This is the first truly lively summer Sunday.

May 22. 

May 22, 2015

Sunday. 

To Nobscot with W. E. C. 

This is the third windy day following the two days’rain. A washing day, such as we always have at this season, methinks. 

The grass has sprung up as by magic since the rains. The birds are heard through the pleasant dashing wind, which enlivens everything. It is clear June, the first day of summer. 

The rye, which, when I last looked, was one foot high, is now three feet high and waving and tossing its heads in the wind. We ride by these bluish-green waving rye fields in the woods, as if an Indian juggler had made them spring up in a night. Why, the sickle and cradle will soon be taken up. Though I walk every day I am never prepared for this magical growth of the rye. I am advanced by whole months, as it were, into summer. 

Sorrel reddens the fields. Cows are preparing the milk for June butter. 

Already the falling apple blossoms fill the air and spot the roads and fields, and some are already turned dark with decay on the ground. 

With this warmth and wind the air is full of haze, such as we have not had before. 

The lilac is scented at every house. 

The wood pewee’s warm note is heard. 

We ride through warm, sandy shrub oak roads, where the Viola pedata blues the edge of the path, and the sand cherry and the choke-cherry whiten it. The crickets now first are generally heard. Houstonias whiten the fields and are now in their prime. The thorn bushes are full of bloom. 

Observed a large sassafras tree in bloom, – a rich lemon (?) yellow. 

Left our horse at the Howe tavern. The oldest date on the sign is “ D. H. 1716. ” An old woman, who had been a servant in the family and said she was ninety-one, said this was the first house built on the spot. 

Went on to Nobscot. Very warm in the woods, — and hear the hoarse note of the tanager and the sweet pe-a-wai, — but pleasantly breezy on the bare hilltops. Can’t see the mountains. 

Found an abundance of the Viola Muhlenbergii (debilis of Bigelow), a stalked violet, pale blue and bearded. 

The krigia out, a redder, more July, yellow than the dandelion; also a yellow Bethlehem-star and ribwort; and the mountain cranberry still here and there in blossom, though for the most part small berries formed. 

An abundance of saxifrage going to seed, and in their midst two or three looking densely white like the pearly everlasting — round dense white heads, apparently an abortion, an abnormal state, without stamens, etc., which I cannot find described. 

The pastures on this hill and its spurs are sprinkled profusely with thorny pyramidal apple scrubs, very thick and stubborn, first planted by the cows, then browsed by them and kept down stubborn and thorny for years, till, as they spread, their centre is protected and beyond reach and shoots up into a tree, giving a wine-glass form to the whole; and finally perchance the bottom disappears and cows come in to stand in the shade and rub against and redden the trunk. They must make fine dark shadows, these shrubs, when the sun is low; perfectly pyramidal, they are now, many of them. You see the cow-dung every where now with a hundred little trees springing up in it. Thus the cows create their own shade and food. 

This hill, Nobscot, is the summit of the island (?) or cape between the Assabet and Musketaquid — per haps the best point from which to view the Concord River valley. The Wayland hills bound it on the east; Berlin, Bolton, [and] Harvard hills on the west. The Sudbury meadows, seen here and there in distance, are of a peculiar bluish green. 

This is the first truly lively summer Sunday, what with lilacs, warm weather, waving rye, slight dusty sandy roads in some places, falling apple blossoms, etc., etc., and the wood pewee. 

The country people walk so quietly to church, and at five o’clock the farmer stands reading the newspaper while his cows go through the bars. 

I ought perhaps to have measured the great white oak by Howe’s. 

A remarkably thick white pine wood this side of Willis’s Pond ! !

...

Our quince blossomed yesterday. 

Saw many low blackberries in bloom to-day

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 22, 1853

The wood pewee’s warm note is heard. See May 22, 1854 ("I hear also pe-a-wee pe-a-wee, and then occasionally pee-yu, the first syllable in a different and higher key emphasized, — all very sweet and naive and innocent") See also May 17, 1853 ("I hear the wood pewee, — pe-a-wai. The heat of yesterday has brought him on."); May 17, 1854 ("Hear the wood pewee, the warm weather sound."). And see A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Wood-Pewee

Already the falling apple blossoms fill the air and spot the roads and fields. See May 17, 1853 ("The air filled with the sweetness of apple blossoms ( this is blossom week )"); May 20, 1854 ("Methinks we always have at this time those washing winds as now, when the choke-berry is in bloom, — bright and breezy days blowing off some apple blossoms”); May 25, 1852 (It is blossom week with the apples.”); May 27 1852 ("The road is white with the apple blossoms fallen off, as with snowflakes.”); June 1, 1855 ("A very windy day, . . . scattering the remaining apple blossoms.”)

