Now after sunset the river is full of light in the dark landscape

August 14

No rain, only the dusty road spotted with the few drops which fell last night, — but there is quite a high and cool wind this morning.

Since August came in, we have begun to have considerable wind, as not since May, at least.

The roads nowadays are covered with a light-colored, powdery dust (this yesterday), several inches deep, which also defiles the grass and weeds and bushes, and the traveller is deterred from stepping in it.

The dusty weeds and bushes leave their mark on your clothes.

Mountain-ash berries orange (?), and its leaves half yellowed in some places.


3 P.M. To climbing fern with E. Hoar. 

It takes a good deal of care and patience to unwind this ' fern without injuring it. Sometimes same frond is half leaf, half fruit.  E. talked of sending one such leaf to G. Bradford to remind him that the sun still shone in America.

The uva-ursi berries beginning to turn.

August 14, 2014

6 P.M. To Hubbard Bath and Fair Haven Hill.

I notice now that saw-like grass seed where the mowers have done.

The swamp blackberries are quite small and rather acid.

Though yesterday was quite a hot day, I find by bathing that the river grows steadily cooler, as yet for a fortnight, though we have had no rain here.  Is it owing solely to the cooler air since August came in, both day and night, or have rains in the southwest cooled the stream within a week?

I now, standing on the shore, see that in sailing or floating down a smooth stream at evening it is an advantage to the fancy to be thus slightly separated from the land.

It is to be slightly removed from the common- place of earth.

To float thus on the silver-plated stream is like embarking on a train of thought itself.

You are surrounded by water, which is full of reflections; and you see the earth at a distance, which is very agreeable to the imagination.



I see the blue smoke of a burning meadow.

The clethra must be one of the most conspicuous flowers not yellow at present.

I sit three-quarters up the hill.

The crickets creak strong and loud now after sunset. No word will spell it.  It is a short, strong, regular ringing sound, as of a thousand exactly together, — though further off some alternate, repeated regularly and in rapid time, perhaps twice in a second.

Methinks their quire is much fuller and louder than a fortnight ago.

Ah ! I need solitude.

I have come forth to this hill at sunset to see the forms of the mountains in the horizon, to behold and commune with something grander than man.

Their mere distance and unprofanedness is an infinite encouragement.

It is with infinite yearning and aspiration that I seek solitude, more and more resolved and strong; but with a certain genial weakness that I seek society ever.

I hear the nighthawk squeak and a whip-poor-will sing.

I hear the tremulous squealing scream of a screech owl in the Holden Woods, sounding somewhat like the neighing of a horse, not like the snipe.


Now at 7.45, perhaps a half-hour after sunset, the river is quite distinct and full of light in the dark landscape,  -- 

a silver strip of sky

of the same color and 

brightness with the sky.

As I go home by Hayden's I smell the burning meadow.

I love the scent.

It is my pipe.

I smoke the earth.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 14, 1854

Mountain-ash berries orange (?) See July 28, 1859 ("Young purple finches eating mountain-ash berries (ours). "); August 25, 1859 ("Mountain-ash berries partly turned. Again see, I think, purple finch eating them.")

The uva-ursi berries beginning to turn. See July 16, 1855 ("Uva-ursi berries begin to redden."); September 21, 1856 ("Uva-ursi berries quite ripe.")

I find by bathing that the river grows steadily cooler. See August 12, 1854 ("I bathe at Hubbard's. The water is rather cool, comparatively."); September 6, 1854 ("Hubbard Bath . . . The water is again warmer than I should have believed; say an average summer warmth, yet not so warm as it has been. It makes me the more surprised that only that day and a half of rain should have made it so very cold when I last bathed here. "); September 12, 1854 ("bathing I find it colder again than on the 2d, so that I stay in but a moment. I fear that it will not again be warm."): September 24, 1854 (" It is now too cold to bathe with comfort."; September 26 1854 ("Took my last bath the 24th . Probably shall not bathe again this year. It was chilling cold.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Luxury of Bathing

I have come forth to this hill at sunset to see the forms of the mountains in the horizon, — to behold and commune with something grander than man. See December 27, 1851 ("The man is blessed who every day is permitted to behold anything so pure and serene as the western sky at sunset, while revolutions vex the world.");  June 5, 1854 ("I have come to this hill to see the sun go down, to recover sanity and put myself again in relation with Nature.”); July 24, 1853 ("On Fair Haven a quarter of an hour before sunset .. . .A golden sheen is reflected from the river so brightly, that it dazzles me as much as the sun . The now silver-plated river is burnished gold there,");  January 7, 1857 “This stillness, solitude, wildness of nature is . . . what I go out to seek. It is as if I always met in those places some grand, serene, immortal, infinitely encouraging, though invisible, companion, and walked with him”);  October 7, 1857 ("When I turn round half-way up Fair Haven Hill, by the orchard wall, and look northwest, I am surprised for the thousandth time at the beauty of the landscape, and I sit down to behold it at my leisure. I think that Concord affords no better view.")

August 14. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 14.

Now after sunset 

the river is full of light 

in the dark landscape

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, a silver strip of sky

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-540814

Sunset from Fair Haven Hill.

December 27.

Saturday.

Sunset from Fair Haven Hill.

This evening there are many clouds in the west into which the sun goes down so that we have our visible or apparent sunset and red evening sky as much as fifteen minutes before the real sunset.

You must be early on the hills to witness such a sunset, — by half past four at least.

