With each fresh varnish of the air we frequent our oldest haunts with new love and reverence.

July 21. 

P. M. — To A. Wheeler's grape meadow. 

Mimulus, not long. Hypericum corymbosum, a day or two. Rusty cotton-grass, how long ? The small hypericums are open only in the forenoon. Pursley, also, in our garden opens now not till 8 a. m., and shuts up before 12 m. 

The flat euphorbia is now in prime on the sandy path beyond Potter's Desert, five-finger fungus path.

Plucked a handful of huckleberries from one bush! The Vaccinium vacillans thick enough to go picking, and probably for a day or two in some places. 

Low blackberries thick enough to pick in some places, three or four days. 

Thimble-berries about the 12th, and V. Pennsylvanicum much longer. 

These hot afternoons I go panting through the close sprout-lands and copses, as now from Cliff Brook to Wheeler meadow, and occasionally come to sandy places a few feet in diameter where the partridges have dusted themselves. 

[Gerard, the lion-killer of Algiers, speaks of seeing similar spots when tracking or patiently waiting the lion there, and his truth in this particular is a confirmation of the rest of his story. But his pursuit dwarfs this fact and makes it seem trivial.] 

Shall not my pursuit also contrast with the trivialness of the partridges' dusting? It is interesting to find that the same phenomena, however simple, occur in different parts of the globe. 

I have found an arrowhead or two in such places even. 

Far in warm, sandy woods in hot weather, when not a breath of air is stirring, I come upon these still sandier and warmer spots where the partridges have dusted themselves, now all still and deserted, and am not relieved, yet pleased to find that I have been preceded, by any creature. 

Grapes ready to stew. 

Mr. Russell writes me to-day that he visited the locality of the Magnolia glauca the 18th, on Cape Ann, and saw lingering still a few flowers and flower-buds. It is quite open and rising above the bushes. 

The brook cress might be called river cress, for it is very abundant rising above the surface in all the shallower parts of the river. 

Verbena hastata, apparently several days. 

Sonchus, some time. 

July 21, 2020

This has been a peculiarly fine afternoon. When I look about casually, am surprised at the fairness of the landscape. Though warm, it is clear and fresh, and the air imparts to all surfaces a peculiar fine glaucous color, full of light, without mistiness, like the under side of the Salix lucida (?) leaves at present.  Not only the under sides of the leaves, but the very afternoon landscape, has become glaucous. 

Now, when the fashionable world goes to Saratoga, Nahant, and Newport, we frequent our oldest haunts with new love and reverence and sail into new ports with each fresh varnish of the air.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 21, 1856

When I look about casually, am surprised at the fairness of the landscape. See note to May 22, 1854 ("How many times I have been surprised thus, on turning about on this very spot, at the fairness of the earth!")

We frequent our oldest haunts with new love and reverence and sail into new ports with each fresh varnish of the air. See October 18, 1855 (“Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.”); August 30, 1856 (“[T]here are square rods in Middlesex County as purely primitive and wild as they were a thousand years ago. . .  I believe almost in the personality of such planetary matter, feel something akin to reverence for it, can even worship it as terrene, titanic matter extant in my day. We are so different we admire each other, we healthily attract one another. I love it as a maiden”) 

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

Sandy places where

partridges dusted themselves

this hot afternoon.

Surprised – the fairmess

of the afternooon landscape,

clear fresh full of light.

With each fresh varnish

we frequent our oldest haunts

with new reverence.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: New love and reverence.

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-560721

Soothed and cheered by I knew not what

June 1. 

Horse-radish in yard, to-morrow. 

Picked up an entire sternothaerus shell yesterday, without scales. In the upper shell there appear to be six small segments of shell wholly dorsal, seventeen wholly lateral (nine in front), and twenty-two marginal, forty five in all. The ribs, in this case spreading out and uniting to form a sharp and tight roof, suggest that ribs were the first rafters. 

So we turn our backs to the storm and shelter ourselves under this roof. The scales upon the shell answer to the shingles on the roof, breaking joints. 

Saw the shell of another turtle, apparently a young painted turtle, one inch long, curiously wrinkled and turned up, like that found in Middleborough. This had been washed up on to meadow some weeks ago, apparently. 

P. M. — To Walden. 

June 1, 2016

Somewhat warmer at last, after several very cold, as Well as windy and rainy, days. 

Was soothed and cheered by I knew not what at first, but soon detected the now more general creak of crickets. 

A striped yellow bug in fields. 

Most of the leaves of the Polygonatum pubescens which I gathered yesterday at Island had been eaten up by some creature. 

A chewink’s nest a rod and a half south of Walden road, opposite Goose Pond path, under a young oak, covered by overarching dry sedge; four eggs, pretty fresh. I am pretty sure the bird uttered the unusual hoarse and distressed note while I was looking at them. 

Linaria Canadensis on Emerson Cliff. Rock-rose, a day or two there. 

Whiteweed by railroad at pond to-morrow. Cotton-grass, several days before the 29th May. 

Heard a quail whistle May 30th. 

The late crataegus on hill, about May 31st.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 1, 1856

The now more general creak of crickets. See May 18, 1860 ("The creak of the cricket has been common on all warm, dry hills, banks, etc., for a week, - inaugurating the summer."); May 30, 1855 ("Is it not summer now when the creak of the crickets begins to be general?"); June 4, 1854 ("These warm and dry days, which put spring far behind, the sound of the cricket at noon has a new value and significance, so serene and cool. It is the iced-cream of song. It is modulated shade."); May 22, 1854 ("At Lee's Cliff. --First observe the creak of crickets. It is quite general amid these rocks. . . ."); May 26, 1852 ("To-night I hear many crickets. They have commenced their song. They bring in the summer."); June 13, 1851 ("I listen to the ancient, familiar, immortal, dear cricket sound under all others, and as these cease I become aware of the general earth-song.”).

A chewink’s nest a rod and a half south of Walden road, opposite Goose Pond path, under a young oak, covered by overarching dry sedge; four eggs, pretty fresh. See June 10, 1856 (“Chewink’s nest with four young in the dry sprout-land of Loring’s thick wood that was, under a completely overarching tuft of dry sedge grass.”); July 8, 1857 (“A chewink's nest with four young just hatched, at the bottom of the pyrola hollow and grove, where it is so dry, about seven feet southwest of a white pine.”)

Linaria Canadensis on Emerson Cliff. See May 22, 1855 ("Linaria Canadensis on Cliffs open.")

• Linaria Canadensis: A native annual or biennial that prefers highly disturbed areas with sandy soils. Its attractive light-blue to blue-violet flowers have a white throat and a nectar spur. (Nuttallanthus canadensisis, Blue Toadflax,, Canada Toadflax. Old-field Toadflax)

To be soothed and cheered 

by I know not what at first . . . 

the creak of crickets.