New and collected mind-prints. by Zphx. Following H.D.Thoreau 170 years ago today. Seasons are in me. My moods periodical -- no two days alike.
Sunday, July 30, 2023
A Book of the Seasons: Pine-sap and Tobacco-pipe
Friday, July 28, 2023
A Book of the Seasons: The Season of Sunny Water
July 27. The water has begun to be clear and sunny, revealing the fishes and countless minnows of all sizes and colors, this year's brood. July 27, 1860
July 28. The season has now arrived when I begin to see further into the water, -- see the bottom, the weeds, and fishes more than before. I can see the bottom when it is five and a half feet deep even, see the fishes scuttling in and out amid the weeds. July 28, 1859
July 30. This is a perfect dog-day. The atmosphere thick, mildewy, cloudy. The water is suddenly clear, as if clarified by the white of an egg or lime. I think it must be because the light is reflected downward from the overarching dog-day sky. It assists me very much as I go looking for the ceratophyllum, potamogetons, etc. All the secrets of the river bottom are revealed. I look down into sunny depths which before were dark. The wonderful clearness of the water, enabling you to explore the river bottom and many of its secrets now, exactly as if the water had been clarified. This is our compensation for a heaven concealed. The air is close and still. July 30, 1856
July 30. This dog-day weather I can see the bottom where five and a half feet deep. At five feet it is strewn clear across with sium, heart-leaf, Ranunculus Purshii, etc. It is quite green and verdurous, especially with the first. I see the fishes moving leisurely about amid the weeds, their affairs revealed, especially perch, — some large ones prowling there; and pickerel, large and small, lie imperturbable. I see more moss (?) covered rocks on the bottom and some rising quite near the surface, — three or four between my boat's place and thirty rods above, — and a good many three feet over on the bottom, revealed in the sunny water, and little suspected before. July 30, 1859
August 8. This is a day of sunny water . . . I look down a rod and see distinctly the fishes and the bottom. August 8, 1854
August 8. The river, now that it is so clear and sunny, is better than any aquarium. August 8, 1859
Tuesday, July 25, 2023
Many little toads.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 25, 1855
See July 25, 1854 ("See in woods a toad, dead-leaf color with black spots.") See also July 12, 1852 ("I go to walk at twilight, — at the same time that toads go to their walks, and are seen hopping about the sidewalks or the pump"); July 17, 1853 ("Young toads not half an inch long at Walden shore."); July 17, 1856 (“I see many young toads hopping about on that bared ground amid the thin weeds, not more than five eighths to three quarters of an inch long.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Midsummer Toads; Northland Nature: Tiny toad time in late July; WHAT ARE THESE TINY TOADS? ("The tadpoles of many species of the genus Bufo (what most people consider to be the “true toads”) metamorphose at a very small size, often all at once, and then disperse. If you live near a pond or lake or stream where the tadpoles are common, you might all of a sudden see dozens or even hundreds of these tiny toadlets for a few days, and after that, see them only occasionally.); toadlets dispersing (July 17, 2013)
Wednesday, July 12, 2023
A Book of the Seasons: July 12 (moonlight, clouds, swallows, bullfrogs and toads)
I observed this morning a row of several dozen swallows perched on the telegraph-wire by the bridge. July 12, 1852
Many young barn swallows sit in flocks on the bared dead willows over the water and let me float within four or five feet. Birds do not distinguish a man sitting in a boat. July 12, 1854
The green-flowered lanceolate-leafed orchis at Azalea Brook will soon flower. July 12, 1853
Red lilies in prime, single upright fiery flowers, their throats how splendidly and variously spotted, hardly two of quite the same hue and not two spotted alike, —leopard-spotted, — averaging a foot or more in height, amid the huckleberry and lambkill, etc., in the moist, meadowy pasture. July 12, 1856
The cows stand up to their bellies in the river, lashing their sides with their tails from time to time. July 12, 1857
Hear a nuthatch in the street. So they breed here. July 12, 1860
It having cleared up, we shouldered our packs and commenced our descent. July 12, 1858 [Mt. Washington]
I hear the toads still at night, together with bullfrogs, but not so universally nor loud as formerly. I go to walk at twilight, — at the same time that toads go to their walks, and are seen hopping about the sidewalks or the pump. July 12, 1852
In the evening, the moon being about full, I paddle up the river to see the moonlight and hear the bullfrogs. The toads and the pebbly dont dont are most common. July 12, 1859.
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. It is a pleasing reminiscence of the day in the midst of the deepening shadows of the night.July 12, 1852
I see at 9.30 p. m. a little brood of four or five barn swallows, which have quite recently left the nest, perched close together for the night on a dead willow twig in the shade of the tree, about four feet above the water. Their tails not yet much grown. July 12, 1859
The moon is full, and I walk alone, July 12, 1851
The moonlight is more perfect than last night; hardly a cloud in the sky, — only a few fleecy ones. There is more serenity and more light. July 12, 1851
*****
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau:
If you make the least correctobservation of nature this year,you will have occasion to repeat itwith illustrations the next,and the season and life itself is prolonged.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 12A 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 © 2009-2024
https://tinyurl.com/HDT12JULY
Wednesday, July 5, 2023
A Book of the Seasons: July 5 (eternal summer, cows in pasture, fruits as well as flowers, a good place to walk by moonlight)
July 5, 2015 |
Saturday. Walden. - Yesterday I came here to live . . . Always there was the sound of the morning cricket. July 5, 1845
There is a handsome wood-path on the east side of White Pond. The shadows of the pine stems and branches fall across the path, which is perfectly red with pine-needles. July 5, 1851
- We lie in the shade of locust trees.
- Haymakers go by in a hay-rigging.
- I am reminded of berrying.
- I scent the sweet-fern and the dead or dry pine leaves. .
One hundred and nine swallows on telegraph-wire at bridge within eight rods, and others flying about. July 5, 1854
Many pickerel dart away from amidst the pads, and in one place I see one or two great snap-turtles. July 5, 1856
This retired bridge is a favorite spot with me. I have witnessed many a fair sunset from it. July 5, 1851
July 5, 2020
If you make the least correctobservation of nature this year,you will have occasion to repeat itwith illustrations the next,and the season and life itself is prolonged.A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 5A 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/HDT05JULY
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