Plucked a buttercup on Bear Hill to-day.

November 24

Plucked a buttercup on Bear Hill to-day.

November 24, 2020

I have certain friends whom I visit occasionally, but I commonly part from them early with a certain bitter-sweet sentiment. That which we love is so mixed and entangled with that we hate in one another that we are more grieved and disappointed, aye, and estranged from one another, by meeting than by absence.

Some men may be my acquaintances merely, but one whom I have been accustomed to regard, to idealize, to have dreams about as a friend, and mix up intimately with myself, can never degenerate into an acquaintance.  

I must know him on that higher ground or not know him at all. We do not confess and explain, because we would fain be so intimately related as to understand each other without speech. 

Our friend must be broad. His must be an atmosphere coextensive with the universe, in which we can expand and breathe.

For the most part we are smothered and stifled by one another. I go and see my friend and try his atmosphere. If our atmospheres do not mingle, if we repel each other strongly, it is of no use to stay.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 24, 1850

Plucked a buttercup on Bear Hill to-day. See November 2, 1852 ('Tall buttercups, red clover, houstonias"); November 14, 1852 ("Still yarrow, tall buttercup, and tansy"); November 23, 1852 ("Among the flowers which may be put down as lasting thus far, as I remember, in the order of their hardiness: yarrow, tansy (these very fresh and common) . . . and perhaps tall buttercup, etc."); November 20, 1857 ("In the large Tommy Wheeler field, Ranunculus bulbosus in full bloom!")

We are more grieved and disappointed, aye, and estranged from one another, by meeting than by absence. See, e.g. February 15, 1851 ("Alas! Alas! when my friend begins to deal in confessions, breaks silence, makes a theme of friendship"); November 16, 1851 ("I love my friends very much , but I find that it is of no use to go to see them  I hate them commonly when I am near them. They belie themselves and deny me continually. "); December 18, 1851 ("When they who have aspired to be friends cease to sympathize, it is the part of religion to keep asunder. . . To explain to a friend is to suppose that you are not  intelligent of one another. If you are not, to what purpose will you explain?"); January 21, 1852 ("I never realized so distinctly as this moment that I am peacefully parting company with the best friend I ever had, by each pursuing his proper path. I perceive that it is possible that we may have a better understanding now than when we were more at one. . . . Simply our paths diverge."); June 11, 1855 ("What if we feel a yearning to which no breast answers? I walk alone. My heart is full. Feelings impede the current of my thoughts. I knock on the earth but no friend appears, and perhaps none is dreaming of me"); March 4, 1856 ("I do not believe in complaint, nor in explanation. The whole is but too plain, alas, already. We grieve that we do not love each other, that we cannot confide in each other."); March 28, 1856 ("Farewell, my friends, my path inclines to this side the mountain, yours to that."); February 8, 1857 ("And now another friendship is ended. I do not know what has made my friend doubt me, but I know that in love there is no mistake, and that every estrangement is well founded. . . . I am perfectly sad at parting from you. I could better have the earth taken away from under my feet, than the thought of you from my mind. ");  February 23, 1857 ('That aching of the breast, the grandest pain that man endures, which no ether can assuage . . . If the teeth ache they can be pulled. If the heart aches, what then? Shall we pluck it out?");  November 3, 1858 ("How long we will follow an illusion! On meeting that one whom I call my friend, I find that I had imagined something that was not there.. . . Thus I am taught that my friend is not an actual person. When I have withdrawn and am alone, I forget the actual person and remember only my ideal. Then I have a friend again "); February 5, 1859 ("When we have experienced many disappointments, such as the loss of friends, the notes of birds cease to affect us as they did")

The darkness in the east, the crescent of night.

November 25.

This morning the ground is again covered with snow, deeper than before.

In the afternoon walked to the east part of Lincoln.

Saw a tree on the turnpike full of hickory-nuts which had an agreeable appearance.

Saw also quite a flock of the pine grosbeak, a plump and handsome bird as big as a robin.

When returning between Bear Hill and the railroad, the sun had set and there was a very clear amber light in the west, and, turning about, we were surprised at the darkness in the east, the crescent of night, almost as if the air were thick, a thick snow-storm were gathering, which, as we had faced the west, we were not prepared for; yet the air was clear.