Then all the vales, even to the horizon, are full of a purple vapor, which half veils the distant mountains, and the windows of undiscoverable farmhouses shine like an early candle or a fire.

After the sun has gone behind a cloud, there appears to be a gathering of clouds around his setting, and for a few moments his light in the amber sky seems more intense, brighter, and purer than at noonday.

I think you never see such a brightness in the noon day heavens as in the western sky sometimes, just before the sun goes down in clouds, like the ecstasy which we are told sometimes lights up the face of a dying man.

That is a serene or evening death, like the end of the day.

Then, at last, through all the grossness which has accumulated in the atmosphere of day, is seen a patch of serene sky fairer by contrast with the surrounding dark than midday, and even the gross atmosphere of the day is gilded and made pure as amber by the setting sun, as if the day's sins were forgiven it.

The man is blessed who every day is permitted to behold anything so pure and serene as the western sky at sunset, while revolutions vex the world.

There is no winter necessarily in the sky, though the snow covers the earth.

The sky is always ready to answer to our moods; we can see summer there or winter.

Snow and drifts on the earth; it swiftly descends from the heavens and leaves them pure.

The heavens present, perhaps, pretty much the same aspect summer and winter.

It is remarkable that the sun rarely goes down without a cloud.

Venus - I suppose it is - is now the evening star, and very bright she is immediately after sunset in the early twilight.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 27, 1851

Fair Haven Hill. See July 27, 1852 ("On Fair Haven Hill. . . .All the clouds in the sky are now close to the west horizon, so that the sun is nearly down before they are reached and lighted or gilded. . . . The sun is now set. All glow on the clouds is gone, except from one higher, small, rosy pink isle. The solemnity of the evening sky! Just before the earliest star I turn round, and there shines the moon, silvering the small clouds which have gathered."); May 22, 1854 ("How many times I have been surprised thus, on turning about on this very spot, at the fairness of the earth!”); February 21, 1855 (“I look at the Peterboro mountains with my glass from Fair Haven Hill. I think that there can be no more arctic scene than these mountains in the edge of the horizon completely crusted over with snow, with the sun shining on them.”); October 7, 1857 (" When I turn round half-way up Fair Haven Hill, by the orchard wall, and look northwest, I am surprised for the thousandth time at the beauty of the landscape. . . I think that Concord affords no better view.”); March 18, 1858 ("When I get two thirds up the hill, I look round and am for the hundredth time surprised by the landscape of the river valley and the horizon with its distant blue scalloped rim.")

The man is blessed who every day is permitted to behold anything so pure and serene as the western sky at sunset. See December 20, 1851( Sunset in winter from a clearing in the woods."); December 21, 1851 ("How swiftly the earth appears to revolve at sunset."); December 23, 1851 ("I see that there is to be a fine, clear sunset, and make myself a seat in the snow on the Cliff to witness it . . . having got home , I find that the evening star is shining brightly, and . . . just above the horizon, the narrowest imaginable white sickle of the new moon."); December 25, 1851 ("I go forth to see the sun set. Who knows how it will set, even half an hour beforehand? whether it will go down in clouds or a clear sky?"); January 17, 1852 (“In proportion as I have celestial thoughts, is the necessity for me to be out and behold the western sky sunset these winter days. That is the symbol of the unclouded mind that knows neither winter nor summer.")

There is no winter necessarily in the sky. . . we can see summer there or winter.. . .The heavens present, perhaps, pretty much the same aspect summer and winter. Compare December 31, 1851 ("Consider in what respects the winter sunsets differ from the summer ones "); December 31, 1851 (“I have not enough valued and attended to the pure clarity and brilliancy of the winter skies. . . . The day sky in winter corresponds for clarity to the night sky, in which the stars shine and twinkle so brightly in this latitude.”); January 1, 1852 ("The stars of higher magnitude are more bright and dazzling, and therefore appear more near and numerable, while those that appear indistinct and infinitely remote in the summer, imparting the impression of unfathomability to the sky, are scarcely seen at all. . . .These are some of the differences between this and the autumn or summer nights . . . the dazzle and seeming nearness of the stars."); January 17, 1852 (“sunset these winter days . . . is the symbol of the unclouded mind that knows neither winter nor summer.") January 22, 1854 ("Once or twice of late I have seen the mother-o'-pearl tints and rainbow flocks in the western sky.. . .Methinks the summer sky never exhibits this so finely. "); January 29, 1854 ("Tonight I feel it stinging cold . . .; it bites my ears and face, but the stars shine all the brighter.”); February 3, 1852 ("The heavens appear less thickly starred than in summer, - rather a few bright stars, brought nearer by this splendid twinkling in the cold sky.")March 20, 1852 ("the stars twinkle as in winter night.")

Venus is now the evening star, and very bright she is immediately after sunset in the early twilight See  December 27, 1853 ("It is a true winter sunset, almost cloudless, clear, cold indigo-y along the horizon. The evening star is seen shining brightly, before the twilight has begun. A rosy tint suffuses the eastern horizon.") 

A TRUE WINTER SUNSET December 27, 2017

The sky is always ready to answer to our moods. See January 17, 1852. ("As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind."); January 26, 1852. ("Would you see your mind, look at the sky.")

I see sun-sparkles on the river, such as I have not seen for a long time

August 26. 

The dust is laid, the streets washed, the leaves — the first ripe crop — fallen, owing to yesterday's copious rain. It is clearer weather, and the creak of the crickets is more distinct, just as the air is clearer. 

The trees look greener and fresher, not only because their leaves are washed and erected, but because they have for the most part shed their yellow and sere leaves. 

