To effect the quality of the day.

(The art of spending a day)

I went to the woods because

I wished to live deliberately

to front only the essential facts of life, and

 see if I could not learn what it had to teach, 

and not, when I came to die,

discover that I had not lived.

Walden

One does not soon learn the trade of life. That one may work out a true life requires more art and delicate skill than any other work.   December 29, 1841.

I find it to be the height of wisdom not to endeavor to oversee myself . . . but to see over and above myself, entertain sublime conjectures, to make myself the thoroughfare of thrilling thoughts, live all that can be lived. November 23, 1850

Resolve to read no book, to take no walk, to undertake no enterprise, but such as you can endure to give an account of to yourself. Live thus deliberately for the most part. August 23, 1851

It is always essential that we love to do what we are doing, do it with a heart. September 2, 1851

I don’t remember 

a page to tell me how to 

 spend this afternoon.

The art of spending a day . . . I do not so much wish to know how to economize time as how to spend it, that the day may not have been in vain. How to extract its honey from the flower of the world. That is my every-day business. September 7, 1851.

I wish for leisure and quiet to let my life flow in its proper channels, with its proper currents; when I might not waste the days. December 12, 1851

What a fine and measureless joy the gods grant us by letting us know nothing about the day that is to dawn! This day, yesterday, was as incredible as any other miracle. December 29, 1851

We cannot live too leisurely. Let me not live as if time was short. January 11, 1852

Do the things which lie 

nearest to you – but which are 

difficult to do.

January 12, 1852

It requires more than a day's devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a day. January 20, 1852

Can I not by expectation affect the revolutions of nature, make a day to bring forth something new? April 18, 1852

The art of life, of a poet's life, is, not having anything to do, to do something. April 29, 1852

The world can never be more beautiful than now. May 18, 1852

A man should not live without a purpose, and that purpose must surely be a grand one. December 15, 1852

The great art of life is how to turn the surplus life of the soul into life for the body, — that so the life be not a failure. March 13, 1853

The sun is now warm on my back, and when I turn round I shade my face with my hands. Nature is beautiful only as a place where a life is to be lived.  July 21, 1853 

All that a man has to say or do that can possibly concern mankind, is in some shape or other to tell the story of his love, — to sing. May 6, 1854

To effect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts . . . Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature . . . determined to make a day of it. Walden

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence. October 18, 1855

The advantage of having some purpose, however small, to be accomplished . . .  for only absorbing employment prevails, succeeds, takes up space, occupies territory, determines the future . . . any little enterprise . . . a thing to be done, — some step to be taken, however slight, out of the usual course.  [O]ur days should be spent . . . carrying out deliberately and faithfully the hundred little purposes which every man's genius must have suggested to him [and] the flavor of your life to that extent . . . will be such a sauce as no wealth can buy. August 30, 1856

The more thrilling, wonderful, divine objects I behold in a day, the more expanded and immortal I become. August 30, 1856

Each man's necessary path, though as obscure and apparently uneventful as that of a beetle in the grass, is the way to the deepest joys he is susceptible of. November 18, 1857

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. September 8, 1858

If you are not happy to-day you will hardly be so to-morrow. September 18, 1860

Simply to see to a distant horizon through a clear air, -- the fine outline of a distant hill or a blue mountain- top through some new vista, -- this is wealth enough for one afternoon. November 22, 1860

To know and possess

the wealth of this afternoon,

get the most of life.

To see the sun rise

or go down every day

full of news to me.

To see what transpires

in the mind and heart of me,

go where my life is.

To attend each thought

every phenomena and

oratorio.

To grow green with spring

yellow and ripe with autumn,

to live each season.

So I help myself,

loving my life as I should –

a day's devotion.

~zphx 20150118

See also 

Walden, An artist in the city of Kouroo

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, To effect the quality of the day

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 ©  2009-2022

In the crucible of my celibate life

purified of all desire,

I enter truth from behind

and call her name --

Simplify!

tinyurl.com/HDTTO-DAY

https://tinyurl.com/HDT-DAY

The snow of yesterday.

