By moonlight in forests like this we listen to hear wolves howl to Cynthia.

September 5.

By moonlight at Potter's Field toward Bear Garden Hill, 8 P. M. 

The whip-poor-wills sing . . . Moonlight on Fair Haven Pond seen from the Cliffs. A sheeny lake in the midst of a boundless forest, the windy surf sounding freshly and wildly in the single pine behind you; the silence of hushed wolves in the wilderness, and, as you fancy, moose looking off from the shore of the lake. 

September 5, 2019

The stars of poetry and history and unexplored nature looking down on the scene.  This is my world now, with a dull whitish mark curving north ward through the forest marking the outlet to the lake. 

Fair Haven by moonlight lies there like a lake in the Maine wilderness in the midst of a primitive forest untrodden by man. This light and this hour take the civilization all out of the landscape. 

Even in villages dogs bay the moon; in forests like this we listen to hear wolves howl to Cynthia.

Even at this hour in the evening the crickets chirp, the small birds peep, the wind roars in the wood, as if it were just before dawn. The moonlight seems to linger as if it were giving way to the light of coming day. 

The landscape seen from the slightest elevation by moonlight is seen remotely, and flattened, as it were, into mere light and shade, open field and forest, like the surface of the earth seen from the top of a mountain.


How much excited we are, how much recruited, by a great many particular fragrances! A field of ripening corn, now at night, that has been topped, with the stalks stacked up to dry, – an inexpressibly dry, rich, sweet ripening scent. I feel as if I were an ear of ripening corn myself. Is not the whole air then a compound of such odors undistinguishable? Drying corn-stalks in a field; what an herb-garden!


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 5, 1851

Moonlight on Fair Haven Pond seen from the Cliffs. A sheeny lake in the midst of a boundless forest. See June 14, 1851 ("The moon was now seen rising over Fair Haven and at the same time reflected in the river, pale and white like a silvery cloud,");September 4, 1854 ("To Fair Haven Pond by boat. Full moon; bats flying about; skaters and water bugs like sparks of fire on the surface between us and the moon.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, September Moonlight

I feel as if I were an ear of ripening corn myself. See July 12, 1851 ("The earliest corn is beginning to show its tassels now, and I scent it as I walk, — its peculiar dry scent."); September 2, 1851 ("A writer, a man writing, is the scribe of all nature; he is the corn and the grass and the atmosphere writing."); September 4, 1859 ("Topping the corn, which has been going on some days, now reveals the yellow and yellowing pumpkins. This is a genuine New England scene. The earth blazes not only with sun-flowers but with sun-fruits.") September 14, 1851 ("The corn-stalks standing in stacks, in long rows along the edges of the corn-fields."); October 6, 1858 ("The corn stands bleached and faded — quite white in the twilight")

The moon is full, and I walk alone.

July 12.

July 12, 2012

8 P. M. Now at least the moon is full, and I walk alone, which is best by night, if not by day always.

Your companion must sympathize with the present mood. The conversation must be located where the walkers are, and vary exactly with the scene and events and the contour of the ground. 

Farewell to those who will talk of nature unnaturally, whose presence is an interruption. I know but one with whom I can walk. I might as well be sitting in a bar-room with them as walk and talk with most. We are never side by side in our thoughts, and we cannot hear each other's silence. Indeed, we cannot be silent. We are forever breaking silence, that is all, and mending nothing.

How can they keep together who are going different ways! 

I start a sparrow from her three eggs in the grass, where she had settled for the night.

The earliest corn is beginning to show its tassels now, and I scent it as I walk, — its peculiar dry scent.

(This afternoon I gathered ripe blackberries, and felt as if the autumn had commenced. )

Now perchance many sounds and sights only remind me that they once said something to me, and are so by association interesting. I go forth to be reminded of a previous state of existence, if perchance any memento of it is to be met with hereabouts.

I have no doubt that Nature preserves her integrity. Nature is in as rude health as when Homer sang. We may at last by our sympathies be well.

I see a skunk on Bear Garden Hill stealing noiselessly away from me, while the moon shines over the pitch pines, which send long shadows down the hill.  Now, looking back, I see it shining on the south side of farmhouses and barns with a weird light, for I pass here half an hour later than last night.