November 22, 2021

That kind of sunset which I witnessed on Saturday and Sunday is perhaps peculiar to the late autumn. The sun is unseen behind a hill.
Only this bright white light like a fire falls on the trembling needles of the pine.

When surveying in the swamp on the 20th last, at sundown, I heard the owls.

Hosmer said: “If you ever minded it, it is about the surest sign of rain that there is. Don't you know that last Friday night you heard them and spoke of them, and the next day it rained?”

This time there were other signs of rain in abundance. But night before last,” said I, “when you were not here, they hooted louder than ever, and we have had no rain yet.”

At any rate, it rained hard the 21st, and by that rain the river was raised much higher than it has been this fall.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 25, 1851

Saw a tree on the turnpike full of hickory-nuts which had an agreeable appearance. See November 27, 1857 ("Was struck by the appearance of a small hickory near the wall, in the rocky ravine just above the trough. Its trunk was covered with loose scales unlike the hickories near it and as much as the shagbark; but probably it is a shaggy or scaly-barked variety of Carya glabra. [Carya glabra – pignut hickory]. The husk is not thick, like that of the shagbark, but quite thin, and splits into four only part way down. The shell is not white nor sharply four-angled like the other, but it is rather like a pignut."); January 7, 1860 ("See, at White Pond . . . a pignut hickory, which was quite full of nuts and still has many on it.") See also November 26, 1860 ("Better for us is the wild strawberry than the pineapple, the wild apple than the orange, the hazelnut or pignut than the cocoanut or almond, and not on account of their flavor merely, but the part they play in our education."); November 28, 1860 ("The rich man's son gets cocoanuts, and the poor man's, pignuts; but the worst of it is that the former never goes a-cocoanutting, and so he never gets the cream of the cocoanut as the latter does the cream of the pignut")

A flock of the pine grosbeak, a plump and handsome. See December 24, 1851 (“Saw also some pine grosbeaks, magnificent winter birds, among the weeds and on the apple trees; . . .when they flit by, are seen to have gorgeous heads, breasts, and rumps, with red or crimson reflections.”);  December 11, 1855 ("When some rare northern bird like the pine grosbeak is seen thus far south in the Winter, he does not suggest poverty, but dazzles us with his beauty."); July 15, 1858 ("Saw two pine grosbeaks, male and female, . . .the male a brilliant red orange, —neck, head, breast beneath, and rump,—blackish wings and tail, with two white bars on wings. (Female, yellowish.) ")

The sun had set and there was a very clear amber light in the west, and, turning about, we were surprised at the darkness in the east, the crescent of night, almost as if the air were thick, . . yet the air was clear.  See November 25, 1857 ("I shiver about awhile on Pine Hill, waiting for the sun to set. Methinks the air is dusky soon after four these days. . . . There is the sun a quarter of an hour high, shining on it through a perfectly clear sky, but to my eye it is singularly dark or dusky. And now the sun has disappeared");November 27, 1853 ("The days are short enough now. The sun is already setting before I have reached the ordinary limit of my walk."); November 28, 1859 ("We make a good deal of the early twilights of these November days, they make so large a part of the afternoon.")

That kind of sunset which I witnessed on Saturday and Sunday is perhaps peculiar to the late autumn. See note to November 22, 1851 ("The light of the setting sun, just emerged from a cloud and suddenly falling on and lighting up the needles of the white pine."); November 23, 1851 ("Another such a sunset to-night as the last."); See also November 25, 1858 ("You are surprised, late these afternoons, a half an hour perhaps before sunset, . . . to see the singularly bright yellow light of the sun reflected from pines. . .through the clear, cold air, the wind, it may be, blowing strong from the northwest.. . . and when I look round northeast I am greatly surprised by the very brilliant sunlight of which I speak, surpassing the glare of any noontide, it seems to me");

When surveying in the swamp on the 20th last, at sundown, I heard the owls. See November 18,1851 ("Surveying these days the Ministerial Lot. Now at sundown I hear the hooting of an owl,-- hoo hoo hoo, hoorer, hoo. . . .I heard it last evening. It is a sound admirably suited to the swamp and to the twilight woods.")

