The comet makes a great show these nights.

October 5. 

Donati's Comet, Oxford, 7:30 p.m., 5 Oct. 1858

I still see large flocks, apparently of chip birds, on the weeds and ground in the yard; without very distinct chestnut crowns, and they are divided by a light line. They are eating seeds of the Amaranthus hybridus, etc. 

8 A. M. — I go to Hubbard’s Close to see when the fringed gentians open. They begin to open in the sun about 8.30 A. M., or say 9. 

Chewink note still. Grackles in flocks. Phebe note of Chickadee often these days. 

Much green is indispensable for maples, hickories, birches, etc., to contrast with, as of pines, oaks, alders, etc. The former are fairest when seen against these. The maples, being in their prime, say yesterday, before the pines, are conspicuously parti-colored. 

P. M. — To Easterbrooks Country. 

White pines in low ground and swamps are the first to change. Some of these have lost many needles. Some on dry ground have so far changed as to be quite handsome, but most only so far as to make the misty glaucous (green) leaves more soft and indefinite. 

The fever-bush is in the height of its change and is a showy clear lemon yellow, contrasting with its scarlet berries. The yellow birch is apparently at the height of its change, clear yellow like the black. I think I saw a white ash which was all turned clear yellowish, and no mulberry, in the Botrychium Swamp. 

Looking on the Great Meadows from beyond Nathan Barrett’s, the wool-grass, where uncut, is very rich brown, contrasting with the clear green of the portions which are mown; all rectangular. The staghorn sumach apparently in the prime of its change. 

In the evening I am glad to find that my phosphorescent wood of last night still glows somewhat, but I improve it much by putting it in water. The little chips which remain in the water or sink to the bottom are like so many stars in the sky. 

The comet makes a great show these nights. Its tail is at least as long as the whole of the Great Dipper, to whose handle, till within a night or two, it reached, in a great curve, and we plainly see stars through it. [It finally reaches between one fourth and one third from the horizon to the zenith.]

Huckleberry bushes generally red, but dull Indian red, not scarlet. 

The red maples are generally past their prime (of color). They are duller or faded. Their first fires, like those of genius, are brightest. In some places on the edges of swamps many of their tops are bare and smoky. 

October 5, 2019

The dicksonia fern is for the most part quite crisp and brown along the walls.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 5, 1858

The comet makes a great show these nights. See September 23 , 1858 (Saw the comet very bright in the northwest. "); November 1, 1858 ("Here are all the friends I ever had or shall have . . .They see the comet from the northwest coast just as plainly as we do, and the same stars through its tail. ") see also Comet Donali (first observed it on June 2, 1858. After the Great Comet of 1811, it was the most brilliant comet that appeared in the 19th century. It was also the first comet to be photographed.)

I still see large flocks, apparently of chip birds, on the weeds and ground in the yard; without very distinct chestnut crowns.  See August 25, 1859 ("quite a flock of (apparently) Fringilla socialis in the garden"); September 1, 1854 ("Now I notice a few faint-chipping sparrows, busily picking the seeds of weeds in the garden"); September 16, 1854 (“I see little flocks of chip-birds along the roadside and on the apple trees, showing their light under sides when they rise.”); September 27, 1858 ("What are those little birds in flocks in the garden and on the peach trees these mornings, about size of chip-birds, without distinct chestnut crowns?”); October 7, 1860 (“Now and for a week the chip-birds in flocks; the withered grass and weeds, etc., alive with them.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Chipping Sparrow

8 A. M. — I go to Hubbard’s Close to see when the fringed gentians open. See September 12, 1854 (" I cannot find a trace of the fringed gentian."); September 14, 1855 ("To Hubbard's Close. I see no fringed gentian yet.");  September 14, 1856 (" To Hubbard's Close. Fringed gentian well out (and some withered or frost-bitten ?), say a week, though there was none to be seen here August 27th.");  September 28, 1853 ("The fringed gentian was out before Sunday; was (some of it) withered then, says Edith Emerson."); October 1, 1858 ("The fringed gentians are now in prime. . . .They who see them closed, or in the afternoon only, do not suspect their beauty.”); October 2, 1857 ("The fringed gentian at Hubbard's Close has been out some time, and most of it already withered"); .October 2, 1853 ("The gentian in Hubbard's Close is frost-bitten extensively"); October 18, 1857 ("The fringed gentian closes every night and opens every morning in my pitcher.");  October 19, 1852 ("It is too remarkable a flower not to be sought out and admired each year, however rare. It is one of the errands of the walker, as well as of the bees, for it yields him a more celestial nectar still. It is a very singular and agreeable surprise to come upon this conspicuous and handsome and withal blue flower at this season, when flowers have passed out of our minds and memories; the latest of all to begin to bloom"); November 4, 1853 (“To Hubbard's Close. I find no traces of the fringed gentian here, so that in low meadows I suspect it does not last very late”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: The Fringed Gentian

