This season of the tender foliage.

May 18.

May 18, 2020

The rhodora is one of the very latest leafing shrubs, for its leaf-buds are but just expanding, making scarcely any show yet, but quite leafless amid the blossoms. 

The Celtis occidentalis in bloom, maybe a day. Its shoots have grown two inches. It is as forward as the hickory at least; more than the elm. 

A red clover in blossom. 

A geranium budded; will open in a day or two.

Surprised to see a Ranunculus Purshii open. 

A choke-cherry blossomed in a tumbler yesterday, and probably outdoors. 

Finding the Linaria Canadensis yesterday at the Cliffs on a very close search for flowers makes me think that, by looking very carefully in the most favored and warmest localities, you may find most flowers out some weeks even in advance of the rest of their kind. 

We have had no storm this spring thus far, but it mizzles to-night.  Perchance a May storm is brewing.

This day it has mizzled  — as it were a dewy atmosphere, through which for the most part the sun shines. Methinks this is common at this season of the tender foliage, which requires a moist air and protection against the sun. 

A singular effect produced by a mass of ferns at a little distance, some rods square, their light yellow green tops seen above the dark masses of their fruit. At first one is puzzled to account for it. 

White ash fully in bloom.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 18, 1853


The rhodora is quite leafless amid the blossoms. See May 18, 1855 ("Rhodora; probably some yesterday.") May 18, 1856 ("The rhodora there maybe to-morrow. Elsewhere I find it . . . to-day."); May 18, 1857 ("Pratt says he saw the first rhodora . . . out yesterday") See also May 14, 1859 ('Rhodora out, says C."); May 17, 1853 (“The rhodora is peculiar for being, like the peach, a profusion of pink blossoms on a leafless stem. This shrub is, then, a late one to leaf out.”); May 17, 1858 ("Rhodora at Clamshell well out.”)

The Celtis occidentalis in bloom, maybe a day. Its shoots have grown two inches. See May 18, 1855 ("Celtis will probably shed pollen to-morrow; shoots already an inch long.") See also May 27, 1857 ("Celtis occidentalis, perhaps yesterday. How the staminate flowers drop off, even before opening!"); September 28, 1857 (" And they have cut down two or three of the very rare celtis trees, not found anywhere else in town. The Lord deliver us from these vandalic proprietors! The botanist and lover of nature has, perchance, discovered some rare tree which has sprung up by a farmer's wall-side to adorn and bless it, sole representative of its kind in these parts. Strangers send for a seed or a sprig from a distance, but, walking there again, he finds that the farmer has sent a raw Irishman. . . with axe and stub-scythe to exterminate it, and he will know it no more forever. . . .If some are prosecuted for abusing children, others deserve to be prosecuted for maltreating the face of nature committed to their care.")

A red clover in blossom. See June 12, 1854 (“Clover now reddens the fields.”); June 15, 1851 (“the clover gives whole fields a rich appearance, -- the rich red and the sweet-scented white. The fields are blushing with the red species as the western sky at evening.”); June 18, 1860 (“I see very distinctly the redness of a luxuriant field of clover on the top of Fair Haven Hill.”)

Finding the Linaria Canadensis yesterday at the Cliffs on a very close search for flowers makes me think that, by looking very carefully in the most favored and warmest localities, you may find most flowers out some weeks even in advance of the rest of their kind. See May 17, 1853 ("The low black berry, apparently, on Cliffs is out, earlier than else where, and Veronica arvensis, very small, obscure pale-blue flower, and, to my surprise, Linaria Canadensis."); May 22, 1855 ("Linaria Canadensis on Cliffs open.")  See also February 28, 1857 ("It takes several years' faithful search to learn where to look for the earliest flowers."); April 10, 1855 ("As for the early sedge, who would think of looking for a flower of any kind in those dry tufts whose withered blades almost entirely conceal the springing green ones? I patiently examined one tuft after another, higher and higher up the rocky hill, till at last I found one little yellow spike low in the grass which shed its pollen on my finger. As for the saxifrage, when I had given it up for to-day, having, after a long search in the warmest clefts and recesses, found only three or four buds which showed some white, I at length, on a still warmer shelf, found one flower partly expanded, and its common peduncle had shot up an inch. These few earliest flowers in these situations have the same sort of interest with the arctic flora, for they are remote and unobserved and often surrounded with snow.") And see A Book of  the Seasons,, by Henry Thoreau, the Earliest Flower

This season of the tender foliage, See A Book of  the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 18

Perchance a May storm is brewing. See May 17, 1852 ("Now the sun has come out after the May storm, how bright, how full of freshness and tender promise and fragrance is the new world!"); May 17, 1853 ("Does not summer begin after the May storm?”); May 19, 1853 ("A May storm, gentle and rather warm");  May 22, 1857 ("When the May storm is over, then the summer is fairly begun.");May 22, 1858 ("Something like this annually occurs. After this May storm the sun bursts forth . . . and we seem to have taken a long stride into summer.")

The rhodora at Ledum Swamp is now in its perfection, brilliant islands of color..

May 26. 