It is a beautifully clear and bracing air, with just enough coolness, full of the memory of frosty mornings.

September 22. 

To the Three Friends' Hill over Bear Hill. 

Yesterday and to-day the stronger winds of autumn have begun to blow, and the telegraph harp has sounded loudly.

I heard it especially in the Deep Cut this afternoon, the tone varying with the tension of different parts of the wire. The sound proceeds from near the posts, where the vibration is apparently more rapid.

I put my ear to one of the posts, and it seemed to me as if every pore of the wood was filled with music, labored with the strain, as if every fibre was affected and being seasoned or timed, rearranged according to a new and more harmonious law. Every swell and change or inflection of tone pervaded and seemed to proceed from the wood, the divine tree or wood, as if its very substance was transmuted.

What a recipe for preserving wood, perchance, — to keep it from rotting, — to fill its pores with music ! How this wild tree from the forest, stripped of its bark and set up here, rejoices to transmit this music! When no music proceeds from the wire, on applying my ear I hear the hum within the entrails of the wood, — the oracular tree acquiring, accumulating, the prophetic fury.

The resounding wood! how much the ancients would have made of it! To have a harp on so great a scale, girdling the very earth, and played on by the winds of every latitude and longitude, and that harp were, as it were, the manifest blessing of heaven on a work of man'! Shall we not add a tenth Muse to the immortal Nine?

And that the invention thus divinely honored and distinguished — on which the Muse has condescended to smile is this magic medium of communication for mankind!

To read that the ancients stretched a wire round the earth, attaching it to the trees of the forest, by which they sent messages by one named Electricity, father of Lightning and Magnetism, swifter far than Mercury, the stern commands of war and news of peace, and that the winds caused this wire to vibrate so that it emitted a harp-like and æolian music in all the lands through which it passed, as if to express the satisfaction of the gods in this invention. Yet this is fact, and we have yet attributed the invention to no god.

I am astonished to see how brown and sere the groundsel or "fire-weed” on hillside by Heywood's Meadow, which has been touched by frost, already is, — as if it had died long months ago, or a fire had run through it. It is a very tender plant. 

Standing on Bear Hill in Lincoln.

                                                September 22, 2017

The black birches ( I think they are ), now yellow, on the south side of Flint's Pond, on the hillside, look like flames. The chestnut trees are brownish-yellow as well as green. 

It is a beautifully clear and bracing air, with just enough coolness, full of the memory of frosty mornings, through which all things are distinctly seen and the fields look as smooth as velvet.

The fragrance of grapes is on the breeze and the red drooping barberries sparkle amid the leaves.

From the hill on the south side of the pond, the forests have a singularly rounded and bowery look, clothing the hills quite down to the water's edge and leaving no shore; the ponds are like drops of dew amid and partly covering the leaves. So the great globe is luxuriously crowded without margin.

The Utricularia cornuta, or horned utricularia, on the sandy pond-shore, not affected by the frost.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 22, 1851

Three Friends Hill. See September 12, 1851 ("To the Three Friends' Hill beyond Flint's Pond. . . I go to Flint's Pond for the sake of the mountain view from the hill beyond, looking over Concord.")

How brown and sere the groundsel or "fire-weed” on hillside by Heywood's Meadow, which has been touched by frost, See August 23, 1856 ("On R. W. E.'s hillside by railroad, burnt over by the engine in the spring, the erechthites has shot up abundantly, very tall and straight, some six or seven feet high."); August 26, 1856 ("Also erechthites as abundant and rank in many places there as if it had been burnt over! So it does not necessarily imply fire."); August 27, 1851 ("Hawkweed groundsel (Senecio hieracifolius) (fireweed)"); August 30, 1859 ("The erechthites down has begun to fly."); September 9, 1852 ("The groundsel down is in the air."); September 20, 1851 ("On Monday of the present week water was frozen in a pail under the pump. . . .All tender herbs are flat in gardens and meadow"); September 20, 1852 ("The groundsel and hieracium down is in the air"); September 21, 1856 ("Was not the fireweed seed sown by the wind last fall, blown into the woods, where there was a lull which caused it to settle? Perhaps it is fitted to escape or resist fire. The wind which the fire creates may, perchance, lift it again out of harm's way."); October 2, 1857 ("The erechthites down (fire-weed) is conspicuous in sprout-lands of late, since its leaves were killed."); October 16, 1859 ("The flowers are at the mercy of the frosts. Places where erechthites grows, more or less bare, in sprout- lands, look quite black and white (black withered leaves and white down) and wintry")

It is a beautifully clear and bracing air, with just enough coolness, full of the memory of frosty mornings.. See

 

These bracing fine days

when frosts come to ripen the

year, the days, like fruit.

