The Concord River at Lowell

September 9.

In Lowell.-- My host says that the thermometer was at 80° yesterday morning, and this morning is at 52º. 

Sudden coolness.

Clears up in afternoon, and I walk down the Merrimack on the north bank.

I see very large plants of the lanceolate thistle, four feet high and very branching.

Also Aster cordata with the corymbosus.

Concord River has a high and hard bank at its mouth, maybe thirty feet high on the east side; and my host thinks it was originally about as high on the west side, where now it is much lower and flat, having been dug down.

There is a small isle in the middle of the mouth.

There are rips in the Merrimack just below the mouth of the Concord.

There is a fall and dam in the Concord at what was Hurd's factory, — the principal fall on the Concord, in Lowell, — one at a bleachery above, and at Whipple's, — three in all below Billerica dam.

  

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, September 9, 1860

A strong west wind, saving us from intolerable heat, accompanied by a blue haze, making the mountains invisible.

July 22. 

This morning, though perfectly fair except a haziness in the east, which prevented any splendor, the birds do not sing as yesterday. They appear to make distinctions which we cannot appreciate, and perhaps sing with most animation on the finest mornings. 

1 p. m. — Lee's Bridge, via Conantum; return by Clematis Brook. 

There men in the fields are at work thus indefatigably, more or less honestly getting bread for men. The writer should be employed with at least equal industry to an analogous though higher end.

Flocks of yellow-breasted, russet-backed female bobolinks are seen flitting stragglingly across the meadows. The bobolink loses his song as he loses his colors. 

Tansy is now conspicuous by the roadsides, covered with small red butterflies. It is not an uninteresting plant. I probably put it down a little too early. 

Is that a slender bellflower with entire leaves by the Corner road? 

The green berries of the arum are seen, and the now reddish fruit of the trillium, and the round green-pea-sized green berries of the axil-flowering Solomon's-seal. 

Farmers have commenced their meadow-haying. 

The Aster macrophyllus, large-leafed, in Miles's Swamp. 

Is not that the Lysimachia ciliata, or hairy-stalked loosestrife, by the Corner road, not the lanceolata? Eupatorium sessilifolium now whitish. 

A strong west wind, saving us from intolerable heat, accompanied by a blue haze, making the mountains invisible. We have more of the furnace-like heat to-day, after all. 

The Rhus glabra flowers are covered with bees, large yellowish wasps, and butterflies; they are all alive with them. How much account insects make of some flowers! There are other botanists than I. 

The Asclepias syriaca is going to seed. Here is a kingfisher frequenting the Corner Brook Pond. They find out such places. 

Huckleberrying and blackberrying have commenced. 

The round-leafed sundew. Monotropa uniflora, Indian- pipe. 

Solidago Canadensis (?) almost out.

Either a smooth Polygonum hydropiperoides or a white P. amphibium var. terrestre. 

The spear thistle. [Cirsium lanceolatum.]

Galium circcezans, wild liquorice, in Baker Farm Swamp. 

What is that minute whitish flower with an upright thread-like stem and thread-like linear leaves, with a kind of interrupted spike or raceme of small, whitish, erect, bell-like flowers, the corolla divided by a stout partition, from which projects the style, with three distinct segments in the edge of the bell each side of the partition? [Canada snapdragon.] 

Also found a very small narrow-leaved whitish aster (?).[Erigeron Canadensis.]

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 22, 1852

Flocks of yellow-breasted, russet-backed female bobolinks are seen flitting stragglingly across the meadows See August 15, 1852 (" I see a dense, compact flock of bobolinks going off in the air over a field. They cover the rails and alders, and go rustling off with a brassy, tinkling note as I approach, revealing their yellow breasts and bellies. This is an autumnal sight, that small flock of grown birds in the afternoon sky. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Bobolink

The green berries of the arum are seen. See September 28, 1856 ("The arum berries are still fresh and abundant, perhaps in their prime. A large cluster is two and a half inches long by two wide ")

The now reddish fruit of the trillium. See August 19, 1852 ("The trillium berries, six-sided, one inch in diameter, like varnished and stained cherry wood, glossy red, crystalline and ingrained, concealed under its green leaves in shady swamps. ")

The Aster macrophyllus, large-leafed, in Miles's Swamp. See August 9, 1856 ("The flowers of A. macrophyllus are white with a very slight bluish tinge, in a coarse flat-topped corymb. Flowers nine to ten eighths of an inch in diameter."); August 26, 1856 ("Aster macrophyllus, now in its prime. It grows large and rank, two feet high. On one I count seventeen central flowers withered, one hundred and thirty in bloom, and half as many buds.")

