A little bundle scents my pocket for many days.

August 13. 

Mikania scandens well out; was not out July 18th. How long since, then? Perhaps not far from 1st August. 

The Lactuca sanguinea (var.) was perhaps as early as the other. 

Rhexia, very common on those bare places on the river meadows from which the soil has been moved by the ice. 

Saw the head and neck of a great bittern projecting above the meadow-grass, exactly like the point of a stump, only I knew there could be no stump there. 

There are green lice now on the birches, but I notice no cotton on them. 

Pennyroyal abundant in bloom. I find it springing from the soil lodged on large rocks in sprout-lands, and gather a little bundle, which scents my pocket for many days. 

I hear that the Corallorhiza odontorhiza, coral-root, is out.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 13, 1852

Rhexia, very common on those bare places on the river meadows from which the soil has been moved by the ice. See July 18, 1852 ("The petals of the rhexia have a beautiful clear purple with a violet tinge."); August 1, 1856 ("Far in the broad wet meadows, on the hummocks and ridges, these bright beds of rhexia turn their faces to the heavens, seen only by the bitterns and other meadow birds that fly over.") and note to August 5, 1858 ("I cannot sufficiently admire the rhexia, one of the highest-colored purple flowers, but difficult to bring home in its perfection, with its fugacious petals.")

Saw the head and neck of a great bittern projecting above the meadow-grass, exactly like the point of a stump. See  August 5, 1854 (Near Lee's (returning), see a large bittern, pursued by small birds, alight on the shorn meadow near the pickerel-weeds, but, though I row to the spot, he effectually conceals himself.); ;August 31, 1855 ("Passed in boat within fifteen feet of a great bittern, standing perfectly still in the water by the riverside, with the point of its bill directly up, as if it knew that from the color of its throat, etc., it was much less likely to be detected in that position, near weeds.")

Pennyroyal abundant in bloom. I gather a little bundle, which scents my pocket for many days. See August 11, 1853 ("Evening draws on while I am gathering bundles of pennyroyal on the further Conantum height. I find it amid the stubble mixed with blue-curls and, as fast as I get my hand full, tie it into a fragrant bundle.”); August 13, 1856 ("Is there not now a prevalence of aromatic herbs in prime? — The polygala roots, blue-curls, wormwood, pennyroyal, Solidago odora, rough sunflowers, horse-mint, etc., etc. Does not the season require this tonic?"); August 26, 1856 ("I gather a bundle of pennyroyal; it grows largest and rankest high and close under these rocks, amid the loose stones.")

I hear that the Corallorhiza odontorhiza, coral-root, is out. Compare August 13, 1857 ("Corallorhiza multiflora . . . how long")

August 13. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, August 13.

A little bundle

of pennyroyal scents my

pocket for many days.

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

Walking before the storm is over, in the soft, subdued light.

December 24. 

December  24, 2016

More snow in the night and to-day, making nine or ten inches. 

P. M. — To Walden and Baker Farm with Ricketson, it still snowing a little. 

Turn off from railroad and went through Wheeler, or Owl, Wood. The snow is very light, so that sleighs cut through it, and there is but little sleighing. 

It is very handsome now on the trees by the main path in Wheeler Wood; also on the weeds and twigs that rise above the snow, resting on them just like down, light towers of down with the bare extremity of the twig peeping out  above. 

We push through the light dust, throwing it before our legs as a husbandman grain which he is sowing. It is only in still paths in the woods that it rests on the trees much. 

Am surprised to find Walden still open in the middle. When I push aside the snow with my feet, the ice appears quite black by contrast. 

There is considerable snow on the edge of the pine woods where I used to live. It rests on the successive tiers of boughs, perhaps weighing them down, so that the trees are opened into great flakes from top to bottom. 

The snow collects and is piled up in little columns like down about every twig and stem, and this is only seen in perfection, complete to the last flake, while it is snowing, as now. 

Return across the pond and go across to Baker Farm. 

Notice, at east end of westernmost Andromeda Pond, the slender spikes of lycopus with half a dozen distant little spherical dark-brown whorls of pungently fragrant or spicy seeds, somewhat nutmeg-like, or even like flagroot (?), when bruised. I am not sure that the seeds of any other mint are thus fragrant now. It scents your handkerchief or pocketbook finely when the crumbled whorls are sprinkled over them. 