September 22, 1854

See also September 20, 1851 ("This week we have had most glorious autumnal weather, - cool and cloudless, bright days, . . . preceded by frosty mornings." ); October 10, 1857 ("The most brilliant days in the year, ushered in, perhaps, by a frosty morning, as this.") November 11, 1853 ("Bracing cold, and exhilarating sunlight on russet and frosty fields “) December 10, 1853 ("These are among the finest days in the year, on account of the wholesome bracing coolness and clearness.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The world can never be more beautiful than now.

The fragrance of grapes is on the breeze. See September 20, 1851 ("This week we have had most glorious autumnal weather, - - cool and cloudless, bright days, filled with the fragrance of ripe grapes, preceded by frosty mornings.")

Perambulating the imagination

September 20.

3 P. M. – To Cliffs via Bear Hill. 

September 20, 2020

As I go through the fields, endeavoring to recover my tone and sanity and to perceive things truly and simply again, after having been perambulating the bounds of the town all the week, and dealing with the most commonplace and worldly-minded men, and emphatically trivial things, I feel as if I had committed suicide in a sense.

I am again forcibly struck with the truth of the fable of Apollo serving King Admetus, its universal applicability.

A fatal coarseness is the result of mixing in the trivial affairs of men. Though I have been associating even with the select men of this and the surrounding towns, I feel inexpressibly begrimed.

My Pegasus has lost his wings; he has turned a reptile and gone on his belly.

Such things are compatible only with a cheap and superficial life.

The poet must keep himself unstained and aloof. Let him perambulate the bounds of Imagination's provinces, the realms of faery, and not the insignificant boundaries of towns. The excursions of the imagination are so boundless, the limits of towns are so petty.

I scare up the great bittern in meadow by the Heywood Brook near the ivy. He rises buoyantly as he flies against the wind, and sweeps south over the willow with outstretched neck, surveying.

The ivy here is reddened. The dogwood, or poison sumach, by Hubbard's meadow is also turned reddish.

Here are late buttercups and dwarf tree-primroses still.

Methinks there are not many goldenrods this year.

The river is remarkably low. There is a rod wide of bare shore beneath the Cliff Hill.

Last week was the warmest perhaps in the year.

On Monday of the present week water was frozen in a pail under the pump. Yet to-day I hear the locust sing as in August.

This week we have had most glorious autumnal weather, - cool and cloudless, bright days, filled with the fragrance of ripe grapes, preceded by frosty mornings. All tender herbs are flat in gardens and meadows. The cranberries, too, are touched.

To-day it is warmer and hazier, and there is, no doubt, some smoke in the air, from the burning of the turf and moss in low lands, where the smoke, seen at sunset, looks like a rising fog.

I fear that the autumnal tints will not be brilliant this season, the frosts have commenced so early.

Butter-and-eggs on Fair Haven.

The cleared plateau beneath the Cliff, now covered with sprouts, shows red, green, and yellow tints, like a rich rug.

I see ducks or teal flying silent, swift, and straight, the wild creatures.

White pines on Fair Haven Hill begin to look parti-colored with the falling leaves, but not at a distance.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 20, 1851

I scare up the great bittern in meadow by the Heywood Brook near the ivy. He rises buoyantly as he flies against the wind, and sweeps south over the willow with outstretched neck, surveying. See September 20, 1855 ("The great bittern, as it flies off from near the rail road bridge, filthily drops its dirt and utters a low hoarse kwa kwa; then runs and hides in the grass, and I land and search within ten feet of it before it rises.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Stake-Diver (American Bittern)

On Monday of the present week water was frozen in a pail under the pump. See September 15, 1851 ("Ice in the pail under the pump, and quite a frost.")