I smell the huckleberry bushes.

I hear a human voice, — some laborer singing after his day's toil, which I do not often hear.  Loud it must be, for it is far away. Methinks I should know it for a white man's voice.

Some strains have the melody of an instrument.

Now I hear the sound of a bugle in the Corner,  reminding me of poetic wars; a few flourishes and the bugler has gone to rest.

At the foot of the Cliff hill I hear the sound of the clock striking nine, as distinctly as within a quarter of a mile usually, though there is no wind.

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.

I hear that sort of throttled or chuckling note as of a bird flying high, now from this side, then from that.

Methinks when I turn my head I see Wachusett from the side of the hill.

I smell the butter-and-eggs as I walk.

I am startled by the rapid transit of some wild animal across my path, a rabbit or a fox, — or you hardly know, if it be not a bird.

Looking down from the cliffs, the leaves of the tree-tops shine more than ever by day.

Here and there a lightning-bug shows his greenish light over the tops of the trees.

As I return through the orchard, a foolish robin bursts away from his perch unnaturally, with the habits of man.

The air is remarkably still and unobjectionable on the hilltop, and the whole world below is covered as with a gossamer blanket of moonlight. It is just about as yellow as a blanket. It is a great dimly burnished shield with darker blotches on its surface. You have lost some light, it is true, but you have got this simple and magnificent stillness, brooding like genius.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 12, 1851

The moon is full, and I walk alone. See July 16, 1850 ("Many men walk by day; few walk by night. It is a very different season. Instead of the sun, there are the moon and stars; instead of the wood thrush, there is the whip-poor-will; instead of butterflies, fireflies, winged sparks of fire!"); August  31?, 1850 ("My friends wonder that I love to walk alone in solitary fields and woods by night . ")

I pass here half an hour later than last night. See July 11, 1851 ("We go toward Bear Garden Hill. The sun is setting. . . . The moon is silvery still, not yet inaugurated.")

(This afternoon I gathered ripe blackberries, and felt as if the autumn had commenced.) See August 18, 1856 ("As I go along the hillsides in sprout-lands, amid the Solidago stricta, looking for the blackberries left after the rain, the sun warm as ever, but the air cool nevertheless, I hear the steady (not intermittent) shrilling of apparently the alder cricket, clear, loud, and autumnal, a season sound. Hear it, but see it not. It reminds me of past autumns and the lapse of time, suggests a pleasing, thoughtful melancholy, like the sound of the flail. Such preparation, such an outfit has our life, and so little brought to pass.")

I smell the huckleberry bushes. See August 12, 1851 ("How wholesome the taste of huckleberries, when now by moonlight I feel for them amid the bushes!")

I hear a human voice, — some laborer singing after his day's toil. See August 15, 1851 ("I hear now from Bear Garden Hill — I rarely walk by moonlight without hearing — the sound of a flute, or a horn, or a human voice.")

Here and there a lightning-bug shows his greenish light over the tops of the trees. See August 5, 1851 ("I see a solitary firefly over the woods".)

July 12. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, July 12

Now at least the moon 

is full, and I walk alone, 

which is best by night.

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 © 2009-2021

The thickness of the ice on Walden.

March 19.

P. M. — To Walden. 

Measure the snow again. West of railroad, 15; east of railroad, 11 4/5; average, 13 2/5; Trillium Woods, 16 3/4. 

The last measurement was on the 7th, when it averaged about sixteen inches in the open land. This depth it must have preserved, owing to the remarkably cold weather, till the 13th at least. So it chances that the snow was constantly sixteen inches deep, at least, on a level in open land, from January 13th to March 13th. 

It is remarkable how rapidly it has settled on the east of the railroad as compared with the west since the 7th (or I may say rather the 13th). The whole average settling, in open land, since say the 13th, is a little less than three inches. 

The thickness of the ice on Walden in the long cove on the south side, about five rods from shore, where the water is nineteen and a half feet deep, is just twenty six inches, about one foot being snow ice. In the middle it was twenty-four and a quarter on the 11th. It is the same there now, and undoubtedly it was then twenty six in the long cove. Probably got to be the thickest on this side. 