RWE 1847

Thursday. P. M. — To Ledum Swamp and Lee's Cliff.

Eleocharis tenuis in bloom, apparently the earliest eleocharis. 

The rhodora at Ledum Swamp is now in its perfection, brilliant islands of color. 

Eriophorum vaginatum, how long? 

Ledum out apparently two or three days. 

Andromeda Polifolia out, how long? 

Tall swamp huckleberry just budded to bloom. 

Do I not hear the nuthatch note in the swamp? 

Do not detect the scheuchzeria there yet.

The air is full of terebinthine odors to-day, — the scent of the sweet-fern, etc. 

May 26, 2019
Moss Ledge

The reddish leaves (and calyx) of the Vaccinium vacillans, just leafed, are interesting and peculiar now, perhaps more or less crimson. 

See a flock of cowbirds, the first I have seen. 

Cows in water, so warm has it got to be. 

Geranium (how long?), behind Bittern Cliff, and wild pink. 

Pitch pine pollen at Lee's. 

Cherry-birds. 

Ascendant potentilla abundant, how long? 

Juniperus repens pollen, how long ? 

Interrupted fern pollen [sic]. 

The dicksonia fern is one foot high, but not fairly unfolded. 

The tender white-downy stems of the meadow saxifrage, seen toward the westering sun, are very conspicuous and thick in the meadows now. 

A purple finch's nest in one of our firs.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 26, 1859

The rhodora at Ledum Swamp is now in its perfection, brilliant islands of color.   See May 17, 1853 (“The rhodora is peculiar for being, like the peach, a profusion of pink blossoms on a leafless stem. This shrub is, then, a late one to leaf out.”);  May 17, 1858 ("Rhodora at Clamshell well out.”); May 18, 1853 ("The rhodora is one of the very latest leafing shrubs, for its leaf-buds are but just expanding, making scarcely any show yet, but quite leafless amid the blossoms."); May 18, 1855 ("Rhodora; probably some yesterday."); May 18, 1856 ("The rhodora there [Kalmia Swamp] maybe to-morrow. Elsewhere I find it (on Hubbard’s meadow) to-day. "); May 18, 1857 ("Pratt says he saw the first rhodora . . . out yesterday");  May 19, 1854 ("The rhodora is late, and is naked flowering."); May 27, 2016 (“Kalmia in prime, and rhodora.”); May 31, 1857 (“Rhodora now in its prime.”).

See a flock of cowbirds, the first I have seen. See September 6, 1858  (“To Ledum Swamp. Going over Clamshell Plain, I see a very large flock of a hundred or more cowbirds about some cows.”); August 25, 1855 (“They keep close to the cow’s head and feet, and she does not mind them; but when all go off . . .at my approach, the cow (about whom they were all gathered) looks off after them for some time, as if she felt deserted.”).

Cows in water, so warm has it got to be. See July 12, 1857 (“It is exceedingly sultry this afternoon, and few men are abroad. The cows stand up to their bellies in the river, lashing their sides with their tails from time to time.”).

May 26. See  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 26

The Mystery of the odorless sternothaerus .

June 16. 

June 16, 2018
(Avesong)

P. M. – To Staples's Meadow Wood. 

It is pleasant to paddle over the meadows now, at this time of flood, and look down on the various meadow plants, for you can see more distinctly quite to the bottom than ever. 

A few sedges are very common and prominent, one, the tallest and earliest, now gone and going to seed, which I do not make out, also the Carex scoparia and the C. stellulata. 

How will the water affect these plants, standing thus long over them? 

The head of every sedge that now rises above the surface is swarming with insects which have taken refuge from the flood on it, — beetles, grasshoppers, spiders, caterpillars, etc. How many must have been destroyed!

No doubt thousands of birds' nests have been destroyed by the flood, – blackbirds', bobolinks', song sparrows', etc. I see a robin's nest high above the water with the young just dead and the old bird in the water, apparently killed by the abundance of rain, and after ward I see a fresh song sparrow's nest which has been flooded and destroyed. 

Two sternothaerus which I smell of have no scent to-day. 

Looking into Hubbard's Pool, I at length see one of the minims which I put into it. I brought the last here April 30th. It is now a little perch about an inch and a quarter long; it was then about a quarter of an inch long. I can now see the transverse bars a rod off. It is swimming actively round and round the pool, but avoids the quite shallow water of the edges, so it does not get landlocked or lost in the weedy overflowed edges. I put twenty or thirty into this pool in all. They grow very fast, then, at last. 

Carrion-flower, how long? Not long. 

How agreeable and wholesome the fragrance of the low blackberry blossom, reminding me of all the rosaceous fruit bearing plants, so near and dear to our humanity! It is one of the most deliciously fragrant flowers, reminding of wholesome fruits. 

I see a yellow-spotted turtle digging its hole at midafternoon, but, like the last of this species I saw, it changed its place after I saw it, and I did not get an egg; it is so wary. Some turtles must lay in pretty low fields, or else make a much longer excursion than I think they do, the water in which they dwell is so far from high land. 