 

Phebe note of Chickadee often these days. See  October 4, 1859 (" I hear. . . the sweet phe-be of the chickadee"); October 6, 1856 ("The common notes of the chickadee, so rarely heard for a long time, and also one phebe strain from it, amid the Leaning Hemlocks, remind me of pleasant winter days, when they are more commonly seen.”);  October 10, 1856 ("The phebe note of the chickadee is now often heard ");  October 20, 1856  ("The chickadees are more numerous and lively and familiar and utter their phebe note.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter

The fever-bush is in the height of its change and is a showy clear lemon yellow, contrasting with its scarlet berries. See September 24, 1859 ("Fever-bush berries are scarlet now, and also green. They have a more spicy taste than any of our berries, carrying us in thought to the spice islands. Taste like lemon-peel."); October 4, 1857 (“Fever-bush has begun to yellow.”); October 15, 1859 ("The fever-bush is for the most part bare, and I see no berries.")

The dicksonia fern is for the most part quite crisp and brown along the walls. See October 4, 1859 ("How interesting now, by wall-sides and on open springy hillsides, the large, straggling tufts of the dicksonia fern . . .. Long, handsome lanceolate green fronds, pointing in every direction, recurved and full of fruit, intermixed with yellowish and sere brown and shrivelled ones. . . .Their lingering greenness so much the more noticeable now that the leaves (generally) have changed. They affect us as if they were evergreen, such persistent life and greenness in the midst of their own decay") See also September 30, 1859 (" The evergreen ferns have been growing more and more distinct amid the fading and decaying and withering ones,")

https://tinyurl.com/HDT581005

The fringed gentians are now in prime.

October 1. 

P. M. — To Hubbard’s Close. 

Clintonia Maple Swamp is very fair now, especially a quarter of a mile off, where you get the effect of the light colors without detecting the imperfections of the leaves. Look now at such a swamp, of maples mixed with the evergreen pines, at the base of a pine-clad hill, and see their yellow and scarlet and crimson fires of all tints, mingled and contrasted with the green. Some maples are yet green, only yellow-tipped on the edges of their flakes, as the edges of a hazelnut bur. Some are wholly brilliant scarlet, raying out regularly and finely every way. Others, of more regular form, seem to rest heavily, flake on flake, like yellow or scarlet snow-drifts. 

The cinnamon ferns are crisp and sour in open grounds. 

The fringed gentians are now in prime. These are closed in the afternoon [No. Vide forward.], but I saw them open at 12 M. a day or two ago, and they were exceedingly beautiful, especially when there was a single one on a stem. They who see them closed, or in the afternoon only, do not suspect their beauty. 

Viola lanceolata again. 

See larks in small flocks. 

Was overtaken by a sudden gust and rain from the west. It broke off some limbs and brought down many leaves. Took refuge in Minott’s house at last. 

He told me his last duck-shooting exploit for the fifth or sixth time.

Says that Jake Potter, who died over eighty some dozen years since, told him that when he was a boy and used to drive his father Ephraim’s cows to pasture in the meadows near Fair Haven, after they were mown in the fall, returning with them at evening, he used to hear the wildcats yell in the Fair Haven woods. 

Minott tells of a great rise of the river once in August, when a great many “marsh-birds,” as peeps, killdees, yellow-legs, etc., came inland, and he saw a flock of them reaching from Flint’s Bridge a mile down-stream over the meadows, and making a great noise. 

Says the “killdees” used to be common here, and the yellow legs, called “humilities,” used commonly to breed here on the tussocks in the meadows. He has often found their nests. 

Let a full-grown but young cock stand near you. How full of life he is, from the tip of his bill through his trembling wattles and comb and his bright eye to the extremity of his clean toes! How alert and restless, listening to every sound and watching every motion! How various his notes, from the finest and shrillest alarum as a hawk sails over, surpassing the most accomplished violinist on the short strings, to a hoarse and terrene voice or cluck! He has a word for every occasion; for the dog that rushes past, and partlet cackling in the barn. And then how, elevating himself and flapping his wings, he gathers ear-piercing strain! not a vulgar note of defiance, but the mere effervescence of life, like the bursting of a bubble in a wine-cup. Is any gem so bright as his eye? 

The elms are now great brownish-yellow masses hanging over the street. Their leaves are perfectly ripe. I wonder if there is any answering ripeness in the lives of those who live beneath them. The harvest of elm leaves is come, or at hand. 

