A Book of the Seasons: June 30 (flowers, larks, haymaking, a summer evening, moonlight, waterbugs)

 

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

 June 30 

The lark sings a note 

which belongs to New England

summer evenings.

June 30, 1851

Oppressively warm –

haymakers are mowing now

in early twilight.

June 30, 1851

The bright curves made by

water-bugs in the moonlight

now at 9 o'clock.

June 30, 1852

June 30, 2018

A rainbow in the west this morning. June 30, 1853

Nature must be viewed humanly to be viewed at all; that is, her scenes must be associated with humane affections, such as are associated with one's native place, for instance. June 30, 1852

Is not June the month when most of our fresh water fish are spawned? June 30, 1856

Is not this period more than any distinguished for flowers, when roses, swamp-pinks, morning-glories, arethusas, pogonias, orchises, blue flags, epilobiums, mountain laurel, and white lilies are all in blossom at once?  June 30, 1852 

The blue flag (Iris versicolor) enlivens the meadow. June 30, 1851

Haying has commenced. June 30,1851

Haying has commenced. June 30, 1852

Saw a haymaker with his suspenders crossed before as well as behind. A valuable hint, which I think I shall improve upon, June 30, 1856

Hot weather. June 30, 1853

2 P. M. -- Thermometer north side of house, 95°; in river where one foot deep, one rod from shore, 82°. June 30, 1855

A Southwest breeze springs up every afternoon at this season, comparatively cool and refreshing from the sea. June 30, 1856

Yesterday afternoon it was remarkably cool, with wind, it being easterly, and I anticipated a sea-turn. June 30, 1857

The coolness continues, and this morning the sky is full of clouds, but they look to me like dog-day clouds and not rain-threatening. June 30, 1857

It does not rain. June 30, 1857

Cooler, with a northerly wind. June 30, 1859

The pads blown up by it already show crimson, it is so strong, but this not a fall phenomenon yet. June 30, 1859

It is a world of glossy leaves and grassy fields and meads. June 30, 1860

The foliage of deciduous trees is now so nearly as dark as evergreens that I am not struck by the contrast. June 30, 1860

The shadows under the edge of woods are less noticed now because the woods themselves are darker. June 30, 1860

Standing on the side of Fair Haven Hill the verdure generally appears at its height, the air clear, and the water sparkling after the rain of yesterday. June 30, 1860

Seen through this clear, sparkling, breezy air, the fields, woods, and meadows are very brilliant and fair. June 30, 1860

Borrowed Roberts’s boat, shaped like a pumpkin seed, for we wished to paddle on Great Quitticus. June 30, 1856

Two men spoke of loon’s eggs on a rocky isle in Little Quitticus. June 30, 1856

Just beyond this was Reed’s Island, which was formerly cultivated, the cattle being swum across, or taken over in a scow. June 30, 1856

At one end of Haskell’s Island was apparently a piece of primitive wood,—beech, hemlock, etc. June 30, 1856

On the right hand in the old orchard near the Quitticus Ponds, heard and at last saw my tweezer-bird, which is extremely restless, flitting from bough to bough and apple tree to apple tree. June 30, 1856

Sylvia Americana, parti-colored warbler, with golden-green reflections on the back, two white bars on wings, all beneath white, large orange mark on breast, bordered broadly with lemon yellow, and yellow throat. June 30, 1856

The tweezer-birds were lively in the hemlocks. June 30, 1856

The lark sings a note which belongs to a New England summer evening. June 30,1851

The cuckoo is faintly heard from a neighboring grove. June 30,1851

The tree-primrose, which was so abundant in one field last Saturday, is now all gone. June 30,1851

I saw the Lobelia Dortmarma in bloom. June 30, 1856

Succory on the bank under my window, probably from flowers I have thrown out within a year or two. June 30, 1853

By the roadside, Long Plain, North Fairhaven, observed a tupelo seven feet high with a rounded top, shaped like an umbrella, eight feet diameter, spreading over the wall, June 30, 1856

The bass tree is budded. June 30, 1852

Young oak shoots have grown from one and a half to three or four feet, but now in some cases appear to be checked and a large bud to have formed. June 30, 1854

Poke, a day or two. June 30, 1854

Small crypta Elatine, apparently some days at least, at Callitriche Pool. June 30, 1854

Rubus triflorus berries, some time, — the earliest fruit of a rubus.The berries are very scarce, light red, semitransparent, showing the seed, — a few (six to ten) large shining grains and rather acid. June 30, 1854