Among the geraniums which now spot the wood or sprout-land paths, I see some with very broad, short, rounded petals, making a smaller but full round flower. 

The Salix nigra appears to be quite done.

Edward Emerson, Edward Bartlett, and Storrow Higginson come to ask me the names of some eggs to-night. 

They have the egg of the warbling vireo, – much like the pepe's, but smaller. [Or is it not yellow-throated vireo's P Vide nest. From a maple near Hemlocks, Asset.]

They tell of a hen-hawk's nest seen the 6th, with two eggs. 

They have also, undoubtedly, the egg of the purple finch, seen first two or three weeks ago, and they bring me two nests and one egg. Both these nests were in small fir trees, one by the Lee house (that was), Joe Barrett's, and the other in the New Burying-Ground. 

The last appeared to have been spoiled by the rain, and was against the main stem and contained four fresh eggs, they say, the 14th; the other had five eggs two days earlier; both near the top. The egg is a little more than three quarters of an inch long by nearly five eighths at the bigger end, and so of another from the other nest, rather more slender, — a tapering pale bluish-green egg, with blackish-brown and also dull slate-colored spots and streaks about the larger end and a few very fine spots on the other parts. 

The Lee nest is somewhat like a hair-bird's, though larger. They are both about four inches wide, outside to out side, and two and a half high, two and a quarter to two and a half [in] diameter within, and one and a quarter to one and a half deep. 

The Lee house one (which had the egg in it) is composed externally of many small weed stems — apparently lepidium, lechea — and root-fibres, and the inner part is very thick and substantial, of root-fibres and bark-shreds and a little cow’s hair, lined with much horsehair. 

The other is a little less substantial, externally of pinweed and apparently hypericum stems and root-fibres and within of root-fibres lined with much fine and soft bark-shreds. 

Edward Bartlett brings me a crow's nest, one of several which he found in maple trees, twenty or thirty feet from ground, in a swamp near Copan, and in this he found an addled egg. The mass of twigs which was its foundation were too loose and bulky to be brought away, — half a wheelbarrow-load, at least, chiefly maple, eighteen inches long and a quarter of an inch wide. The rest or inner portion of the nest, which part is ten or twelve inches in diameter, about two inches thick, and slightly concave, is composed almost wholly of coarse strips of grape-vine bark, with some finer, apparently maple, bark-shreds and some hair and hog's bristles, perhaps of carrion carried to its young heretofore; and the under part is loosely earthy to some extent.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 16, 1858

The head of every sedge that now rises above the surface is swarming with insects which have taken refuge from the flood on it. See August 25, 1856 (“Almost every stem which rises above the surface has a grasshopper or caterpillar upon it. Some have seven or eight grasshoppers, clinging to their masts, one close and directly above an other, like shipwrecked sailors, now the third or fourth day exposed. . . . They are so thick that they are like a crop which the grass bears; some stems are bent down by their weight.”)

Two sternothaerus which I smell of have no scent to-day. See April 1, 1858 ("I see six Sternothaerus odoratus in the river thus early. . . .. I took up and smelt of five of these, and they emitted none of their peculiar scent!”); May 1, 1858 ("Two sternothaeruses which I catch emit no scent yet.”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musk Turtle (Sternothaerus odoratus )

Looking into Hubbard's Pool, I at length see one of the minims which I put into it. See April 3, 1858 (“When returning, we discovered, on the south side of the river, just at the old crossing-place from the Great Meadows, north of the ludwigia pool, a curious kind of spawn.”); ; April 7, 1858 ("I brought home ... two kinds of spawn in a pail. ...  I see the embryo, already fish-like (?), curved round the yolk, with a microscope.”);April 14, 1858 (“At Ed. Hoar's in the evening.. . .. with his microscope I see the heart beating in the embryo fish and the circulations distinctly along the body.”); April 16, 1858("My fish ova in a tumbler has gradually expanded till it is some three sixteenths of an inch in diameter, and for more than a week the embryos have been conspicuously active, hardly still enough to be observed with a microscope. Their tails, eyes, pectoral fins, etc., were early developed and conspicuous. . . .This morning I set them in the sun, and, looking again soon after, found that they were suddenly hatched, and more than half of them were free of the egg.”); April 30, 1858 (“I carry the rest of my little fishes, fifteen or twenty, to the cold pool in Hubbard's ground. They are about a quarter-inch long still, and have scarcely increased in length. ”)

Edward Bartlett brings me a crow's nest. See April 29, 1859 ("E. Bartlett has found a crow's nest with four eggs a little developed in a tall white pine in the grove east of Beck Stow's")

June 16. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 16

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

Monadnock as an arctic isle in the sky.

June 2. 

June 2, 2018

8.30 A. M. — Start for Monadnock. 

Between Shirley Village and Lunenburg, I notice, in a meadow on the right hand, close to the railroad, the Kalmia glauca in bloom, as we are whirled past. The conductor says that he has it growing in his garden. 

Blake joins me at Fitchburg. Between Fitchburg and Troy saw an abundance of wild red cherry, now apparently in prime, in full bloom, especially in burnt lands and on hillsides, a small but cheerful lively white bloom. 