This week we have had most glorious autumnal weather, - cool and cloudless, bright days, filled with the fragrance of ripe grapes, preceded by frosty mornings. See August 19, 1853 ("It is a glorious and ever-memorable day. . . . The first bright day of the fall" ); September 3, 1860 ("Here is a beautiful, and perhaps first decidedly autumnal, day, -- a, cloudless sky, a clear air, with, maybe, veins of coolness”); September 18, 1860 ("This is a beautiful day, warm but not too warm, a harvest day . . . the first unquestionable and conspicuous autumnal day,"); September 22, 1851 ("It is a beautifully clear and bracing air, with just enough coolness, full of the memory of frosty mornings"); October 10, 1857 ("The most brilliant days in the year, ushered in, perhaps, by a frosty morning, as this.") October 11, 1857 ("This is the seventh day of glorious weather. Perhaps, these might be called Harvest Days"); December 9, 1853 ("The third (at least) glorious day, clear and not too cold . . .with peculiarly long and clear cloudless silvery twilights morn and eve")

White pines on Fair Haven Hill begin to look parti-colored. SeeAugust 24, 1854 ("The white pines are parti-colored there [Lee's Cliff]"); September 28, 1854 ("R. W. E.’s pines are parti-colored, preparing to fall, some of them.");. September 29, 1857 (". Pines have begun to be parti-colored with yellow leaves");. October 3, 1852 ("The pine fall, i.e. change, is commenced, and the trees are mottled green and yellowish"); October 3, 1856 ("The white pines are now getting to be pretty generally parti-colored, the lower yellowing needles ready to fall. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The October Pine Fall

Overtaken by a sudden sun-shower.

April 18.

6 A. M. —See and hear tree sparrows, and hear hyemalis still. 

Rained last evening and was very dark. Fair this morning and warm. White-bellied swallows and martins twitter now at 9 A. M. 

P. M. — To Cliffs and Walden and Hubbard’s Close. 

Almost did without a fire this morning. Coming out, I find it very warm, warmer than yesterday or any day yet. It is a reminiscence of past summers. 

It is perfectly still and almost sultry, with wet-looking clouds hanging about, and from time to time hiding the sun. First weather of this kind. 

And as I sit on Fair Haven Hill-side, the sun actually burns my cheek; yet I left some fire in the house, not knowing behind a window how warm it was. 

The hillside and especially low bank-sides are now conspicuously green. The flooded meadows and river are smooth, and just enough in shadow for reflections. 

The rush sparrows tinkle now at 3 P. M. far over the bushes, and hylodes are peeping in a distant pool. Robins are singing and peeping, and jays are screaming. 

I see one or two smokes in the horizon. I can still see the mountains slightly spotted with snow. The frost is out enough for plowing probably in most open ground. 

When I reach the top of the hill, I see suddenly all the southern horizon (east or south from Bear Hill in Waltham to the river) full of a mist, like a dust, already concealing the Lincoln hills and producing distinct wreaths of vapor, the rest of the horizon being clear. Evidently a sea-turn, — a wind from over the sea, condensing the moisture in our warm atmosphere and putting another aspect on the face of things. 

All this I see and say long before I feel the change, while still sweltering on the rocks, for the heat is oppressive. 

Nature cannot abide this sudden heat, but calls for her fan. In ten minutes I hear a susurrus in the shrub oak leaves at a distance, and soon an agreeable fresh air washes these warm rocks, and some mist surrounds me. 

A low blackberry on the rocks is now expanding its leaves just after the gooseberry. A little sallow, about two feet high and apparently intermediate between tristis and the next, with reddish anthers not yet burst, will bloom to-morrow in Well Meadow Path. 

The shad-bush flower-buds, beginning to expand, look like leaf-buds bursting now.  