December 21. 

A. M. — A fine winter day and rather mild. 

Solstice 2019

Ride to T. Wheeler's lot. 

See a red squirrel out in two places. Do they not come out chiefly in the forenoon? 

Also a large flock of snow buntings, fair and pleasant as it is. Their whiteness, like the snow, is their most remarkable peculiarity. 

The snow of yesterday having turned to rain in the afternoon, the snow is no longer (now that it is frozen) a uniformly level white, as when it had just fallen, but on all declivities you see it, even from a great distance, strongly marked with countless furrows or channels. These are about three inches deep, more or less parallel where the rain ran down. 

On hillsides these reach from top to bottom and give them a peculiar combed appearance. Hillsides around a hollow are thus very regularly marked by lines converging toward the centre at the bottom. 

In level fields the snow is not thus furrowed, but dimpled with a myriad little hollows where the water settled, and perhaps answering slightly to the inequalities of the ground. 

In level woods I do not see this regular dimpling — the rain being probably conducted down the trunks — nor the furrows on hillsides; the rain has been differently distributed by the trees. 

This makes a different impression from the fresh and uniformly level white surface of recently fallen snow. It is now, as it were, wrinkled with age. The incipient slosh of yesterday is now frozen, and makes good sleighing and a foundation for more.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 21, 1859

A fine winter day and rather mild. See note to December 21, 1854 ("We are tempted to call these the finest days of the year.")

A large flock of snow buntings, fair and pleasant as it is. Their whiteness, like the snow, is their most remarkable peculiarity. See December 10, 1854 ("See a large flock of snow buntings (quite white against woods, at any rate), though it is quite warm."); December 24, 1851 ("Saw a flock of snowbirds on the Walden road. I see them so commonly when it is beginning to snow that I am inclined to regard them as a sign of a snow-storm. The snow bunting (Emberiza nivalis) methinks it is, so white and arctic, not the slate-colored") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snow Bunting

Another Glorious Day with Clear Cloudless Silvery Twilights.

December 9. 

The third (at least) glorious day, clear and not too cold (this morning a leaf frost on the rails a third of an inch long), with peculiarly long and clear cloudless silvery twilights morn and eve, with a stately, withdrawn after-redness. 

Above all, deliver me from a city built on the site of a more ancient city, the materials of the one being the ruins of the other. There the dwellings of the living are in the cemeteries of the dead, and the soil is blanched and accursed.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, 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. See December 8, 1853 ("The twilights, morn and eve, are very clear and light, very glorious and pure, or stained with red, and prolonged, these days. But, now the sun is set, Walden . .is more light than the sky"); December 10, 1853 ("Another still more glorious day , if possible . . .These are among the finest days in the year ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,The world can never be more beautiful than now.

A peculiarly fine September day,

September 21. 

September 21, 2019

Heard in the night a snapping sound and the fall of some small body on the floor from time to time. In the morning I found that it was produced by the witch-hazel nuts on my desk springing open and casting their seeds quite across the chamber, hard and stony as these nuts are. 

It is overcast, like yesterday, and yet more rain-promising. Methinks the 19th was such a day (the second after rain) as the 18th in '58, — a peculiarly fine September day, looking toward the fall, warm and bright, with yellow butterflies in the washed road, and early-changed maples and shrubs adorning the low grounds. The red nesaea blazing along the Assabet above the powder-mills. The apple crop, red and yellow, more conspicuous than ever amid the washed leaves. 

The farmers on all sides are digging their potatoes, so prone to their work that they do not see me going across lots. 

I sat near Coombs's pigeon-place by White Pond. The pigeons sat motionless on his bare perches, from time to time dropping down into the bed and uttering a quivet or two. Some stood on the perch; others squatted flat. I could see their dove-colored breasts. Then all at once, being alarmed, would take flight, but ere long return in straggling parties. 