Arrived at Troy Station at 11.5 and shouldered our knapsacks, steering northeast to the mountain, some four miles off, —its top. It is a pleasant hilly road, leading past a few farmhouses, where you already begin to snuff the mountain, or at least up-country air. 

By the roadside I plucked, now apparently in prime, the Ribes Cynosbati, rather downy leaved, and, near by, the same with smooth berries. I noticed, too, 'the Salix lucida, by the roadside there on high land; the S. rostrata, etc., were common. 

Almost without interruption we had the mountain in sight before us, — its sublime gray mass — that antique, brownish-gray, Ararat color. Probably these crests of the earth are for the most part of one color in all lands, that gray color of antiquity, which nature loves; color of unpainted wood, weather-stain, time-stain; not glaring nor gaudy; the color of all roofs, the color of things that endure, and the color that wears well; color of Egyptian ruins, of mummies and all antiquity; baked in the sun, done brown. 

Methought I saw the same color with which Ararat and Caucasus and all earih’s brows are stained, which was mixed in antiquity and receives a new coat every century; not scarlet, like the crest of the bragging cock, but that hard, enduring gray; a terrene sky-color; solidified air with a tinge of earth. [Best view of mountain about two and a half miles this side of summit.] 

The red elder was in full bloom by the road, apparently in prime.

We left the road at a schoolhouse, and, crossing a meadow, began to ascend gently through very rocky pastures. Previously an old man, a mile back, who lived on a hilltop on the road, pointed out the upper corner of his pasture as a short way up. Said he had not been up for seven years and, looking at our packs, asked, “Are you going to carry them up?” “Well,” said he, with a tone half of pity and lIalf regret, adding, “ I shall never go up again.” 

Here, at the base, by the course of a rocky rill, where we paused in the shade, in moist ground, I saw the Tiarella cordifolia, abundant and apparently in prime, with its white spike sometimes a foot and more high; also the leaves of the Geranium Robertianum, emitting their peculiar scent, with the radical reddish tinge, not yet budded. The cress in the water there was quite agreeable to our taste, and methinks would be good to eat fresh with bread. 

The neighboring hills began to sink, and entering the wood we soon passed Fassett's shanty, — he so busily at work inside that he did not see us, – and we took our dinner by the rocky brook-side in the woods just above. 

A dozen people passed us early in the afternoon, while we sat there, men and women on their way down from the summit, this suddenly very pleasant day after a louring one having attracted them. We met a man (apparently an Indian or Canadian half-breed) and a boy, with guns, who had been up after pigeons but only killed five crows. 

Thereabouts first I noticed the Ribes prostratum, abundantly in bloom, apparently in prime, with its pretty erect racemes of small flowers, sometimes purplish with large leaves. 

There, too, the Trillium erythrocarpum, now in prime, was conspicuous, – three white lanceolate waved-edged petals with a purple base. This the handsomest flower of the mountain, coexten sive with the wooded sides. 

Also the Viburnum lantanoides, apparently in prime, with its large and showy white outer florets, reminding me by its marginal flowering of the tree-cranberry, coextensive with last; and Uvularia grandiflora, not long begun to bloom. 

Red elder-berry not open, apparently, there; and Amelanchier Canadensis var. Botryapium not long in bloom. 

Having risen above the dwarfish woods (in which mountain-ash was very common), which reached higher up along this ravine than elsewhere, and nearly all the visitors having descended, we proceeded to find a place for and to prepare our camp at mid-afternoon. We wished it to be near water, out of the way of the wind, which was northwest, and of the path, and also near to spruce trees for a bed. (There is a good place if you would be near the top within a stone's throw of the summit, on the north side, under some spruce trees.) 

We chose a sunken yard in a rocky plateau on the southeast side of the mountain, perhaps half a mile from the summit, by the path, a rod and a half wide by many more in length, with a mossy and bushy floor about five or six feet beneath the general level, where a dozen black spruce trees grew, though the surrounding rock was generally bare. There was a pretty good spring within a dozen rods, and the western wall shelved over a foot or two. 

We slanted two scraggy spruce trees, long since bleached, from the western wall, and, cutting many spruce boughs with our knives, made a thick bed and walls on the two sides to keep out the wind. Then, putting several poles transversely across our two rafters, we covered [them] with a thick roof of spruce twigs, like shingles. The spruce, though harsh for a bed, was close at hand, we cutting away one tree to make room. 

We crawled under the low eaves of this roof, about eighteen inches high, and our extremities projected about a foot. Having left our packs here and made all ready for the night, we went up to the summit to see the sun set. 

Our path lay through a couple of small swamps and then up the rocks. 

Some forty or fifty rods below the very apex southeast, or quite on the top of the mountain, I saw a little bird flit out from beneath a rock close by the path on the left of it, where there were only very few scattered dwarf black spruce about, and, looking, I found a nest with three eggs. 

