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
I would know when in the year
to expect certain thoughts and moods --
as the sportsman knows
when to look for plover.
September 24, 1859
to expect certain thoughts and moods --
as the sportsman knows
when to look for plover.
September 24, 1859
September 24, 2013
Young men have not learned the phases of Nature; they do not know what constitutes a year, or that one year is like another. September 24, 1859
A man must attend to Nature closely for many years to know when, as well as where, to look for his objects, since he must always anticipate her a little. September 24, 1859
I would know when in the year to expect certain thoughts and moods, as the sportsman knows when to look for plover. September 24, 1859
I walk to that very dense and handsome white pine grove east of Beck Stow’s Swamp . . . You would have said that there was not a hardwood tree in it, young or old, though I afterward found . . . as often as every five feet, a little oak, three to twelve inches high, and in one place I found a green acorn dropped by the base of a tree. I was surprised, I confess, to find my own theory so perfectly proved. September 24, 1857
The perception of truth, as of the duration of time, etc., produces a pleasurable sensation. September 24 1854
The ground was completely strewn with white pine cones, apparently thrown down by the squirrels, still generally green and closed, but many stripped of scales, about the base of almost every pine, sometimes all of them. September 24, 1857
Now and for a week a good time to collect them. September 24, 1857
Brought home quite a boat-load of fuel . . . It would be a triumph to get all my winter’s wood thus . . . I derive a separate and peculiar pleasure from every stick that I find. September 24, 1855
The button bushes pretty well browned with frost (though the maples are but just beginning to blush), their pale yellowish season past. September 24, 1855
The button-bushes, which before had attained only a dull mixed yellow, are suddenly bitten, wither, and turn brown . . . The button-bushes thus withered suddenly paint with a rich brown the river’s brim. September 24, 1854
I notice one red tree, a red maple, against the green woodside in Conant's meadow. It is a far brighter red than the blossoms of any tree in summer and more conspicuous. September 24, 1851
On the large sassafras trees on the hill I see many of the handsome red club-shaped pedicels left, with their empty cups. September 24, 1854
The tufts of cinnamon fern, now a pale brown. September 24, 1859
On Mt. Misery some very rich yellow leaves — clear yellow — of the Populus grandidentata, which still love to wag, and tremble in my hands. September 24, 1851
Witch-hazel well out. September 24, 1853
See some kalmiana lilies still freshly bloomed. September 24, 1855
Pasture thistle still. September 24, 1852
D. umbellatus, still abundant. September 24, 1856
A. corymbosus, still fresh though probably past prime. September 24, 1856
But little bright Solidago nemorosa is left. It is generally withered or dim. September 24, 1854
Methinks it stands thus with goldenrods:
- Early S. stricia, done some time. . .
- S. gigantea (?), probably done.
- S. nemoralis, about done.
- S. altissima, much past prime.
- S. odora, not seen but probably done. . . .
- S. bicolor . . . in prime.
S. altissima, much past prime. September 24, 1858
Some hickories are yellow. September 24, 1852
I meet Melvin loaded down with barberries, in bags and baskets, so that he has to travel by stages and is glad to stop and talk with me. September 24, 1859
Some still raking, others picking, cranberries. September 24, 1855
At brook, cohush and arum berries still fresh, and Viburnum acerifolium berries. September 24, 1856
The zizania ripe, shining black, cylindrical kernels, five eighths of an inch long. September 24, 1852
Those thorns by Shattuck's barn, now nearly leafless, have hard green fruit as usual. September 24, 1859
The fruit of the thorn trees on Lee's Hill is large, globular, and gray-dotted. September 24, 1852
The panicled andromeda berries (?) begin to brown. September 24, 1859
The Viburnum Lentago berries now turn blue-black in pocket, as the nudum did, which last are now all gone, while the Lentago is now just in season. September 24, 1854
I find the Lycopodium dendroideum, not quite out, just northwest of this pine grove, in the grass. It is not the variety obscurum, which grows at Trillium Wood, is more upright-branched and branches round. September 24, 1857
These are the stages in the river fall ... The water begins to be clear of weeds, and the fishes are exposed. It is now too cold to bathe with comfort. September 24, 1854
I scare up a duck which circles round four times high in the air a diameter of a. hundred rods, and finally alights with a long, slanting flight near where it rose. September 24, 1854
See coming from the south in loose array some twenty apparently black ducks . . . At first they were in form like a flock of blackbirds, then for a moment assumed the outline of a fluctuating harrow. September 24, 1855