Found an abundance of the Viola Muhlenbergii (debilis of Bigelow), a stalked violet, pale blue and bearded. See May 22, 1856 ("To Viola Muhlenbergii, which is abundantly out; how long? A small pale-blue flower growing in dense bunches, but in spots a little drier than the V. cucullata and blanda.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Violets

The pastures on this hill and its spurs are sprinkled profusely with thorny pyramidal apple scrubs, very thick and stubborn, first planted by the cows, then browsed by them and kept down stubborn and thorny for years, till, as they spread, their centre is protected and beyond reach and shoots up into a tree. See October 28, 1857 ("I see some shrubs which cattle have browsed for twenty years, keeping them down and compelling them to spread, until at last they are so broad they become their own fence and some interior shoot darts upward and bears its fruit. ")

To paddle now at evening when the water is smooth and the air begins to be warm.

May 9. 

May 9, 2020

Since I returned from Haverhill not only I find the ducks are gone but I no longer hear the chill lill of the blue snowbird or the sweet strains of the fox-colored sparrow and the tree sparrow. The robin's strain is less remarkable. 

I have devoted most of my day to Mr. Alcott. He is broad and genial but indefinite; some would say feeble; forever feeling about vainly in his speech and touching nothing. But this is a very negative account of him for he thus suggests far more than the sharp and definite practical mind. The feelers of his thought diverge — such is the breadth of their grasp — not converge; and in his society almost alone I can express at my leisure with more or less success my vaguest but most cherished fancy or thought. There are never any obstacles in the way of our meeting. He has no creed. He is not pledged to any institution. The sanest man I ever knew; the fewest crotchets after all has he? 

It has occurred to me while I am thinking with pleasure of our day's intercourse, “Why should I not think aloud to you?” Having each some shingles of thought well dried we walk and whittle them trying our knives and admiring the clear yellowish grain of the pumpkin pine. We wade so gently and reverently or we pull together so smoothly that the fishes of thought are not scared from the stream but come and go grandly like yonder clouds that float peacefully through the western sky. When we walk it seems as if the heavens — whose mother-oʻ-pearl and rainbow tints come and go form and dissolve — and the earth had met together and righteousness and peace had kissed each other. I have an ally against the arch-enemy. A blue robed man dwells under the blue concave. The blue sky is a distant reflection of the azure serenity that looks out from under a human brow. We walk together like the most innocent children going after wild pinks with case-knives. Most with whom I endeavor to talk soon fetch up against some institution or particular way of viewing things theirs not being a universal view. They will continually bring their own roofs or — what is not much better — their own narrow skylights between us and the sky when it is the unobstructed heavens I would view. Get out of the way with your old Jewish cobwebs. Wash your windows. 

Saw on Mr. Emerson's firs several parti-colored warblers or finch creepers (Sylvia Americana) a small blue and yellow bird somewhat like but smaller than the indigo-bird; quite tame about the buds of the firs now showing red; often head downward. Heard no note. He says it has been here a day or two. 

At sundown paddled up the river. The pump-like note of a stake-driver from the fenny place across the Lee meadow. 

The greenest and rankest grass as yet is that in the water along the sides of the river. The hylodes are peeping. 

I love to paddle now at evening when the water is smooth and the air begins to be warm. 

The rich warble of blackbirds about retiring is loud and incessant not to mention the notes of numerous other birds. The black willow has started but not yet the button-bush. Again I think I heard the night-warbler. 

Now at starlight that same nighthawk or snipe squeak is heard but no hovering. 

The first bat goes suddenly zigzag overhead through the dusky air; comes out of the dusk and disappears into it. 

That slumbrous snoring croak far less ringing and musical than the toad' s (which is occasionally heard) now comes up from the meadows edge. 

I save a floating plank which exhales and imparts to my hands the rank scent of the muskrats which have squatted on it. I often see their fresh green excrement on rocks and wood. 

Already men are fishing for pouts. 

This has been almost the first warm day; none yet quite so warm. Walking to the Cliffs this afternoon I noticed on Fair Haven Hill a season stillness as I looked over the distant budding forest and heard the buzzing of a fly.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 9, 1853

I no longer hear the chill lill of the blue snowbird or the sweet strains of the fox-colored sparrow and the tree sparrow. See April 17, 1855 ("The fox-colored sparrows seem to be gone, and I suspect that most of the tree sparrows and F. hyemalis, at least, went yesterday.")

I have devoted most of my day to Mr. Alcott. See July 4, 1855 ("So we have to spend the day in Boston, —at Athenaeum gallery, Alcott’s, and at the regatta. Lodge at Alcott’s, who is about moving to Walpole."); September 11, 1856  ("Walked over what Alcott calls Farm Hill, east of his house."); January 17, 1860 ("Alcott said well the other day that this was his definition of heaven, 'A place where you can have a little conversation.'")