Since the warmer weather which began on the 13th, the snow, which was three or four inches deep, is about half melted on the ice, under the influence of the sun alone, and the ice is considerably softened within the last five days, thus suddenly, quite through, it being easier to cut and more moist, quite fine and white like snow in the hole, sticking together as damp snow when I shovel it out on my axe, the dust not at all hard, dry, and crystalline. 

Apparently, then, Walden is as thickly frozen about shore as Flint’s. 

While I am measuring, though it is quite warm, the air is filled with large, moist snowflakes, of the star form, which are rapidly concealing the very few bare spots on the railroad embankment. It is, indeed, a new snow-storm. 

Another old red maple bleeds now, on the warm south edge of Trillium Wood. The first maple was old and in a warm position.

No sooner is some opening made in the river, a square rod in area, where some brook or rill empties in, than the fishes apparently begin to seek it for light and warmth, and thus early, perchance, may become the prey of the fish hawk. They are seen to ripple the water, darting out as you approach. 

I noticed on the 18th that springy spot on the shore just above the railroad bridge, by the ash, which for a month has been bare for two or three feet, now enlarged to eight or ten feet in diameter. And in a few other places on the meadowy shore, e. g. just above mouth of Nut Meadow, I see great dimples in the deep snow, eight or ten feet over, betraying springs. 

There the pads (Nuphar) and cress already spring, and shells are left by the rat. At the broad ditch on the Corner road, opposite Bear Garden, the snowy crust had slumped or fallen in here and there, and, where the bridge was perfect, I saw it quite two feet thick. 

In the smooth open water there, small water-bugs were gyrating singly, not enough to play the game. 

I am surprised at the sudden change in the Walden ice within five days. In cutting a hole now, instead of hard, dry, transparent chips of ice, you make a fine white snow, very damp and adhering together, with but few chips in it. The ice has been affected throughout its twenty-six inches, though most, I should say, above. Hard to say exactly where the ice begins, under the two inches of snow.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 19, 1856

No sooner is some opening made in the river, . . . than the fishes . . . ripple the water. . .  See March 18, 1856 (“I see the ripples made by some fishes, which were in the small opening at its mouth, making haste to hide themselves in the ice-covered river.”);March 19, 1854 (" You look into some clear, sandy-bottomed brook, where it spreads into a deeper bay, yet flowing cold from ice and snow not far off, and see, indistinctly poised over the sand on invisible fins, the outlines of a shiner, scarcely to be distinguished from the sands behind it as if it were transparent.”)

Winter comes unnoticed – already foxes have left their tracks.

December 8

P. M. —Up river and meadow on ice to Hubbard Bridge and thence to Walden.

Winter has come unnoticed by me, I have been so busy writing. This is the life most lead in respect to Nature. How different from my habitual one! It is hasty, coarse, and trivial, as if you were a spindle in a factory. The other is leisurely, fine, and glorious, like a flower. In the first case you are merely getting your living; in the second you live as you go along. You travel only on roads of the proper grade without jar or running off the track, and sweep round the hills by beautiful curves.

Here is the river frozen over in many places, I am not sure whether the fourth night or later, but the skating is hobbly or all hobbled like a coat of mail or thickly bossed shield, apparently sleet frozen in water. Very little smooth ice.

December 8, 2024

How black the water where the river is open when I look from the light, by contrast with the surrounding white, the ice and snow! A black artery here and there concealed under a pellicle of ice.

Go over the fields on the crust to Walden, over side of Bear Garden. Already foxes have left their tracks. 

How the crust shines afar, the sun now setting! There is a glorious clear sunset sky, soft and delicate and warm even like a pigeon’s neck. 

Why do the mountains never look so fair as from my native fields?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 8, 1854

Up river and on ice to Hubbard Bridge. See December 13, 1859 (“My first true winter walk is perhaps that which I take on the river, or where I cannot go in the summer.”)