Lobelia spicata, to-morrow. June 30, 1854

Jersey tea. June 30, 1854

Cat-mint (Nepeta cataria) in bloom. June 30, 1852

I see the farmers in distant fields cocking their hay now at six o'clock. June 30,1851

The day has been so oppressively warm that some workmen have lain by at noon, and the haymakers are mowing now in the early twilight. June 30,1851

After hoeing in a dusty garden all this warm afternoon, - so warm that the baker says he never knew the like and expects to find his horses dead in the stable when he gets home, - it is very grateful to wend one's way at evening to some pure and cool stream and bathe therein. June 30, 1851

Though so late, I hear the summer hum of a bee in the grass, as I am on my way to the river behind Hubbard's. June 30,1851

Moon nearly full; rose a little before sunset. June 30, 1852

The moon appears full. At first a mere white cloud. June 30, 1852

As soon as the sun sets, begins to grow brassy or obscure golden in the gross atmosphere. June 30, 1852

Now that it is beginning to be dark as I am crossing a pasture, I hear a happy, shrill cricket-like little lay from a sparrow either in the grass or else on that distant tree. June 30,1851

The cattle on Bear Garden Hill, seen through the twilight, look monstrously large. June 30,1851

It is starlight about half an hour after sunset to-night; i. e. the first stars appear. June 30, 1852

The moon is now brighter, but not so yellowish.  June 30, 1852

Ten or fifteen minutes after, the fireflies are observed, at first about the willows on the Causeway, where the evening is further advanced. June 30, 1852

The creak of the crickets is more universal and loud, and becomes a distinct sound. June 30, 1852

The oily surface of the river in which the moon is reflected looks most attractive at this hour. June 30, 1852

I see the bright curves made by the water-bugs in the moonlight, and a muskrat crossing the river, now at 9 o'clock. June 30, 1852

Finally the last traces of day disappear, about 9.30 o'clock, and the night fairly sets in. June 30, 1852

The color of the moon is more silvery than golden, or silvery with a slight admixture of golden, a sort of burnished cloud. June 30, 1852

June 30, 2018

*****

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau:

Haymaking

The Water-bug

the Raspberry

The Wild Rose

 Swamp-pink

The Snakemouth Orchid

AThe Blue Flag Iris (Versicolor)

The Basswood

the Sea-turn

the Musquash

June Moonlight

 first fireflies in June

Starlight

June

*****

A rainbow in the west this morning. See June 25, 1852 (“Just as the sun rises this morning, under clouds, I see a rainbow in the west horizon, the lower parts quite bright.”)

Thermometer north side of house, 95°. See June 21, 1856 (”Very hot day, as was yesterday, -— 98° at 2 P. M., 99° at 3, and 128° in sun”); June 25, 1858 (“Hotter than yesterday and, like it, muggy or close. So hazy can see no mountains. In many spots in the road and by edge of rye-fields the reflected heat is almost suffocating. 93° at 1 P. M. ”); June 29, 1860 ("At 6 P.M. 91°, the hottest yet.").

I anticipated a sea-turn. See  April 28, 1856("On our return the wind changed to easterly, and I felt the cool, fresh sea-breeze."); April 30, 1856 ("At one o’clock there was the usual fresh easterly wind and sea-turn . . .and a fresh cool wind from the sea produces a mist in the air.")

 The earliest fruit of a rubus. See June 7, 1857 ("Rubus triflorus still in bloom");   June 25, 1854 ("A raspberry on sand by railroad, ripe.");  July 2, 1851("Some of the raspberries are ripe, the most innocent and simple of fruits”);July 6, 1857 (“Rubus triflorus well ripe.”)

The pads blown up by [the wind] already show crimson. See June 29, 1852 ("The wind exposes the red under sides of the white lily pads. This is one of the aspects of the river now.");  August 24,1854 ("The bright crimson-red under sides of the great white lily pads, turned up by the wind in broad fields on the sides of the stream, are a great ornament to the stream. It is not till August, methinks, that they are turned up conspicuously.”)

Tweezer-bird. See June 22, 1856 ("The woods still resound with the note of my tweezer-bird, or Sylvia Americana.").