The front-rank polygonum is now perhaps in its prime. Where it forms an island in the river it is surmounted in the middle or highest part by the P. hydropiperoides. 

P. M. — To Fair Haven Hill. 

Elder-berries have fairly begun to be ripe, as also the Cornus sericea berries, and the dull-reddish leaves of the last begin to be conspicuous. 

The creak of the mole cricket has a very afternoon sound.

 Potato vines are generally browning and rank. Roman wormwood prevails over them; also erechthites, in new and boggy ground, and butterweed. These lusty natives prevail in spite of the weeding hoe, and take possession of the field at last. Potato vines have taken a veil of wormwood. 

The barn-yard grass and various panics (sanguinale, capillare, and bottle-grass) now come forward with a rush and take possession of the cultivated fields, partly abandoned for the present by the farmer and gardener. 

How singular that the Polygonum aviculare should grow so commonly and densely about back doors where the earth is trodden, bordering on paths ! Hence properly called door-grass. I am not aware that it prevails in any other places. 

The pontederia leaves are already slightly imbrowned, though the flowers are still abundant. 

The river is a little cooled by yesterday's rain, and considerable heart-leaf (the leaves mainly) is washed up. 

I begin to think of a thicker coat and appreciate the warmth of the sun. I see sun-sparkles on the river, such as I have not seen for a long time. At any rate, they surprise me. There may be cool veins in the air now, any day. 

Now for dangle-berries. 

Also Viburnum nudum fruit has begun. 

I saw a cherry-bird peck from the middle of its upright (vertical) web on a bush one of those large (I think yellow-marked) spiders within a rod of me. It dropped to the ground, and then the bird picked it up. It left a hole or rent in the middle of the web. The spider cunningly spreads his net for feebler insects, and then takes up his post in the centre, but perchance a passing bird picks him from his conspicuous station. 

I perceived for the first time, this afternoon, in one place, a slight mouldy scent. There are very few fungi in a dry summer like this.

The Uvularia sessilifolia is for the most part turned yellow, with large green fruit, or even withered and brown. 

Some medeola is quite withered. Perhaps they are somewhat frost-bitten. 

I see a goldfinch eating the seeds of the coarse barn yard grass, perched on it. It then goes off with a cool twitter. 

Notice arrowhead leaves very curiously eaten by some insect. They are dotted all over in lines with small roundish white scales, — which your nail will remove, and then a scar is seen beneath, — as if some juice had exuded from each puncture and then hardened. 

The first fall rain is a memorable occasion, when the river is raised and cooled, and the first crop of sere and yellow leaves falls. The air is cleared; the dog- days are over; sun-sparkles are seen on water; crickets sound more distinct; saw-grass reveals its spikes in the shorn fields; sparrows and bobolinks fly in flocks more and more. Farmers feel encouraged about their late potatoes and corn. Mill-wheels that have rested for want of water begin to revolve again. Meadow-haying is over. 

The first significant event (for a long time) was the frost of the 17th. That was the beginning of winter, the first summons to summer. Some of her forces succumbed to it. The second event was the rain of yesterday. 

My neighbor told me yesterday that about four inches of rain had fallen, for he sent his man for a pail that was left in the garden during the rain, and there was about four inches depth of water in it. I inquired if the pail had upright sides. "No," he said, "it was flaring ! ! " However, according to another, there was full four inches in a tub. 

Leersia or cut-grass in prime at Potter's holes. 

That first frost on the 17th was the first stroke of winter aiming at the scalp of summer. Like a stealthy and insidious aboriginal enemy, it made its assault just before daylight in some deep and far-away hollow and then silently withdrew. Few have seen the drooping plants, but the news of this stroke circulates rapidly through the village. Men communicate it with a tone of warning. The foe is gone by sunrise, but some fearful neighbors who have visited their potato and cranberry patches report this stroke. The implacable and irresistible foe to all this tender greenness is not far off, nor can we be sure, any month in the year, that some scout from his low camp may not strike down the tenderest of the children of summer. 

The earliest and latest frosts are not distinguishable. This foe will go on steadily increasing in strength and boldness, till his white camps will be pitched over all the fields, and we shall be compelled to take refuge in our strongholds, with some of summer's withered spoils stored up in barns, maintaining ourselves and our herds on the seeds and roots and withered grass which we have embarned. Men in anticipation of this time have been busily collecting and curing the green blades all the country over, while they have still some nutriment in them. Cattle and horses have been dragging homeward their winter's food.

A new plant, apparently Lycopodium inundatum, Hubbard's meadow-side, Drosera Flat, not out.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 26, 1859


Elder-berries have fairly begun to be ripe. See note to August 23, 1856 (Elder-berries, now looking purple, are weighing down the bushes along fences by their abundance. ")
  
Cornus sericea berries See August 28, 1856 ("The bright china-colored blue berries of the Cornus sericea begin to show themselves along the river. .”)

The creak of the mole cricket has a very afternoon sound. See August 23, 1857 ("The mole cricket nowadays"); August 22, 1856 ("The creak of the mole cricket is heard along the shore."); September 11, 1855 ("Loudly the mole cricket creaks by mid-afternoon.")

Viburnum nudum fruit has begun. See August 25, 1854 ("The Viburnum nudum berries, in various stages, — green, deep-pink, and also deep-blue, not purple or ripe, — are very abundant at Shadbush Meadow. They appear to be now in their prime and are quite sweet, but have a large seed. Interesting for the various colors on the same bush and in the same cluster.")