July 22. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 22

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 © 2009-2024

I paddle up the river to see the moonlight

July 12. 

Another hot day. 96° at mid-afternoon.

July 12, 2019

 P. M. — To Assabet Bath. 

The elm avenue above the Wheeler farm is one of the hottest places in the town; the heat is reflected from the dusty road. The grass by the roadside begins to have a dry, hot, dusty look. 

The melted ice is running almost in a stream from the countryman's covered wagon, containing butter, which is to be conveyed hard to Boston market. He stands on the wheel to relieve his horses at each shelf in the ascent of Colburn Hill. 

I think I have distinguished our eriophorums now. There is the E. vaginatum, the earliest, out long ago; the E. polystachyon, well out June 19th; and to-day I see the E. gracile, which apparently has not been out quite so long as the last. Its leaves are channelled triangular. Saw yesterday the E. Virginicum, apparently in bloom, though very little woolly or reddish as yet, — a dense head. 

The taller dark rhynchospora is well out. 

In the evening, the moon being about full, I paddle up the river to see the moonlight and hear the bullfrogs. The toads and the pebbly dont dont are most common. 

There are fireworks in the village, — rockets, blue lights, etc. I am so far off that I do not hear the rush of the rocket till it has reached its highest point, so that it seems to be produced there. So the villagers entertain themselves this warm evening. Such are the aspirations. 

I see at 9.30 p. m. a little brood of four or five barn swallows, which have quite recently left the nest, perched close together for the night on a dead willow twig in the shade of the tree, about four feet above the water. Their tails not yet much grown. When I passed up, the old bird twittered about them in alarm. I now float within four feet, and they do not move or give sign of awaking. I could take them all off with my hand. 

They have been hatched in the nearest barn or elsewhere, and have been led at once to roost here, for coolness and security. There is no cooler nor safer place for them. I observe that they take their broods to the telegraph-wire for an aerial perch, where they teach them to fly. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 12, 1859

 In the evening, the moon being about full, I paddle up the river to see the moonlight and hear the bullfrogs. See  July 17, 1856 ("Returning after ten, by moonlight, see the bullfrogs lying at full length on the pads where they trump.") ;May 8, 1857 ("The full moon rises, and I paddle by its light. It is an evening for the soft-snoring, purring frogs ");   July 8, 1854 ("The 4th and 5th were the hot bathing days thus far; thermometer at 98 and 96 respectively. 8 p. m. — Full moon . . The moon reflected from the rippled surface like a stream of dollars."); Also July 6, 1851 ("I walked by night last moon, and saw its disk reflected in Walden Pond, the broken disk, now here, now there, a pure and memorable flame unearthly bright.")

Another hot day. 96° at mid-afternoon. See June 21, 1856 ("Very hot day, as was yesterday, -— 98° at 2 P. M., 99° at 3"); June 30, 1855 ("2 P. M. -- Thermometer north side of house, 95°");June 29, 1860 ("At 6 P.M. 91°, the hottest yet."); July 13, 1852 ("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"). 


A little brood of four or five barn swallows perched close together for the night on a dead willow twig above the water. I now float within four feet, and they do not move or give sign of awaking.See July 12, 1854 ("Many young barn swallows sit in flocks on the bared dead willows over the water and let me float within four or five feet. Birds do not distinguish a man sitting in a boat.")

They take their broods to the telegraph-wire for an aerial perch, where they teach them to fly. See July 12, 1852 ("I observed this morning a row of several dozen swallows perched on the telegraph-wire by the bridge, and ever and anon a part of them would launch forth as with one consent, circle a few moments over the water or meadow, and return to the wire again.")

July 12. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, July 12

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

Another hot day with blue haze.

July 11. 

July 11, 2015

Another hot day with blue haze, and the sun sets red, threatening still hotter weather, and the very moon looks through a somewhat reddish air at first. 

The position of the button-bushes determines the width of the river, no less than the width or depth of the water determines the position of the button-bushes. We call that all river between the button-bushes, though sometimes they may have landed or sprung up in a regular brink fashion three or four rods further from, or nearer to, the channel. 