The lark sings a note which belongs to a New England summer evening.  See July 16, 1851 ("The lark sings in the meadow; the very essence of the afternoon is in his strain. This is a New England sound")

Moon nearly full; rose a little before sunset. . . . At first a mere white cloud. As soon as the sun sets, begins to grow brassy. See July 11, 1851 ("[The moon] who was a pale cloud before, begins to emit a silvery light, acquiring at last a tinge of golden as the darkness deepens."); April 30, 1852 ("Then when I turned, I saw in the east, just over the woods, the modest, pale, cloud-like moon, two thirds full, looking spirit-like on these daylight scenes. Such a sight excites me. The earth is worthy to inhabit. ") See also May 3, 1852 ("A great brassy moon going down in the west."); June 1, 1852 ("The moon about full.. . .The moving clouds are the drama of the moonlight nights"); July 20, 1852 (" The crescent moon, meanwhile, grows more silvery, and, as it sinks in the west, more yellowish, ")

It is starlight about half an hour after sunset to-night; i. e. the first stars appear. . . .Finally the last traces of day disappear, about 9.30 o'clock, and the night fairly sets in. See August 8, 1851 ("Starlight! that would be a good way to mark the hour, if we were precise.”);May 8, 1852 (“Starlight marks conveniently a stage in the evening, i. e. when the first star can be seen. ”); June 28,1852 ("Now it is starlight; perhaps that dark cloud in the west has concealed the evening star before . . .Starlight!. . .. That is an epoch, when the last traces of daylight have disappeared and the night (nox) has fairly set in.”); 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 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. 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. . . .the last traces of daylight disappear, about 10 o'clock.")

I see the bright curves made by the water-bugs in the moonlight . . . now at 9 o'clock. See June 2, 1860 (“Water-bugs dimple the surface now quite across the river, in the moonlight, for it is a full moon.”); August 8, 1851 (“As I recross the string-pieces of the bridge, I see the water-bugs swimming briskly in the moonlight . . .”) 

June 30, 2019

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.

  April 7, 1853  

June 29 <<<<< June 30 >>>>> July 1 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, June 30

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 ©  2009-2023

https://tinyurl.com/HDT30June 

A Book of the Seasons: Lightning

 How peaceful great nature!

Henry Thoreau,

October 13, 1852

Wonder, awe

innocence, serenity –

lightning!

June 27,1852

January 25. The elms . . . stand for magnificence; they take the brunt of the tempest; they attract the lightning that would smite our roofs, leaving only a few rotten members scattered over the highway. January 25, 1856 See June 19, 1854 (" It runs down the large elm at Holbrook's and shatters the house near by. ")

February 15. A little thunder and lightning late in the afternoon. I see two flashes and hear two claps. February 15, 1861

February 23. About 4 P. M. a smart shower, ushered in by thunder and succeeded by a brilliant rainbow and yellow light from under the dark cloud in the west. Thus the first remarkable heat brings a thunder-shower. February 23, 1860

March 8. Lightning this evening, after a day of successive rains. March 8, 1854

March 13. Rainbow in east this morning. March 13, 1855

March 16. It is warm weather. A thunder-storm in the evening. March 16, 1854

March 25. To speak of the general phenomena of March . . . The 9th, it is quite warm, with a southwest wind. The first lightning is seen in the horizon by one who is out in the evening. March 25, 1860

April 6. The first lightning I remember this year was in the rain last evening, quite bright; and the thunder followed very long after. A thunder-shower in Boston yesterday. April 6, 1853

April 9. With April showers, me thinks, come rainbows. Why are they so rare in the winter? April 9, 1855

April 13. Hear the first toad in the rather cool rain, 10 A. M. See through the dark rain the first flash of lightning, in the west horizon, doubting if it was not a flash of my eye at first, but after a very long interval I hear the low rumbling of the first thunder, and now the summer is baptized and inaugurated in due form. Is not the first lightning the forerunner or warranty of summer heat? The air now contains such an amount of heat that it emits a flash. April 13, 1858

April 14. Rains still, with one or two flashes of lightning, but soon over.  April 14, 1858 

April 17. Was awakened in the night by a thunder and lightning  shower and hail-storm — the old familiar burst and rumble, as if it had been rumbling somewhere else ever since I heard it last, and had not lost the knack. I heard a thousand hailstones strike and bounce on the roof at once. What a clattering! Yet it did not last long, and the hail took a breathing-space once or twice. I did not know at first but we should lose our windows, the blinds being away at the painters’. These sounds lull me into a deeper slumber than before. Hail-storms are milked out of the first summer-like warmth; they belong to lingering cool veins in the air, which thus burst and come down. The thunder, too, sounds like the final rending and breaking up of winter; thus precipitous is its edge. The first one is a skirmish between the cool rear-guard of winter and the warm and earnest vanguard of summer. Advancing summer strikes on the edge of winter, which does not drift fast enough away, and fire is elicited. Electricity is engendered by the early heats. I love to hear the voice of the first thunder as of the toad (though it returns irregularly like pigeons), far away in his moist meadow where he is warmed to life, and see the flash of his eye. April 17, 1856