Several parti-colored warblers or finch creepers (Sylvia Americana) a small blue and yellow bird quite tame about the buds of the firs now showing red; often head downward. Heard no note. See May 9, 1858  ("The parti-colored warbler . . .— my tweezer-bird, – making the screep screep screep note. It is an almost incessant singer . . . utters its humble notes, like ah twze twze twze, or ah twze twze twze twze."). See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the parti-colored warbler (Sylvia Americana)

 The pump-like note of a stake-driver from the fenny place across the Lee meadow. See  May 9, 1857 ("Hear stake-driver"), See also  April 24, 1854 (" As I stand still listening . . . I hear the loud and distinct pump-a-gor of a stake-driver. Thus he announces himself.”)..

That slumbrous snoring croak far less ringing and musical than the toad's now comes up from the meadows edge. See May 8. 1857 ("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).. . . Their croak is very fine or rapid, and has a soft, purring sound at a little distance")

A conversation with Therien, the woodchopper.

December 24. 

The rain of yesterday concluded with a whitening of snow last evening, the third thus far. To day is cold and quite windy. 

P. M. — To the field in Lincoln which I surveyed for Weston the 17th. 

Walden almost entirely open again. 

Skated across Flint's Pond; for the most part smooth but with rough spots where the rain had not melted the snow. 

From the hill beyond I get an arctic view northwest. The mountains are of a cold slate-color. It is as if they bounded the continent toward Behring's Straits. 

In Weston's field, in springy land on the edge of a swamp, I counted thirty-three or four of those large silvery-brown cocoons within a rod or two, and probably there are many more about a foot from the ground, commonly on the main stem — though sometimes on a branch close to the stem — of the alder, sweet-fern, brake, etc., etc. 

The largest are four inches long by two and a half, bag-shaped and wrinkled and partly concealed by dry leaves, — alder, ferns, etc., — attached as if sprinkled over them. This evidence of cunning in so humble a creature is affecting, for I am not ready to refer it to an intelligence which the creature does not share, as much as we do the prerogatives of reason. This radiation of the brain. The bare silvery cocoons would otherwise be too obvious. 

The worm has evidently said to itself: "Man or some other creature may come by and see my casket. I will disguise it, will hang a screen before it." 

Brake and sweet-fern and alder leaves are not only loosely sprinkled over it and dangling from it, but often, as it were, pasted close upon and almost incorporated into it. 

Saw Therien yesterday afternoon chopping for Jacob Baker in the rain. I heard his axe half a mile off, and also saw the smoke of his fire, which I mistook for a part of the mist which was drifting about. 

I asked him where he boarded. At Shannon's.

He asked the price of board and said I was a grass boarder, i. e. not a regular one. 

Asked him what time he started in the morning. The sun was up when he got out of the house that morning. He heard Flint's Pond whooping like cannon the moment he opened the door, but sometimes he could see stars after he got to his chopping-ground. 

He was working with his coat off in the rain. 

He said he often saw gray squirrels running about and jumping from tree to tree. There was a large nest of leaves close by. 

That morning he saw a large bird of some kind. 

He took a French paper to keep himself in practice, — not for news; he said he didn't want news. He had got twenty- three or twenty-four of them, had got them bound and paid a dollar for it, and would like to have me see it. He hadn't read it half; there was a great deal of reading in it, by gorry.

He wanted me to tell him the meaning of some of the hard words. 

How much had he cut? He wasn't a-going to kill himself. He had got money enough. 

He cut enough to earn his board. A man could not do much more in the winter. 

He used the dry twigs on the trees to start his fire with, and some shavings which he brought in his pocket. He frequently found some fire still in the morning. 

He laid his axe by a log and placed another log the other side of it. I said he might have to dig it out of a snow drift, but he thought it would not snow. 

Described a large hawk killed at Smith's (which had eaten some hens); its legs "as yellow as a sovereign;" apparently a goshawk. 

He has also his beetle and wedges and whetstone. 

In the town hall this evening, my spruce tree, one of the small ones in the swamp, hardly a quarter the size of the largest, looked double its size, and its top had been cut off for want of room. It was lit with candles, but the starlit sky is far more splendid to-night than any saloon.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  December 24, 1853

A whitening of snow last evening, the third thus far. See  December 24,1850 ("the fine, dry snow blown over the surface of the frozen fields looks like steam curling up, as from a wet roof when the sun comes out after a rain."); December 24,1851 ("Now and long since the birds' nests have been full of snow."); December 24, 1854 ("Some three inches of snow fell last night and this morning,"); December 24, 1856 ("More snow in the night and to-day, making nine or ten inches")