That mass (described on the 9th, seen the 10th) in the Wayland meadows above Sherman's Bridge was, I think, the largest mass drifted or growing at all on that great meadow. So this transplantation is not on an insignificant scale when compared with [the] whole body that grows by our river. The largest single mass on the Wayland meadows, considering both length and breadth, was the recently drifted one. 

To-day the farmer owns a meadow slightly inclined toward the river and generally (i. e. taking the year together) more or less inundated on that side. Tomorrow it is a meadow quite cut off from the river by a fence of button-bush and black willow, a rod or more in width and four to seven or eight feet high, set along the inundated side and concealing the river from sight.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 11, 1859

Another hot day with blue haze, and the sun sets red, threatening still hotter weather. See July 11, 1857 ("Looking off into the vales from Fair Haven Hill  . . . a thin blue haze now rests almost universally . . . Thermometer at 93°+ this afternoon.")

That mass (described on the 9th, seen the 10th) in the Wayland meadows above Sherman's Bridge. See July 9, 1859 ("I see, just above Sherman's Bridge, on the east side, a piece, some eight rods long by one rod wide, arranged as a brink separating a meadow from the river in the same manner, and, a quarter of a mile higher up on the same side, a more or less broken piece which I estimated by my eye to be five rods by twelve, the largest mass or collection of the kind moved together that I ever saw.”)

July 11. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 11

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

A very hot day

JULY 4, 2019

July 4. 

A sultry night the last; bear no covering; all windows open. 

8 a. m. — To Framingham. 

Great orange-yellow lily, some days, wild yellow lily, drooping, well out. 

Asclepias obtusifolia, also day or two. 

Some chestnut trees show at distance as if blossoming. 

Buckwheat, how long ? I probably saw 

Asclepias purpurascens (??) over the walls. 

A very hot day.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 4, 1854

To Framingham. See June 11, 1854 ("To Framingham with Mrs. Brown.")

Asclepias obtusifolia, also day or two. See June 29, 1853 ("Asclepias obtusifolia, a day or two.");  September 21, 1856 ("The Asclepias obtusifolia . . . A fairy-like casket, shaped like a canoe, with its closely packed imbricated brown seeds, with their yet compressed silvery parachutes like finest unsoiled silk in the right position above them, ready to be wafted some dry and breezy day to their destined places.”)

Some chestnut trees show at distance as if blossoming. See July 14, 1860 ("Perceive now the light-colored tops of chestnuts in bloom, and, when I come near them, an offensive, sickening odor, somewhat like that of the barberry blossoms, but worse.")

A very hot day. See July 3, 1854 ("It is gloriously hot, — the first of this weather.")

Such is the first hot weather.

May 7 

May  7, 2019

Saturday. Surveying Damon's Acton lot. 

It is hotter still, — 88° or more, as I hear in the afternoon. 

I frequently see pigeons dashing about in small flocks, or three or four at a time, over the woods here. Theirs is a peculiarly swift, dashing flight. 

The mayflower is still sparingly in bloom on what I will call Mayflower Path in this lot. It is almost the prevailing undershrub here. 

I think I hear the redstart. 

To-day and yesterday the sunlight is peculiarly yellow, on account of the smoky haze. I notice its peculiar yellowness, almost orange, even when, coming through a knot-hole in a dark room, it falls on the opposite wall. 

Such is the first hot weather.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 7, 1856

The mayflower is still sparingly in bloom on what I will call Mayflower Path. See May 7, 1854 ("As I ascend Cliff Hill, the two leaves of the Solomon's-seal now spot the forest floor, pushed up amid the dry leaves.")  April 12, 1858 ("Surveying part of William P. Brown's wood-lot in Acton, west of factory . . . I find the mayflower, but not in bloom. It appears to be common thereabouts."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Two-leaved Solomon's Seal ( Canada mayflower or false lily-of-the-valley)

I think I hear the redstart. See May 16, 1858 (“See and hear a redstart, the rhythm of whose strain is tse'-tse, tse'-tse, tse', emphasizing the last syllable of all and not ending with the common tsear”); May 17, 1856 (“At the Kalmia Swamp, see and hear the redstart, very lively and restless, flirting and spreading its reddish tail.”) See also  A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The American Redstart

May 7. See A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 7

Sunlight coming through 

a knot-hole in a dark room –

yellow, almost orange. 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Such is the first hot weather.