April 18. Am overtaken by a sudden sun-shower, after which a rainbow . . .In the evening hear far and wide the ring of toads, and a thunder-shower with its lightning is seen and heard in the west. April 18, 1855

April 26. A still, warm, overcast day with a southwest wind . . . almost sultry, as if there might be a thunder-shower before night. . . .*9 p. m. — Quite a heavy thunder-shower, The vivid lightning, as I walk the street, reveals the contrast between day and night. The rising cloud in the west makes it very dark and difficult to find my way, when there comes a flash which lights up the street for a moment almost as brightly as the day, far more so than moonlight, and I see a person on the sidewalk before me fifty rods off. April 26, 1854

April 27. Ricketson frequents his shanty by day and evening as much as his house, but does not sleep there, partly on account of his fear of lightning, which he cannot overcome. His timidity in this respect amounts to an idiosyncrasy. I was awaked there in a thunder-storm at midnight by Ricketson rushing about the house, calling to his sons to come down out of the attic where they slept and bolting in to leave a light in my room. His fear of death is equally singular. The thought of it troubles him more perhaps than anything else. He says that he knows nothing about another life, he would like to stay here always. He does not know what to think of the Creator that made the lightning and established death. April 27, 1857

May 9. The first thunder this afternoon. May 9, 1859

May 10. Before night a sudden shower with some thunder and lightning; the first. May 10, 1857

May 10. That season which is bounded on the north, on the spring side at least, by the trump of the bullfrog. . . .. I hear in his tone the rumors of summer heats.. . .and anticipation of the livelong summer to come. It gives leave to the corn to grow and to the heavens to thunder and lighten. . . . 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 11. I feel the air cooled and hear the muttering of distant thunder in the northwest and see a dark cloud in that direction indistinctly through the wood. That distant thunder-shower very much cools our atmosphere. I make haste through the woods homeward via Hubbard's Close . . . The shower is apparently going by on the north. There is a low, dark, blue-black arch, crescent-like, in the horizon, sweeping the distant earth there with a dusky, rainy brush. There is an uncommon stillness here, disturbed only by a rush of the wind from time to time. All men, like the earth, seem to wear an aspect of expectation. In the village I meet men making haste to their homes, for, though the heavy cloud has gone quite by, the shower will probably strike us with its tail. Now I have got home there is at last a still cooler wind with a rush, and at last a smart shower, slanting to the ground, without thunder. The rain is over. There is a bow in the east. The earth is refreshed; the grass is wet. The air is warm again and still. The rain has smoothed the water to a glassy smoothness . . . It is surprising what an electrifying effect this shower appears to have had. It is like the christening of the summer. I suspect that summer weather may be always ushered in in a similar manner, — thunder-shower, rainbow, smooth water, and warm night. A rainbow on the brow of summer. May 11, 1854

May 12. I see now, as I go forth on the river, the first summer shower coming up in the northwest, a dark and well defined cloud with rain falling sheaf-like from it, but fortunately moving off northeast along the horizon, or down the river . . . The thunder-cloud is like the ovary of a perfect flower. Other showers are merely staminiferous or barren. There are twenty barren to one fertile. It is not commonly till thus late in the season that the fertile are seen. In the thunder-cloud, so distinct and condensed, there is a positive energy, and I notice the first as the bursting of the pollen-cells in the flower of the sky . . . Already the coarse grass along the meadow shore, or where it is wettest, is a luxuriant green, answering in its deep, dark color to the thunder-cloud, – both summer phenomena, – as if it too had some lightning in its bosom. May 12, 1858

May 13. The third sultry evening in my chamber. A faint lightning is seen in the north horizon. May 13, 1860

May 16. It has been oppressively warm to-day, the first really warm, sultry-like weather, so that we were prepared for a thunder-storm at evening. At 5 P. M., dark, heavy, wet-looking clouds are seen in the northern horizon, perhaps over the Merrimack Valley, and we say it is going down the river and we shall not get a drop. The main body goes by, there is a shower in the north, and the western sky is suffused with yellow where its thin skirts are withdrawing. People stand at their doors in the warm evening, listening to the muttering of distant thunder and watching the forked lightning, now descending to the earth, now ascending to the clouds. This the first really warm day and thunder-shower . . .l We smell the fresher and cooler air from where the storm has passed. And now that it has grown dark, the skirts of the cloud seem to promise us a shower. It lightens incessantly right in the west; the right wing of the rear guard of the storm is steadily advancing and firing, and every flash shows the outlines of the cloud. We look out into the dark, and ever and anon comes a sudden illumination blinding our eyes, like a vast glow-worm, succeeded ere long by the roll of thunder. The first pattering of drops is heard; all west windows are hastily shut. The weak-eyed sit with their backs to windows and close the blinds. But we are disappointed, after all, and each flash reveals a narrow strip of evening red through the thin drops below the advancing cloud. May 16, 1853

