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

Sailing with an umbrella: It is highly important to invent a dress which will enable us to be abroad with impunity in the severest storms.

April 22.

April 22.

It has rained two days and nights, and now the sun breaks out, but the wind is still easterly, and the storm probably is not over. In a few minutes the air is full of mizzling rain again. 

8 A. M. —Go to my boat opposite Bittern Cliff. 

Monroe’s larches by river will apparently shed pollen soon. The staminate flowers look forward, but the pistil late scarcely show any red. 

There is snow still (of the winter) in the hollows where sand has been dug on the hillside east of Clamshell. 

Going through Hubbard’s root-fence field, see a pigeon woodpecker on a fence post. He shows his lighter back between his wings cassock-like and like the smaller woodpeckers. Joins his mate on a tree and utters the wooing note o-week o-week, etc. 

The seringo also sits on a post, with a very distinct yellow line over the eye,_and the rhythm of its strain is ker chick | ker che |  ker-char—r-r-r-r | chick, the last two bars being the part chiefly heard. 

The huckleberry buds are much swollen. 

I see the tracks of some animal which has passed over Potter’s sand, perhaps a skunk. They are quite distinct, the ground being smoothed and softened by rain. The tracks of all animals are much more distinct at such a time. 

By the path, and in the sandy field beyond, are many of those star-fingered puffballs. I think they must be those which are so white, like pigeons’ eggs, in the fall, the thick, leathery rind bursting into eight to eleven segments, like those of a boy’s batting ball, and curving back. They are very pretty and remarkable now, sprinkled over the sand, smooth and plump on account of the rain. (I find some beyond at Mountain Sumach Knoll, smaller with a very thin rind and more turned back, a different species plainly.) The inside of the rind, which is uppermost, approaches a chocolate-color; the puffball is a rough dirty or brownish white; the dust which does not fly now at any rate is chocolate-colored. Seeing these thus open, I should know there had been wet weather. 

The mountain sumach berries have no redness now, though the smooth sumach berries have. Its twigs are slender and so have a small pith. Its heart-wood is not yellow, like the smooth and the dogwood, but green. Its bark is more gray than that of the smooth, which last, when wet, is slightly reddish. Its bark sap or juice is not yellow like that of the smooth, and is slower to harden. 

Some hellebore leaves are opened in the Cliff Brook Swamp. 

My boat is half full of water. 

There are myriads of snow-fleas in the water amid the bushes, apparently washed out of the bark by the rain and rise of river. I push up-stream to Lee’s Cliff, behind Goodwin, who is after musquash. 

Many suckers and one perch have washed up on the Conantum shore, the wind being southeasterly. I do not detect any wound. Their eyes are white, -- it would be worth while to see how long before this happens, —and they appear to have been dead some time; their fins are worn, and they are are slimy. I cut open a sucker, and it looked rather yellow within. I also see sometimes their bladders washed up. They float on their backs. When cut open they sink, but the double bladder is uppermost and protruded as far as possible. Saw some pieces of a sucker recently dropped by some bird or beast, eight or ten rods from the shore. 

Much root and leaf-bud washed up. 

A gull. 

Very perfect and handsome clamshells, recently opened by the musquash, i. e. during the storm, lie on the meadow and the hillside just above water-mark. They are especially handsome because wet by the rain. 

I buy a male muskrat of Goodwin, just killed. He sometimes baits his mink-traps with muskrat; always with some animal food. The musquash does not eat this, though he sometimes treads on the trap and is caught. 

It rains hard and steadily again, and I sail before it.

Now I see many more ducks than in all that fair weather, — sheldrakes, etc. 

A marsh hawk, in the midst of the rain, is skimming along the shore of the meadow, close to the ground, and, though not more than thirty rods, I repeatedly lose sight of it, it is so nearly the color of the hillside beyond. It is looking for frogs. 

The small slate-colored hawk which I have called pigeon hawk darts away from a bushy island in the meadow. 

The muskrat, which I bought for twelve cents, weighs three pounds, six ounces. Goodwin thought that some would weigh a half to three quarters of a pound more than this; I think a pound more. Thought this was a young one of last year, — judged by the tail, —and that they hardly came to their growth in one year. Extreme length, twenty—three inches; length of bare tail, nine inches; breadth of tail, seven eighths of an inch; breadth of body, etc., as it lies, six and a half. An oval body, dark-brown above (black in some lights, the coarse wind hairs aft), reddish-brown beneath. Thus far the color of the hair. The fur within slate-color. Tail black; feet a delicate glossy dark slate (?), with white nails. The hind feet half webbed, and their sides and toes fringed thickly with stiff hair, apparently to catch water; ears (the head is wet and bruised), partly concealed in the fur, short and round; long black mustachial bristles; fore legs, quite short, more like hands; hind ones, about three inches without the line of the body’s fur and hair. Tail, on the skin, is a little curved downwards. 

The star fungi, as they dried in my chamber in the course of two or three hours, drew in the fingers. The different segments curled back tightly upon the central puff, the points being strongly curled downward into the middle dimple-wise. It requires wet weather, then, to expand and display them to advantage. They are hygrometers. 

Their coat seems to be composed of two thicknesses of different material and quality, and I should guess that the inside chocolate-colored had a great affinity for moisture and, being saturated with it, swelled, and so necessarily burst off and turned back, and perchance the outside dirty-white or pale-brown one expands with dryness. 