It is very pleasant walking thus before the storm is over, in the soft, subdued light. We are also more domesticated in nature when our vision is confined to near and familiar objects. 

Do not see a track of any animal till returning near the Well Meadow Field, where many foxes (?), one of whom I have a glimpse of, had been coursing back and forth in the path and near it for three quarters of a mile. They had made quite a path. 

I do not take snuff. In my winter walks, I stoop and bruise between my thumb and finger the dry whorls of the lycopus, or water horehound, just rising above the snow, stripping them off, and smell that. That is as near as I come to the Spice Islands. That is my smelling-bottle, my ointment.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 24, 1856

The snow collects and is piled up in little columns like down about every twig and stem, and this is only seen in perfection, complete to the last flake, while it is snowing, as now. See December 26, 1853  ("It has fallen so gently that it forms an upright wall on the slenderest twig. And every twig thus laden is as still as the hillside itself. The sight . . . would tempt us to begin life again.”); January 14, 1853 ("White walls of snow rest on the boughs of trees, in height two or three times their thickness.”); February 21, 1854 ("You cannot walk too early in new-fallen snow to get the sense of purity, novelty, and unexploredness.") 

Foxes . . . one of whom I have a glimpse of . . . See February 10, 1856 ("I saw a fox on the railroad. . . He coursed, or glided, along easily, appearing not to lift his feet high, leaping over obstacles, with his tail extended straight behind. He leaped over the ridge of snow . . . between the tracks, very easily and gracefully.”)

Man is all in all, Nature nothing, but as she draws him out and reflects him.

October 18. 

aglow with yellow,
red, and green

Rain all night and half this day. 

P. M. — A-chestnutting down Turnpike and across to Britton's, thinking that the rain now added to the frosts would relax the burs which were open and let the nuts drop. 

The sugar maples are now in their glory, all aglow with yellow, red, and green. They are remarkable for the contrast they afford of deep blushing red on one half and green on the other. 

The chestnuts are not so ready to fall as I expected. Perhaps the burs require to be dried now after the rain. In a day or two they will nearly all come down. They are a pretty fruit, thus compactly stowed away in this bristly chest, — three is the regular number, and there is no room to spare, — the two outside nuts having each one convex side without and a flat side within; the middle nut has two flat sides. Sometimes there are several more nuts in a bur, but this year the burs are small, and there are not commonly more than two good nuts, very often only one, the middle one, both sides of which will then be convex, each way bulging out into a thin abortive mere reminiscence of a nut, all shell, beyond it. 

It is a rich sight, that of a large chestnut tree with a dome-shaped top, where the yellowing leaves have become thin, — for most now strew the ground evenly as a carpet throughout the chestnut woods and so save some seed, — all richly rough with great brown burs, which are opened into several segments so as to show the wholesome-colored nuts peeping forth, ready to fall on the slightest jar. 

The individual nuts are very interesting, of various forms, according to the season and the number in a bur. The base of each where it was joined to the bur is marked with an irregular dark figure on a light ground, oblong or crescent-shaped commonly, like a spider or other insect with a dozen legs, while the upper or small end tapers into a little white, woolly spire crowned with a star, and the whole upper slopes of the nuts are covered with the same hoary wool, which reminds you of the frosts on whose advent they peep forth. 

Each nut stretches forth a little starry hand at the end of a slender arm — and by this, when mature, you may pull it out without fear of prickles. Within this thick prickly bur the nuts are about as safe until they are quite mature, as a porcupine behind its spines. Yet I see where the squirrels have gnawed through many closed burs and left the pieces on the stumps. 

There are sometimes two meats within one chestnut shell, divided transversely, and each covered by its separate brown-ribbed skin.

The late goldenrod (S. latifolia) is all gone, on account of frost. 

Men commonly exaggerate the theme. Some themes they think are significant and others insignificant. I feel that my life is very homely, my pleasures very cheap. Joy and sorrow, success and failure, grandeur and meanness, and indeed most words in the English language do not mean for me what they do for my neighbors. I see that my neighbors look with compassion on me, that they think it is a mean and unfortunate destiny which makes me to walk in these fields and woods so much and sail on this river alone.