The cat sleeps on her head! What does this portend? It is more alarming than a dozen comets. 

How long prejudice survives! The big-bodied fisherman asks me doubtingly about the comet seen these nights in the northwest, — if there is any danger to be apprehended from that side! I would fain suggest that only he is dangerous to himself.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 1, 1858

The fringed gentians are now in prime. See October 2, 1853 ("The gentian in Hubbard's Close is frost-bitten extensively.”); ;October 2, 1857 ("The fringed gentian at Hubbard's Close has been out some time, and most of it already withered. “); October 12, 1857 ("To Annursnack. . . .The fringed gentian by the brook opposite is in its prime, and also along the north edge of the Painted-Cup Meadows”); October 18, 1857 (“The fringed gentian closes every night and opens every morning in my pitcher.”)

See larks in small flocks. See October 13, 1855 ("Larks in flocks in the meadows, showing the white in their tails as they fly, sing sweetly as in spring."); November 1, 1853 ("I see and hear a flock of larks in Wheeler's meadow on left of the Corner road, singing exactly as in spring and twittering also, but rather faintly ...")

I wonder if there is any answering ripeness in the lives of those who live beneath them. See October 9, 1857 ("The elms are now at the height of their change. As I look down our street, which is lined with them, now clothed in their very rich brownish-yellow dress, they remind me of yellowing sheaves of grain, as if the harvest had come to the village itself, and we might expect to find some maturity and flavor in the thoughts of the villagers at last.")

The comet seen these nights in the northwest. See September 23 , 1858 (Saw the comet very bright in the northwest. "); October 5, 1858 ("The comet makes a great show these nights.");  November 1, 1858 ("Here are all the friends I ever had or shall have . . .They see the comet from the northwest coast just as plainly as we do, and the same stars through its tail. ")

What astronomer can calculate the orbit of my thistle-down?

September 29. 

Fine weather. P. M. — To White Pond. 

September 29, 2018

One or two myrtle-birds in their fall dress, with brown head and shoulders, two whitish bars on wings, and bright-yellow rump. 

Sit on Clamshell, looking up the smooth stream. Two blue herons, or “herns,” as Goodwin calls them, fly sluggishly up the stream. Interesting even is a stake, with its reflection, left standing in the still river by some fisherman. 

Again we have smooth waters, yellow foliage, and faint warbling birds, etc., as in spring. The year thus repeats itself. 

Catch some of those little fuzzy gnats dancing in the air there over the shelly bank, and these are black, with black plumes, unlike those last seen over the Cassandra Pond. 

Brushed a spectrum, ghost-horse, off my face in a birch wood, by the J. P. Brown cold Heart-Leaf Pond. Head somewhat like a striped snake. 

That pond is drier than I ever saw it, perhaps [No, have seen it so before.]—all but a couple of square rods in the middle, —and now covered with cyperus, etc. The mud is cracked into large polygonal figures of four to six sides and six to twelve inches across, with cracks a half to three quarters of an inch wide.

See what must be a solitary tattler feeding by the water’s edge, and it has tracked the mud all about. It cannot be the Tringa pectoralis, for it has no conspicuous white chin, nor black dashes on the throat, nor brown on the back and wings, and I think I see the round white spots on its wings. It has not the white on wing of the peetweet, yet utters the peetweet note!— short and faint, not protracted, and not the “sharp whistle” that Wilson speaks of. 

The lespedeza leaves are all withered and ready to fall in the frosty hollows near Nut Meadow, and [in] the swamps the ground is already strewn with the first maple leaves, concealing the springiness of the soil, and many plants are prostrate there, November-like.

High up in Nut Meadow, the very brook — push aside the half-withered grass which (the farmer disdaining to cut it) conceals it — is as cool as a spring, being near its sources. 

Take perhaps our last bath in White Pond for the year. Half a dozen F. hyemalis about. 

Looking toward the sun, some fields reflect a light sheen from low webs of gossamer which thickly cover the stubble and grass. 

On our way, near the Hosmer moraine, let off some pasture thistle-down. One steadily rose from my hand, freighted with its seed, till it was several hundred feet high, and then passed out of sight eastward. Its down was particularly spreading or open. Is not here a hint to balloonists? 

Astronomers can calculate the orbit of that thistle-down called the comet, now in the northwest sky, conveying its nucleus, which may not be so solid as a thistle’s seed, some whither, but what astronomer can calculate the orbit of my thistle-down and tell where it will deposit its precious freight at last? It may still be travelling when I am sleeping. 