A single male sheldrake rose from amid the alders against Holden Swamp Woods, as I was sailing down in angles across my course, only four or five rods from me and a foot or two above the water, finally circling round into my rear. 

Soon after I turned about in Fair Haven Pond, it began to rain hard. The wind was but little south of east and therefore not very favorable for my voyage. I raised my sail and, cowering under my umbrella in the stern, wearing the umbrella like a cap and holding the handle between my knees, I steered and paddled, almost perfectly sheltered from the heavy rain. Yet my legs and arms were a little exposed sometimes, in my endeavors to keep well to windward so as to double certain capes ahead. For the wind occasionally drove me on to the western shore. 

From time to time, from under my umbrella, I could see the ducks spinning away before me, like great bees. For when they are flying low directly from you, you see hardly anything but their vanishing dark bodies, while the rapidly moving wings or paddles, seen edgewise, are almost invisible. 

At length, when the river turned more easterly, I was obliged to take down my sail and paddle slowly in the face of the rain, for the most part not seeing my course, with the umbrella slanted before me. But, though my progress was slow and laborious, and at length I began to get a little wet, I enjoyed the adventure because it combined to some extent the advantages of being at home in my chamber and abroad in the storm at the same time. 

It is highly important to invent a dress which will enable us to be abroad with impunity in the severest storms. We cannot be said to have fully invented clothing yet. In the meanwhile the rain-water collects in the boat, and you must sit with your feet curled up on a paddle, and you expose yourself in taking down your mast and raising it again at the bridges. 

These rain-storms -- this is the third day of one -- characterize 'the season, and belong rather to winter than to summer. Flowers delay their blossoming, birds tarry in their migrations, etc., etc. It is surprising how so many tender organizations of flowers and insects survive them uninjured. 

The muskrat must do its swimming chiefly with its hind feet. They are similar in form and position to those of the sheldrake. Its broad oval and flattish body, too, must help keep it up. 

Those star puffballs which had closed up in my chamber, put into water, opened again in a few hours. 

What is that little bodkin-shaped bulb which I found washed up on the edge of the meadow, white with a few  small greenish rounded leafets? 

On the 19th, when setting out one of those over cup oaks in Sleepy Hollow, digging at the decayed stump of an apple tree, we disturbed, dug up, a toad, which probably had buried itself there last fall and had not yet come out.

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

Monroe’s larches by river will apparently shed pollen soon. The staminate flowers look forward, but the pistil late scarcely show any red. See April 26, 1856 (“ Monroe’s larch will [shed pollen], apparently, by day after to-morrow.”); April 27, 1856 (" I find none of Monroe’s larch buds shedding pollen, but the anthers look crimson and yellow, and the female flowers are now fully expanded and very pretty, but small. I think it will first scatter pollen to-morrow.”); April 29, 1855 ( A few of the cones within reach on F. Monroe’s larches shed pollen; say, then, yesterday. The crimson female flowers are now handsome but small. “);April 29, 1856 ("Monroe’s larch staminate buds have now erected and separated their anthers, and they look somewhat withered, as if they had shed a part of their pollen. If so, they began yesterday.”)

you expose yourself in taking down your mast and raising it again at the bridges. . . . See April 17, 1856 ("I make haste to take down my sail at the bridges, but at the stone arches forgot my umbrella, which was un avoidably crushed in part. ")

A marsh hawk . . . looking for frogs . See April 8, 1856  ("marsh hawks circling low shows that frogs must be out.”); April 5, 1854 ("These days, when a soft west or southwest wind blows and it is truly warm, and an outside coat is oppressive, — these bring out the butterflies and the frogs, and the marsh hawks which prey on the last.”)

It is highly important to invent a dress which will enable us to be abroad with impunity in the severest storms. See February 15, 1857 (“Never under take to ascend a mountain or thread a wilderness where there is any danger of being lost, without taking thick clothing, partly india-rubber, if not a tent or material for one; the best map to be had and a compass. . .”); February 28, 1852 (“To get the value of the storm we must be out a long time and travel far in it, so that it may fairly penetrate our skin, . . . and there be no part in us but is wet or weather beaten, - so that we become storm men instead of fair weather men.”); November 6, 1851 ("I had on my  bad-weather clothes” at Quebec like Olaf Trygvesson, the Northman, when he went to Thing in England.")

Tonight, April 22, we leave the dogs behind around 6 o'clock and climb straight up behind the house to the logging road that connects to the red trail over the ridge down the red trail towards the wetland turn right at the big tree and there is that pile of scat still there. 

She says she wishes she had something to take it home and I reach in my back pocket ( I'm wearing shorts) and serendipity have a blue latex glove and  a plastic bag from an old Subway sandwich. (She collects the scat I put it in the cargo pocket of my shorts and hand it to her when we got home a little before 9:30.)

We detour into the wetland she gets very excited there is lots of Sphagum moss and a pit of mud where some animal has been digging. 

I discover part of the shell and skeleton of a snapping turtle. 

Surprisingly we are able to walk on the tufts of grass and mossy fallen logs without getting wet although there is a great deal of water all around.

Discover part of 

the shell and skeleton of 

a snapping turtle.

zphx April 22, 2016