One of those large (I think yellow-marked) spiders. See September 12, 1858 ("They are the yellow-backed spider, commonly large and stout but of various sizes. I count sixty-four such webs there, and in each case the spider occupies the centre, head downward.")

A new plant, apparently Lycopodium inundatum. See August 28, 1860 ("The Lycopodium inundatum common by Harrington's mud-hole, Ministerial Swamp.") 

[Northern bog-clubmoss is by far the most common species of bog-clubmoss in New England.  The tops of the erect shoots are distinctively widened. Its diminutive size, thin horizontal shoots, and entire trophophylls (sterile leaves) quickly distinguish most populations; it frequently occurs in the absence of other species or hybrids. ~ GoBotany]

See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Lycopodiums

No doubt on almost every such warm bank now you will find a snake lying out.

April 2.

P. M. – To yew and R. W. E.'s Cliff. 

April 2, 2018

At Hubbard’s Grove I see a woodchuck. He waddles to his hole and then puts out his gray nose within thirty feet to reconnoitre.

It is too windy, and the surface of the croaker pool is too much ruffled, for any of the croakers to be lying out, but I notice a large mass of their spawn there well advanced.

At the first little sluiceway just beyond, I catch a large Rana halecina, which puffs itself up considerably, as if it might be full of spawn. I must look there for its spawn. It is rather sluggish; cannot jump much yet. It allows me to stroke it and at length take it up in my hand, squatting still in it.

Who would believe that out of these dry and withered banks will come violets, lupines, etc., in profusion?

At the spring on the west side of Fair Haven Hill, I startle a striped snake. It is a large one with a white stripe down the dorsal ridge between two broad black ones, and on each side the last a buff one, and then blotchy brown sides, darker toward tail; beneath, greenish-yellow. This snake generally has a pinkish cast.

There is another, evidently the same species but not half so large, with its neck lying affectionately across the first, — I may have separated them by my approach, – which, seen by itself, you might have thought a distinct species. The dorsal line in this one is bright-yellow, though not so bright as the lateral ones, and the yellow about the head; also the black is more glossy, and this snake has no pink cast.

No doubt on almost every such warm bank now you will find a snake lying out. The first notice I had of them was a slight rustling in the leaves, as if made by a squirrel, though I did not see them for five minutes after. The biggest at length dropped straight down into a hole, within a foot of where he lay. They allowed me to lift their heads with a stick four or five inches without stirring, nor did they mind the flies that alighted on them, looking steadily at me without the slightest motion of head, body, or eyes, as if they were of marble; and as you looked hard at them, you continually forgot that they were real and not imaginary.

The hazel has just begun to shed pollen here, perhaps yesterday in some other places. This loosening and elongating of its catkins is a sufficiently pleasing sight, in dry and warm hollows on the hillsides. It is an unexpected evidence of life in so dry a shrub.

On the side of Fair Haven Hill I go looking for bay wings, turning my glass to each sparrow on a rock or tree. At last I see one, which flies right up straight from a rock eighty [or] one hundred feet and warbles a peculiar long and pleasant strain, after the manner of the skylark, methinks, and close by I see another, apparently a bay-wing, though I do not see its white in tail, and it utters while sitting the same subdued, rather peculiar strain.

See how those black ducks, swimming in pairs far off on the river, are disturbed by our appearance, swimming away in alarm, and now, when we advance again, they rise and fly up-stream and about, uttering regularly a crack cr-r-rack of alarm, even for five or ten minutes, as they circle about, long after we have lost sight of them. Now we hear it on this side, now on that.

The yew shows its bundles of anthers plainly, as if it might open in four or five days.

Just as I get home, I think I see crow blackbirds about a willow by the river.

It is not important that the poet should say some particular thing, but should speak in harmony with nature. The tone and pitch of his voice is the main thing. It appears to me that the wisest philosophers that I know are as foolish as Sancho Panza dreaming of his Island. Considering the ends they propose and the obstructions in their path, they are even. One philosopher is feeble enough alone, but observe how each multiplies his difficulties, – by how many unnecessary links he allies himself to the existing state of things. He girds himself for his enterprise with fasting and prayer, and then, instead of pressing forward like a light-armed soldier, with the fewest possible hindrances, he at once hooks himself on to some immovable institution, as a family, the very rottenest of them all, and begins to sing and scratch gravel towards his objects. Why, it is as much as the strongest man can do decently to bury his friends and relations without making a new world of it. But if the philosopher is as foolish as Sancho Panza, he is also as wise, and nothing so truly makes a thing so or so as thinking it so.

Approaching the side of a wood on which were some pines, this afternoon, I heard the note of the pine warbler, calling the pines to life, though I did not see it. It has probably been here as long as I said before.

Returning, I saw a sparrow-like bird flit by in an orchard, and, turning my glass upon it, was surprised by its burning yellow. This higher color in birds surprises us like an increase of warmth in the day.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 2, 1858

A woodchuck waddles to his hole and then puts out his gray nose. See April 2, 1856 ("A woodchuck has been out under the Cliff, and patted the sand, cleared out the entrance to his burrow.”)