May 17. Now the sun has come out after the May storm, how bright, how full of freshness and tender promise and fragrance is the new world! The woods putting forth new leaves; it is a memorable season . . . Does not summer begin after the May storm? May 17, 1852

May 19. There was the first lightning we have noticed this year, last Sunday evening, and a thunder-storm in Walpole, N. H. Lightning here this evening and an aurora in form of a segment of a circle. May 19, 1852

May 20. Very low thunder-clouds and showers far in the north at sunset, the wind of which, though not very strong, has cooled the air. See the lightning, but can not hear the thunder. I see in the northwest first rise, in the rose-tinted horizon sky, a dark, narrow, craggy cloud, narrow and projecting as no cloud on earth, seen against the rose-tinged sky, — the crest of a thunder-storm, beautiful and grand. . May 20, 1854

May 20. Was awaked and put into sounder sleep than ever early this morning by the distant crashing of thunder, and now, — P. M. (to Beck Stow’s),— I hear it in mid-afternoon, muttering, crashing in the muggy air in mid-heaven, a little south of the village as I go through it, like the tumbling down of piles of boards, and get a few sprinkles in the sun. Nature has found her hoarse summer voice again, like the lowing of a cow let out to pasture. It is Nature’s rutting season. Even as the birds sing tumultuously and glance by with fresh and brilliant plumage, so now is Nature’s grandest voice heard, and her sharpest flashes seen. The air has resumed its voice, and the lightning, like a yellow spring flower, illumines the dark banks of the clouds. All the pregnant earth is bursting into life like a mildew, accompanied with noise and fire and tumult. Some oestrus stings her that she dashes headlong against the steeples and bellows hollowly, making the earth tremble. She comes dropping rain like a cow with overflowing udder. The winds drive her; the dry fields milk her. May 20, 1856

May 29. These are afternoons when you expect a thunder-shower before night; the outlines of cloudy cumuli are dimly seen through the hazy, furnace-like air, rising in the west. May 29, 1853

May 29. It lights up a little, and the drops fall thinly again, and the birds begin to sing, but now I see a new shower coming up from the southwest, and the wind seems to have changed somewhat. Already I had heard the low mutterings of its thunder — for this is a thunder- shower — in the midst of the last. It seems to have shifted its quarters merely to attack me on a more exposed side of my castle. Two foes appear where I had expected none. But who can calculate the tactics of the storm? It is a first regular summer thunder-shower, preceded by a rush of wind, and I begin to doubt if my quarters will prove a sufficient shelter. I am fairly besieged and know not when I shall escape. I hear the still roar of the rushing storm at a distance, though no trees are seen to wave. And now the forked flashes descending to the earth succeed rapidly to the hollow roars above, and down comes the deluging rain. I hear the alarmed notes of birds flying to a shelter. The air at length is cool and chilly, the atmosphere is darkened, and I have forgotten the smooth pond and its reflections. The rock feels cold to my body, as if it were a different season of the year. I almost repent of having lingered here; think how far I should have got if I had started homeward. But then what a condition I should have been in! Who knows but the lightning will strike this cliff and topple the rocks down on me? The crashing thunder sounds like the overhauling of lumber on heaven's loft. And now, at last, after an hour of steady confinement, the clouds grow thin again, and the birds begin to sing. They make haste to conclude the day with their regular evening songs (before the rain is fairly over) according to the program. The pepe on some pine tree top was heard almost in the midst of the storm. One or two bullfrogs trump. They care not how wet it is. Again I hear the still rushing, all-pervading roar of the withdrawing storm, when it is at least half a mile off, wholly beyond the pond, though no trees are seen to wave. It is simply the sound of the countless drops falling on the leaves and the ground. You were not aware what a sound the rain made. Several times I attempt to leave my shelter, but return to it. My first stepping abroad seems but a signal for the rain to commence again. Not till after an hour and a half do I escape. May 29, 1857

May 29.

These are afternoons

when you expect a thunder-

shower before night.