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-560507

*****

A sunset walk. We walk to the view getting a late start, around 630 At the view there are beacons of light shining at spots all over the landscape through broken clouds. Parts of the lake are illuminated parts of the golf course suddenly bright bright green. 

The maple leaves are now lacy against the sky and probably will be forming shadows. The small maples go straight to leaf but the adult trees still have no leaves. This spring green color of the tree flowers is coloring the valley and the grass is bright green.

It is obviously going to be an incredibly good sunset. Gradually the clouds break up and we see the peachy orange color in the west. The mountains are blue to dark purple. Whiteface is concealed.

We wait until the sun is down and then notice the beam of red light illuminating the clouds behind the Adirondacks like a red fan silhouetting the mountains. Many pictures to document this beautiful evening.

Meanwhile through the hike we hear the hermit thrush,'the wood thrush, the oven bird, the black throated green the sapsuckers tapping and perhaps others. Rose breasted grosbeak –we have been been waiting for it; today it first is heard.

Just as the sun sets the peepers in the lower pond start up in earnest.

  zphx 20190507

Young red maples suddenly bursting into leaf are very conspicuous now in the woods,

May 6. 

Surveying for Willis & Damon at the factory. 

Hear the tea-lee of the white-throat sparrow. 

It is suddenly very warm and oppressive, especially in the woods with thick clothing. 

Viola pedata begins to be common about white pine woods there.

While surveying this forenoon behind Willis's house on the shore of the mill-pond, I saw remarkable swarms of that little fuzzy gnat (Tipulidae). Hot as it was, — oppressively so, — they were collected in the hollows in the meadow, apparently to be out of the way of the little breeze that there was, and in many such places in the meadow, within a rod of the water, the ground was perfectly concealed by them. Nay, much more than that. I saw one shallow hollow some three feet across which was completely filled with them, all in motion but resting one upon another, to the depth, as I found by measurement with a stick, of more than an inch, — a living mass of insect life. There were a hundred of these basins full of them, and I then discovered that what I had mistaken for some black dye on the wet shore was the bodies of those that were drowned and washed up, blackening the shore in patches for many feet together like so much mud. We were also troubled by getting them into our mouths and throats and eyes. 

This insect resembles the plate of the Chironomus plumosus ("Library of Entertaining Knowledge, Insect Transformations," page 305), also the Corethra plumicornis (page 287), both of which live at first in the water, like the mosquito. 

Young red maples suddenly bursting into leaf are very conspicuous now in the woods, among the most prominent of all shrubs or trees. The sprouts are reddish. 

Hear yellow-throat vireo, and probably some new warblers. 

See the strong-scented wood ants in a stump. 

Black suckers, so called, are being speared at the factory bridge.

This is about the last of the very dry leaves in the woods, for soon the ground will be shaded by expanded green leaves. It is quite hazy, if not smoky, and I smell smoke in the air, this hot day. 

My assistants, being accustomed to work indoors in the factory, are quite overcome by this sudden heat. The old leaves and earth are driest now, just before the new leaves expand and when the heat is greatest. 

I see the black traces of many a recent fire in the woods, especially in young woods. At evening I hear the first sultry buzz of a fly in my chamber, telling of sultry nights to come.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 6, 1859

Viola pedata begins to be common about white pine woods there. See May 10, 1858 ("How much expression there is in the Viola pedata! I do not know on the whole but it is the handsomest of them all, it is so large and grows in such large masses.") See also  May 5, 1853 ("The Emerson children found blue and white violets May 1st at Hubbard's Close, probably Viola ovata and blanda; but I have not been able to find any yet."); May 5, 1859  ("V. pedata and lanceolata rarer yet, or not seen.")  May 6, 1852 (“The first Viola blanda (sweet-scented white), in the moist ground by this spring.”);  May 6, 1855 ("Viola lanceolata, yesterday at least. . . .Two or three rods this side of John Hosmer’s pitch pines, beyond Clamshell, some white Viola ovata, some with a faint bluish tinge. ")// Also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Violets

I saw remarkable swarms of that little fuzzy gnat (Tipulidae). See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Fuzzy Gnat

Young red maples suddenly bursting into leaf are very conspicuous now in the woods. Compare May 6, 1855 ("The young sugar maples leafing are more conspicuous now than any maples.”) . See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Spring Leaf-Out

Hear yellow-throat vireo, and probably some new warblers. See May 6, 1852 ("Hear the first warbling vireo this morning on the elms. This almost makes a summer.”); May 7, 1852 ("One or more little warblers in the woods this morning are new to the season, . . .The first wave of summer from the south.”)


