since. May 25, 1855

June 1. The hylodes are no longer heard. The bullfrogs begin to trump.  June 1, 1853

June 4.  The bullfrog now begins to be heard at night regularly; has taken the place of the hylodes. June 4, 1853

June 6. From time to time, at mid-afternoon, is heard the trump of a bullfrog, like a Triton's horn. June 6, 1854

June 7.  Bullfrogs now are in full blast. I do not hear other frogs; their notes are probably drowned. I perceive that this generally is the rhythm of the bullfrog; er|er-r er-r-r| (growing fuller and fuller and more tremendous) and then doubling, er, er er, err er, er, er er, er, er and finally er, er, er, er er, er, er, er. Or I might write it oorar oorar oorar oorar-hah oorar-hah hah oorar hah hah hah.
    Some of these great males are yellow or quite yellowish over the whole back. Are not the females oftenest white-throated? . . . 
    Seeing a large head, with its prominent eyes, projecting above the middle of the river, I found it was a bullfrog coming across. It swam under water a  rod or two, and then came up to see where it was, or its way. It is thus they cross when sounds or sights attract them to more desirable shores. Probably they prefer the night for such excursions, for fear of large pickerel, etc.  I thought its throat was not yellow nor baggy. Was it not the female attracted by the note of the male? June 7, 1858

June 8At the last small pond near Well Meadow, a frog, apparently a small bullfrog, on the shore enveloped by a swarm of small, almost invisible insects, some resting on him, attracted perhaps by the slime which shone on him. He appears to endure the persecution like a philosopher. June 8, 1853 

June 8I perceive distinctly to-day that there is no articular line along the sides of the back of the bullfrog, but that there is one along the back of that bullfrog-like, smaller, widely dispersed and early frog. June 8, 1858 

June 9. So there is an evening for the toads and another for the bullfrogs.  June 9, 1853

June 13. The different frogs mark the seasons pretty well,- the peeping hyla, the dreaming frog, and the bullfrog . I believe that all may be heard at last occasionally together. The bullfrog belongs to summer. June 13, 1851

June 15. The bullfrogs now commonly trump at night, and the mosquitoes are now really troublesome. For some time I have not heard toads by day, and the hylodes appear to have done. . . . A new season begun. June 15, 1860

June 16.  It appears to me that these phenomena occur simultaneously, say June 12th: viz.: -
• Heat about. 85° at 2 P.M.
• Hylodes cease to peep.
• Purring frogs (Rana palustris) cease.
• Lightning-bugs first seen.
• Bullfrogs trump generally.
• Mosquitoes begin to be really troublesome.
• Afternoon thunder-showers almost regular.
• Sleep with open window.
• Turtles fairly and generally begun to lay.

June 25. I notice an apparent female bullfrog, with a lustrous greenish (not yellow) throat. June 25, 1858


 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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