See a warbler which inquisitively approaches me creeper-wise along some dead brush twigs. It may be the pine-creeping warbler, though I see no white bars on wings. I should say all yellow olivaceous above; clear lemon-yellow throat and breast; narrow white ring around eye; black bill, straight; clay-colored legs; edge of wings white. September 24, 1854
I see still what I, take to be small flocks of grackles feeding beneath the covert of the button-bushes and flitting from bush to bush. They seldom expose them-selves long. September 24, 1854
Was that a flock of grackles on the meadow? I have not seen half a dozen blackbirds, methinks, for a month. September 24, 1859
Hardly can I say a bird sings, except a slight warble, perhaps, from some kind of migrating sparrow. Was it a tree sparrow, not seen? September 24, 1855
The lonely horse in its pasture is glad to see company, comes forward to be noticed and takes an apple from your hand. September 24, 1859
I see a red squirrel run along the bank under the hemlocks with a nut in its mouth. He stops near the foot of a hemlock, and, hastily pawing a hole with his fore feet, drops the nut, covers it up, and retreats part way up the trunk of the tree, all in a few moments. . . . This, then, is the way forests are planted. September 24, 1857
Returning over the causeway from Flint's Pond the other evening (22d), just at sunset, I observed that while the west was of a bright golden color under a bank of clouds, — the sun just setting, — and not a tinge of red was yet visible there, there was a distinct purple tinge in the nearer atmosphere, so that Annursnack Hill, seen through it, had an exceedingly rich empurpled look. September 24, 1851
Last night was exceedingly dark. I could not see the sidewalk in the street, but only felt it with my feet. I was obliged to whistle to warn travellers of my nearness. September 24, 1851
I have many affairs to attend to, and feel hurried these days. September 24, 1859
Great works of art have endless leisure for a background, as the universe has space. Time stands still while they are created. The artist cannot be in [a] hurry. September 24, 1859
The earth moves round the sun with inconceivable rapidity, and yet the surface of the lake is not ruffled by it. September 24, 1859
At sundown the wind has all gone down. September 24, 1851
*****
September 24, 2014
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Pine Warbler
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Black Duck
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Lycopodiums
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Arum Berries
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Common Barberry
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Witch-Hazel
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red Maple
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The White Pines
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Big-toothed Aspen (Populus grandidentata)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red Squirrel
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Luxury of Bathing
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, September Moods
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, There was an artist in the City of Kouroo
*****
September 24, 2021
I seek acquaintance with Nature, —
to know her moods and manners.
March 23, 1856
Walden ("We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, by an infinite expectation of the dawn.”)
February 27, 1851("a novel and grand surprise, or a sudden revelation of the insufficiency of all that we had called knowledge before; an indefinite sense of the grandeur and glory of the universe.”)
April 19 1852 ("How sweet is the perception of a new natural fact! suggesting what worlds remain to be unveiled. That phenomenon of the andromeda seen against the sun cheers me exceedingly. When the phenomenon was not observed, it was not at all. I think that no man ever takes an original or detects a principle, without experiencing an inexpressible, as quite infinite and sane, pleasure, which advertises him of the dignity of that truth he has perceived.”)
April 18, 1852 (" For the first time I perceive this spring that the year is a circle. Can I not by expectation affect the revolutions of nature, make a day to bring forth something new? ")
April 24, 1859 ("There is a season for everything, and we do not notice a given phenomenon except at that season, if, indeed, it can be called the same phenomenon at any other season. . . . The observer of nature must improve these seasons...The moods and thoughts of man are revolving just as steadily and incessantly as nature's.")
Each day moods and thoughts
revolve just as steadily
as nature's seasons.
April 24, 1859
May 5, 1860 ("It takes us many years to find out that Nature repeats herself annually.")
May 23, 1853 ("The poet must bring to Nature the smooth mirror in which she is to be reflected. Every new flower that opens, no doubt, expresses a new mood of the human mind.")
June 3, 1856 (“As I have said before, it seems to me that the squirrels, etc., disperse the acorns, etc., amid the pines, . . . If the pine wood had been surrounded by white oak, probably that would have come up after the pine.”)
June 6, 1857 ("Each annual phenomenon is a reminiscence and prompting.")
June 19, 1852 (“Facts collected by a poet are set down at last as winged seeds of truth.”)