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.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 18, 1855


The rush sparrows tinkle now at 3 P. M. far over the bushes, and hylodes are peeping in a distant pool. See April 18, 1857 ("Hear the huckleberry-bird”); .April 18, 1859 ("Hear a field sparrow."); April 18, 1856 ("This evening I hear the snipes generally and peeping of hylas from the door."); April 9, 1856 (“This degree of heat, then, brings the Fringilla juncorum and pine warbler and awakes the hyla.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Field Sparrow(Fringilla juncorum)

Am overtaken by a sudden sun-shower, after which a rainbow. See  March 13, 1855 ("Rainbow in east this morning."); April 9, 1855 ("With April showers, me thinks, come rainbows. Why are they so rare in the winter?");May 11, 1854 ("A rainbow on the brow of summer.")

In the evening hear far and wide the ring of toads. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The ring of toads

To Bear Hill, Lincoln.

June 27.

June 27.

I meet the partridge with her brood in the woods, a perfect little hen. She spreads her tail into a fan and beats the ground with her wings fearlessly within a few feet of me, to attract my attention while her young disperse; but they keep up a faint, wiry kind of peep, which betrays them, while she mews and squeaks as if giving them directions.

Looking from Bear Hill, I am struck by the yellowish green of meadows, almost like an ingrained sunlight. Perhaps they have that appearance because the fields generally incline now to a reddish-brown green. The freshness of the year in most fields is already past. The tops of the early grass are white, killed by the worm. 

It is somewhat hazy, yet I can just distinguish Monadnock.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 27,1852

I meet the partridge with her brood in the woods. See June 27, 1860 ("See on the open grassy bank and shore, just this side the Hemlocks, a partridge with her little brood."); June 26, 1857(" See a pack of partridges as big as robins at least."); July 1, 1860 (I see young partridges not bigger than robins fly three or four rods. . .”); July 5, 1856 ("Young partridges (with the old bird), as big as robins, make haste into the woods from off the railroad.") See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge

It is somewhat hazy, yet I can just distinguish Monadnock  Compare  February 21, 1855 ("Could not distinguish Monadnock till the sun shone on it."); March 28, 1858 ("turning my glass toward the mountains, I can see the sun reflected from the rocks on Monadnock, and I know that it would be pleasant to be there too to-day as well as here")

Wonder, awe, innocence, serenity -- lightning.

June 27

June 27, 1852

See a very large white ash tree, three and a half feet in diameter, in front of the house which White formerly owned, under this hill, which was struck by lightning the 22d, about 4 P.M. . The lightning apparently struck the top of the tree and scorched the bark and leaves for ten or fifteen feet downward, then began to strip off the bark and enter the wood, making a ragged narrow furrow or crack, till, reaching one of the upper limbs, it apparently divided, descending on both sides and entering deeper and deeper into the wood. 

At the first general branching, it had got full possession of the tree in its centre and tossed off the main limbs butt foremost, making holes in the ground where they struck; and so it went down in the midst of the trunk to the earth, where it apparently exploded, rending tire trunk into six segments, whose tops, ten or twenty feet long, were rayed out on every side at an angle of about 30° from a perpendicular, leaving the ground bare directly under where the tree had stood, though they were still fastened to the earth by their roots.

The lightning appeared to have gone off through the roots, furrowing them as the branches, and through the earth, making a furrow like a plow, four or five rods in one direction, and in another passing through the cellar of the neighboring house, about thirty feet distant, scorching the tin milk-pans and throwing dirt into the milk, and coming out the back side of the house in a furrow, splitting some planks there. The main body of the tree was completely stripped of bark, which was cast in every direction two hundred feet; and large pieces of the inside of the tree, fifteen feet long, were hurled with tremendous force in various directions, one into the side of a shed, smashing it, another burying itself in a wood-pile. The heart of the tree lay by itself. 

Probably, a piece as large as a man's leg could not have been sawn out of the trunk which would not have had a crack in it, and much of it was very finely splintered. 

The windows in the house were broken and the inhabitants knocked down by the concussion. 

All this was accomplished in an instant by a kind of fire out of the heavens called lightning, or a thunderbolt, accompanied by a crashing sound. For what purpose? The ancients called it Jove's bolt, with which he punished the guilty, and we moderns understand it no better. If we trust our natural impressions, it is a manifestation of brutish force or vengeance, more or less tempered with justice . 

Why should trees be struck? Science assumes to show why the lightning strikes a tree, but it does not show us the moral why any better than our instincts do. Science answers, Non scio, I am ignorant. Science affirms too much. It is full of presumption. It is not enough to say because they are in the way. Men are probably nearer to the essential truth in their superstitions than in their science. 