He tells me that he has fifteen dozen baited, but does not intend to catch any more at present, or for two or three weeks, hoping to attract others. Rice says that white oak acorns pounded up, shells and all, make the best bait for them. 

I see now in the wood-paths where small birds and partridges, etc., have been destroyed, — only their feathers left, — probably by hawks. Do they not take their prey often to a smooth path in the woods? 

White Pond is being dimpled here and there all over, perhaps by fishes; and so is the river. It is an overcast day. Has that anything to do with it? 

I see some of the rainbow girdle reflected around its edge. Looking with the proper intention of the eye, I see it is ribbed with the dark prolonged reflections of the pines almost across. But why are they bent one side? Is it the effect of the wind? 

We are having our dog-days now and of late, methinks, having had none to speak of in August; and now at last I see a few toadstools, — the election-cake (the yellowish, glazed over) and the taller, brighter-yellow above. Those shell-less slugs which eat apples eat these also. 

Jays are more frequently heard of late, maybe because other birds are more silent. 

Considerable many acorns are fallen (black oak chiefly) in the path under the south edge of Conant's Wood, this side of White Pond. Acorns have been falling very sparingly ever since September 1, but are mostly wormy. They are as interesting now on the shrub oak (green) as ever. 

I suspect that it is not when the witch-hazel nut first gapes open that the seeds fly out, for I see many (if not most of them) open first with the seeds in them; but when I release a seed (it being still held by its base), it flies as I have said. I think that its slippery base is compressed by the unyielding shell, which at length expels it, just as I can make one fly by pressing it and letting it slip from between my thumb and finger. It appears to fit close to the shell at its base, even after the shell gapes. 

The ex-plenipotentiary refers in after [-dinner] speeches with complacency to the time he spent abroad and the various lords and distinguished men he met, as to a deed done and an ever-memorable occasion! Of what account are titles and offices and opportunities, if you do no memorable deed? 

I perceive that a spike of arum berries which I gathered quite green September 1 is now turned completely scarlet, and though it has lain on my desk in a dry and warm chamber all the while, the berries are still perfectly plump and fresh (as well as glossy) to look at, — as much so as any. 

The greater part [of], almost all, the mikania was killed by the frost of the 15th and 16th. Only that little which was protected by its position escaped and is still in bloom. And the button-bush too is generally browned above by the same cause. This has given a considerably brown look to the side of the river. 

Saw baeomyces (lately opened, probably with the rain of the 17th) by roadside. 

Yesterday was a still, overcast, rain-promising day, and I saw this morning (perhaps it was yesterday) the ground about the back door all marked with worm-piles. Had they not come out for water after the dry weather? 

See a St. Domingo cuckoo (black-billed) still.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 21, 1859

The witch-hazel nuts on my desk springing open and casting their seeds quite across the chamber. September 18, 1859 ("The double-fruited stone splits and reveals the two shining black oblong seeds. It has a peculiarly formed nut, in pretty clusters, clothed, as it were, in close-fitting buckskin.")

A peculiarly fine September day, looking toward the fall, warm and bright, with yellow butterflies.  See September 21, 1854  ("With this bright, clear, but rather cool air the bright yellow of the autumnal dandelion is in harmony "); September 21, 1857 ("The warmth of the sun is just beginning to be appreciated again on the advent of cooler days.") See also September 18, 1858 ("It is a wonderful day."); September 18, 1860 ("This is a beautiful day, warm but not too warm, a harvest day . . ."If you are not happy to-day you will hardly be so to-morrow.”)

Yellow butterflies in the washed road. See note to September 19, 1859 ("See many yellow butterflies in the road this very pleasant day after the rain of yesterday.")

The red nesaea blazing along the Assabet above the powder-mills. See July 21, 1859 ("The nesaea grows commonly along the river near the powder-mills, one very dense bed of it at the mouth of the powder-mill canal.")