A bay wing warbles a peculiar long and pleasant strain. Close by I see another, and it utters while sitting the same subdued, rather peculiar strain. See  April 13, 1856 (“I hear a bay-wing on the railroad fence sing, the rhythm somewhat like, char char (or here here), che che, chip chip chip (fast), chitter chitter chitter chit (very fast and jingling), tchea tchea (jinglingly). It has another strain, considerably different, but a second also sings the above. Two on different posts are steadily singing the same, as if contending with each other, notwithstanding the cold wind”); See also April 8, 1859 (“ See the first bay-wing hopping and flitting along the railroad bank, but hear no note as yet.”); April 12, 1857 (“I think I hear the bay-wing here.”); April 13, 1855(“See a sparrow without marks on throat or breast, running peculiarly in the dry grass in the open field beyond, and hear its song, and then see its white feathers in tail; the bay-wing”);  April 15, 1859 (“The bay-wing now sings — the first I have been able to hear”). See April 13, 1854 ("Did I see a bay-wing?"); May 12, 1857 ("As the bay-wing sang many thousand years ago, so sang he to-night.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Bay-Wing Sparrow

It is not important that the poet should say some particular thing, but should speak in harmony with nature. See  May 23, 1853 (“The poet must bring to Nature the smooth mirror in which she is to be reflected.”)

Approaching the side of a wood on which were some pines, this afternoon, I heard the note of the pine warbler, calling the pines to life, though I did not see it. See April 2, 1853 ("The edge of the wood is not a plane surface, but has depth. Hear and see what I call the pine warbler, --vetter vetter vetter vetter vet, -- the cool woodland sound.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Pine Warbler

Having crawled over the hill through the woods on our stomachs we watch various water-fowl for an hour. .

March 27. 

P. M. — Sail to Bittern Cliff. 

Scare up a flock of sheldrakes just off Fair Haven Hill, the conspicuous white ducks, sailing straight hither and thither. At first they fly low up the stream, but, having risen, come back half-way to us, then wheel and go up-stream. 

Soon after we scare up a flock of black ducks. 

J.J. Audubon (The flight of this Duck, which, in as far as I know, is peculiar to America, is powerful, rapid, and as sustained as that of the Mallard. While travelling by day they may be distinguished from that species by the whiteness of their lower wing-coverts, which form a strong contrast to the deep tints of the rest of their plumage See  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the American Black Duck)

We land and steal over the hill through the woods, expecting to find them under Lee's Cliff, as indeed we do, having crawled over the hill through the woods on our stomachs; and there we watched various water-fowl for an hour.

There are a dozen sheldrakes (or goosanders) and among them four or five females. They are now pairing. I should say one or two pairs are made. At first we see only a male and female quite on the alert, some way out on the pond, tacking back and forth and looking every way. They keep close together, headed one way, and when one turns the other also turns quickly. The male appears to take the lead. Soon the rest appear, sailing out from the shore into sight. 

We hear a squeaking note, as if made by a pump, and presently see four or five great herring gulls wheeling about. Sometimes they make a sound like the scream of a hen-hawk. They are shaped somewhat like a very thick white rolling-pin, sharpened at both ends. At length they alight near the ducks. 

The sheldrakes at length acquire confidence, come close inshore and go to preening themselves, or it may be they are troubled with lice. They are all busy about it at once, continually thrusting their bills into their backs, still sailing slowly along back and forth offshore. Sometimes they are in two or three straight lines. Now they will all seem to be crossing the pond, but presently you see that they have tacked and are all heading this way again. 

Among them, or near by, I at length detect three or four whistlers, by their wanting the red bill, being considerably smaller and less white, having a white spot on the head, a black back, and altogether less white, and also keeping more or less apart and not diving when the rest do. 

Now one half the sheldrakes sail off southward and suddenly go to diving as with one consent. Seven or eight or the whole of the party will be under water and lost at once. In the mean while, coming up, they chase one another, scooting over the surface and making the water fly, sometimes three or four making a rush toward one. 

At length I detect two little dippers, as I have called them, though I am not sure that I have ever seen the male before. They are male and female close together, the common size of what I have called the little dipper. They are incessantly diving close to the button-bushes.

 [Rice says that the little dipper has a hen bill and is not lobe footed. He and his brother Israel also speak of another water-fowl of the river with a hen bill and some bluish feathers on the wings.]

The female is apparently uniformly black, or rather dark brown, but the male has a conspicuous crest, with, apparently, white on the hindhead, a white breast, and white line on the lower side of the neck; i. e., the head and breast are black and white conspicuously. 

J J Audubon Fuligula albeola Buffle-headed Duck:" The bufflehead, being known in different districts by the names of Spirit Duck, Butter-box, Marrionette, Dipper, and Die-dipper, generally returns from the far north, where it is said to breed, about the beginning of September."

Can this be the Fuligula albeola, and have I commonly seen only the female? Or is it a grebe?

Fair Haven Pond four fifths clear. 

C. saw a phoebe, i e. pewee, the 25th. - 

The sheldrake has a peculiar long clipper look, often moving rapidly straight forward over the water. It sinks to very various depths in the water sometimes, as when apparently alarmed, showing only its head and neck and the upper part of its back, and at others, when at ease, floating buoyantly on the surface, as if it had taken in more air, showing all its white breast and the white along its sides. Sometimes it lifts itself up on the surface and flaps its wings, revealing its whole rosaceous breast and its lower parts, and looking in form like a penguin. 

When I first saw them fly up-stream I suspected that they had gone to Fair Haven Pond and would alight under the lee of the Cliff. So, creeping slowly down through the woods four or five rods, I was enabled to get a fair sight of them, and finally we sat exposed on the rocks within twenty five rods. They appear not to observe a person so high above them. 

