Lightning here this evening and an aurora in form of a segment of a circle.

May 19. 

Up to about the 14th of May I watched the progress of the season very closely, — though not so carefully the earliest birds, – but since that date, both from poor health and multiplicity of objects, I have noted little but what fell under my observation. 

May 19, 2019

The pear trees are in bloom before the apples. 

The cherries appear to have been blasted by the winter.

 

The lilac has begun to blossom. 

There was the first lightning we have noticed this year, last Sunday evening, and a thunder-storm in Walpole, N. H.  

Lightning here this evening and an aurora in form of a segment of a circle.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 19, 1852

The first lightning we have noticed this year. See May 9, 1859 ("The first thunder this afternoon."); May 10, 1857(" A sudden shower with some thunder and lightning; the first."); May 11, 1854 (“I suspect that summer weather may be always ushered in in a similar manner, — thunder-shower, rainbow, smooth water, and warm night”); May 16, 1853 ("People stand at their doors in the warm evening, listening to the muttering of distant thunder and watching the forked lightning, now descending to the earth, now ascending to the clouds. This the first really warm day and thunder-shower"); May 20, 1856 ("So now is Nature’s grandest voice heard, and her sharpest flashes seen."); May 29, 1857 ("A first regular summer thunder-shower, preceded by a rush of wind.")

An aurora in form of a segment of a circle. See May 10, 1852 ("There is an aurora borealis to-night.");  June 16, 1852 ("There are northern lights, shooting high up withal.");July 12, 1852 ("As I sit on the river-bank beyond the ash tree there is an aurora, a low arc of a circle, in the north.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Northern Lights

May 19.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 19

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 © 2009-2021

In rain to Nawshawtuct.

May 3. 

P. M. -- In rain to Nawshawtuct.

The river rising still.

What I have called the small pewee on the willow by my boat, — quite small, uttering a short tchevet from time to time.

Some common cherries are quite forward in leafing; say next after the black.

The Pyrus arbutifolia, of plants I observed, would follow the cherry in leafing. It just begins to show minute glossy leaves.

The meadow-sweet begins to look fairly green, with its little tender green leaves, making thin wreaths of green against the bare stems of other plants (this and the gooseberry), - the next plant in this respect to the earliest gooseberry in the garden, which appears to be the same with that in the swamp.

I see wood turtles which appear to be full and hard with eggs.

Yesterday I counted half a dozen dead yellow-spotted turtles about Beck Stow's.

There is a small dark native willow in the meadows as early to leaf as the S. alba, with young catkins.

Anemone nemorosa near the ferns and the sassafras appeared yesterday.

The ferns invested with rusty wool (cinnamomea?) have pushed up eight or ten inches and show some of the green leaf.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 3, 1854

What I have called the small pewee on the willow by my boat, See May 3, 1855 ("Small pewee; tchevet, with a jerk of the head."); See also 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. The first summer yellow- birds on the willow causeway. The birds I have lately mentioned come not singly, as the earliest, but all at once, i.e. many yellowbirds all over town. Now I remember the yellowbird comes when the willows begin to leave out. (And the small pewee on the willows also.)") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,the “Small Pewee"

Some common cherries and Pyrus arbutifolia, etc. leafing. See geneally May 5, 1855 ("The trees and shrubs which I observe to make a show now with their green,. . .in the order of their intensity and generalness — gooseberry, both kinds . . . meadow-sweet . . . Choke-cherry shoots . . . Pyrus, probably arbutifolia, young black cherry,  . . . probably wild red cherry in some places, Salix alba with bracts, some small native willows, cultivated cherry") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Spring leaf-out.

The meadow-sweet begins to look fairly green. See April 24, 1860 ("The meadow-sweet and hardhack have begun to leaf."); May 4, 1852 ("The meadow-sweet begins to leave out")

There is a small dark native willow in the meadows as early to leaf as the S. alba, with young catkins. See May 2, 1855 ("That small native willow now in flower, or say yesterday, just before leaf.") See also April 24, 1855 ("The Salix alba begins to leaf. "); April 27, 1854 ("The Salix alba begins to leaf, and the catkins are three quarters of an inch long. "); April 29, 1855 ("For two or three days the Salix alba, with its catkins (not yet open) and its young leaves, or bracts (?), has made quite a show, before any other tree, —a pyramid of tender yellowish green in the russet landscape."); April 30, 1859 (Salix alba leafing, or stipules a quarter of an inch wide; probably began a day or two.")