An evening hike it’s been a perfectly blue sky  and puffy white clouds day we hear the first tree frog of the season somewhere past the junction. I stop and cut a hop hornbeam there, dispose of the top over the bank and leave the trunk along one of the trails. I see there the sedge flowering for the first time. The spring beauties are out in profusion and  I smell them now the sweet smell of spring. They’re everywhere in the woods but seemingly thriving more so in the paths The sun is still a couple of hours high, but quite a bit north right in front of the view. We sit long enough for the sky below the clouds to have an orangey peach tint. There seems to be an oven bird trying to sing. We go down past the middle pond and approaching the top of  middle ridge I hear the first wood thrush. We spend a long time listening. It sings in groups of four  phrases which it repeats. One -- after the throat clearing – starts with  a bursting  high note.  More trail cleaning on a spur trail on the way out and home at dusk to feed the dogs. 20190586: tree frog wood thrush oven bird black-throated green spring beauties

A botanist in pursuit of grasses tramples down oaks in his walk.

September 9. 

P. M. — To Waban Cliff. 

A very hot day, — 90°, as I hear. Yesterday was hot, too. 

Now it is about time to gather elder-berries. 

Many Viola cucullata have opened again. 

What is that short squeaking note heard from time to time from amid the weeds on the west side the river at Hubbard’s Bath? 

There are broad patches, sometimes of several acres, on the edge of the meadow, where it is wettest and weediest, which the farmers do not mow. There especially stands the brown-headed wool-grass. There are small tracts still, as it were, in their primitive condition, — wild tracts where the bittern rises and where, no doubt, the meadow-hen lurks.

(Was it the note of the last I heard?)

Heard a short plover-like note from a bird flying high across the river. 

Watched a little dipper some ten rods off with my glass, but I could see no white on the breast. It was all black and brownish, and head not enlarged. Who knows how many little dippers are sailing and sedulously diving now along the edge of the pickerel-weed and the button-bushes on our river, unsuspected by most? 

This hot September afternoon all may be quiet amid the weeds, but the dipper, and the bittern, and the yellow legs, and the blue heron, and the rail are silently feeding there. At length the walker who sits meditating on a distant bank sees the little dipper sail out from amid the weeds and busily dive for its food along their edge: Yet ordinary eyes might range up and down the river all day and never detect its small black head above the water. 

It requires a different intention of the eye in the same locality to see different plants, as, for example, Juncaceoa and Gramineoe; even; i. e., I find that when I am looking for the former, I do not see the latter in their midst. 

How much more, then, it requires different intentions of the eye and of the mind to attend to different departments of knowledge! How differently the poet and the naturalist look at objects! A man sees only what concerns him. A botanist absorbed in the pursuit of grasses does not distinguish the grandest pasture oaks. He as it were tramples down oaks unwittingly in his walk. 

Bidens cernua, how long?


The river is about at its height to-day or yesterday. Much bur-reed and heart-leaf is floating and washed up, apparently the first important contribution to the river wrack. The sportsman will paddle a boat now five or six miles, and wade in water up to his knees, being out all day without his dinner, and think himself amply compensated if he bags two or three yellow-legs. The most persistent and sacrificing endeavors are necessary to success in any direction. 

Woodbine scarlet, like a brilliant scarf on high, wrapped around the stem of a green tree. By a blush betrays where it hangs upon an elm. 

I find an abundance of beaked hazelnuts at Blackberry Steep, one to three burs together, but, gathering them, I get my fingers full of fine shining bristles, while the common hazel burs are either smooth or covered with a softer glandular down; i. e., its horns are brazen tipped. 

Under the rocks near the slippery elm, the Gymnostichum Hystrix, bottle-brush grass, hedgehog grass, long done. 

Rice says he saw two meadow-hens when getting his hay in Sudbury some two months ago, and that they breed there. They kept up a peculiar note. My egg (named Sept. 7th) was undoubtedly a meadow-hen’s Rallus Virginiana. 

R. says that he has caught pigeons which had ripe grapes in their crops long before any were ripe here, and that they came from the south west. 

We live in the same world with the Orientals, far off as they may seem. Nature is the same here to a chemist’s tests. 

