All the secrets of the river bottom are revealed.

July 30 P. M. — To Rudbeckia laciniata via Assabet. 

Amaranthus hybridus and albus, both some days at least; first apparently longest. 

This is a perfect dog-day. The atmosphere thick, mildewy, cloudy. It is difficult to dry anything. The sun is obscured, yet we expect no rain. 

Bad hay weather. 

The streams are raised by the showers of yesterday and day before, and I see the farmers turning their black-looking hay in the flooded meadows with a fork. 

The water is suddenly clear, as if clarified by the white of an egg or lime. I think it must be because the light is reflected downward from the overarching dog-day sky.  It assists me very much as I go looking for the ceratophyllum, potamogetons, etc. 

All the secrets of the river bottom are revealed. I look down into sunny depths which before were dark. The wonderful clearness of the water, enabling you to explore the river bottom and many of its secrets now, exactly as if the water had been clarified. This is our compensation for a heaven concealed. 

The air is close and still. 

Some days ago, before this weather, I saw haymakers at work dressed simply in a straw hat, boots, shirt, and pantaloons, the shirt worn like a frock over their pants. The laborer cannot endure the contact with his clothes. 

I am struck with the splendid crimson-red under sides of the white lily pads where my boat has turned them, at my bath place near the Hemlocks. For these pads, i. e. the white ones, are but little eaten yet. 

Rudbeckia laciniata, perhaps a week. 

When I have just rowed about the Island a green bittern crosses in my rear with heavy flapping flight, its legs dangling, not observing me. It looks deep slate-blue above, yellow legs, whitish streak along throat and breast, and slowly plows the air with its prominent breast-bone, like the stake-driver.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 30, 1856

This is a perfect dog-day.  See July 31, 1859 (" It is emphatically one of the dog-days . . .fog and mist, which threatened no rain. A muggy but comfortable day.");  July 31, 1860 ("Decidedly dog-days, and a strong musty scent."); August 1, 1856 ("Since July 30th, inclusive, we have had perfect dog-days without interruption."); See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Locust Days, Dogdayish Days

The water is suddenly clear . . . This is our compensation for a heaven concealed. See July 30, 1859 ("This dog-day weather I can see the bottom where five and a half feet deep . . . I see the fishes moving leisurely about amid the weeds, their affairs revealed") See also July 18, 1854 ("I do not know why the water should be so remarkably clear and the sun shine through to the bottom of the river, making it so plain.“);   July 27, 1860 ("The water has begun to be clear and sunny, revealing the fishes and countless minnows of all sizes and colors”); July 28, 1859 ("The season has now arrived when I begin to see further into the water”) and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Season of Sunny Water

I saw haymakers at work dressed simply in a straw hat, boots, shirt, and pantaloons. See July 30, 1853 ("In every meadow you see far or near the lumbering hay-cart with its mountainous load and the rakers and mowers in white shirts."); See also August 3, 1859 ("It being remote from public view, some of them work in their shirts or half naked.");  August 5, 1854 ("Almost every meadow or section of a meadow has its band of half a dozen mowers and rakers, either bending to their manly work with regular and graceful motion."); August 18, 1854 ("Men in their white shirts look taller and larger than near at hand."); August 24, 1858 (""I distinguish men busily haying in gangs of four or five, revealed by their white shirts) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Haymaking

The splendid crimson-red under sides of the white lily pads . See June 29, 1852 ("The wind exposes the red under sides of the white lily pads. This is one of the aspects of the river now"); June 30, 1859 ("The pads blown up by it already show crimson, it is so strong, but this not a fall phenomenon yet.”); August 24, 1854 ("The bright crimson-red under sides of the great white lily pads, turned up by the wind").

Rudbeckia laciniata, perhaps a week. See July 30, 1854 ("I find the new rudbeckia in five distinct and distant parts of the town."); See also   August 6, 1853 ("The rudbeckia must have been out at least a week or more; half the buds have opened."); August 16, 1852 ("I must look for the rudbeckia which Bradford says he found yesterday behind Joe Clark's");  August 18, 1852 (“Rudbeckia laciniata, sunflower-like tall cone-flower, behind Joe Clark's”).; September 4, 1857 ("Rudbeckia laciniata by Dodge's Brook"); September 21, 1857 ("Rudbeckia laciniata done, probably some time.")