May 29, 1853

May 30. A succession of moderate thunder and lightning storms from the west, two or three, an hour apart. . . .I took refuge from the thunder-shower this afternoon by running for a high pile of wood near Second Division, and while it was raining, I stuck three stout cat-sticks into the pile, higher than my head, each a little lower than the other, and piled large flattish wood on them and tossed on dead pine-tops, making a little shed, under which I stood dry. May 30, 1860

June 2, 2017

June 2. It is very warm till 3 p. m., and then a washing breeze arises, and before night probably distant thunder-showers have cooled the air, for after dark we see the flashes called heat lightning in the north, and hear the distant thunder. June 2, 1857

June 3. It has been a sultry day, and a slight thunder-shower, and now I see fireflies in the meadows at evening. June 3, 1852

June 7. Fireflies pretty numerous over the river, though we have had no thunder-showers of late. June 7, 1858

June 8. Within a day or two has begun that season of summer when you see afternoon showers, maybe with thunder, or the threat of them, dark in the horizon, and are uncertain whether to venture far away or without an umbrella. I noticed the very first such cloud on the 25th of May, — the dark iris of June. When you go forth to walk at 2 p. m. you see perhaps, in the south west or west or maybe east horizon, a dark and threatening mass of cloud showing itself just over the woods, its base horizontal and dark, with lighter edges where it is rolled up to the light, while all beneath is the kind of dark slate of falling rain. These are summer showers, come with the heats of summer. June 8, 1860

June 9. There are some large cumuli with glowing downy cheeks floating about. Now I notice where an elm is in the shadow of a cloud,—the black elm-tops and shadows of June. It is a dark eyelash which suggests a flashing eye beneath. It suggests houses that lie under the shade, the repose and siesta of summer noons, the thunder-cloud, bathing, and all that belongs to summer. June 9, 1856

June 9. We have half a dozen showers to-day, distinct summer showers from black clouds suddenly wafted up from the west and northeast; also some thunder and hail, – large white stones. June 9, 1860

June 11. It is very hot this afternoon, and that peculiar stillness of summer noons now reigns in the woods. I observe and appreciate the shade, as it were the shadow of each particular leaf on the ground. I think that this peculiar darkness of the shade, or of the foliage as seen between you and the sky . . . reminds me of the thunder-cloud and the dark eyelash of summer. Great cumuli are slowly drifting in the intensely blue sky, with glowing white borders. June 11, 1856

June 13. I hear the muttering of thunder and see a dark cloud in the west-southwest horizon; am uncertain how far up-stream I shall get. An opposite cloud rises fast in the east-northeast, and now the lightning crinkles and I hear the heavy thunder. June 13, 1854

June 14. It suddenly begins to rain with great violence, and we in haste draw up our boat on the Clamshell shore, upset it, and get under, sitting on the paddles, and so are quite dry while our friends thought we were being wet to our skins. But we have as good a roof as they. It is very pleasant to lie there half an hour close to the edge of the water and see and hear the great drops patter on the river, each making a great bubble. June 14, 1855

June 15. This is the third afternoon that we have had a rumbling thunder-cloud arise in the east, — not to mention the west, — but all signs have failed hitherto, and I resolve to proceed on my voyage, knowing that I have a tight [roof] in my boat turned up. June 15, 1854

June 15. A thunder-shower in the north goes down the Merrimack. June 15, 1860

June 16 Heat lightning in the horizon. A sultry night. June 16, 1852

June 16. Three days in succession, — the 13th, 14th, and 15th, — thunder-clouds, with thunder and lightning, have risen high in the east, threatening instant rain, and yet each time it has failed to reach us. Thus it is almost invariably, methinks, with thunder-clouds which rise in the east; they do not reach us. June 16, 1854

June 16. Thunder-showers show themselves about 2 P.M. in the west, but split at sight of Concord and go east on each side . . . 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 16, 1860

June 17. A small thunder-shower comes up in the south-west. The thunder sounds like moving a pile of boards in the attic. We see the increasing outline of the slate-colored falling rain from the black cloud. It passes mainly to the south. We feel only the wind of it at first, but after it appears to back up and we get some rain. In the damp, warm evening after the rain, the fireflies appear to be more numerous than ever. June 17, 1852    

June 17. About 1 P.M., notice thunder-clouds in west and hear the muttering. As yesterday, it splits at sight of Concord and goes south and north. Nevertheless about 3 P. M. begins a steady gentle rain here for several hours, and in the night again, the thunder, as yesterday, mostly forerunning or superficial to the shower. This the third day of thunder-showers in afternoon, though the 14th it did not rain here. June 17, 1860