I see wood turtles which appear to be full and hard with eggs. See June 10, 1858 ("Apparently the E. insculpta are in the very midst of their laying now."); June 20, 1853 ("I see wood tortoises in the path; one feels full of eggs.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wood Turtlw (Emys insculpta)

Yesterday I counted half a dozen dead yellow-spotted turtles about Beck Stow's. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Yellow-Spotted Turtle (Emys guttata)

Orange leaves.

August 18. 

Thursday. 

Half the leaves of some cherries in dry places are quite orange now and ready to fall.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 18, 1859

See August 18, 1853 ("Many leaves of the cultivated cherry are turned yellow, and a very few leaves of the elm have fallen.");  August 29, 1852 (The first leaves begin to fall; a few yellow ones lie in the road this morning, loosened by the rain and blown off by the wind.") October 13, 1857 ("Our cherry trees have now turned to mostly a red orange color.")

The thermometer at ninety-five degrees, and we have had no rain.

July 13. 

July 13, 2019

A journal, a book that shall contain a record of all your joy, your ecstasy.

The pool by Walden is now quite yellow with the common utricularia (vulgaris).

The northern wild red cherry of the woods is ripe, handsome, bright red, but scarcely edible; also, sooner than I expected, huckleberries, both blue and black; the former, not described by Gray or Bigelow, in the greater abundance, and must have been ripe several days. They are thick enough to pick. The black only here and there. The former is apparently a variety of the latter, blue with bloom and a tough or thick skin. 

There are evidently several kinds of huckleberries and blueberries not described by botanists: of the very early blueberries at least two varieties, one glossy black with dark-green leaves, the other a rich light blue with bloom and yellowish-green leaves; and more kinds I remember. 

I found the Vaccinium corymbosum well ripe on an exposed hillside. 

Each day now I scare up woodcocks by shady springs and swamps. 

The dark-purple amelanchier are the sweetest berries I have tasted yet.

One who walks the woods and hills daily, expecting to see the first berry that turns, will be surprised at last to find them ripe and thick before he is aware of it, ripened, he cannot tell how long before, in some more favorable situation. It is impossible to say what day — almost what week — the huckleberries begin to be ripe, unless you are acquainted with, and daily visit, every huckleberry bush in the town, at least every place where they grow.


The Polygala sanguinea and P. cruciata in Blister's meadow, both numerous and well out. The last has a fugacious (?) spicy scent, in which, methinks, I detect the scent of nutmegs. Afterward I find that it is the lower part of the stem and root which is most highly scented, like checkerberry, and not fugacious.

The weather has been remarkably warm for a week or ten days, the thermometer at ninety-five degrees, more or less; and we have had no rain. You have not thought of cold or of taking cold, night or day, but only how you should be cool enough. 


Such weather as this the only use of clothing is to cover nakedness and to protect the body from the sun. It is remarkable that, though it would be a great luxury to throw aside all clothing now except one thin robe to keep off the sun, yet throughout the whole community not one is found to do it.

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

A journal, a book that shall contain a record of all your joy, your ecstasy. See September 2, 1851 ("We cannot write well or truly but what we write with gusto. . . . Expression is the act of the whole man. . .. It is always essential that we love to do what we are doing, do it with a heart.”); January 22, 1852 ("Perhaps this is the main value of a habit of writing, of keeping a journal, - that so we remember our best hours and stimulate ourselves."); 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.”); February 23, 1860 ("May we measure our lives by our joys. We have lived, not in proportion to the number of years that we have spent on the earth, but in proportion as we have enjoyed.")

One who walks the woods and hills daily, expecting to see the first berry that turns, will be surprised at last to find them ripe and thick before he is aware of it See June 29, 1852 ("Children bring you the early blueberry to sell now."); July 16, 1851 ("Berries are just beginning to ripen, and children are planning expeditions after them."); July 16, 1857 ("I hear of the first early blueberries brought to market. What a variety of rich blues their berries present, i. e. the earliest kind! Some are quite black and without bloom. What innocent flavors!");July 17, 1852 ("Notwithstanding the rain, some children still pursue their blackberrying on the Great Fields."); July 24, 1853 ("This season of berrying is so far respected that the children have a vacation to pick berries"); July 31, 1856 ("The children should grow rich if they can get eight cents a quart for black berries, as they do.");August 5, 1851 ("The question is not what you look at, but what you see”)