Walden almost entirely open again. Skated across Flint's Pond. See December 4, 1853 ("Flint's Pond only skimmed a little at the shore, like the river."). Compare  December 27, 1852 (" Not a particle of ice in Walden to-day. Paddled across it. I took my new boat out. A black and white duck on it, Flint's and Fair Haven being frozen up.."); December 11, 1854 ("I find Flint’s frozen to-day,and how long?");  December 9, 1856 ("Yesterday I met Goodwin bringing a fine lot of pickerel from Flint's, which was frozen at least four inches thick. This is, no doubt, owing solely to the greater depth of Walden."); December 24, 1856 ("Am surprised to find Walden still open in the middle. . "); December 24, 1858 ("Those two places in middle of Walden not frozen over yet, ..."); December 24, 1859 (“There is, in all, an acre or two in Walden not yet frozen, though half of it has been frozen more than a week. ”);

From the hill beyond I get an arctic view northwest. The mountains are of a cold slate-color. 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. I have thought it the best, especially in the winter, which I can get in this neighborhood. It is worth the while to see the mountains in the horizon once a day. "); October 22, 1857 ("Look from the high hill, just before sundown, over the pond. The mountains are a mere cold slate-color. But what a perfect crescent of mountains we have in our northwest horizon!")

In Weston's field I counted thirty-three or four of those large silvery-brown cocoons. See December 17, 1853 ("While surveying for Daniel Weston in Lincoln to-day, see a great many — maybe a hundred — silvery-brown cocoons");  February 19, 1854 (" the light ash-colored cocoons of the A. Promethea, with the withered and faded leaves wrapped around them "); January 6, 1855 ("Saw one of those silver-gray cocoons which are so securely attached by the silk being wound round the leaf-stalk and the twig.")

This evidence of cunning in so humble a creature is affecting, for I am not ready to refer it to an intelligence which the creature does not share.See February 19, 1854 ("Each and all such disguises and other resources remind us that not some poor worm's instinct merely, as we call it, but the mind of the universe rather, which we share, has been intended upon each particular object. All the wit in the world was brought to bear on each case to secure its end.”)

Saw Therien yesterday afternoon chopping for Jacob Baker in the rain. See July 14, 1845 ("Alek Therien, he called himself; a Canadian now, a woodchopper, a post-maker; makes fifty posts—holes them, i. e.—in a day; and who made his last supper on a woodchuck which his dog caught. And he too has heard of Homer, and if it were not for books, would not know what to do rainy days."); February 5, 1855 ("Found Therien cutting down the two largest chestnuts in the wood-lot behind where my house was."); December 29, 1853 ("I asked Therien yesterday if he was satisfied with himself.")

He wasn't a-going to kill himself. He had got money enough. He cut enough to earn his board. See Walden ("He wasn’t a-going to hurt himself. He didn’t care if he only earned his board.")

He took a French paper to keep himself in practice. See Walden ("I know a woodchopper, of middle age, who takes a French paper, not for news as he says, for he is above that, but to “keep himself in practice,” he being a Canadian by birth; and when I ask him what he considers the best thing he can do in this world, he says, beside this, to keep up and add to his English. ")

He has also his beetle.  See March 15, 1857 ("An indispensable piece of woodcraft."); December 29, 1853 ("The woodchopper to-day is the same man that Homer refers to, and his work the same. He, no doubt, had his beetle and wedge and whetstone then, carried his dinner in a pail or basket, and his liquor in a bottle, and caught his woodchucks, and cut and corded, the same.")

My spruce tree. See December 22, 1853 ("Got a white spruce for a Christmas-tree for the town out of the spruce swamp,")

Like the fruits, when cooler weather and frosts arrive, we too are braced and ripened..

September 14. 

High, gusty winds, with dust and a little rain (more or less for two or three days). These powerful gusts fill all the air with dust, concealing the earth and sky. 

P. M. — To Cliffs via Hubbard's Bath. 

The Spiranthes cernua has a sweet scent like the clethra's. 

The mountain sumach appears to bear quite sparingly. Its berries are a hoary crimson and not bright like those of the smooth. Also they are in looser masses. They are, perhaps, a little later, but I think ripe now. 

I see in the swamp under the Cliffs the dark, decaying leaves of the skunk-cabbage, four or five spreading every way and so flat and decayed as to look like a fungus or mildew, making it doubtful at first what plant it is; but there is the sharp green bud already revealed in the centre between the leaf-stalks, ready to expand in the spring. 

This wind has strewn the Fair Haven Hill-side with apples. I think that fully three quarters of all are on the ground. Many trees are almost entirely stripped, the whole crop lying in a circular form beneath, yet hard and green. Others on the hillside have rolled far down. The farmers will be busy for some time gathering these windfalls. 

The winds have come to shake the apple trees prematurely, making fruit (for pies) cheap, I trust, against Thanksgiving or Cattle-Show. Not only apples and other fruit, but a great many green as well as withered leaves, strew the ground under almost all kinds of trees. 