But so long as I find here the only real elysium, I can not hesitate in my choice. My work is writing, and I do not hesitate, though I know that no subject is too trivial for me, tried by ordinary standards; for, ye fools, the theme is nothing, the life is everything. 

All that interests the reader is the depth and intensity of the life excited. We touch our subject but by a point which has no breadth, but the pyramid of our experience, or our interest in it, rests on us by a broader or narrower base. That is, man is all in all, Nature nothing, but as she draws him out and reflects him. Give me simple, cheap, and homely themes.

I still see a yellow butterfly occasionally zigzagging by the roadside. 

What a strong medicinal but rich scent now after the rain, from decaying weeds, perhaps ferns, by the road side! The rain, falling on the fresh dried herbs and filling the ditches into which they drooped, has converted them into tea.

Apple leaves are now pretty generally brown and crisp. 

I see where the chestnut trees have been sadly bruised by the large stones cast against them in previous years and which still lie around. 

That was an interesting sight described on the 12th, the winged insects of various kinds gathered on the last fragment of a watermelon in the garden, to taste the last sweets of the year. In midsummer they are dispersed and not observed, but now, as in the spring, they are congregated about the little sweet that is left. 

Minott told me one of his hunting stories yesterday, how he saw a very large hen-hawk come sailing from over the hill, just this side of where Moore lives now. He didn't expect to reach her, but he knew that he had a plaguy smart little piece, — it was a kind of half- stocked one (he always speaks of the gun he used on a particular occasion as if it were a new one, describing it minutely, though he never had more than three, perhaps not more than two, in his life, I suspect), — so he thought he'd give her a try, and, faith, she pitched down into the little meadow on the north side the road there, and when he came up she bristled up to him so that he was obliged to give her another charge.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 18, 1856

The sugar maples are now in their glory, all aglow with yellow, red, and green. See October 18, 1858 ("The large sugar maples on the Common are now at the height of their beauty.")
We touch our subject but by a point which has no breadth. . . . See June 6, 1857 (" Each season is but an infinitesimal point. It no sooner comes than it is gone. It has no duration. It simply gives a tone
and hue to my thought. . . . We are conversant with only one point of contact at a time, . . .") December 11, 1855 ("I am tickled by this or that I come in contact with, as if I touched the wires of a battery. The age of miracles is each moment thus returned. ”); January 26, 1852 ("The moment always spurs us. The spurs of countless moments goad us incessantly into life.")

I still see a yellow butterfly occasionally zigzagging by the roadside. See July 14, 1852 (" See to-day for the first time this season fleets of yellow butterflies in compact assembly in the road like a mackerel fleet with their small hulls and great sails now suddenly dispersing on our approach and filling the air with yellow in their zigzag flight, as when a fair wind calls schooners out of haven and disperses them over the broad ocean. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Yellow Butterflies

All that interests the reader is the depth and intensity of the life excited. . . . That is, man is all in all, Nature nothing, but as she draws him out and reflects him. See May 24, 1857 ("We want no[t] completeness but intensity of life."); May 6, 1854 ("Every important worker will report what life there is in him. 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; and, if he is fortunate and keeps alive, he will be forever in love."); May 23, 1853 ("The poet must bring to Nature the smooth mirror in which she is to be reflected.”) May 10, 1853 ("I pray for such inward experience as will make nature significant") August 7, 1853("The objects I behold correspond to my mood"); May 21, 1851 ("The existence of man in nature is the divinest and most startling of all facts. Man, the crowning fact, the god we know. . . .The standing miracle to man is man."):

Pennyroyal tea.

September 22. 

A rainy day. 