Huckleberries, both blue and black,must have been ripe several days. See July 13, 1854 ("Many of the huckleberries here on the hilltop have dried black and shrivelled before ripening."); July 18, 1854("every bush and bramble bears its fruit; the sides of the road are a fruit garden; blackberries, huckleberries, thimble-berries, fresh and abundant, no signs of drought; all fruits in abundance; the earth teems.") July 21, 1853 ("to Fair Haven. Plenty of berries there now, — large huckleberries, blueberries, and blackberries."); July 21, 1856 ("Plucked a handful of huckleberries from one bush!"); July 26, 1854 ("Almost every bush now offers a wholesome and palatable diet to the wayfarer, — large and dense clusters of Vaccinium vacillans, largest in most moist ground, sprinkled with the red ones not ripe; great high blueberries, some nearly as big as cranberries, of an agreeable acid; huckleberries of various kinds, some shining black, some dull-black, some blue; and low blackberries of two or more varieties."); July 29,, 1859 (“Vaccinium vacillans begin to be pretty thick and some huckleberries.”); July 18, 1854 ("As I go along the Joe Smith road, every bush and bramble bears its fruit; the sides of the road are a fruit garden; blackberries, huckleberries, thimble-berries, fresh and abundant, no signs of drought; all fruits in abundance; the earth teems. "); July 31, 1856 (“How thick the berries — low blackberries, Vaccinium vacillans, and huckleberries — on the side of Fair Haven Hill! ”) August 4, 1852 (“Most huckleberries and blueberries and low blackberries are in their prime now.”); August 4, 1854 ("On this hill (Smith's) the bushes are black with huckleberries. ...Now in their prime. Some glossy black, some dull black, some blue; and patches of Vaccinium vacillans ntermixed.")

It is impossible to say what day — almost what week — the huckleberries begin to be ripe, unless you are acquainted with, and daily visit, every huckleberry bush in the town. See June 22, 1859 ("One who is not almost daily on the river will not perceive the revolution constantly going on.”); November 18 1851 ("The chopper who works in the woods all day is more open in some respects to the impressions they are fitted to make than the naturalist who goes to see them"); April 16, 1852("Many a foreigner who has come to this town has worked for years on its banks without discovering which way the river runs. ")

Ninety-five degrees, more or less; and we have had no rain. See July 13, 1854 ("In the midst of July heat and drought."); July 13, 1857 ("Very hot weather. . . .I make haste home, expecting a thunder-shower, which we need, but it goes by.") See also  July 10, 1852 ("Every hour we expect a thundershower to cool the air, but none comes."); and note to July 12, 1859 ("Another hot day. 96° at mid-afternoon.")

Each day now I scare up woodcocks by shady springs and swamps. See July 3, 1856 ("I scare up one or two woodcocks in different places by the shore, where they are feeding, and in a meadow. They go off with a whistling flight. Can see where their bills have probed the mud. "); July 7, 1854 ("Woodcock at the spring under Clamshell"); July 15, 1857 ("Scare up . . . two woodcocks in the shady alder marsh at Well Meadow, which go off with a whistling flight."); July 18, 1856 ("Again scare up a woodcock, apparently seated or sheltered in shadow of ferns in the meadow on the cool mud in the hot afternoon.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The American Woodcock

It would be a great luxury to throw aside all clothing now. See July 10, 1852 ("Walking up and down a river in torrid weather with only a hat to shade the head."); July 12, 1852 ("Divesting yourself of all clothing but your shirt and hat, which are to protect your exposed parts from the sun, you are prepared for the fluvial excursion.")

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

choke cherry

July 13,2024

The northern wild red 

cherry of the woods is ripe – 

scarcely edible. 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The thermometer at ninety-five degrees

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 © 2009-2021

tinyurl.com/hdt-520713

A man at work on the Ledum Pool, draining it.

October 23

P. M. — To Ledum Swamp. 

One tells me that he saw geese go over Wayland the 17th.

Large wild cherries are half fallen or more, the few remaining leaves yellowish. Choke-cherries are bare; how long?

Amelanchier bare. 

Viburnum nudum half fallen or more; when wet and in shade, a light crimson. 

Hardhack, in low ground, where it has not withered too soon, inclines to a very light scarlet. 

Sweet-gale is not fallen, but a very dull yellowish and scarlet. 

You see in woods many black (?) oak sprouts, forming low bushes or clumps of green and dark crimson. (C. says they are handsome, like a mahonia.) 