I notice of late the green or ripe pods of the Orchidaceoe, — some for a long time, — including gymnodenia, lady's-slipper, etc.; pods full of a fine, dust-like seed. The dusty-seeded Orchidaceoe. 

The yellow lily (Nuphar advena) fruit, now green and purplish, is ripening under water, full of yellow seeds 

The white lily, when stripped of the blackened and decaying petals, etc., is of this form:  

Even the tough-twigged mocker-nut, yet green, is blown off in some places. I bring home a twig with three of its great nuts together, as big as small apples, and children follow and eye them, not knowing what kind of fruit it is. 

Like the fruits, when cooler weather and frosts arrive, we too are braced and ripened. When we shift from the shady to the sunny side of the house, and sit there in an extra coat for warmth, our green and leafy and pulpy thoughts acquire color and flavor, and perchance a sweet nuttiness at last, worth your cracking. 

Now all things suggest fruit and the harvest, and flowers look late, and for some time the sound of the flail has been heard in the barns. 

They are catching pigeons nowadays. Coombs has a stand west of Nut Meadow, and he says that he has    just shot fourteen hawks there, which were after the pigeons. 

I have one which he has shot within a day or two and calls a pigeon hawk.

Audubon's "Pigeon Hawk" [Merlin]
"Adult male with the cere greenish-yellow, the feet pale orange, the upper parts light bluish-grey, each feather with a black central line; lower parts reddish or yellowish-white, the breast and sides with large oblong brown spots; tibial feathers light red, streaked with blackish-brown. Female with the cere and legs greenish-yellow, the upper parts dark greyish-brown, the lower pale red, spotted as in the male."

•  It is about twenty inches in alar extent. 
• Above dark-slate or brownish with the edges, i. e. tips, of the feathers (especially of wing-coverts) rufous. 
• The primaries and secondaries dark or blackish brown, barred with black, and only  some white concealed on the inner vanes near the base. 
• Wings beneath white or whitish, thickly barred with dark. 
• Scapulars with white spots. 
• Head much mutilated, but no "black spots" visible, but apparently the dark brown mixed or edged with rufous. 
• Cere, etc., said to have been green.
•  Beneath brownish-white, centred with brown, with a darker line through that. 
• Femorals still more rustyish brown, with central dashes. 
• Legs yellowish. 
• Tail slate, with four black bars half an inch or more wide; the edge slate, with a very narrow edging of white; beneath the slate is almost white. 

What kind of hawk is this? 

I can learn nothing from Wilson and Nuttall. The latter thinks that neither the pigeon nor sparrow hawk is found here !! 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 14, 1859


The mountain sumach appears to bear quite sparingly. Its berries are a hoary crimson. See August 28, 1853 ("The berries of the dwarf sumach are not a brilliant crimson, but as yet, at least, a dull sort of dusty or mealy crimson"); October 2, 1856 ("The mountain sumach now a dark scarlet quite generally.")

Spiranthes  cernus
[nodding ladies' tressses orchid]

The Spiranthes cernua has a sweet scent like the clethra's. See September 2, 1856 ("Spiranthes cernua, apparently some days at least, though not yet generally; a cool, late flower, growing with fringed gentian"); September 15, 1856 ("Spiranthes cernua in prime.")

The farmers will be busy for some time gathering these windfalls. See September 3, 1859 ("A strong wind, which blows down much fruit."); September 13, 1852 ("Yesterday, it rained all day, with considerable wind, which has strewn the ground with apples and peaches, and, all the country over, people are busy picking up the windfalls"); September 17, 1858 ("The orchards are strewn with windfalls, mostly quite green.")

Like the fruits, when cooler weather and frosts arrive, we too are braced and ripened. . . . our green and leafy and pulpy thoughts acquire color and flavor, and perchance a sweet nuttiness at last.

The ripening year,

all my thoughts break out spotted

yellow, green and brown.

September 8, 1854 

See August 17, 1851 (" For a day or two it has been quite cool, a coolness that was felt even when sitting by an open window in a thin coat on the west side of the house in the morning, and you naturally sought the sun at that hour. The coolness concentrated your thought. . . I feel as if this coolness would do me good. If it only makes my life more pensive! . . . My life flows with a deeper current.");; August 7, 1854 ("Do you not feel the fruit of your spring and summer beginning to ripen, to harden its seed within you? Do not your thoughts begin to acquire consistency as well as flavor and ripeness? . . .Already some of my small thoughts — fruit of my spring life — are ripe, like the berries which feed the first broods of birds."); January 30, 1854 ("It is for man the seasons and all their fruits exist. The winter was made to concentrate and harden and mature the kernel of his brain, to give tone and firmness and consistency to his thought. Then is the great harvest of the year, the harvest of thought.");  June 6, 1857 (“A year is made up of a certain series and number of sensations and thoughts which have their language in nature. Now I am ice, now I am sorrel. Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind. ”) Compare July 30 1852 ("After midsummer we have a belated feeling . . ., just as in middle age man anticipates the end of life"); August 18, 1853 (“What means this sense of lateness that so comes over one now? — now is the season of fruits; but where is our fruit?)