It was the Fringilla hyemalis, which soon disappeared around a projecting rock. It was near by a conspicuous spruce, six or eight feet high, on the west edge of a sort of hollow, where a vista opened south over the precipice, and the path ascended at once more steeply. The nest was sunk in the ground by the side of a tuft of grass, and was pretty deep, made of much fine dry grass or sedge (?) and lined with a little of a delicate bluish hair-like fibre (?) (q.v.) two or three inches long. 

The eggs were three, of a regular oval form, faint bluish white, sprinkled with fine pale-brown dots, in two of the three condensed into a ring about the larger end. They had apparently just begun to develop. The nest and tuft were covered by a projecting rock. 

Brewer says that only one nest is known to naturalists. 

We saw many of these birds flitting about the summit, perched on the rocks and the dwarf spruce, and disappearing behind the rocks. It is the prevailing bird now up there, i.e. on the summit. 

They are commonly said to go to the fur countries to breed, though Wilson says that some breed in the Alleghanies. The New York Reports make them breed on the mountains of Oswego County and the Catskills.” 

This was a quite interesting discovery. They probably are never seen in the surrounding low grounds at this season. 

The ancestors of this bird had evidently perceived on their flight northward that here was a small piece of arctic region, containing all the conditions they require, — coolness and suitable food, etc., etc., –and so for how long have builded here. For ages they have made their home here with the Arenaria Graenlandica and Potentilla tridentata. They discerned arctic isles sprinkled in our southern sky.

I did not see any of them below the rocky and generally bare portion of the mountain. It finds here the same conditions as in the north of Maine and in the fur countries, – Labrador mosses, etc. 

Now that the season is advanced, migrating birds have gone to the extreme north or gone to the mountain tops. 

By its color it harmonized with the gray and brownish-gray rocks. 

We felt that we were so much nearer to perennial spring and winter. 

I observed rabbit's dung commonly, quite to the top and all over the rocky portion, and where they had browsed the bushes. 

For the last fifteen or twenty rods the ground between the rocks is pretty thickly clothed or carpeted with mountain cranberry and Potentilla tridentata, only the former as yet slightly budded, but much lower than this the mountain cranberry is not common. The former grows also in mere seams on the nearly upright sides of rocks, and occasionally I found some of last year's cranberries on the latter, which were an agreeable acid. These were the prevailing plants of a high order on the very summit. 

There was also on the same ground considerable fine grass, and radical leaves of a sericocarpus-like aster (?), – I saw some withered heads, – springing up commonly, and a little (hardly yet conspicuously budded except in the warmest places) Arenaria Granlandica in dense tufts, succulent. 

There were a few very dwarfish black spruce there, and a very little dry moss, and, on the rocks, many of that small leather-colored lichen, and Umbilicaria pustulata, and the two common (?) kinds of cladonia, white and green, between them.

Scarcely, if at all, lower than the above-named plants, grew the Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum, also Pyrus arbutifolia, very minute and but just budded, and minute mountain-ashes, a few inches high only. From these one may judge what plants, among others, grow far north. 

We heard the hylodes peeping from a rain-water pool a little below the summit toward night. 

As it was quite hazy, we could not see the shadow of the mountain well, and so returned just before the sun set to our camp. We lost the path coming down, for nothing is easier than to lose your way here, where so little trail is left upon the rocks, and the different rocks and ravines are so much alike. Perhaps no other equal area is so bewildering in this respect as a rocky mountain summit, though it has so conspicuous a central point. 

Notwithstanding the newspaper and egg-shell left by visitors, these parts of nature are still peculiarly unhandselled and untracked. The natural terraces of rock are the steps of this temple, and it is the same whether it rises above the desert or a New England village. 

Even the inscribed rocks are as solemn as most ancient gravestones, and nature reclaims them with bog and lichens. They reminded me of the grave and pass of Ben Waddi (?). These sculptors seemed to me to court such alliance with the grave as they who put their names over tombstones along the highway. One, who was probably a blacksmith, had sculptured the emblems of his craft, an anvil and hammer, beneath his name. Apparently a part of the regular outfit of mountain-climbers is a hammer and cold-chisel, and perhaps they allow themselves a supply of garlic also. Certainly you could not hire a stone-cutter to do so much engraving for less than several thousand dollars. But no Old Mortality will ever be caught renewing these epitaphs. It reminds what kinds of steeps do climb the false pretenders to fame, whose chief exploit is the carriage of the tools with which to inscribe their names. For speaking epitaphs they are, and the mere name is a sufficient revelation of the character. They are all of one trade, -- stone cutters, defacers of mountain-tops. “Charles & Lizzie!” Charles carried the sledge-hammer, and Lizzie the cold chisel. Some have carried up a paint-pot, and painted their names on the rocks. 

We returned to our camp and got our tea in our sunken yard. While one went for water to the spring, the other kindled a fire. 

The whole rocky part of the mountain, except the extreme summit, is strewn with the relics of spruce trees, a dozen or fifteen feet long, and long since dead and bleached, so that there is plenty of dry fuel at hand. We sat out on the brink of the rocky plateau near our camp, taking our tea in the twilight, and found it quite dry and warm there, though you would not have thought of sitting out at evening in the surrounding valleys. 