June 19. At this season we apprehend no long storm, only showers with or without thunder.  June 19, 1853

June 19. Suddenly comes the gust, and the big drops slanting from the north, and the birds fly as if rudderless, and the trees bow and are wrenched. It rains against the windows like hail and is blown over the roofs like steam or smoke. It runs down the large elm at Holbrook's and shatters the house near by. June 19, 1854

June 21. I hear the sound of distant thunder, though no cloud is obvious, muttering like the roar of artillery. That is a phenomenon of this season. As you walk at evening, you see the light of the flashes in the horizon and hear the muttering of distant thunder, where some village is being refreshed with the rain denied to Concord. We say that showers avoid us, that they go down the river, i. e. go off down the Merrimack, or keep to the south. Thunder and lightning are remarkable accompaniments to our life, as if to remind us that there always is or should be a kind of battle waging. The thunder is signal guns to us. June 21, 1852

June 22. The far-retreated thunder-clouds low in the southeast horizon and in the north, emitting low flashes which reveal their forms. June 22, 1852

June 22, 2015

June 23. It is . . . an agreeably cool and clear and breezy day, when all things appear as if washed bright and shine . . . The air is cleared and cooled by yesterday's thunder-storms. The river too has a fine, cool, silvery sparkle or sheen on it. June 23, 1852

June 27. All the phenomena of nature need be seen from the point of view of wonder and awe, like lightning; and, on the other hand, the lightning itself needs to be regarded with serenity, as the most familiar and innocent phenomena are. June 27, 1852

June 29. At 6 P.M. 91°, the hottest yet. A thunder-shower has passed northeast and grazed us, and at 6.30 or 7, another thunder-shower comes up from the southwest and there is a sudden burst from it with a remarkably strong, gusty wind, and the rain for fifteen minutes falls in a blinding deluge. The roof of the depot shed is taken off, many trees torn to pieces, the garden flooded at once, corn and potatoes, etc., beaten flat. You could not see distinctly many rods through the rain. It was the very strong gusts added to the weight of the rain that did the mischief. I think I never saw it rain so hard. Thus our most violent thunder-shower followed the hottest hour of the month. June 29, 1860 

June 29, 2013 6:23 PM

July 10. Every hour we expect a thundershower to cool the air, but none comes. July 10, 1852

July 12. . The clouds, cumuli, lie in high piles along the southern horizon, glowing, downy, or cream-colored, broken into irregular summits in the form of bears erect, or demigods, or rocking stones, infant Herculeses; and still we think that from their darker bases a thunder-shower may issue. July 12, 1852

July 13. Very hot weather . . . I hear before I start the distant mutterings of thunder in the northwest, though I see no cloud. The haymakers are busy raking their hay, to be ready for a shower. They would rather have their grass wet a little than not have the rain. I keep on, regardless of the prospect J. . . I make haste home, expecting a thunder-shower, which we need, but it goes by. July 13, 1857

July 17.

Gentle steady rain

without thunder or lightning —

the first summer rain.

July 17, 1852

July 19. The wind rises more and more. The river and the pond are blacker than the threatening cloud in the south. The thunder mutters in the distance. The surface of the water is slightly rippled . . . The woods roar. Small white clouds [hurry] across the dark-blue ground of the storm. July 19, 1851

July 20. A thunder-shower in the night . . . The clap which waked me last night was as if some one was 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 filled the damp air with light, like some vast glow-worm in the fields of ether opening its wings. July 20, 1851  

July 20. A muttering thunder-cloud in northwest gradually rising and with its advanced guard hiding in the sun and now and then darting forked lightning. The wind rising ominously also drives me home again. At length down it comes upon the thirsty herbage, beating down the leaves with grateful, tender violence and slightly cooling the air. How soon it sweeps over and we see the flash in the southeast! July 20, 1854

July 20.

Darting forked lightning,

a muttering thunder-cloud

drives me home again.

July 20, 1854

July 23, 2014

July 23. See a thunder-cloud coming up in northwest, but as I walk and wind in the woods, lose the points of compass and cannot tell whether it is travelling this way or not. At length the sun is obscured by its advance guard, but, as so often, the rain comes, leaving thunder and lightning behind. July 23, 1854

July 24. Now, at 2 p. m., I hear again the loud thunder and see the dark cloud in the west. 