Now all things suggest fruit and the harvest, and flowers look late, and for some time the sound of the flail has been heard in the barns. See  September 13,1858 ("From many a barn these days I hear the sound of the flail.") See also July 31, 1856 ("I hear the distant sound of a flail, and thoughts of autumn occupy my mind, and the memory of past years."); August 18, 1856 ("It reminds me of past autumns and the lapse of time, suggests a pleasing, thoughtful melancholy, like the sound of the flail");   October 31, 1860 ("I hear the sound of the flailing . . . and gradually draw near to it from the woods, thinking many things.");

The dark river, now that shades are increased, is like the dark eye of a maiden.

May 27. 

This moment each year

the setting sun reflecting

from both pond and lake.

May 27, 2019

May 27, 2015

Friday. P. M. — Up Assabet.

Now first I notice a linty dust on the surface of the dark river at the Hemlocks, evidently from the new and downy leaves. These expressions of the face of Nature are as constant and sure to recur as those of the eyes of maidens, from year to year, — sure to be repeated as long as time lasts. 

It is a new and peculiar season when this phenomenon is observed. Rivers flow already bearing the dust of summer on their bosoms. The dark river, now that shades are increased, is like the dark eye of a maiden. 

Azalea nudiflora blooms generally. 

Hear a black and white creeper sing, ah vee vee, vee vee, vitchet vitchet vitchet vitchet. 

A peculiarity of these days is the first hearing of the crickets' creak, suggesting philosophy and thought. No greater event transpires now. It is the most interesting piece of news to be communicated, yet it is not in any newspaper.

Melvin and Skinner tell me of three wild geese, to their surprise seen within a week down the river, — a gander and two geese, — which must be breeding here. Melvin got near them a fortnight ago. They are too much disturbed to rear a brood, I think. 

Melvin tells of seeing once in June dead shad-flies washed up on the North Branch in windrows, along the shore. 

Golden senecio, at least to-morrow. 

Went by Temple's. For rural interest, give me the houses of the poor, with simply a cool spring, a good deal of weather-stained wood, and a natural door-stone: a house standing somewhere in nature, and not merely in an atmosphere of art, on a measured lot; on a hillside, perchance, obviously not made by any gardener, amid rocks not placed there by a landscape gardener for effect; with nothing "pretty" about it, but life reduced to its lowest terms and yet found to be beautiful. 

This is a good foundation or board to spring from. All that the natives erect themselves above that will be a genuine growth.

Blue-eyed grass out.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 27, 1859

Now first I notice a linty dust on the surface of the dark river at the Hemlocks. See June 4, 1854 (“The surface of the still water nowadays looking like dust at a little distance. Is it the down of the leaves blown off?”) and  note to June 4, 1857 (“I observed yesterday, the first time this year, the lint on the smooth surface of the Assabet at the Hemlocks, giving the water a stagnant look. It is an agreeable phenomenon to me, as connected with the season and suggesting warm weather. I suppose it to be the down from the new leaves.”)

These expressions of the face of Nature are sure to be repeated as long as time lasts. April 18, 1852 ("For the first time I perceive this spring that the year is a circle.”); September 24, 1859 ("Young men have not learned the phases of Nature; they do not know what constitutes a year, or that one year is like another."); May 5, 1860 ("It takes us many years to find out that Nature repeats herself annually”)

The dark river, now that shades are increased, is like the dark eye of a maiden. See June 6, 1855 ("You see the dark eye and shade of June on the river as well as on land.”); June 9. 1856 ("It is a dark eyelash which suggests a flashing eye beneath .”); May 29, 1857 ("the sunniness contrasts with the shadows of the freshly expanded foliage, like the glances of an eye from under the dark eyelashes of June.”);May 29, 1857  ("It was like the first bright flashings of an eye from under dark eyelashes after shedding warm tears."); May 29, 1857 ("I sit on the top of Lee's Cliff, looking into the light and dark eye of the lake.")

Azalea nudiflora blooms generally. See note to May 31, 1853 ( It blossomed at the old election time, and he thought it 'the handsomest flower that grows.’”)