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.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 27, 1852

All the phenomena of nature need be seen from the point of view of wonder and awe, like lightning. See August 21, 1852  ("A man killed by lightning would have a good answer ready in the next world to the question "How came you here?" which he need not hesitate to give."); December 26, 1853 (“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.”)

Now we begin to see lichens.

February 26.

The east side of Deep Cut nearly dry; sand has ceased flowing; west side just beginning. 

Now we begin to see the Cladonia rangiferina ("reindeer moss") in the dry pastures.

Observe for the first time on and about Bear Hill in Lincoln the "greenish straw-colored" Parmelia conspersa, a very handsome and memorable lichen, which every child has admired. I love to find it where the rocks will split into their laminae so that I can easily carry away a specimen.

The low hills in the northeast beyond Bedford, seen from Bear Hill about 4.30 P. M., were remarkably dark blue, much more blue than the mountains in the northwest. The sky was in great part concealed by white clouds. Had this blue the same cause with the blue in the crevices of the snow? 


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 26, 1852

Now we begin to see the Cladonia rangiferina.  See November 30, 1853 ("Now, first since spring, I take notice of the cladonia lichens, which the cool fall rains appear to have started."); December 7, 1853 ("I observe the beds of greenish cladonia lichens."); February 5, 1860 ("I see where crows have pecked the tufts of cladonia lichens which peep out of the snow."); March 12, 1859 (" It is a very barren, exhausted soil, where the cladonia lichens abound . . . the very visible green of the cladonias thirty rods off, and the rich brown fringes where the broken sod hung over the edge of the sand-bank . . . methinks these terrestrial lichens were never more fair and prominent. On some knolls these vivid and rampant lichens as it were dwarf the oaks."); March 14, 1857 ("Now each hill is a dry moss-bed, of various species of cladonia.");  June 25, 1852 ("The light, dry cladonia lichens on the brows of hills reflect the moonlight well, looking like rocks.")

The "greenish straw-colored" Parmelia conspersa, a very handsome and memorable lichen.  See January 26, 1852 ("The beauty of lichens, with their scalloped leaves, the small attractive fields, the crinkled edge! I could study a single piece of bark for hour."); February 6, 1852 ("Near the C. Miles house there are some remarkably yellow lichens (parmelias?) on the rails, – ever as if the sun were about to shine forth clearly . . . Found three or four parmelias caperata) in fruit on a white oak on the high river-bank between Tarbell's and Harrington’s"); March 18, 1852 ("There is more rain than snow now falling, and the lichens, especially the Parmelia conspersa, appear to be full of fresh fruit, though they are nearly buried in snow."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Lichens and the lichenst .

Had this blue the same cause with the blue in the crevices of the snow? See January 9, 1852 ("The sky shut out by snow-clouds . . . I see little azures, little heavens, in the crannies and crevices . . . Apparently the snow absorbs the other rays and reflects the blue"); January 14, 1852 ("There is no blueness in the ruts and crevices in the snow to-day. What kind of atmosphere does this require? . . . It is one of the most interesting phenomena of the winter."); January 18, 1852 ("To-day, again, I see some of the blue in the crevices of the snow. Perhaps the snow in the air, as well as on the ground, takes up the white rays and reflects the blue."); January 26, 1852 ("To-day I see . . . a slight blueness in the chinks, it being cloudy and melting.")

The low hills in the northeast . . . were remarkably dark blue. Compare  January 16, 1860 ("The hills eight or ten miles west are white, but the mountains thirty miles off are blue, though both may be equally white at the same distance."); November 13, 1851("The mountains are of an uncommonly dark blue to-day. Perhaps this is owing . . . to the greater clearness of the atmosphere, which brings them nearer"); March 31, 1853 ("When the air is a little hazy, the mountains are particularly dark blue.'); August 25, 1853 ("Seen through this lower stratum, the mountain is a very dark blue."); September 27, 1853 ("From our native hills we look out easily to the far blue mountains.")

We begin to see 

the Cladonia lichen 

in the dry pastures.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Now we begin to see lichens.

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 © 2009-2025