The farmers on all sides are digging their potatoes, so prone to their work that they do not see me going across lots. Compare September 27, 1858 ("The farmers digging potatoes on shore pause a moment to watch my sail and bending mast."); November 18, 1851 ("The man who is bent upon his work is frequently in the best attitude to observe what is irrelevant to his work. "); April 12, 1854 ("It is from out the shadow of my toil that I look into the light."); April 30, 1856 (“ Again, it is with the side of the ear that you hear. The music or the beauty belong not to your work. . . but you will hear more of it if you devote yourself to your work.”)

At last I see a few toadstools, — the election-cake (the yellowish, glazed over). See October 2, 1859 ("Nowadays I see most of the election-cake fungi, with crickets and slugs eating them"); October 4, 1858 ("See crickets eating the election-cake toadstools."); October 10, 1858 ("I find the under sides of the election-cake fungi there covered with pink-colored fleas"); October 20, 1856 (“I notice, as elsewhere of late, a great many brownish-yellow (and some pink) election-cake fungi, eaten by crickets; about three inches in diameter."); October 16, 1859 ("That election-cake fungus which is still growing (as for some months) appears to be a Boletus"); October 20, 1857 ("I see the yellowish election-cake fungi."); October 29, 1855 ("There are many fresh election-cake toadstools amid the pitch pine”); See also Concord: A Sense of Place, October 20, 2015, Election-cake Fungus Mystery.

Jays are more frequently heard of late. See September 21, 1854 (“I hear many jays since the frosts began”)

The earth is yellowing in the September sun

September 18. 

P. M. — Sail to Fair Haven Pond. 

It is a fine September day. The river is still rising on account of the rain of the 16th and is getting pretty well over the meadows. As we paddle westward, toward College Meadow, I perceive that a new season has come. 

The air is incredibly clear. The surface of both land and water is bright, as if washed by the recent rain and then seen through a much finer, clearer, and cooler air. The surface of the river sparkles. 

I am struck by the soft yellow-brown or brown-yellow of the black willows, stretching in cloud-shaped wreaths far away along the edges of the stream, of a so much mellower and maturer tint than the elms and oaks and most other trees seen above and beyond them. 

It is remarkable that the button-bushes beneath and mingling with them are of exactly the same tint and in perfect harmony with them. They are like two interrupted long brown-yellow masses of verdure resting on the water, a peculiarly soft and warm yellow. This is, perhaps, the most interesting autumnal tint as yet. 

Above the railroad bridge, with our sail set, wind north-northwest, we see two small ducks, dusky, —— perhaps dippers, or summer ducks, — and sail within four rods before they fly. They are so tame that for a while we take them for tame ducks. 

The pads are drowned by the flood, but I see one pontederia spike rising blue above the surface. Elsewhere the dark withered pontederia leaves show themselves, and at a distance look like ducks, and so help conceal them. For the ducks are now back again in numbers, since the storm and freshet. We can just go over the ammannia meadow. 

It is a wonderful day. 

As I look westward, this fine air — “gassy,” C. calls it — brings out the grain of the hills. I look into the distant sod. This air and sun, too, bring out all the yellow that is in the herbage. The very grass or sedge of the meadow is the same soft yellow with the willows, and the button-bush harmonizes with them. It is as if the earth were one ripe fruit, like a muskmelon yellowed in the September sun; i. e., the sedges, being brought between me and the sun, are seen to be ripe like the cucumbers and muskmelons in the garden. 

The earth is yellowing in the September sun. 

It occurs to me to put my knee on it, press it gently, and hear if it does not crack within as if ripe. Has it not, too, a musty fragrance, as a melon? 

At Clamshell we take the wind again, and away we glide. I notice, along the edge of the eastern meadow wood, some very light-colored and crisped-looking leaves, apparently on small maples, or else swamp white oaks, as if some vine ran over the trees, for the leaves are of a different color from the rest. This must be the effect of frost, I think. 

The sedge and wool-grass all slant strongly southward or up the stream now, which makes a strange impression on the sailor, but of late the wind has been north and stronger than the sluggish current of the river. 