Some small and nearer clouds are floating past, white against the dark-blue distant one.  July 24, 1854

July 29. Another smart rain, with lightning. July 29, 1856

July 29. We passed near a pine on its shore which had been splintered by lightning, perhaps the day before. The Maine Woods (“Wednesday, July 29 [1857]. When we awoke it had done raining,")

July 30. Caught in a thunder-shower, when south of Flint's Pond. It is a grand sound, that of the rain on the leaves of the forest a quarter of a mile distant, approaching. July 30, 1852 

July 30. See the lightning on the telegraph battery and hear the shock about sundown from our window -- an intensely bright white light.  July 30, 1855

July 31.You are liable to be overtaken by a thunder-shower these afternoons. July 31, 1858

August 4. [Monadnock] Lightning is seen far in the south. Cloud, drifting cloud, alternate with moonlight all the rest of the night. August 4, 1860

August 6. Copious and continuous rain in the night, deluging, soaking rain, with thunder and lightning, beating down the crops; and this morning it is cooler and clearer and windier. August 6, 1856

August 8. Rain, lightning, and thunder all day long in torrents. The ground was already saturated on the night of the 5th, and now it fills all gutters and low grounds. No sooner has one thunder-shower swept over and the sky begun to light up a little, than another darkens the west. We were told that lightning clears the air and so clears itself, but now we lose our faith in that theory, for we have thunder after thunder-shower and lightning is become a drug. Nature finds it just as easy to lighten the last time as at first, and we cannot believe that the air was so very impure. August 8, 1856

August 9. Notwithstanding the very copious rain, with lightning, on the night of August 5th and the deluge which fell yesterday, raising the river still higher, it rained again and again with very vivid lightning, more copiously than ever, last night, and without long intervals all this day. Few, if any, can remember such a succession of thunder-storms merged into one long thunder-storm, lasting almost continuously (the storm does) two nights and two days. August 9, 1856

I hear muttering

of thunder as the first drops

dimple the river.

August 22, 1853

August 25. I cross the meadows in the face of a thunder-storm rising very dark in the north.. . . It comes on rapidly, with vivid lightning striking the northern earth and heavy thunder following. . . .
Just before, and in the shadow of, the cloud, I see, advancing majestically with wide circles over the meadowy flood, a fish hawk and, apparently, a black eagle (maybe a young white-head).. . .
They soon disappear southwest, cutting off a bend. The thunder-shower passed off to the southeast. August 25, 1856

August 26.  In the evening, some lightning in the horizon, and soon after a little gentle rain. August 26, 1854


August 31 A thunder-cloud, seen from a hilltop, as it is advancing rapidly across the sky on one side, whose rear at least will soon strike us. The dark-blue mass (seen edgewise) with its lighter upper surface and its copious curving rain beneath and behind, like an immense steamer holding its steady way to its port, with tremendous mutterings from time to time, a rush of cooler air, and hurried flight of birds. August 31, 1859

Rush of cooler air

and a hurried flight of birds –

dark-blue thunder-cloud.

August 31, 1859

September 6. 9 P. M. — There is now approaching from the west one of the heaviest thunder-showers (apparently) and with the most incessant flashes that I remember to have seen. It must be twenty miles off, at least. for I can hardly hear the thunder at all. The almost incessant flashes reveal the form of the cloud, at least the upper and lower edge of it, but it stretches north and south along the horizon further than we see. Every minute I see the crinkled lightning, intensely bright, dart to earth or forkedly along the cloud. September 6, 1854

September 26. It grieves me to see how rapidly some great trees which have fallen or been felled waste away when left on the ground. There was the large oak by the Assabet, which I remember to have been struck by lightning, and afterward blown over, being dead. It used to lie with its top down-hill and partly in the water and its butt far up. Now there is no trace of its limbs, and the very core of its trunk is the only solid part, concealed within a spongy covering. Soon only a richer mould will mark the spot. September 26, 1855

November 23. In the evening heavy rain and some thunder and lightning, and rain in the night. November 23, 1857

December 26. I passed by the pitch pine that was struck by lightning. I was impressed with awe on looking up and seeing that broad, distinct spiral mark, more distinct even than when made eight years ago, as one might groove a walking-stick, — mark of an invisible and in tangible power, a thunderbolt, mark where a terrific and resistless bolt came down from heaven, out of the harmless sky, eight years ago. It seemed a sacred spot. I felt that we had not learned much since the days of Tullus Hostilius. It at length shows the effect of the shock, and the woodpeckers have begun to bore it on one side. December 26, 1853

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Lightning

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 ©  2009-2023

https://tinyurl.com/HDTlightning