Winter has come unnoticed by me, I have been so busy writing . . . hasty, coarse, and trivial, as if you were a spindle in a factory. See December 6, 1854 ("I see thick ice and boys skating . . . but know not when it froze, I have been so busy writing my lecture . . . After lecturing twice this winter I feel that I am in danger of cheapening myself."); December 12, 1851("I have been surveying for twenty or thirty days, living coarsely, - indeed, leading a quite trivial life ");  December 14. 1851 ("The boys have been skating for a week, but . . .I have hardly realized that there was ice, though I have walked over it about this business.") See also December 7, 1856 ("That grand old poem called Winter is round again without any connivance of mine . . . I see with surprise the pond a dumb white surface of ice speckled with snow . . . It seemed as if winter had come without any interval since midsummer, and I was prepared to see it flit away by the time I again looked over my shoulder. It was as if I had dreamed it.")

Already foxes have left their tracks. Compare December 8, 1855 ("Saturday. Still no snow, nor ice noticeable . . .Let a snow come and clothe the ground and trees, and I shall see the tracks of many inhabitants now unsuspected"); See  December 12, 1855 ("The snow having come, we see . . . now first, as it were, we have the fox for our nightly neighbor, and countless tiny deer mice."); December 13, 1859  ("I see that the fox too has already taken the same walk before me, just along the edge of the button-bushes, where not even he can go in the summer. We both turn our steps hither at the same time."); December 14, 1855 ("Thus by the snow I was made aware in this short walk of the recent presence there of squirrels, a fox, and countless mice, whose trail I had crossed, but none of which I saw, or probably should have seen before the snow fell.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Fox

Clear sunset sky, soft and delicate.  See December 8, 1853 ("Now the sun is set, Walden (I am on the east side) is more light than the sky . . . while the sky is yellowish in the horizon and a dusky blue above "); See also December 5, 1856 ("It is a perfectly cloudless and simple winter sky . . . The sun goes down and leaves not a blush in the sky."); December 9, 1859 ("Methinks it often happens that as the weather is harder the sky seems softer." ); December 14, 1852 ("Ah, who can tell the serenity and clarity of a New England winter sunset? This could not be till the cold and the snow came.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Winter Sunsets

How the crust shines afar, the sun now setting! See December 8, 1850 ("This evening for the first time the new moon is reflected from the frozen snow-crust.")

Why do the mountains never look so fair as from my native fields? See November 11, 1851 ("The horizon has one kind of beauty and attraction to him who has never explored the hills and mountains in it, and another . . . to him who has."); August 2, 1852 ("In many moods it is cheering to look across hence to that blue rim of the earth,  . . . These hills extend our plot of earth; they make our native valley or indentation in the earth so much the larger."); September 27, 1852 ("From the mountains we do not discern our native hills; but from our native hills we look out easily to the far blue mountains, which seem to preside over them."); March 31, 1853 ("It is affecting to see a distant mountain-top,. . . still as blue and ethereal to your eyes as is your memory of it.'); November 1, 1858 ("A man dwells in his native valley like a corolla in its calyx, like an acorn in its cup. Here, of course, is all that you love, all that you expect, all that you are.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Mountains in the Horizon

How black the water 

 when I look from the light – how  

 white the ice and snow.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, 

Winter comes unnoticed – already foxes have left their tracks.

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 © 2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-541208

Redness gradually deepening till the darkness prevails.

July 20.

At evening the eastern clouds, the western clouds, and the atmosphere of the west horizon have one history successively – a fainter glow and redness, gradually and by stages deepening till the darkness prevails.

We see from the hill darkness infolding the village, collected first in the elm-tops. If it were not for the lightcolored barns and white houses, it would already be dark there. The redness of the clouds, or the golden or coppery glow, appears to endure almost till starlight. Then the cloudlets in the west turn rapidly dark, the shadow of night advances in the east, and the first stars become visible. The pitch pine woods are heavy and dark, but the river is full of golden light and more conspicuous than by day.

It is starlight. We see the first star in the southwest, and know not how much earlier we might have seen it had we looked. Now the first whip-poor-will sings hollowly in the dark pitch pine wood on Bear Garden Hill, as if the night had never ceased, and it had never ceased to sing, only now we heard it. Night is seen settling down with mists on Fair Haven Bay. The stars are few and distant; the fireflies fewer still.