The small white pines on the side of Fair Haven Hill now look remarkably green, by contrast with the surrounding shrubbery, which is recently imbrowned. You are struck by their distinct liquid green, as if they had but just sprung up there. 

All bright colors seem brighter now for the same reason, i. e. from contrast with the duller browns and russets. The very cows on the hill side are a brighter red amid the pines and the brown' hazels. 

The perfectly fresh spike of the Polygonum amphibium attracts every eye now. It is not past its prime. C. thinks it is exactly the color of some candy. 

Also the Polygala sanguiuea on the bank looks redder than usual. 

Many red maples are now partly turned dark crimson along the meadow-edge. 

Near the pond we scare up twenty or thirty ducks, and at the pond three blue herons. They are of a hoary blue. One flies afar and alights on a limb of a large white pine near Well Meadow Head, bending it down. I see him standing there with outstretched neck. 

Finding grapes, we proceeded to pluck them, tempted more by their fragrance and color than their flavor, though some were very palatable. We gathered many without getting out of the boat, as we paddled back, and more on shore close to the water’s edge, piling them up in the prow of the boat till they reached to the top of the boat, — a long sloping heap of them and very handsome to behold, being of various colors and sizes, for we even added green ones for variety. Some, however, were mainly green when ripe. You cannot touch some vines without bringing down more single grapes in a shower around you than you pluck in bunches, and such as strike the water are lost, for they do not float. But it is a pity to break the handsome clusters. Thus laden, the evening air wafting the fragrance of the cargo back to us, we paddled homeward. 

The cooler air is so clear that we see Venus plainly some time before sundown. The wind had all gone down, and the water was perfectly smooth. The sunset was uncommonly fair. 

Some long amber clouds in the horizon, all on fire with gold, were more glittering than any jewelry. An Orient city to adorn the plates of an annual could not be contrived or imagined more gorgeous. 

And when you looked with head inverted the effect was increased tenfold, till it seemed a world of enchantment. We only regretted that it had not a due moral effect on us scapegraces. 

Nevertheless, when, turning my head, I looked at the willowy edge of Cyanean Meadow and onward to the sober-colored but fine-grained Clamshell Hills, about which there was no glitter, I was inclined to think that the truest beauty was that which surrounded us but which we failed to discern, that the forms and colors which adorn our daily life, not seen afar in the horizon, are our fairest jewelry. The beauty of Clamshell Hill, near at hand, with its sandy ravines, in which the cricket chirps. This is an Occidental city, not less glorious than that we dream of in the sunset sky. 

It chanced that all the front-rank polygonum, with its rosaceous spikes, was drowned by the flood, but now, the sun having for some time set, with our backs to the west we saw the light reflected from the slender clear white spikes of the P. hydropiperoides (now in its prime), which in large patches or masses rise about a foot above the surface of the water and the other polygonum. Under these circumstances this polygonum was very pretty and interesting, only its more presentable part I rising above the water. 

Mr. Warren brings to me three kinds of birds which he has shot on the Great Meadows this afternoon, viz. two Totanus flavipes, such as I saw the 8th (there were eight in the flock, and he shot seven), one Rallus Carolinus, and one peetweet. I doubt if I have seen any but the T. flavipes here, since I have measured this.[Or very likely I have. Vide 25th.] Wilson says that this does not penetrate far inland, though he sees them near Philadelphia after a northeast storm. 

The above rail corresponds to the land rail or corn crake of Europe in form and habits. In Virginia is called the sora; in South Carolina, the coot. It is the game rail of the South, and the only species of the genus Crex in America. Note kuk kuk kuk. Go to Hudson’s Bay and thereabouts to breed. This was a male, having a black throat and black about base of bill. Peabody says that they are seen here only in the autumn on their return from the north, though Brewer thinks their nest may be found here. In the genus Crex, the bill is stout and shorter than the head. In Rallus (as in R. Virginianus), it is longer than the head and slender. In the latter, too, the crown and whole upper parts are black, streaked with brown; the throat, breast, and belly, orange-brown; sides and vent, black tipped with white; legs and feet, dark red-brown; none of which is true of the R. Carolinus. 