The meadow-sweet is yellowish and yellow-scarlet. 

In Ledum Swamp the white azalea is a dirty brown scarlet, half fallen, or more. 

Panicled andromeda reddish-brown and half fallen. 

Some young high blueberry, or sprouts, never are a deeper or brighter crimson-scarlet than now. 

Wild holly fallen. 

Even the sphagnum has turned brownish-red on the exposed surfaces, in the swamp, looking like the at length blushing pellicle of the ripe globe there. 

The ledum is in the midst of its change, rather conspicuous, yellow and light-scarlet and falling. I detect but few Andromeda Polifolia and Kalmia glaucaleaves turned a light red or scarlet. 

The spruce is changed and falling, but is brown and inconspicuous.

A man at work on the Ledum Pool, draining it, says that, when they had ditched about six feet deep, or to the bottom, near the edge of this swamp, they came to old flags, and he thought that the whole swamp was once a pond and the flags grew by the edge of it. Thought the mud was twenty feet deep near the pool, and that he had found three growths of spruce, one above another, there. He had dug up a hard-pan with iron in it (as he thought) under a part of this swamp, and in what he cast out sorrel came up and grew, very rankly indeed.

I notice some late rue turned a very clear light yellow. 

I see some rose leaves (the early smooth) turned a handsome clear yellow, — and some (the R. Carolina) equally clear and handsome scarlet or dark red. This is the rule with it. 

Elder is a dirty greenish yellow and apparently mostly fallen. 

Beach plum is still green with some dull red leaves, but apparently hardly any fallen. 

Butternuts are bare. 

Mountain-ash of both kinds either withered or bare.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 23, 1858

Geese go over Wayland the 17th. See October 24, 1858 ("A northeast storm, though not much rainfalls to-day, but a fine driving mizzle or “drisk.” This, as usual, brings the geese, and at 2.30 P. M. I see two flocks go over. . . .This weather warns of the approach of winter, and this wind speeds them on their way.")");    October 27, 1857 ("I hear that Sammy Hoar saw geese go over to-day. The fall (strictly speaking) is approaching an end in this probably annual northeast storm"); November 13, 1858 ("A large flock of geese go over just before night. "); November 8 , 1857 ("About 10 A.M. a long flock of geese are going over from northeast to southwest"); November 13, 1855 ("Seventy or eighty geese, in three harrows successively smaller, flying southwest—pretty well west—over the house. A completely overcast, occasionally drizzling forenoon. "); November 13, 1858 ("A large flock of geese go over just before night. ");November 18, 1854 (" Sixty geese go over the Great Fields, in one waving line, broken from time to time by their crowding on each other and vainly endeavoring to form into a harrow, honking all the while."); November 20, 1853 ("Methinks the geese are wont to go south just before a storm, and, in the spring, to go north just after one, say at the end of a long April storm.");   November 30, 1857 ("The air is full of geese. I saw five flocks within an hour, about 10 A. M., containing from thirty to fifty each, and afterward two more flocks, making in all from two hundred and fifty to three hundred at least"); December 1, 1857 ("I hear of two more flocks of geese going over to-day."); December 6, 1855 ("10 P. M. — Hear geese going over.")

The ledum is in the midst of its change, rather conspicuous. I detect but few Andromeda Polifolia and Kalmia glauca. See February 4, 1858 ("Discover the Ledum latifolium, quite abundant over a space about six rods in diameter just east of the small pond-hole, growing with the Andromeda calyculata, Polifolia, Kalmia glauca, etc.")

The spruce is changed and falling, but is brown and inconspicuous. See February 12, 1858 ("About the ledum pond-hole there is an abundance of that abnormal growth of the spruce. . . , which have an impoverished look, altogether forming a broom-like mass, very much like a heath. ")

A man at work on the Ledum Pool, draining it. See November 8, 1857 ("I have no doubt that a good farmer, who, of course, loves his work, takes exactly the same kind of pleasure in draining a swamp, seeing the water flow out in his newly cut ditch, that a child does in its mud dikes and water-wheels. Both alike love to play with the natural forces.")

Turtle season.

September 15.

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

See many painted tortoise scales being shed, half erect on their backs. 

An Emys insculpta which I mistook for dead, under water near shore; head and legs and tail hanging down straight. Turned it over, and to my surprise found it coupled with another. It was at first difficult to separate them with a paddle. 