Hear a black and white creeper sing, ah vee vee, vee vee, vitchet vitchet vitchet vitchet. See May 30, 1857 ("In the midst of the shower, though it was not raining very hard, a black and white creeper came and inspected the limbs of a tree before my rock, in his usual zigzag, prying way, head downward often, and when it thundered loudest, heeded it not.”). Compare April 28, 1856 ("I hear to-day frequently the seezer seezer seezer of the black and white creeper, . . . suggesting still warmer weather, —that the season has revolved so much further."); May 11, 1856 ("The black and white creeper also is descending the oaks, etc., and uttering from time to time his seeser seeser seeser. What a rich, strong striped blue-black (?) and white bird”). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Black and White Creeper

The first hearing of the crickets' creak, suggesting philosophy and thought. See May 18, 1860 ("The creak of the cricket has been common on all warm, dry hills, banks, etc., for a week, - inaugurating the summer."); May 22, 1854 (“The song suggests lateness, but only as we come to a knowledge of eternity after some acquaintance with time. . . . . Only in their saner moments do men hear the crickets. . . .A quire has begun which pauses not for any news, for it knows only the eternal.”); May 24, 1857 (“Hear the first cricket as I go through a warm hollow, bringing round the summer with his everlasting strain.”); May 26, 1852 ("To-night I hear many crickets. They have commenced their song. They bring in the summer.”); May 30, 1855 ("Is it not summer now when the creak of the crickets begins to be general?”); June 1, 1856 (“Was soothed and cheered by I knew not what at first, but soon detected the now more general creak of crickets”); June 4, 1857 ( “the creak of crickets, which affects our thoughts so favorably, imparting its own serenity. It is time now to bring our philosophy out of doors.”)

Golden senecio, at least to-morrow. See June 6, 1858 ("Golden senecio is not uncommon now")

Blue-eyed grass out. See May 29, 1852 ("Blue-eyed grass [in bloom]."); May 29, 1853 ("That exceedingly neat and interesting little flower blue-eyed grass now claims our attention"); May 29, 1856 (“Blue-eyed grass, probably to-morrow.”); May 31, 1854 (“Blue-eyed grass, apparently in pretty good season.”); June 6, 1855 (“Blue-eyed grass maybe several days in some places.”); June 15, 1851 (“The blue-eyed grass, well named, looks up to heaven.”); June 15, 1852 ("The fields are blued with blue-eyed grass, — a slaty blue. "); June 15, 1859 ("Blue-eyed grass at height."); June 19, 1853 ("I see large patches of blue-eyed grass in the meadow across the river from my window"); June 20, 1852 ("The blue-eyed grass is shut up. When does it open?"); June 20, 1852 ("The blue-eyed grass is shut up. When does it open?"); July 6, 1851("Blue-eyed grass is now rarely seen. “)

On the way up the dogs are let loose and they dutifully walk along the trail in front of us.  I veer off on the last steep and get up to my chair in time to take several pictures of a the sunset through open clouds in the west. A jet pass is over headed for Europe. The sun is setting so at the right moment is reflecting both from the lake and the pond  —and still has more north to go. At dusk we head back regular way and both can walk in the dark without lights as the path is illuminated by the phosphorus of paint. Every rock that is to be avoided as marked and the rest is a fairyland of of lights pulling us through the woods.

This moment each year

the setting sun reflecting

from both pond and lake.

~zphx 20190527

Greenness prevails, a new season arrives

April 25. 

April 25, 2019

P. M. — To Kalmia Swamp. 

First notice martins.

I got to-day and yesterday the first decided impression of greenness beginning to prevail, summer-like. It struck me as I was going past some opening and by chance looked up some valley or glade, — greenness just beginning to prevail over the brown or tawny. It is a sudden impression of greater genialness in the air, when this greenness first makes an impression on you at some turn, from blades of grass decidedly green, though thin, in the sun and the still, warm air, on some warm orchard-slope perhaps. 

It reminds you of the time, not far off, when you will see the dark shadows of the trees there and buttercups spotting the grass. 

Even the grass begins to wave, in the 19th-of-April fashion. When the wind is still cool elsewhere, I glance up some warm southern slope, sunny and still, where the thinly scattered blades of green grass, lately sprung, already perchance begin to wave, and I am suddenly advertised that a new season has arrived. 

April 25, 1859

This is the beginning of that season which, methinks, culminates with the buttercup and wild pink and Viola pedata. 

It begins when the first toad is heard. Methinks I hear through the wind to-day — and it was the same yesterday — a very faint, low ringing of toads, as if distant and just begun. It is an indistinct undertone, and I am far from sure that I hear anything. It may be all imagination. 

I see the meadow-sweet, thimble-berry (even in a swamp), high blackberry, and (on a dry rock in the woods in a sunny place) some Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum leafing (even the last) apparently two or three days. Fern scrolls are eight inches high, — beyond Hubbard Bridge on the north bank of road. 

A mosquito endeavors to sting me. 

Ranunculus repens at Corner Spring apparently yesterday; five of them out now. Thus early now because exposed to light. 

The Viola blanda are numerously open there, say two days at least. 