I notice that the wing of the peetweet, which is about two inches wide, has a conspicuous and straight-edged white bar along its middle on the under side for half its length. It is seven eighths of an inch wide and, being quite parallel with the darker parts of the wing, it produces that singular effect in its flying which I have noticed. This line, by the way, is not mentioned by Wilson, yet it is, perhaps, the most noticeable mark of the bird when flying! The under side of the wings is commonly slighted in the description, though it is at least as often seen by us as the upper. Wilson says that “the whole lower parts are beautifully marked with roundish spots of black, . . . but the young are pure white be low.” May I not have made the young the T. solitarius? But the young are white-spotted on wings. 

I think that I see a white-throated sparrow this after noon.

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

It is a fine September day. The air is incredibly clear. The surface of both land and water is bright. . .seen through a much finer, clearer, and cooler air. The surface of the river sparkles. . . .It is a wonderful day"); September 18, 1860 ("If you are not happy to-day you will hardly be so to-morrow."); September 22, 1854 ("As I look off from the hilltop, wonder if there are any finer days in the year than these. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The world can never be more beautiful than now.

Finding grapes, we proceeded to pluck them, tempted more by their fragrance and color than their flavor,piling them up in the prow of the boat till they reached to the top of the boat, — the evening air wafting the fragrance of the cargo back to us, we paddled homeward . See September 8, 1854 ("As I paddle home with my basket of grapes in the bow, every now and then their perfume was wafted to me in the stern, and I think that I am passing a richly laden vine on shore."); September 13, 1856 ("The best are more admirable for fragrance than for flavor. Depositing them in the bows of the boat, they fill all the air with their fragrance, as we row along against the wind, as if we were rowing through an endless vineyard in its maturity. ")

Some long amber clouds in the horizon, all on fire with gold, were more glittering than any jewelry. And when you looked with head inverted the effect was increased tenfold, till it seemed a world of enchantment. See January 8, 1854 ("Gilpin, in his essay on the "Art of Sketching Landscape," says: "When you have finished your sketch . . . tinge the whole over with some light horizon hue." . . .I have often been attracted by this harmonious tint in his and other drawings, and sometimes, especially, have observed it in nature when at sunset I inverted my head.")

Nevertheless, when, turning my head, . . .I was inclined to think that the truest beauty was that which surrounded us but which we failed to discern, that the forms and colors which adorn our daily life, not seen afar in the horizon, are our fairest jewelry. See June 21, 1852 ("The perception of beauty is a moral test."); May 17, 1853 ("I was surprised, on turning round, to behold the serene and everlasting beauty of the world"); May 17, 1853 ("Ah, the beauty of this last hour of the day — when a power stills the air and smooths all waters and all minds — that partakes of the light of the day and the stillness of the night");  ;December 11. 1855 ("It is only necessary to behold thus the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair’s breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance."); Autumnal Tints ("There is just as much beauty visible to us in the landscape as we are prepared to appreciate")

The cooler air is so clear that we see Venus plainly some time before sundown. See February 3, 1852 ("Venus is now like a little moon in the west,"); May 8, 1852 ("Venus is the evening star and the only star yet visible"); 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")

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

A wonderful day.  

The earth is yellowing in 

the September sun.

The air is so clear 

we see Venus plainly some 

time before sundown.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The earth yellowing in the September sun

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-540918

The full moon rises.

May 8, 2017

May 8.

A third fine day. 

The sugar maple at Barrett's is now in full bloom. 

I finish the arbor to-night. This has been the third of these remarkably warm and beautiful. I have worked all the while in my shirt-sleeves. 

Summer has suddenly come upon us, and the birds all together. Some boys have bathed in the river. 

Walk to first stone bridge at sunset. Salix alba, possibly the 6th. 