It was evidently warmer and drier there than below. I have often perceived the warm air high on the sides of hills late into the night, while the valleys were filled with a cold damp night air, as with water, and here the air was warmer and drier the greater part of the night. We perceived no dew there this or the next night. 

This was our parlor and supper-room; in another direction was our wash-room. 

The chewink sang before night, and this, as I have before observed, is a very common bird on mountain-tops. It seems to love a cool atmosphere, and sometimes lingers quite late with us. And the wood thrush, indefinitely far or near, a little more distant and unseen, as great poets are. 

Early in the evening the nighthawks were heard to spark and boom over these bare gray rocks, and such was our serenade at first as we lay on our spruce bed. We were left alone with the nighthawks. 

These with drawn bare rocks must be a very suitable place for them to lay their eggs, and their dry and unmusical, yet supramundane and spirit-like, voices and sounds gave fit expression to this rocky mountain solitude. It struck the very key-note of the stern, gray, barren solitude. It was a thrumming of the mountain’s rocky chords; strains from the music of Chaos, such as were heard when the earth was rent and these rocks heaved up. Thus they went sparking and booming, while we were courting the first access of sleep, and I could imagine their dainty limping flight, circling over the kindred rock, with a spot of white quartz in their wings. 

No sound could be more in harmony with that scenery. 

Though common below, it seemed peculiarly proper here. But ere long the nighthawks were stilled, and we heard only the sound of our companion's breathing or of a bug in our spruce roof. I thought I heard once faintly the barking of a dog far down under the mountain, and my companion thought he heard a bullfrog. 

A little after 1 A. M., I woke and found that the moon had risen, and heard some little bird near by sing a short strain of welcome to it, somewhat song-sparrow-like. But every sound is a little strange there, as if you were in Labrador. Before dawn the nighthawks commenced their sounds again, and these sounds were as good as a clock to us, telling how the night got on.

H.. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 2, 1858


Thoreau visited Monadnock on four occasions: a solo overnight on the summit in 1844, a quick day-hike in  September 1852, and more extended stays in 1858 and 1860:  August 4 1860, August 5, 1860. August 6, 1860, August 7, 1860, August 8, 1860,  and  August 9, 1860

The ground between the rocks is pretty thickly clothed or carpeted with mountain cranberry and Potentilla tridentata. Compare September 7, 1852 (“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.”)

Arctic isles sprinkled in our southern sky.  Monadnock rises 2,000 feet above its surrounding terrain and stands, at 3,165 feet, nearly 1,000 feet higher than any mountain peak within 30 miles .~ wikipedia. The internet credits the ecological term “sky island” as first introduced in 1943 by writer Natt N. Dodge’s in the Arizona Highways magazine.

Now that the season is advanced, migrating birds have gone to the extreme north or gone to the mountain tops. Dark-eyed juncos   have long been observed migrating through the eastern part of Massachusetts toward the mountains of Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire and on into Canada, with a strong contingent stopping to nest in the higher elevations of western Massachusetts. Mass Audubon

June 2. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 2

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

The propagation of birches by seed blown in winter.

May 21. 

May 21, 2018

P. M. – To Boulder Field. 

Horse-chestnut in bloom. 

Aetoea  spicata var. rubra will bloom, apparently, in four or five days. It is now fifteen inches high. 

Lilac in bloom. 

Pratt shows me what I take to be Genista tinctoria (not budded) from the Boulder Field. It has leafed; when? 

Also a ranunculus from his land, – which has been out how long?— which is very near to R. repens, but has small flowers, petals less than the calyx, and leaves, methinks, more divided, but I did not see it open. It may be a variety of repens. 

His daughter has found in bloom: huckleberry on the 19th; Viola pubescens, 16th; Geranium maculatum, 18th. 

I notice that the old indigo-bird path behind Pratt's is for some distance distinctly defined by young birches, three or four feet high, which are now clothed with tender leaves before the young oaks, etc., on each side. They are especially thick in the ruts, while there are but few here and there in the sprout-land generally. I suspect that the seed was blown and lodged there in the winter. 

E. Hoar saw Silene Pennsylvanica out in Lincoln to day, in a warm cleft of a rock; also Cerasus pumila between here and Newton.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 21, 1858

Birches thick in the ruts, the seed was blown and lodged there in the winter. See March 2, 1856 ("Walking up the river by Prichard's, was surprised to see, on the snow over the river, a great many seeds and scales of birches, . . . A great proportion of the seed that was carried to a distance lodged in the hollow over the river, and when the river breaks up will be carried far away, to distant shores and meadows. "); May 12, 1858 (“I notice that birches near meadows,. . . grow in more or less parallel lines a foot or two apart, parallel with the shore, apparently the seed having been dropped there either by a freshet or else lodged in the parallel waving hollows of the snow.”)

The grass is flaming up through the shallow water on the meadows.

June 2. 

Sterile buttonwood, not yet generally, but some apparently several days at least. 

It was a portion of the natural surface of the earth itself which jutted out and became my roof the other day. How fit that Nature should thus shelter her own children! The first drops were dimpling the pond even as the fishes had done. 

June 2, 2017

The grass is flaming up through the shallow water on the meadows. 