Also bluets and potentilla are first noticed by me, and V. sagittate. 

The more yellowish red maples of this afternoon are one, barked, northeast corner Hubbard's Dracaena Grove, the easternmost tree of the row south of Hub bard's Grove, the larger about ten rods this side Hub bard Bridge, south side. The two at this end of bridge are quite red. 

I hear still the what what what of a nuthatch, and, directly after, its ordinary winter note of gnah gnah, quite distinct. I think the former is its spring note or breeding-note. 

E. Bartlett has found a crow's nest with four eggs a little developed in a tall white pine in the grove east of Beck Stow's. 

The snipe have hovered commonly this spring an hour or two before sunset and also in the morning. I can see them flying very high over the Mill-Dam, and they appear to make that sound when descending, — one quite by himself. 

Toads have been observed or disturbed in gardens for a week. 

One saw a striped snake the 3d of April on a warm railroad sand-bank, — a similar place to the others I heard of. 

Young Stewart tells me that he saw last year a pout's nest at Walden in the pond-hole by the big pond. The spawn lay on the mud quite open and uncovered, and the old fish was tending it. A few days after, he saw that it was hatched and little pouts were swimming about.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 25, 1859


The first decided impression of greenness beginning to prevail. See April 28, 1854 ("Perhaps the greenness of the landscape may be said to begin fairly now. . . .during the last half of April the earth acquires a distinct tinge of green, which finally prevails over the russet")

Even the grass begins to wave. . . and I am suddenly advertised that a new season has arrived. See May 19, 1860 ("This is the season when the meadow- grass is seen waving in the wind at the same time that the shadows of clouds are passing over it.."); May 27, 1855 ("The fields now begin to wear the aspect of June, their grass just beginning to wave");  May 30, 1852 (Now is the summer come. . . . A day for shadows, even of moving clouds, over fields in which the grass is beginning to wave.")

In the 19th-of-April fashion. See May 19, 1860 ("[T]hey say of the 19th of April, '75, — that "the apple trees were in bloom and grass was waving in the fields,")

It begins when the first toad is heard.  See  April 25, 1856 (“The toads have begun fairly to ring at noonday in amid the birches to hear them. The wind is pretty strong and easterly . . . It is a low, terrene sound, the undertone of the breeze. Now it sounds low and indefinitely far, now rises, as if by general consent, to a higher key, as if in another and nearer quarter, — a singular alternation.The now universal hard metallic ring of toads blended and partially drowned by the rippling wind. The voice of the toad, the herald of warmer weather.”); See slso April 13, 1853 ("First hear toads (and take off coat), a loud, ringing sound filling the air, which yet few notice."); April 13, 1858 ("Hear the first toad in the rather cool rain, 10 A. M."); April 15, 1856 (" I hear a clear, shrill, prolonged ringing note from a toad, the first toad of the year”); April 29, 1856 (“Do not the toads ring most on a windy day like this? ”); May 1, 1857 ("There is a cool and breezy south wind, and the ring of the first toad leaks into the general stream of sound, unnoticed by most. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The ring of Toads.

 The Viola blanda are numerously open [at Corner Spring], say two days at least. See  April 23, 1858 ("Saw a Viola blanda in a girl's hand.");;May 5, 1853 ("The Emerson children found blue and white violets May 1st at Hubbard's Close, probably Viola ovata and blanda; but I have not been able to find any yet.”).

I hear still the what what what of a nuthatch, and, directly after, its ordinary winter note of gnah gnah, quite distinct. I think the former is its spring note or breeding-note. See March 5, 1859 ("Going down-town this forenoon, I heard a white-bellied nuthatch on an elm within twenty feet, uttering peculiar notes and more like a song than I remember to have heard from it. There was a chickadee close by, to which it may have been addressed. It was something like to-what what what what what, rapidly repeated, and not the usual gnah gnah; and this instant it occurs to me that this may be that earliest spring note which I hear, and have referred to a woodpecker! ")See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Nuthatch

A crow's nest with four eggs a little developed in a tall white pine in the grove east of Beck Stow's. See May 5, 1855 (" I direct my steps to them and am soon greeted with an angry caw, and, within five minutes from my resolve, I detect a new nest close to the top of the tallest white pine in the [Beck Stow] swamp.")

One saw a striped snake the 3d of April on a warm railroad sand-bank. See April 3, 1859 ("C. says he saw a striped snake on the 30th"); April 2, 1858 ("At the spring on the west side of Fair Haven Hill, I startle a striped snake.. . . No doubt on almost every such warm bank now you will find a snake lying out"); April 9, 1856 ("saw a striped snake, which probably I had scared into the water from the warm railroad bank”); April 16, 1855 (A striped snake rustles down a dry open hillside where the withered grass is long. "); April 20, 1854 ("A striped snake on a warm, sunny bank.")