It is a glorious evening. 

I scent the expanding willow leaves (for there are very few blossoms yet) fifteen rods off. Already hear the cheerful, sprightly note of the yellowbird amid them. It is perfectly warm and still, and the green grass reminds me of June. The air is full of the fragrance of willow leaves. The high water stretches smooth around. 

I hear the sound of Barrett's sawmill with singular distinctness. The ring of toads, the note of the yellowbird, the rich warble of the red-wing, the thrasher on the hillside, the robin's evening song, the woodpecker tapping some dead tree across the water; and I see countless little fuzzy gnats in the air, and dust over the road, between me and the departed sun. 

Perhaps the evenings of the 6th and 7th were as pleasant. But such an evening makes a crisis in the year. I must make haste home and go out on the water. 

I paddle to the Wheeler meadow east of hill after sundown. From amid the alders, etc., I hear the mew of the catbird and the yorrick of Wilson's thrush. One bullfrog's faint er-er-roonk from a distance. (Perhaps the Amphibia, better than any creatures, celebrate the changes of temperature.) One dump note. 

It grows dark around. The full moon rises, and I paddle by its light. 

It is an evening for the soft-snoring, purring frogs (which I suspect to be Rana palustris). I get within a few feet of them as they sit along the edge of the river and meadow, but cannot see them. Their croak is very fine or rapid, and has a soft, purring sound at a little distance. I see them paddling in the water like toads. 

Within a week I have had made a pair of corduroy pants, which cost when done $1.60. They are of that peculiar clay-color, reflecting the light from portions of their surface. They have this advantage, that, beside being very strong, they will look about as well three months hence as now, — or as ill, some would say. Most of my friends are disturbed by my wearing them. I can get four or five pairs for what one ordinary pair would cost in Boston, and each of the former will last two or three times as long under the same circumstances. The tailor said that the stuff was not made in this country; that it was worn by the Irish at home, and now they would not look at it, but others would not wear it, durable and cheap as it is, because it is worn by the Irish. 

Moreover, I like the color on other accounts. Anything but black clothes. I was pleased the other day to see a son of Concord return after an absence of eight years, not in a shining suit of black, with polished boots and a beaver or silk hat, as if on a furlough from human duties generally, — a mere clothes-horse, — but clad in an honest clay-colored suit and a snug every-day cap. It showed unusual manhood. Most returning sons come home dressed for the occasion. 

The birds and beasts are not afraid of me now. A mink came within twenty feet of me the other day as soon as my companion had left me, and if I had had my gray sack on as well as my corduroys, it would perhaps have come quite up to me. 

Even farmers' boys, returning to their native town, though not unfamiliar with homely and dirty clothes, make their appearance on this new stage in a go-to-meeting suit.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 8, 1857

A third fine day. See May 6, 1857 ("A beautiful and warm day."); May 7, 1857 ("A second fine day."); May 9, 1857; ("Another fine day.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The world can never be more beautiful than now.

Summer has suddenly come upon us, and the birds all together. See May 6, 1852  ("Hear the first warbling vireo this morning on the elms. This almost makes a summer."); May 7, 1852 ("One or more little warblers in the woods this morning are new to the season, . . .The first wave of summer from the south") ; May 7, 1852 ("The birds I have lately mentioned come not singly, as the earliest, but all at once,"); May 10, 1858 ("It is remarkable how many new birds have come all at once to-day.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau. Summer and The Birds of May

It is a glorious evening . . . I must make haste home and go out on the water. See August 31, 1852 ("This is the most glorious part of this day,. . . and the most suggestive.. . . Evening is pensive. The serenity is far more remarkable to those who are on the water.”)

Already hear the cheerful, sprightly note of the yellowbird amid them. See May 8, 1854 (“Hear a yellowbird in the direction of the willows. Its note coarsely represented by che-che-che-char-char- char."); May 8 1859 ("Summer yellowbird.”) and note to May 11, 1856 ("At a distance I hear the first yellow-bird . . . All these willows blossom.”).

