From Strawberry Hill the first glimpse of Nagog Pond.

September 6

September 6, 2022

2 P. M. — To Hapgood's in Acton direct, returning via Strawberry Hill and Smith's Road.

The ripening grapes begin to fill the air with their fragrance.

The vervain will hardly do for a clock, for I perceive that some later and smaller specimens have not much more than begun to blossom, while most have done.

Saw a tall pear tree by the roadside beyond Harris's in front of Hapgood's.

Saw the lambkill (Kalmia angustifolia) in blossom – a few fresh blossoms at the ends of the fresh twigs-on Strawberry Hill, beautiful bright flowers. Apparently a new spring with it, while seed vessels apparently of this year, hung dry below.

From Strawberry Hill the first, but a very slight, glimpse of Nagog Pond by standing up on the wall. That is enough to relate of a hill, methinks, that its elevation gives you the first sight of some distant lake.

The horizon is remarkably blue with mist this afternoon. Looking from this hill over Acton, successive valleys filled with blue mist appear, and divided by darker lines of wooded hills.

The shadows of the elms are deepened, as if the whole atmosphere were permeated by floods of ether.

Annursnack never looked so well as now seen from this hill.

The ether gives a velvet softness to the whole landscape. The hills float in it. A blue veil is drawn over the earth.

The elecampane (Inula Helenium) with its broad leaves wrinkled underneath and the remains of sunflower-like blossoms, in front of Nathan Brooks's, Acton, and near J. H. Wheeler's.

Prenanthes alba; this Gray calls Nabalus albus, white lettuce or rattlesnake-root. Also I seem (?) to have found Nabalus Fraseri, or lion's foot.

Every morning for a week there has been a fog which all disappeared by seven or eight o'clock.

A large field of sunflowers for hens now in full bloom at Temple's, surrounding the house, and now, at 6 o'clock P. M., facing the east.

The larches in the front yards, both Scotch and American, have turned red. Their fall has come.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 6, 1851

The ripening grapes begin to fill the air with their fragrance. See August 29, 1853 ("Walking down the street in the evening, I detect my neighbor’s ripening grapes by the scent twenty rods off"); August 29, 1859 ("The very earliest ripe grapes begin to be scented in the cool nights "); September 8, 1854 (I bring home a half-bushel of grapes to scent my chamber with"; September 8, 1858 (“Gather half my grapes, which for some time have perfumed the house.”)

The vervain will hardly do for a clock. Compare August 21, 1851 ("It is very pleasant to measure the progress of the season by this and similar clocks. So you get, not the absolute time, but the true time of the season.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Blue Vervain

Saw the lambkill (Kalmia angustifolia) in blossom. See September 10, 1857 ("I see lambkill ready to bloom a second time. Saw it out on the 20th; how long?"); September 19, 1852 ("The Viola lanceolata has blossomed again, and the lambkill. "); September 28, 1852 ("This is the commencement, then, of the second spring. Violets, Potentilla Canadensis, lambkill, wild rose, yellow lily, etc., etc., begin again"); September 29, 1853 ("Lambkill blossoms again.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Lambkill (Kalmia augustifolia)

Nabalus albus, white lettuce or rattlesnake-root. Also I seem (?) to have found Nabalus Fraseri, or lion's foot. See August 27, 1858 ("The Nabalus albus has been out some ten days, but N. Fraseri at Walden road will not open, apparently, for some days yet."); September 13, 1857 ("Nabalus Fraseri, top of Cliffs, — a new plant, — yet in prime and not long out. The nabalus family generally, apparently now in prime")

From Strawberry Hill the first, but a very slight, glimpse of Nagog Pond . See July 6, 1851 ("The distant hills look unusually near in this atmosphere. Acton meeting-houses seen to stand on the side of some hills, Nagog or Nashoba, beyond, as never before."); August 15, 1854 ("Cross from top of Annursnack to top of Strawberry Hill. The locomotive whistle, far southwest, sounds like a bell. From Strawberry Hill we steer northeast . . . We are completely lost, and see not one familiar object. At length see steeples which we think Westford, but the monument proves it Acton."); January 30, 1860 ("I see, when I look over our landscape from any eminence as far as the horizon, certain rounded hills, amid the plains and ridges and cliffs, which have a marked family likeness, like eggs that belong to one nest though scattered. They suggest a relation geologically. Such are, for instance, Nashoba, Annursnack, Nawshawtuct, and Ponkawtasset, all which have Indian names, as if the Indian, too, had regarded them as peculiarly distinct. There is also Round Hill in Sudbury, and perhaps a hill in Acton")

Looking from this hill over Acton, successive valleys filled with blue mist appear, and divided by darker lines of wooded hills. See November 9, 1851 ("To-day the mountains seen from the pasture above are dark blue, so dark that they look like new mountains and make a new impression, and the intervening town of Acton is seen against them in a new relation, a new neighborhood.")

The shadows of the elms are deepened. See June 2, 1852 ("The elms now hold a good deal of shade and look rich and heavy with foliage. You see darkness in them.")