I see many scales from the sternum of tortoises. 

Three weeks ago saw many brown thrashers, cat birds, robins, etc., on wild cherries. They are worth raising for the birds about you, though objectionable on account of caterpillars.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 15, 1855

Many scales from the sternum of tortoises . . .See August 31, 1856 ("A painted tortoise shedding its scales.”); September 3, 1856 (Painted tortoises with . . . fresh clean black scales . . ."); September 22, 1855 ("Many tortoise-scales about the river now.").

An Emys insculpta which I mistook for dead . . . coupled with another. See October 21, 1857 ("I saw wood tortoises coupled up the Assabet, the back of the upper above water. It held the lower with its claws about the head, and they were not to be parted."); November 11, 1859 ("I observed, October 23d, wood turtles copulating in the Assabet.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau The Wood Turtle (Emys insculpta) and A Year in the Life of a Wood Turtle ("In late November. . .you might expect Wood Turtles in Vermont to be hunkered down in their hibernacula. Instead, I spotted 15 Wood Turtles, most of which were active underwater, including two mating pairs.")

I enjoy the warmth of the sun now that the air is cool

August 29.

It is a great pleasure to walk in this clearer atmosphere, though cooler. 

August 29, 2016

How great a change, and how sudden, from that sultry and remarkably hazy atmosphere to this clear, cool autumnal one, in which all things shine, and distance is restored to us! It is so cool that we are inclined to stand round the kitchen fire a little while these mornings, though we sit and sleep with open windows still.

The cymes of elder-berries, black with fruit, are now conspicuous. I see a boy already raking cranberries. The moss rose hips will be quite ripe in a day or two. Many birds nowadays resort to the wild black cherry tree, as here front of Tarbell's. I see them continually coming and going directly from and to a great distance, — cherry birds, robins, and kingbirds.

At Clamshell Bank the barn swallows are very lively, filling the air with their twittering now, at 6 p.m. They rest on the dry mullein-tops, then suddenly all start off together as with one impulse and skim about over the river, hill, and meadow. Some sit on the bare twigs of a dead apple tree. Are they not gathering for their migration?

I enjoy the warmth of the sun now that the air is cool, and Nature seems really more genial. I love to sit on the withered grass on the sunny side of the wall. My mistress is at a more respectful distance, for, by the coolness of the air, I am more continent in my thought and held aloof from her, while by the genial warmth of the sun I am more than ever attracted to her. 

Early for several mornings I have heard the sound of a flail.  It leads me to ask if I have spent as industrious a spring and summer as the farmer, and gathered as rich a crop of experience.

If so, the sound of my flail will be heard by those who have ears to hear, separating the kernel from the chaff all the fall and winter, and a sound no less cheering it will be . . .  

Have you commenced to thresh your grain? 

The lecturer must commence his threshing as early as August, that his fine flour may be ready for his winter customers. The fall rains will make full springs and raise his streams sufficiently to grind his grist. We shall hear the sound of his flail all the fall, early and late.

For him there is no husking-bee, but he does it all alone and by hand, at evening by lamplight, with the barn door shut and only the pile of husks behind him for warmth. For him, too, I fear there is no patent corn-sheller, but he does his work by hand, ear by ear, on the edge of a shovel over a bushel, on his hearth, and after he takes up a handful of the yellow grain and lets it fall again, while he blows out the chaff; and he goes to bed happy when his measure is full. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 29, 1854

It is so cool that we are inclined to stand round the kitchen fire . See  August 29, 1859 ("It is so cool a morning that for the first time I move into the entry to sit in the sun.") .See also  September 11, 1853 "Cool weather. Sit with windows shut, and many by fires. . . .The air has got an autumnal coolness which it will not get rid of again.")

The sound of a flail . . . leads me to ask if I have spent as industrious a spring and summer as the farmer, and gathered as rich a crop of experience. See August 9, 1853 ("This is the season of small fruits. I trust, too, that I am maturing some small fruit as palatable in these months, which will communicate my flavor to my kind."); August 18, 1853 (“The season of flowers or of promise may be said to be over, and now is the season of fruits; but where is our fruit?") 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"); September 13,1858 ("From many a barn these days I hear the sound of the flail.") September 14, 1859 ("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."); October 31, 1860 ("I hear the sound of the flailing . . . and gradually draw near to it from the woods, thinking many things")

August 29. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 29

How sudden a change

this clear cool autumnal air

in which all things shine.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, I enjoy the warmth of the sun now that the air is cool

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-540829

A wild and strange place

June 21.