August 8, 1852 ("No man ever makes a discovery, even an observation of the least importance, but he is advertised of the fact by a joy that surprises him.")
August 22, 1860 ("I never find a remarkable Indian relic but I have first divined its existence, and planned the discovery of it.“)
September 2, 1856 ("I make my most interesting botanical discoveries when I am in a thrilled and expectant mood,. . .I am prepared for strange things.”)
September 2, 1856 (" I think we may detect that some sort of prepartion and faint expectation preceded every discovery we have made. ")
September 4-7 1851 (“There are innumerable avenues to a perception of the truth. All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy; we reason from our hands to our head.”)
September 9, 1857 (“To the Hill for white pine cones.”)
September 12, 1860 ("A dark and stormy night . . . Where the fence is not painted white I can see nothing, and go whistling for fear I run against some one. . . .You walk with your hands out to feel the fences and trees");
September 16, 1857 ("On the trees many are already open. Say within a week have begun.”)
September 16, 1860 ("See no zizania seed ripe, or black, yet, but almost all is fallen.");
September 18, 1857 ("It was exceedingly dark. I met two persons within a mile, and they were obliged to call out from a rod distant lest we should run against each other. ")
September 21, 1856 ("Solidago altissima past prime. ")
September 23, 1852 ("I gathered some haws very good to eat to-day.")
September 23, 1852 ("The barberry bushes in Clematis Hollow are very beautiful now, with their wreaths of red or scarlet fruit drooping over a rock.")
The artist cannot
be hurried – time stands still while
great art is created
September 25, 1855 (We get about three pecks of barberries from four or five bushes”).
September 25, 1856 ("The haws of the common thorn are now very good eating and handsome.")
September 25, 1857 ("The red maple has fairly begun to blush in some places by the river. I see one, by the canal behind Barrett’s mill, all aglow against the sun.")
September 25, 1857 ("A single tree becomes the crowning beauty of some meadowy vale and attracts the attention of the traveller from afar.")
September 25, 1857 ("The whole tree, thus ripening in advance of its fellows, attains a singular preéminence")
September 25, 1858 ("The zizania fruit is green yet, but mostly dropped or plucked. Does it fall, or do birds pluck it?")
September 25, 1859 ("The cinnamon ferns are all a decaying brown. . . in harmony with the twilight of the swamp");
September 27, 1857 ("The large common ferns (either cinnamon or interrupted) are yellowish, and also many as rich a deep brown now as ever.");
October 1, 1853 (" Got three pecks of barberries.")
October 1, 1858 ("The cinnamon ferns are crisp and sour in open grounds")
October 2, 1857 ("They are now generally imbrowned or crisp. In the more open swamp beyond, these ferns, recently killed by the frost and exposed to the sun, fill the air with a very strong sour scent")
October 2, 1859 ("I perceive in various places, in low ground, this afternoon, the sour scent of cinnamon ferns decaying. It is an agreeable phenomenon, reminding me of the season and of past years.")
October 16, 1855 “(P. M. —To the white pine grove beyond Beck Stow’s. What has got all the cones?”)
October 19, 1858 ("The sun just ready to set, I notice that its light on my note-book is quite rosy or purple")
October 26, 1857 ("After a while I learn what my moods and seasons are . . . The perfect correspondence of Nature to man, so that he is at home in her")
November 1, 1857 ("A higher truth, though only dimly hinted at, thrills us")
November 4, 1858 ("We cannot see any thing until we are possessed with the idea of it, and then we can hardly see anything else.")
November 25, 1860 ("How is any scientific discovery made ? Why, the discoverer takes it into his head first. He must all but see it.")
December 28, 1852 ("Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars. What are threescore years and ten hurriedly and coarsely lived to moments of divine leisure in which your life is coincident with the life of the universe?")
January 5, 1860 ("A man receives only what he is ready to receive. His observations make a chain. He does not observe the phenomenon that cannot be linked with the rest which he has observed, however novel and remarkable it may be. A man tracks himself through life, apprehending only what he already half knows.”)
January 11, 1852 ("We cannot live too leisurely. Let me not live as if time was short. Catch the pace of the seasons; have leisure to attend to every phenomenon of nature, and to entertain every thought that comes.")
The succession of forest trees (“If a pine wood is surrounded by a white-oak one chiefly, white-oaks may be expected to succeed when the pines are cut.”)
September 24, 2021
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, September 24
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
https://tinyurl.com/HDT24September
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