Donati’s Comet 1858

Some Lobelia inflata leaves peculiar hoary-white.

September 29, 2018

H. D. Thoreau,  Journal, September 29, 1858

One or two myrtle-birds in their fall dress, with brown head and shoulders, two whitish bars on wings, and bright-yellow rump. See September 23, 1855 (“A little wren-like (or female goldfinch) bird on a.willow at Hubbard’s Causeway, eating a miller: with bright-yellow rump when wings open, and white on tail. Could it have been a yellow-rump warbler?”); October 14, 1855 ("Black bill and feet, yellow rump, brown above, yellowish-brown on head, cream-colored chin, two white bars on wings, tail black, edged with white, — the yellow-rump warbler or myrtle-bird without doubt.”)

Half a dozen F. hyemalis about. See  September 29, 1854 ("I hear a very pleasant and now unusual strain on the sunny side of an oak wood from many — I think F. hyemalis, though I do not get a clear view of them. Even their slight jingling strain is remarkable at this still season.") See also September 24, 1854 (" Do I see an F. hyemalis in the Deep Cut? It is a month earlier than last yea"); October 5, 1857 ("It is evident that some phenomena which belong only to spring and autumn here . . . the myrtle-bird and F. hyemalis which breed there, but only transiently visit us in spring and fall.") 

The year thus repeats itself. See May 5, 1860 ("It takes us many years to find out that Nature repeats herself annually”)

Brushed a spectrum, ghost-horse, off my face in a birch wood. See ;  August 29, 1858 (“The ghost-horse (Spectrum) is seen nowadays, — several of them.”)

Take perhaps our last bath in White Pond for the year. See September 27, 1856 ("Bathed at Hubbard's Bath, but found the water very cold. Bathing about over”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Luxury of Bathing

The comet, now in the northwest sky. See September 23 , 1858 (Saw the comet very bright in the northwest. "); October 5, 1858 ("The comet makes a great show these nights.")

Thistle-down See September 1, 1852 ("These white faery vessels are annually wafted over the cope of their sky. Bethink thyself, O man, when the first thistle-down is in the air. Buoyantly it floated high in air over hills and fields all day, and now, weighed down with evening dews, perchance, it sinks gently to the surface of the lake. Nothing can stay the thistle-down, but with September winds it unfailingly sets sail. The irresistible revolution of time. It but comes down upon the sea in its ship, and is still perchance wafted to the shore with its delicate sails. The thistle-down is in the air. Tell me, is thy fruit also there? Dost thou approach maturity? ")

tinyurl.com/HDT580929

Cape Ann and the comet

September 23. 

September 23, 2018

Another fair day and wind northwest, but rather warmer. 

We kept along the road to Rockport, some two miles or more, to a “thundering big ledge” by the road, as a man called it; then turned off toward the south shore, at a house with two very large and old pear trees before it. Part of the house was built by a Witham, one of the first settlers, and the place or neighborhood used to be called “the Farms.” Saw the F. hyemalis flitting along the walls, and it was cool enough for them on this cape. 

In a marsh by the shore, where was a very broad curving sandy beach, the shore of a cove, found the Ranunculus Cymbalaria, still in bloom, but mostly in fruit. Glaux maritima (?), nearly prostrate, with oblong leaves. Triglochin palustris in fruit. An eleocharis, apparently marine, with lenticular fruit and a wrinkled mitre-shaped beak. Spergularia rubra, etc., samphire, etc. 

The narrow road — where we followed it — wound about big boulders, past small, often bevel-roofed cottages where sometimes was a small flag flying for a vane. The number and variety of bevelled roofs on the Cape is surprising. Some are so nearly flat that they reminded me of the low brows of monkeys. 

We had already seen a sort of bare rocky ridge, a bare boulder-covered back of the Cape, running northeasterly from Gloucester toward Rockport and for some three miles quite bare, the eastern extremity of the Cape being wooded. That would be a good place to walk. 

In this marsh, saw what I thought the solitary tattler, quite tame. 

Having reached the shore, we sat under the lee of the rocks on the beach, opposite Salt Island. A man was carting seaweed along the shore between us and the water, the leather-apron kind, which trailed from his cart like the tails of oxen, and, when it came between us and the sun, was of a warm purple-brown glow. 

Half a mile further, beyond a rocky head, we came to another curving sandy beach, with a marsh between it and the Cape on the north. Saw there, in the soft sand, with beach-grass, apparently Juncus Balticus (?), very like but not so stout (!) as Juncus effusus. 