It was a pretty sight to see a pair of them tacking about, always within a foot or two of each other and heading the same way, now on this short tack, now on that, the male taking the lead, sinking deep and looking every way. When the whole twelve had come together they would soon break up again, and were continually changing their ground, though not diving, now sailing slowly this way a dozen rods, and now that, and now coming in near the shore. Then they would all go to preening themselves, thrusting their bills into their backs and keeping up such a brisk motion that you could not get a fair sight of one’s head.

From time to time you heard a slight titter, not of alarm, but perhaps a breeding-note, for they were evidently selecting their mates. I saw one scratch its ear or head with its foot. 

Then it was surprising to see how, briskly sailing off one side, they went to diving, as if they had suddenly come across a school of minnows. A whole company would disappear at once, never rising high as before. Now for nearly a minute there is not a feather to be seen, and the next minute you see a party of half a dozen there, chasing one another and making the water fly far and wide.

When returning, we saw, near the outlet of the pond, seven or eight sheldrakes standing still in a line on the edge of the ice, and others swimming close by. They evidently love to stand on the ice for a change.

I saw on the 22d a sucker which apparently had been dead a week or two at least. Therefore they must begin to die late in the winter.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 27,1858



Sheldrakes. See March 22, 1858 ("I see two of these very far off on a bright-blue bay where the waves are running high. They are two intensely white specks, which yet you might mistake for the foaming crest of waves. Now one disappears, but soon is seen again, and then its companion is lost in like manner, having dived."); March 5, 1857 ("I scare up six male sheldrakes, with their black heads, in the Assabet,—the first ducks I have seen"); March 16, 1855 ("Scare up two large ducks . . . I think it the goosander or sheldrake."); March 16, 1854 ("I see ducks afar, sailing on the meadow, leaving a long furrow in the water behind them.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Merganser, Goosander)

Can this be the Fuligula albeola, and have I commonly seen only the female? Or is it a grebe? See January 15, 1858 ("At Natural History Rooms, Boston. Looked at the little grebe. Its feet are not webbed with lobes on the side like the coot, and it is quite white beneath."); December 26, 1857 ("The little dipper must, therefore, be different from a coot. Is it not a grebe?); April 19, 1855 ("A little duck, asleep with its head in its back, exactly in the middle of the pond. It has a moderate-sized black head and neck, a white breast, and seems dark-brown above, with a white spot on the side of the head, not reaching to the out side, from base of mandibles, and another, perhaps, on the end of the wing, with some black there. . . .I think it is the smallest duck I ever saw. Floating buoyantly asleep on the middle of Walden Pond. Is it not a female of the buffle-headed or spirit duck?"); December 26, 1853 ("Saw in it a small diver, probably a grebe or dobchick, dipper, or what-not, with the markings, as far as I saw, of the crested grebe, but smaller. It had a black head, a white ring about its neck, a white breast, black back, and apparently no tail.”); September 27, 1860 (" I see a little dipper in the middle of the river.. . .It has a dark bill and considerable white on the sides of the head or neck, with black between it, no tufts, and no observable white on back or tail.");April 22, 1861 (" [Mann] obtained to-day the buffle-headed duck, diving in the river near the Nine-Acre Corner bridge. I identify it at sight as my bird seen on Walden. ")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Little Dipper

They must begin to die late in the winter. See note to March 28, 1857 ("Every spring there are many dead suckers floating belly upward on the meadows. This phenomenon of dead suckers is as constant as the phenomenon of living ones; nay, as a phenomenon it is far more apparent.")

Each new year is a surprise to us.

 
March 18

 7 A.M. – By river. 

Almost every bush has its song sparrow this morning, and their tinkling strains are heard on all sides. You see them just hopping under the bush or into some other covert, as you go by, turning with a jerk this way and that, or they flit away just above the ground, which they resemble. It is the prettiest strain I have heard yet. 

Melvin is already out in his boat for all day, with his white hound in the prow, bound up the river for musquash, etc., but the river is hardly high enough to drive them out. 

March 18, 2018

P. M. – To Fair Haven Hill via Hubbard’s Bath. 

How much more habitable a few birds make the fields! At the end of winter, when the fields are bare and there is nothing to relieve the monotony of the withered vegetation, our life seems reduced to its lowest terms. But let a bluebird come and warble over them, and what a change! 

• The note of the first bluebird in the air answers to the purling rill of melted snow beneath. It is eminently soft and soothing, and, as surely as the thermometer, indicates a higher temperature. It is the accent of the south wind, its vernacular. It is modulated by the south wind. 

• The song sparrow is more sprightly, mingling its notes with the rustling of the brash along the watersides, but it is at the same time more terrene than the bluebird. 

• The first woodpecker comes screaming into the empty house and throws open doors and windows wide, calling out each of them to let the neighbors know of its return. But heard further off it is very suggestive of ineffable associations which cannot be distinctly recalled, – of long-drawn summer hours, – and thus it, also, has the effect of music. I was not aware that the capacity to hear the woodpecker had slumbered within me so long.

• When the blackbird gets to a conqueree he seems to be dreaming of the sprays that are to be and on which he is to perch. 

• The robin does not come singing, but utters a somewhat anxious or inquisitive peep at first. The song sparrow is immediately most at home of any that I have named. 

I see this afternoon as many as a dozen bluebirds on the warm side of a wood. 

At Hubbard's shore, where a strong but warm westerly wind is blowing, the shore is lined for half a rod in width with pulverized ice, or “brash,” driven against it. 

At Potter's sand-hill (Bear Garden), I see, on the southeast side of the blue-curls, very distinct and regular arcs of circles (about a third of a circle), scored deep in the sand by the tops of these weeds, which have been blown about by the wind, and these marks show very surely and plainly how the wind has been blowing and with what force and flakiness. 