Now quite into evening. There is a second glow on the few low western cloudlets, when we thought the sun had bid us a final adieu. - Those small clouds, the rearmost guard of day, which were wholly dark, are again lit up for a moment with a dull-yellowish glow and again darken.

And now the evening redness deepens till all the west or northwest horizon is red; as if the sky were rubbed there with some rich Indian pigment, a permanent dye; as if the Artist of the world had mixed his red paints on the edge of the inverted saucer of the sky. 

An exhilarating, cheering redness, most wholesome. There should be a red race of men. I would look into the west at this hour till my face permanently reflects that red. It is like the stain of some berries crushed along the edge of the sky. 

The crescent moon, meanwhile, grows more silvery, and, as it sinks in the west, more yellowish, and the outline of the old moon in its arms is visible if you do not look directly at it. Some dusky redness lasts almost till the last traces of daylight disappear, about 10 o'clock, the same time the moon goes down.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 20, 1852

The redness of the clouds, or the golden or coppery glow, appears to endure almost till starlight. 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. 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 would be a good way to mark the hour, if we were precise. That is an epoch, when the last traces of daylight have disappeared and the night (nox) has fairly set in.”); June 30, 1852 (“It is starlight about half an hour after sunset to-night; i. e. the first stars appear”); 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 21, 1852 ("Do we perceive such a deep Indian red after the first starlight at any other season as now in July?”)

The stars are few and distant; the fireflies fewer still. Compare July 7, 1852 ("I am older than last year; the mornings are further between; the days are fewer.")

The darkness that first 

collects in the elm-tops now 

infolds the village.

The shadow of night

advances in the east and the

first stars visible.

We see the first star

and know not if we might have

seen it earlier.

The river is full

of golden light – the pitch pine

woods heavy and dark.

The first whip-poor-will

sings in the dark pitch pine wood

on Bear Garden Hill.

The whip-poor-will sings

like it never ceased – but we

hear it only now.

Quite into evening

the stars are few and distant –

fireflies fewer still.

And now the evening

redness deepens like paint on

the edge of the sky.

Redness gradually 

by stages deepening till 

the darkness prevails.

Old moon visible

in the arms of the crescent –

if we do not look.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Redness gradually deepening till the darkness prevails.

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 © 2009-2024

A New England summer evening.

June 30.

Haying has commenced. 

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

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.


The blue flag (Iris versicolor) enlivens the meadow.

The lark sings a note which belongs to a New England summer evening. 

The cuckoo is faintly heard from a neighboring grove. 

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.

July 30, 2018

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.

The tree-primrose, which was so abundant in one field last Saturday, is now all gone. The cattle on Bear Garden Hill, seen through the twilight, look monstrously large.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 30,1851

Haying has commenced. See June 30, 1852 ("Haying has commenced.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Haymaking

The blue flag (Iris versicolor) enlivens the meadow. See June 14, 1853 ("The blue flag (Iris versicolor) grows in this pure water, rising from the stony bottom all around the shores, and is very beautiful, — not too high-colored, — especially its reflections in the water. There was something [in] its bluish blade which harmonized with the greenish water.. . .. Instead of the white lily, which requires mud, or the sweet flag, here grows the blue flag in the water, thinly about the shore. The color of the flower harmonizes singularly with the water. . . .Large devil's-needles are buzzing back and forth. They skim along the edge of the blue flags, apparently quite round this cove or further, like hen-harriers beating the bush for game. And now comes a hummingbird humming from the woods and alights on the blossom of a blue flag. "); June 30, 1852 ("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?"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Flag Iris (Versicolor)

The lark sings a note which belongs to a New England summer evening. See July 11, 1857 ("Haying is fairly begun, and for some days I have heard the sound of the mowing-machine, and now the lark must look out for the mowers.'): 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")

Oppressively warm –

haymakers are mowing now

in early twilight.

The lark sings a note 

which belongs to New England

summer evenings.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  A New England Summer Evening

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 ©  2009-2024

tinyurl.com/hdt-510630