A green bittern. . .with heavy flapping flight, its legs dangling. See May 6, 1852 ("A green bittern, a gawky bird.”); June 25, 1854 (A green bittern . . . awkwardly alighting on the trees and uttering its hoarse, zarry note,”); July 12, 1854 (“[A] green bittern wading in a shallow muddy place, with an awkward teetering, fluttering pace.”); May 16, 1855 ("A green bittern with its dark-green coat and crest, sitting watchful, goes off with a limping peetweet flight.”); July 29, 1859 ("Heard from a bittern, a peculiar hoarse, grating note, lazily uttered as it flew over the meadows. A bittern's croak: a sound perfectly becoming the bird, as far as possible from music."); July 31, 1859 ("The small green bitterns are especially numerous."); August 1, 1858 ("So the green bitterns are leaving the nest now"); August 2, 1856 ("A green bittern comes, noiselessly flapping, with stealthy and inquisitive looking to this side the stream and then that . . There is a sympathy between its sluggish flight and the sluggish flow of the stream,.— its slowly lapsing flight,"); August 24, 1860 (“[A] green bittern nearby standing erect on Monroe's boat. Finding that it is observed, it draws in its head and stoops to conceal itself. It allows me to approach so near, apparently being deceived by some tame ducks there. When it flies it seems to have no tail.”); August 31, 1858 ("At Goose Pond I scare up a small green bittern. It plods along low, a few feet over the surface, with limping flight, and alights on a slender water-killed stump, and voids its excrement just as it starts again, as if to lighten itself. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. The Green Bittern

July 30. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 30

A perfect dog-day.

Atmosphere thick, mildewy.

obscuring the sun.

Haymakers at work 

dressed simply – a straw hat, boots, 

shirt, and pantaloons

 A green bittern 

in flapping flight dangling legs, 

not observing me. 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, 

The secrets of the river bottom

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 © 2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-560730 

Midsummer's deepened shade; a sultry, languid debauched look.

July 18

July 18, 2014

A hot midsummer day with a sultry mistiness in the air and shadows on land and water beginning to have a peculiar distinctness and solidity. The river, smooth and still, with a deepened shade of the elms on it, like midnight suddenly revealed, its bed-curtains shoved aside, has a sultry languid look.

The atmosphere now imparts a bluish or glaucous tinge to the distant trees. A certain debauched look. This a crisis in the season. 

After this the foliage of some trees is almost black at a distance. 

I do not know why the water should be so remarkably clear and the sun shine through to the bottom of the river, making it so plain. Methinks the air is not clearer nor the sun brighter, yet the bottom is unusually distinct and obvious in the sun. There seems to be no concealment for the fishes. On all sides, as I float along, the recesses of the water and the bottom are unusually revealed, and I see the fishes and weeds and shells. I look down into the sunny water. 

We have very few bass trees in Concord, but walk near them at this season and they will be betrayed, though several rods off, by the wonderful susurrus of the bees, etc., which their flowers attract. It is worth going a long way to hear. I am warned that I am passing one in two instances on the river, —only two I pass, — by this remarkable sound. At a little distance it is like the sound of a waterfall or of the cars; close at hand like a factory full of looms. They are chiefly humblebees, and the great globose tree is all alive with them. I hear the murmur distinctly fifteen rods off. You will know if you pass within a few rods of a bass tree at this season in any part of the town, by this loud murmur, like a water fall, which proceeds from it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 18, 1854

A certain debauched look: See June 16, 1852 ("The earth looks like a debauchee after the sultry night") and July 24, 1851 ("Nature is like a hen panting with open mouth, in the grass, as the morning after a debauch.")

After this the foliage of some trees is almost black at a distance. See July 27, 1859 ("Now observe the darker shades, and especially the apple trees, square and round, in the northwest landscape. Dogdayish.")

Bass tree susurrus:  See July 16, 1852 ("The air is full of sweetness. The tree is full of poetry."); July 17, 1856 ("Hear at distance the hum of bees from the bass with its drooping flowers at the Island,. . . It sounds like the rumbling of a distant train of cars.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Basswood

I look down into the sunny water. See July 27, 1860 ("The water has begun to be clear and sunny, revealing the fishes and countless minnows of all sizes and colors”). July 28, 1859 ("The season has now arrived when I begin to see further into the water.");  July 30, 1856 ("The water is suddenly clear.”); August 8, 1859 ("The river, now that it is so clear and sunny, is better than any aquarium. ")

July 18. See A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Children of the sun and A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 18

.

Hot midsummer day

a crisis in the season

a deepened black shade

like midnight revealed

by bed-curtains shoved aside.

A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Midsummer's deepened shade

A Book of 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-540718a

Sail and paddle down river.

July 27.

The water has begun to be clear and sunny, revealing the fishes and countless minnows of all sizes and colors, this year's brood. 

How easy for the young ducks to hide amid the pickerel-weed along our river, while a boat goes by! and this plant attains its height when these water-fowl are of a size to need its shelter. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 27, 1860 

The water has begun to be clear and sunny. See July 28, 1859 ("The season has now arrived when I begin to see further into the water, -- see the bottom, the weeds, and fishes more than before.”); July 30, 1856 ("The water is suddenly clear. . .All the secrets of the river bottom are revealed”). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Season of Sunny Water