Met a gunner from Lynn on the beach, who had several pigeons which he had killed in the woods by the shore. Said that they had been blown off the mainland. Second, also a kingfisher. Third, what he called the “ox eye,” about size of peetweet but with a short bill and a blackish-brown crescent on breast, and wing above like peetweet’s, but no broad white mark below. Could it be Charadrius semipalmatus? Fourth, what he called a sandpiper, very white with a long bill. Was this Tringa arenaria? Fifth, what I took to be a solitary tattler, but possibly it was the pectoral sandpiper, which I have seen since. 

On the edge of the beach you see small dunes, with white or fawn-colored sandy sides, crowned with now  yellowish smilax and with bayberry bushes. Just before reaching Loblolly Cove, near Thatcher’s Island, sat on a beach composed entirely of small paving-stones lying very loose and deep. 

We boiled our tea for dinner on the mainland opposite Straitsmouth Island, just this side the middle of Rockport, under the lee of a boulder, using, as usual, dead bay berry bushes for fuel. This was, indeed, all we could get. They make a very quick fire, and I noticed that their smoke covered our dippers with a kind of japan which did not crock or come off nearly so much as ordinary soot. 

We could see the Salvages very plainly, apparently ex tending north and south, the Main Rock some fifteen or twenty rods long and east-northeast of Straitsmouth Island, apparently one and a half or two miles distant, with half-sunken ledges north and south of it, over which the sea was breaking in white foam. The ledges all together half a mile long. 

We could see from our dining-place Agamenticus, some forty miles distant in the north. Its two sides loomed so that about a third of the whole was lifted up, while a small elevation close to it on the east, which afterward was seen to be a part of it, was wholly lifted up. 

Rockport well deserves its name, — several little rocky harbors protected by a breakwater, the houses at Rockport Village backing directly on the beach. 

At Folly Cove, a wild rocky point running north, covered with beach—grass. See now a mountain on the east of Agamenticus. Isles of Shoals too low to be seen. Probably land at Boar’s Head, seen on the west of Agamenticus, and then the coast all the way from New Hampshire to Cape Ann plainly, Newburyport included and Plum Island. Hog Island looks like a high hill on the mainland. 

It is evident that a discoverer, having got as far west as Agamenticus, off the coast of Maine, would in clear weather discern the coast trending southerly beyond him as far round as Cape Ann, and if he did not wish to be embayed would stand across to Cape Ann, where the Salvages would be the outmost point. 

At Annisquam we found ourselves in the midst of boulders scattered over bare hills and fields, such as we had seen on the ridge northerly in the morning, i. e., they abound chiefly in the central and northwesterly part of the Cape. This was the most peculiar scenery of the Cape. 

We struck inland southerly, just before sundown, and boiled our tea with bayberry bushes by a swamp on the hills, in the midst of these great boulders, about half way to Gloucester, having carried our water a quarter of a mile, from a swamp, spilling a part in threading swamps and getting over rough places. 

Two oxen feeding in the swamp came up to reconnoitre our fire. We could see no house, but hills strewn with boulders, as if they had rained down, on every side, we sitting under a shelving one. When the moon rose, what had appeared like immense boulders half a mile off in the horizon now looked by contrast no larger than nutshells or buri-nut against the moon’s disk, and she was the biggest boulder of all. 

When we had put out our bayberry fire, we heard a squawk, and, looking up, saw five geese fly low in the twilight over our heads. We then set out to find our way to Gloucester over the hills, and saw the comet very bright in the northwest. 

Donati’s Comet 1858

After going astray a little in the moonlight, we fell into a road which at length conducted us to the town.

As we bought our lodging and breakfast, a pound of good ship-bread, which cost seven cents, and six herring, which cost three cents, with sugar and tea, supplied us amply the rest of the two days. The selection of suitable spots to get our dinner or supper led us into interesting scenery, and it was amusing to watch the boiling of our water for tea. There is a scarcity of fresh water on the Cape, so that you must carry your water a good way in a dipper.

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

The fall dandelion in Tuttle's meadow.

August 26. 

The fall dandelion is as conspicuous and abundant now in Tuttle's meadow as buttercups in the spring. It takes their place. 

Saw the comet in the west to-night.

H. D. Thoreau, August 26, 1853

The fall dandelion is as conspicuous and abundant now August 4. 1854 ("The autumnal dandelion is now more common ");. August 24, 1852("Autumnal dandelions are more common now."); September 1, 1859 ("The autumnal dandelion is a prevailing flower now"); September 2, 1854("The autumnal dandelion is conspicuous on the shore."); September 13, 1856 (" Surprised at the profusion of autumnal dandelions in their prime . . . A cool, spring-suggesting yellow. They reserve their force till this season.") See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Autumnal Dandelion