Now there is a dense mass of weeds along the waterside, where the muskrats lurk, and overhead a canopy of leaves conceals the birds and shuts out the sun. 

In the little meadow pool, or bay, in Hubbard's shore, I see two old pouts tending their countless young close to the shore. The former are slate-colored. The latter are about half an inch long and very black, forming a dark mass from eight to twelve inches in diameter. The old are constantly circling around them, -over and under and through, as if anxiously endeavoring to keep them together, from time to time moving off five or six feet to reconnoitre. The whole mass of the young and there must be a thousand of them at least is incessantly moving, pushing forward and stretching out. Are often in the form of a great pout, apparently keeping together by their own instinct chiefly, now on the bottom, now rising to the top. Alone they might be mistaken for polly-wogs. The old, at any rate, do not appear to be very successful in their apparent efforts to communicate with and direct them. At length they break into four parts. The old are evidently very careful parents. One has some wounds apparently . . . I think also that I see the young breams in schools hovering over their nests while the old are still protecting them. 

Up the grassy hollows in the sprout-lands north of Goose Pond I feel as if in a strange country, — a pleasing sense of strangeness and distance. 

Here are numerous open hollows more or less connected, where for some reason the wood does not spring up, — and I am glad of it, — filled with a fine wiry grass, with the panicled andromeda, which loves dry places, now in blossom around the edges, and small black cherries and sand cherries straggling down into them. 

As wild and strange a place as you might find in the unexplored West or East. The quarter of a mile of sprout-land which separates it from the highway seems as complete a barrier as a thousand miles of earth. 

Your horizon is there all your own.

Again I am attracted by the deep scarlet of the wild moss rose half open in the grass , all glowing with rosy light.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 21, 1854

See August 6, 1851 ("After how few steps, how little exertion, the student stands in pine woods . . .in a place still unaccountably strange and wild to him.")

June 21. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 21

The deep scarlet of

the wild moss rose, half open,

glowing in the grass.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A Wild and Strange Place

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/hdt-540621

Quick Monadnock hike

September 7.

Across lots to Monadnock, some half-dozen miles in a straight line from Peterboro. Bunch-berries are everywhere now with the summit hardly more than a mile distant in a straight line, but about two miles as they go. Acer Pennsylvanicum, striped maple or moosewood or striped dogwood, but no keys to be seen.

Between the rocks on the summit, an abundance of large and fresh blueberries still, apparently Vaccnium Pennsylvanicum, very large fresh and cooling to eat, supplying the place of water. Though this vegetation was very humble, yet it was very productive of fruit. 

In one little hollow between the rocks grow blueberries, choke-berries, bunch-berries, red cherries, wild currants (Ribes prostratum, with the berry the odor of skunk-cabbage, but a not quite disagreeable wild flavor), a few raspberries still, holly berries, mountain cranberries (Vaccinium Vitis-Idaea), all close together. 

The little soil on the summit between the rocks was covered with the Potentilla tridentata, now out of bloom, the prevailing plant at the extreme summit. Mountain-ash berries also.

We are on the top of the mountain at 1 P.M. The cars leave Troy, four or five miles off, at three. Descending toward Troy, we see that the mountain had spurs or buttresses on every side, by whose ridge you might ascend. It is an interesting feature in a mountain. I have noticed that they will send out these buttresses every way from their centre.

We reach the depot, by running at last, at the same instant the cars, and reach Concord at a quarter after five, i.e. four hours from the time we were picking blueberries on the mountain, with the plants of the mountain fresh in my hat. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 7, 1852

A fresh cool summer morning.

July 2.

It is a fresh, cool summer morning.

That principle which gives the air an azure color is more abundant.

From the road at N. Barrett's, on my way to P. Blood's at 8:30A.M., the Great Meadows have a slight bluish misty tinge; elsewhere a sort of hoary sheen. Miles of waving grass adorning the surface of the earth, inconceivably fine and silvery far away, - light reflects from the grass blades. 

July 2

It takes but little distance to make the hills and even the meadows look blue to-day. 

To-day the milkweed is blossoming.  Some of the raspberries are ripe, the most innocent and simple of fruits. Cherries are ripe. Strawberries in the gardens have passed their prime.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 2, 1851

The dispersion of seeds.