The full moon rises, and I paddle by its light. It is an evening for the soft-snoring, purring frogs (which I suspect to be Rana palustris). See April 11, 1854 ("Hear a slight snoring of frogs on the bared meadows. Is it not the R. palustris? This the first moon to walk by.”); May 3, 1852 ("The moon is full. The air is filled with a certain luminous, liquid, white light. You can see the moonlight, as it were, reflected from the atmosphere."); . May 6, 1858 ("In the mornings now, I hear no R. palustris and no hylodes, but a few toads still, but now, at night, all ring together, the toads ringing through the day, the hylodes beginning in earnest toward night and the palustris at evening. I think that the different epochs in the revolution of the seasons may perhaps be best marked by the notes of [frogs]"); May 9, 1853 ("That slumbrous snoring croak far less ringing and musical than the toad' s (which is occasionally heard) now comes up from the meadows edge."); See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, May Moonlight and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The  Pickerel frog  (Rana palustris)

Such an evening makes a crisis in the year.  Compare July 18, 1854 (“The atmosphere now imparts a bluish or glaucous tinge to the distant trees. A certain debauched look. This a crisis in the season.”); August 20, 1854 (“When the red-eye ceases generally, then I think is a crisis, — the woodland quire is dissolved.”)

May 8. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  May 8

It grows dark around.

The full moon rises, and I

paddle by its light. 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The full moon rises

                                     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-570508

A second fine day.

May 7. 

A second fine day. Small pewee and, methinks, golden robin (?).

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 7, 1857

Small pewee. See May 7, 1852 ("The first small pewee sings now che-vet, or rather chirrups chevet, tche-vet — a rather delicate bird with a large head and two white bars on wings.) Also note to May 3, 1855 ("Small pewee; tchevet, with a jerk of the head.”)

Golden robin (?). See May 14, 1856 ("Air full of golden robins. Their loud clear note betrays them as soon as they arrive.”); May 13, 1855 (“[H]eard the golden robin, now that the elms are beginning to leaf . . .The gold robin, just come, is heard in all parts of the village. I see both male and female.”)

While at work I hear the bobolink.

May 6. 

Wednesday. A beautiful and warm day. 

May 6, 2017

I go to build an arbor for R. W. E. The thrasher has been heard this morning. While at work I hear the bobolink and, methinks, peetweet along the brook (surely see it on the 9th). 

Sugar maple by Dr. Barrett's, possibly to-day.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 6, 1857

While at work I hear the bobolink. See May 10, 1853 (“All at once a strain that sounds like old times and recalls a hundred associations. Not at once do I remember that a year has elapsed since I heard it, and then the idea of the bobolink is formed in my mind.”); May 16, 1854 ("The earth is all fragrant as one flower. And bobolinks tinkle in the air. Nature now is perfectly genial to man.”); and note to May 12, 1856 (“We hear the first bobolink. . . How much life the note of the bobolink imparts to the meadow! ”)

Sugar maple by Dr. Barrett’s. See May 5, 1855 (“The sugar maples on the Common have just begun to show their stamens peeping out of the bud, but that by Dr. Barrett’s has them an inch and a half long or more.”); May 6, 1855 (“The young sugar maples leafing are more conspicuous now than any maples.”); May 8, 1857 (“The sugar maple at Barrett's is now in full bloom.”)

A Day's Devotion

To know and possess

the wealth of this afternoon –

get the most of life.

To see the sun rise

or go down every day

full of news to me.

To see what transpires

in the mind and heart of me –

go where my life is.

To attend each thought

every phenomena and 

oratorio.

To grow green with spring

yellow and ripe with autumn –

to live each season.

So I help myself,

loving my life as I should –

a day's devotion.

~zphx 20150118

see HDT:

September 7, 1851
January 11, 1852

January 20, 1852

August 23, 1853

March 28, 1859

April 24, 1859

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/HDevoTION