It is very warm till 3 p. m., and then a washing breeze arises, and before night probably distant thunder-showers have cooled the air, for after dark we see the flashes called heat lightning in the north, and hear the distant thunder. 

Geraniums bring thunder. 

That bobolink's song affected me as if one were endeavoring to keep down globes of melody within a vase full of liquid, but some bubbled up irrepressible, — kept thrusting them down with a stick, but they slipped and came up one side. 

A young sparrow already flies. 

Drove this afternoon to Painted-Cup Meadow. 

A tanager yesterday.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal , June 2, 1857

It was a portion of the natural surface of the earth itself which jutted out and became my roof the other day. See May 29, 1857 (“The drops fall thicker, and I seek a shelter under the Cliffs. ”); May 30, 1857 (“When first I had sheltered myself under the rock, I began at once to look out on the pond with new eyes,”)

Heat lightning in the north, and hear the distant thunder. See June 16, 1852 (“Heat lightning in the horizon. A sultry night. A flute from some villager.”)

That bobolink's song affected me. See June 1, 1857 (“I hear the note of a bobolink concealed in the top of an apple tree behind me. . . . Methinks they are the most liquidly sweet and melodious sounds I ever heard.”); May 16, 1854 ("The earth is all fragrant as one flower. And bobolinks tinkle in the air. Nature now is perfectly genial to man.”) and note to May 12, 1856 (“We hear the first bobolink. . . How much life the note of the bobolink imparts to the meadow! ”)

June 2. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 2

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

The red huckleberry is as easily distinguished in the green state as when ripe.

August 17. 

P. M. — Walked with Minot Pratt behind his house. 

Hypericum Canadense well out at 2 p. m. 

Ludwigia alternifolia still with red or scarlet calyx-lobes to the seed, roadside this side H. Shattuck's.

Aster miser some time, turned purple. A. longifolius not long.

Hieracium Canadense. 

Pratt describes finding one or two small yellowish plants on the edge of his field under the hill, like a polygala, but twice as large, stiff, and points of the flowers turned down [?]; leaf clover-like, three-foliate. Russell had suggested genista. 

He has in his garden the mountain fringe (Adlumia cirrhosa), which grows in Maine and he thought in the western part of this State. 

Also wood geranium (G. dissectum (Big.)) from Fitzwilliam, though Gray seems to think that the Carolinianum has been mistaken for it. 

Rhus copallina already going to seed by the wall, apparently on what was W. E. C.'s ground. 

Saw again the red huckleberry and the white hardhack. The red huckleberry is as easily distinguished in the green state as when ripe. It is then red with a white cheek, often slightly pear-shaped, semitransparent with a lustre, very finely and indistinctly white-dotted. I do not perceive any very marked peculiarity in the bush, unless that the recent twigs are red. The last year's a peculiar ochreous color and the red buds in the axils larger. It might be called Gaylussacia resinosa var. erythrocarpa.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 17, 1856

Hieracium Canadense. See July 25, 1856 ("The Hieracium Canadense grows by the road fence in Potter's hydrocotyle field, some seven or eight inches high, in dense tufts!"); August 1, 1854 ("Hieracium Canadense,apparently a day or two."); October 2, 1856 ("Hieracium Canadense still quite fresh, with its very pretty broad strap-shaped rays, broadest at the end, alternately long and short, with five very regular sharp teeth in the end of each. "); see also August 21, 1851 (" I have now found all the hawkweeds. Singular these genera of plants, plants manifestly related yet distinct. They suggest a history to nature, a natural history in a new sense.”)


Saw again the red huckleberry. ... The red huckleberry is as easily distinguished in the green state as when ripeT he red huckleberry is . . .red with a white cheek, often slightly pear-shaped, semitransparent with a lustre, very finely and indistinctly white-dotted.. . .It might be called Gaylussacia resinosa var. erythrocarpa. See Augusst 4 , 1856 ("and, rising above these, large blue and also shining black huckleberries (Gaylussacia resinosa) of various flavors and qualities");  May 18, 1857 ("The red huckleberry looks more forward — blossom-buds more swollen — than those of common there."); June 7, 1857 ("Pratt has . . . Red huckleberry about same time. It is sticky like the black.") Compare August 2, 1853 ("John Legross brought me a quantity of red huckleberries yesterday. The less ripe are whitish. I suspect that these are the white huckleberries."); August 30, 1856 (“I noticed also a few small peculiar-looking huckleberries hanging on bushes amid the sphagnum, and, tasting, perceived that they were hispid, a new kind to me. Gaylussacia dumosa var. hirtella . . .. Has a small black hairy or hispid berry, shining but insipid and inedible, with a tough, hairy skin left in the mouth.”); august 7, 1858 (" find huckleberries which are distinctly pear-shaped, all of them. These and also other roundish ones near by, and apparently huckleberries generally, are dotted or apparently dusted over with a yellow dust or meal, which looks as if it could be rubbed off. Through a glass it looks like a resin which has exuded."); ,August 8, 1858 (I see [at Ledum  swamp][ especially near the pool, tall and slender huckleberry bushes of a peculiar kind. Some are seven feet high. They are, for the most part, three or four feet high, very slender and drooping, bent like grass to one side. The berries are round and glossy-black, with resinous dots, as usual, and in flattish-topped racemes, sometimes ten or twelve in a raceme, but generally more scattered. Call it, perhaps, the tall swamp huckleberry."")