The rather warm but strong wind now roars in the wood — as in the maple swamp — with a novel sound. I doubt if the same is ever heard in the winter. It apparently comes at this season, not only to dry the earth but to wake up the trees, as it were, as one would awake a sleeping man with a smart shake. Perchance they need to be thus wrung and twisted, and their sap flows the sooner for it. 

Perfectly dry sand even is something attractive now, and I am tempted to tread on and to touch it, as a curiosity. Skunks’ tracks are everywhere now, on the sand, and the little snow that is left. 

The river is still closed with ice at Cardinal Shore, so Melvin must have stopped here at least; but there is a crescent of “brash ” there, which the waves blown up-stream have made, half a dozen rods wide. It is even blown a rod on to the solid ice. The noise made by this brash undulating and grating upon itself, at a little distance, is very much like the rustling of a winrow of leaves disturbed by the winds. A little farther off it is not to be distinguished from the roar of the wind in the woods. 

Each new year is a surprise to us. We find that we had virtually forgotten the note of each bird, and when we hear it again it is remembered like a dream, reminding us of a previous state of existence. How happens it that the associations it awakens are always pleasing, never saddening; reminiscences of our sanest hours? The voice of nature is always encouraging. 

The blackbird — probably grackle this time —wings his way direct above the swamp northward, with a regular tchuck, carrier haste, calling the summer months along, like a hen her chickens. 

When I get two thirds up the hill, I look round and am for the hundredth time surprised by the landscape of the river valley and the horizon with its distant blue scalloped rim. It is a spring landscape, and as impossible a fortnight ago as the song of birds. It is a deeper and warmer blue than in winter, methinks. 

The snow is off the mountains, which seem even to have come again like the birds. The undulating river is a bright-blue channel between sharp-edged shores of ice retained by the willows. The wind blows strong but warm from west by north, so that I have to hold my paper tight when I write this, making the copses creak and roar; but the sharp tinkle of a song sparrow is heard through it all. 

But ah! the needles of the pine, how they shine, as I look down over the Holden wood and westward! Every third tree is lit with the most subdued but clear ethereal light, as if it were the most delicate frostwork in a winter morning, reflecting no heat, but only light. And as they rock and wave in the strong wind, even a mile off, the light courses up and down there as over a field of grain; i. e., they are alternately light and dark, like looms above the forest, when the shuttle is thrown between the light woof and the dark web, weaving a light article, – spring goods for Nature to wear. 

At sight of this my spirit is like a lit tree. It runs or flashes over their parallel boughs as when you play with the teeth of a comb. The pine tops wave like squirrels' tails flashing in the air. Not only osiers but pine-needles, methinks, shine in the spring, and arrowheads and railroad rails, etc., etc. Anacreon noticed the same. 

Is it not the higher sun, and cleansed air, and greater animation of nature? There is a warmer red to the leaves of the shrub oak, and to the tail of the hawk circling over them. 

I sit on the Cliff, and look toward Sudbury. I see its meeting-houses and its common, and its fields lie but little beyond my ordinary walk, but I never played on its common nor read the epitaphs in its graveyard, and many strangers to me dwell there. How distant in all important senses may be the town which yet is within sight! We see beyond our ordinary walks and thoughts. With a glass I might perchance read the time on its clock. How circumscribed are our walks, after all! With the utmost industry we cannot expect to know well an area more than six miles square, and yet we pretend to be travellers, to be acquainted with Siberia and Africa! 

Going by the epigaea on Fair Haven Hill, I thought I would follow down the shallow gully through the woods from it, that I might find more or something else. There was an abundance of checkerberry, as if it were a peculiar locality for shrubby evergreens. At first the checkerberry was green, but low down the hill it suddenly became dark-red, like a different plant, as if it had been more subject to frost there, it being more frosty lower down. Where it was most turned, that part of the leaf which was protected by another overlapping it was still pure bright-green, making a pretty contrast when you lifted it. 

Eight or ten rods off I noticed an evergreen shrub with the aspect or habit of growth of the juniper, but, as it was in the woods, I already suspected it to be what it proved, the American yew, already strongly budded to bloom. This is a capital discovery. 

I have thus found the ledum and the taxus this winter and a new locality of the epigaea.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 18, 1858

The note of the first bluebird in the air answers to the purling rill of melted snow beneath . . . It is modulated by the south wind. See March 9, 1852 ("I hear and see bluebirds, come with the warm wind."); March 17, 1858 ("Hear the first bluebird. A remarkably warm and pleasant day with a south or southwest wind . . .  The air is full of bluebirds. I hear them far and near on all sides of the hill, warbling in the tree-tops, though I do not distinctly see them . . . four species of birds have all come in one day, no doubt to almost all parts of the town. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Listening for the Bluebird

The rather warm but strong wind now roars in the wood to wake up the trees,  and their sap flows the sooner for it. See March 9, 1852 (“These March winds, which make the woods roar and fill the world with life and bustle, appear to wake up the trees out of their winter sleep and excite the sap to flow.”)

When I get two thirds up the hill, I look round and am for the hundredth time surprised by the landscape of the river valley and the horizon with its distant blue scalloped rim. See May 17, 1853 ("I was surprised, on turning round, to behold the serene and everlasting beauty of the world.”); May 22, 1854 ("How many times I have been surprised  thus, on turning about on this very spot, at the fairness of the earth!”) ; October 7, 1857 ("When I turn round half-way up Fair Haven Hill, by the orchard wall, and look northwest, I am surprised for the thousandth time at the beauty of the landscape.”). See also note to June 3, 1850 ("The landscape is a vast amphitheatre rising to its rim in the horizon.")