September 1

P. M. – To Walden . Saw a fish hawk yesterday up the Assabet . In one position it flew just like a swallow ; of the same form as it flew . and We could not judge correctly of distances on the mountain , but greatly exaggerated them . That surface was so novel , - suggested so many thoughts , also so uneven , a few steps sufficing to conceal the least ground , as if it were half a mile away , that we would have an impression as if we had travelled a mile when we had come only forty rods . We no longer thought and reasoned as in the plain . 

Now see many birds about E. Hubbard's elder hedge , - bobolinks , kingbirds , pigeon woodpeckers , and not elsewhere.

Many pine stipules fallen yesterday. Also see them on Walden to-day. 

* * *

See how artfully the seed of a cherry is placed in order that a bird may be compelled to transport it. It is placed in the very midst of a tempting pericarp, so that the creature that would devour a cherry must take a stone into its mouth. The bird is bribed with the pericarp to take the stone with it and do this little service for Nature. Thus a bird's wing is added to the cherry-stone which was wingless, and it does not wait for winds to transport it.

Cherries are especially birds' food, and the consequence is that cherries not only grow here but there. Many kinds are called birds' cherry, and unless we plant the seeds occasionally, I shall think the birds have the best right to them.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 1, 1860

Many pine stipules fallen yesterday. See September 3, 1858 ("The narrow brown sheaths from the base of white pine leaves now strew the ground and are washed up on the edge of puddles after the rain."); September 5, 1857 ("I now see those brown shaving like stipules of the white pine leaves, which are falling.");

See how artfully the seed of a cherry is placed. See The Succession of Forest Trees ("As for the heavy seeds and nuts which are not furnished with wings, the notion is still a very common one that, when the trees which bear these spring up where none of their kind were noticed before, they have come from seeds or other principles spontaneously generated there in an unusual manner, or which have lain dormant in the soil for centuries, or perhaps been called into activity by the heat of a burning. I do not believe these assertions, and I will state some of the ways in which, according to my observation, such forests are planted and raised. Every one of these seeds, too, will be found to be winged or legged in another fashion. 

Surely it is not wonderful that cherry-trees of all kinds are widely dispersed, since their fruit is well known to be the favorite food of various birds. Many kinds are called bird-cherries, and they appropriate many more kinds, which are not so called. Eating cherries is a bird like employment, and unless we disperse the seeds occasionally, as they do, I shall think that the birds have the best right to them. 

See how artfully the seed of a cherry is placed in order that a bird may be compelled to transport it — -in the very midst of a tempting pericarp, so that the creature that would devour this must commonly take the stone also into its mouth or bill. If you ever ate a cherry and did not make two bites of it, you must have perceived it — right in the centre of the luscious morsel, a large earthy residuum left on the tongue. 

We thus take into our mouths cherry-stones as big as peas, a dozen at once, for Nature can persuade us to do almost anything when she would compass her ends. Some wild men and children instinctively swallow these, as the birds do when in a hurry, it being the shortest way to get rid of them. 

Thus, though these seeds are not provided with vegetable wings, Nature has impelled the thrush tribe to take them into their bills and fly away with them; and they are winged in another sense, and more effectually than the seeds of pines, for these are carried even against the wind. The consequence is, that cherry-trees grow not only here but there. The same is true of a great many other seeds.")

See how artfully the seed of a cherry is placed . . .Thus a bird's wing is added to the cherry-stone which was wingless, and it does not wait for winds to transport it. See September 1, 1859 ("The cherry-birds and robins seem to know the locality of every wild cherry in the town."):See also July 14, 1856 ("While drinking at Assabet Spring in woods, noticed a cherry-stone on the bottom. A bird that came to drink must have brought it half a mile. So the tree gets planted!"); February 4, 1856. ("I have often wondered how red cedars could have sprung up in some pastures which I knew to be miles distant from the nearest fruit-bearing cedar, but it now occurs to me that these and barberries, etc., may be planted by the crows, and probably other birds.") see also September 21, 1860 ("I suspect that . . . those [seeds] the wind takes are less generally the food of birds and quadrupeds than the heavier and wingless seeds."); October 16, 1860 (Looking from a hilltop, I observe that pines, white birches, red maples, alders, etc., often grow in more or less regular rounded or oval or conical patches, while oaks, chestnuts, hickories, etc., simply form woods of greater or less extent, whether by themselves or mixed, and do not naturally spring up in an oval form. This is a consequence of the different manner in which trees which have winged seeds and those which have not are planted")