How important the dark evergreens now; how interesting the huckleberries.

May 27

P. M. —To Fair Haven Pond, taking boat opposite Puffer’s. 

Still a very strong wind from northerly, and hazy and rather cool for season. 

The fields now begin to wear the aspect of June, their grass just beginning to wave; the light-colored withered grass seen between the blades, foliage thickening and casting darker shadows over the meadows, elm-tree-tops thick in distance, deciduous trees rapidly investing evergreens, haze with the strong wind. How important the dark evergreens now seen through the haze in the distance  and contrasting with the gauze-like, as yet thin-clad deciduous trees! They are like solid protuberances of earth. 

A thrasher’s nest on the bare open ground with four eggs which were seen three days ago. The nest is as open and exposed as it well can be, lined with roots, on a slight ridge where a rail fence has been, some rods from any bush. 

Saw the yellow-legs on one side flying over the meadow against the strong wind and at first mistook it for a hawk. It appeared now quite brown, with its white rump; and, excepting for its bill and head, I should have taken it for a hawk; between the size of male harrier and the male pigeon hawk, or say the size of a dove. It alighted on the shore. And now again I think it must be the large one. 

The blue yellow-back or parti-colored warbler still, with the chestnut crescent on breast, near my Kalmia Swamp nest. 

See a painted turtle on a hill forty or fifty feet above river, probably laying eggs. 

Some mountain sumach has grown one inch, some not started; some button-bush three inches, some not started. The first must be put after the last. 

Myosotis stricta under Cliffs, how long? 

The meadow fragrance to-day. 

How interesting the huckleberries now generally in blossom on the knoll below the Cliff — countless wholesome red bells, beneath the fresh yellow green foliage! The berry-bearing vaccinium! It is a rich sight. 

Geranium at Bittern Cliff, apparently several days, -and Arabis rhomboidea there in meadow, apparently still longer — say seven or eight days; but I am doubtful about the “slender style tipped with a conspicuous stigma.” 

Carrion-flower a foot high. Crimson gall on a shrub oak. 

A loose-spiked sedge at Bittern Cliff Meadow, — forgot to bring, — a foot high.

May 27, 2015

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 27, 1855

The fields now begin to wear the aspect of June, their grass just beginning to wave. . . foliage thickening and casting darker shadows over the meadows, elm-tree-tops thick in distance, deciduous trees rapidly investing evergreens. See May 27, 1853 ("A new season has commenced - summer - leafy June. The elms begin to droop and are heavy with shade."); May 22, 1855 ("The deciduous trees leafing begin to clothe or invest the evergreens.");  May 18, 1852 ("They are now being invested with the light, sunny, yellowish-green of the deciduous trees.").  See also May 19, 1860 ("The grass, especially the meadow-grasses, are seen to wave distinctly, and the shadows of the bright fair-weather cumuli are sweeping over them."); May 26, 1854 (At sight of this deep and dense field all vibrating with motion and light, winter recedes many degrees in my memory. . . . The season of grass, now everywhere green and luxuriant.”); May 28, 1858 (“These various shades of grass remind me of June.”); May 30, 1852 (Now is the summer come. . . . A day for shadows, even of moving clouds, over fields in which the grass is beginning to wave."); June 30, 1860 ("The foliage of deciduous trees is now so nearly as dark as evergreens that I am not struck by the contrast. The shadows under the edge of woods are less noticed now because the woods themselves are darker.")  See also note to June 6, 1855 ("The dark eye and shade of June").

A thrasher’s nest on the bare open ground with four eggs which were seen three days ago. See May 23, 1858 ("Brown thrasher's nest on ground, under a small tree, with four eggs"); May 28, 1855 ("I find the feathers apparently of a brown thrasher in the path, plucked since we passed here last night."); June 5, 1856 (" A brown thrasher’s nest with four eggs considerably developed, under a small white pine on the old north edge of the desert, lined with root-fibres.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Brown Thrasher

My Kalmia Swamp nest.  See May 26, 1855 ("What that neat song-sparrow-like nest of grass merely, in the wet sphagnum under the andromeda there, with three eggs, -- in that very secluded place, surrounded by the watery swamp and andromeda?")

How interesting the huckleberries now generally in blossom.  See May 26, 1859 ("Tall swamp huckleberry just budded to bloom."); May 28, 1854 ('' huckleberries . . . now generally in blossom, their rich clear red contrasting with the light-green leaves; frequented by honey-bees, full of promise for the summer."). See also December 30, 1860 ("the whortleberry family")

May 27. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 27

The fields now begin

to wear the aspect of June –

their grass just waving.

Now seen through the haze

dark evergreens contrast with 

deciduous trees.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  How important the dark evergreens now

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 © 2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-550527