The robin does not come singing, but utters a somewhat anxious or inquisitive peep at first. See March 18, 1853 ("He does not sing as yet . . . the robin and blackbird only peep and chuck at first."); March 18, 1859 ("Three days ago, the 15th, we had steady rain with a southerly wind. . . and the peep of the robin was heard through the drizzle and the rain.") See also  February 27, 1857 (" Before I opened the window this cold morning, I heard the peep of a robin, that sound so often heard in cheerless or else rainy weather, so often heard first borne on the cutting March wind or through sleet or rain, as if its coming were premature. "); March 8, 1855 ("I hear the hasty, shuffling, as if frightened, note of a robin from a dense birch wood . . . This sound reminds me of rainy, misty April days in past years."); March 12, 1854 ("I hear my first robin peep distinctly at a distance. No singing yet."); March 17, 1858 ("I hear a faint note far in the wood which reminds me of the robin. Again I hear it; it is he, — an occasional peep.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring, the anxious peep of the early robin

Each new year is a surprise to us. . . . a spring landscape as impossible a fortnight ago as the song of birds. See December 29, 1851 (" What a fine and measureless joy the gods grant us thus, letting us know nothing about the day that is to dawn! This day, yesterday, was as incredible as any other miracle.")

The sharp tinkle of a song sparrow is heard through it all. See March 18, 1857 ("I now again hear the song sparrow’s tinkle along the riverside, probably to be heard for a day or two.”)March 18, 1852 ("I hear the song sparrow's simple strain, most genuine herald of the spring.”)

I have thus found the ledum this winter. See February 4, 1858 (“As usual with the finding of new plants, I had a presentiment that I should find the ledum in Concord.”)

Going by the epigaea on Fair Haven Hill, I thought I would follow down the shallow gully through the woods from it, that I might find more or something else. See September 8, 1858 ("It is good policy to be stirring about your affairs, for the reward of activity and energy is that if you do not accomplish the object you had professed to yourself, you do accomplish something else. So, in my botanizing or natural history walks, it commonly turns out that, going for one thing, I get another thing.")

A new locality of the epigaea. See February 7, 1858 (“I am surprised to find the epigaea on this hill, at the northwest corner of C. Hubbard’s (?) lot.”)

March 18. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, March 18

The note of each bird

remembered like a dream when

we hear it again.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Each new year is a surprise to us.

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-580318

Little mounds or tufts of yellowish or golden moss in the young woods look like sunlight on the ground.

February 7.

Aunt Louisa has talked with Mrs. Monroe, and I can correct or add to my account of January 23d. She says that she was only three or four years old, and that she went to school, with Aunt Elizabeth and one other child, to a woman named Turner, somewhere in Boston, who kept a spinning-wheel a-going while she taught these three little children.

She remembers that one sat on a lignum-vitae mortar turned bottom up, another on a box, and the third on a stool; and then repeated the account of Jennie Burns bringing her little daughter to the school, as before.

I observed yesterday in that oak stump on the ditch bank by Trillium Wood (which I counted the rings of once) that between the twentieth and twenty-seventh ' rings there was only about three sevenths of an inch, though before and after this it grew very fast and seven spaces would make nearly two inches. The tree was growing lustily till twenty years old, and then for seven years it grew only one fourth or one fifth part as fast as before and after. I am curious to know what happened to it.

P. M. —To Cliffs through Wheeler’s pasture on the hill.

This new pasture, with gray stumps standing thickly in the now sere sward, reminds me of a graveyard. And on these monuments you can read each tree’s name, when it was born (if you know when it died), how it throve, and how long it lived, whether it was cut down in full vigor or after the infirrnities of age had attacked it.

I am surprised to find the epigaea on this hill, at the northwest corner of C. Hubbard’s (?) lot, i. e. the large wood. It extends a rod or so and is probably earlier there than where I have found it before. Some of the buds show a very little color. The leaves have lately been much eaten, I suspect by partridges.

Little mounds or tufts of yellowish or golden moss in the young woods look like sunlight on the ground.

If possible, come upon the top of a hill unexpectedly, perhaps through woods, and then see off from it to the distant earth which lies behind a bluer veil, before you can see directly down it, i. e. bringing its own near top against the distant landscape.

In the Fair Haven orchard I see the small botrychium still fresh, but quite dark reddish. 

The bark of the Populus grandidentata there is a green clay-color.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 7, 1858

Aunt Louisa has talked with Mrs. Monroe.  See January 23, 1858 ("Mrs. William Monroe told Sophia last evening that she remembered her (Sophia’s) grandfather very well,")

Epigaea repens: trailing arbutus. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Epigaea

Populus grandidentata: big-tooth aspen. A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,the Big-toothed Aspen (Populus grandidentata)

In the Fair Haven orchard I see the small botrychium still fresh, but quite dark reddish. See April 2, 1859 ("I see the small botrychium still quite fresh in the open pasture, only a reddish or leathery brown, — some, too, yellow. It is therefore quite evergreen and more than the spleenworts.")

Yellowish or golden moss in the young woods look like sunlight on the ground. Compare October 25, 1853 ("The ground is strewn with pine-needles as sunlight.")

Little mounds of truth,

yellowish or golden moss:

sunlight on the ground.

zphx