Tried some pennyroyal tea, but found it too medicinal for my taste. Yet I collect these herbs, biding the time when their use shall be discovered.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 22, 1856

I collect these herbs.  See August 1, 1855 ("Pennyroyal and alpine enchanter’s-nightshade well out, how long?”); August 11, 1853 ("Evening draws on while I am gathering bundles of pennyroyal on the further Conantum height. I find it amid the stubble mixed with blue-curls and, as fast as I get my hand full, tie it into a fragrant bundle.”); August 13, 1852 ("Pennyroyal abundant in bloom. I find it springing from the soil lodged on large rocks in sprout-lands, and gather a little bundle, which scents my pocket for many days."); August 13, 1856 (“Is there not now a prevalence of aromatic herbs in prime? — The polygala roots, blue-curls, wormwood, pennyroyal, . . . etc., etc. Does not the season require this tonic?“); August 26, 1856 ("I gather a bundle of pennyroyal; it grows largest and rankest high and close under these rocks, amid the loose stones.") See also December 14, 1855 ("In a little hollow I see the sere gray pennyroyal rising above the snow, which, snuffed, reminds me of garrets full of herbs.”)

Does not the season require this tonic?

August 13

August 13. 

P. M. — To Conantum. 




Beck says of the small circaea (C. alpina), "Many botanists consider this a mere variety of the preceding." I am not sure but it is more deeply toothed than the large. Its leaves are of the same color with those of the large at Bittern Cliff, but more decidedly toothed;

alpine enchanter’s-nightshade

(Circaea alpina)

q. v. Why does it not grow larger at Corner Spring? 

The root of the Polygala verticillata also has the checkerberry odor. 

In Bittern Cliff Woods that (apparently) very oblong elliptical leafed Lespedeza violacea (?), growing very loose and open on a few long petioles, one foot high by four or five inches wide. Is this because it grows in woods? It is not in bloom. 

Is there not now a prevalence of aromatic herbs in prime? — The polygala roots, blue-curls, wormwood, pennyroyal, Solidago odora, rough sunflowers, horse-mint, etc., etc. Does not the season require this tonic? 

I stripped off a shred of Indian hemp bark and could not break it. It is as strong as anything of the kind I know.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 13, 1856

The small circaea (C. alpine). . . leaves are of the same color with those of the large at Bittern Cliff.  See June 19, 1856 ("enchanter’s-nightshade"); July 8, 1856 ("Circaea alpina, some days, a foot high with opaque leaves and bracts . . .  the same with the small, also bracted, one at Corner Spring”); August 1, 1855 ("Pennyroyal and alpine enchanter’s-nightshade well out, how long?”)

A prevalence of aromatic herbs in prime . . . See August 11, 1853  ("Evening draws on while I am gathering bundles of pennyroyal on the further Conantum height. I find it amid the stubble mixed with blue-curls and, as fast as I get my hand full, tie it into a fragrant bundle.”); August 13, 1852 ("Pennyroyal abundant in bloom. I find it springing from the soil lodged on large rocks in sprout-lands, and gather a little bundle, which scents my pocket for many days."); August 26, 1856 ("I gather a bundle of pennyroyal; it grows largest and rankest high and close under these rocks, amid the loose stones.") See also December 14, 1855 ("In a little hollow I see the sere gray pennyroyal rising above the snow, which, snuffed, reminds me of garrets full of herbs.”)  See also June 6, 1851 ("Bigelow says, “The leaves of the Solidago odora have a delightfully fragrant odor, partaking of that of anise and sassafras, but different from either.”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Aromatic Herbs;  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,The Polygala

Indian hemp . . . is as strong as anything of the kind I know. See August 9, 1856 ("Again I am surprised to see the Apocynum cannabinum close to the rock at the Island”); August 16, 1856 ("I find the dog's-bane (Apocynum androsoemifolium) bark not the nearly so strong as that of the A. cannabinum. "); September 2, 1856 ("Some years ago I sought for Indian hemp (Apocynum cannabinum) hereabouts in vain, and concluded that it did not grow here. A month or two ago . . .my eyes fell on it, aye, in three different places, and different varieties of it. ");  Compare January 19,   1856 (“ I strip off some  [milkweed] bark . . . and, separating ten or twelve fibres from the epidermis, roll it in my fingers, making a thread about the ordinary size. This I can not break by direct pulling . . .I  doubt if a thread of flax or hemp of the same size could be made so strong."). See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Dogsbane and Indian hemp

August 13. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, August 13.

 

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 © 2009-202