The weeping willow (Salix Babylonica) will grow here. The peach, too, has been transplanted, and is agreeable to our palates. So are their poetry and philosophy near and agreeable to us.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 9, 1858

It requires a different intention of the eye in the same locality to see different plants. A man sees only what concerns him. A botanist absorbed in the pursuit of grasses does not distinguish the grandest pasture oaks. See  November 18 1851 ("A man can hardly be said to be there if he knows that he is there, or to go there if he knows where he is going.".); September 13, 1852 ("I must walk more with free senses. I must let my senses wander as my thoughts, my eyes see without looking. Carlyle said that how to observe was to look, but I say that it is rather to see, and the more you look the less you will observe. Be not preoccupied with looking. Go not to the object; let it come to you. What I need is not to look at all, but a true sauntering of the eye."); March 23, 1853 ("Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at Nature directly, but only with the side of his eye."); June 14, 1853 (". . . you are in that favorable frame of mind described by De Quincey, open to great impressions, and you see those rare sights with the unconscious side of the eye, which you could not see by a direct gaze before.”); December 11, 1855 ("It is only necessary to behold thus the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair’s breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance.”); April 28, 1856 ("Again, as so many times, I am reminded of the advantage to the poet, and philosopher, and naturalist, and whomsoever, of pursuing from time to time some other business than his chosen one, — seeing with the side of the eye.") July 2, 1857 (“Many an object is not seen, though it falls within the range of our visual ray, because it does not come within the range of our intellectual ray, i. e., we are not looking for it. So, in the largest sense, we find only the world we look for.”); October 13, 1857 (“We ordinarily do not see what is before us, but what our prejudices presume to be there.”); November 4, 1858 ("Objects are concealed from our view not so much because they are out of the course of our visual ray (continued) as because there is no intention of the mind and eye toward them”) Autumnal tints.("Objects are concealed from our view, not so much because they are out of the course of our visual ray as because we do not bring our minds and eyes to bear on them”)

Many Viola cucullata have opened again. See September 4, 1856 (“Viola pedata again.”); September 10, 1857 ("I see lambkill ready to bloom a second time.”); September 16, 1852 (“Some birds, like some flowers, begin to sing again in the fall.”); and note to October 10, 1856 ("Indian summer itself is a similar renewal of the year, with the faint warbling of birds and second blossoming of flowers.”)

There are broad patches, sometimes of several acres, on the edge of the meadow, where it is wettest and weediest, which the farmers do not mow. There are small tracts still, as it were, in their primitive condition, — wild tracts where the bittern rises and where, no doubt, the meadow-hen lurks. See Walden (“Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it. We need the tonic of wildness, — to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.”); Walking (“A town is saved by the woods and swamps that surround it.”); January 22, 1852 (“I see, one mile to two miles distant on all sides from my window, the woods, which still encircle our New England towns. They still bound almost every view. They have been driven off only so far. Where still wild creatures haunt. How long will these last?”)

The smooth sumach’s lower leaves are bright-scarlet on dry hills.

August 31. 

P. M. — To Flint’s Pond. 

A hot afternoon. We have had but few warmer. 

wood aster
August 31, 2018

I hear and see but few bobolinks or blackbirds for several days past. The former, at least, must be withdrawing. I have not heard a seringo of late, but I see to-day one golden robin. 

The birches have lately lost a great many of their lower leaves, which now cover and yellow the ground. Also some chestnut leaves have fallen. Many brakes inthe woods are perfectly withered. 

At the Pout’s Nest, Walden, I find the Scirpus debilis, apparently in prime, generally aslant; also the Cyperus dentatus, with some spikes changed into leafy tufts; also here less advanced what I have called Juncus acuminatus. 

Ludwigia alternifolia still. Sericocarpus about done. 

High blackberries are abundant in Britton’s field. At a little distance you would not suspect that there were any, — even vines, — for the racemes are bent down out of sight, amid the dense sweet-ferns and sumachs, etc. The berries still not more than half black or ripe, keeping fresh in the shade. Those in the sun are a little wilted and insipid. 

The smooth sumach’s lower leaves are bright-scarlet on dry hills. 

Lobelia Dortmanna is not quite done. 

Some ground-nuts are washed out. 

The Flint’s Pond rush appears to be Cladium mariscoides, twig rush, or, in Bigelow, water bog rush, a good while out of bloom; style three-cleft. It is about three feet high. This, with Eleocharis palustris, which is nearest the shore, forms the dense rushy border of the pond. It extends along the whole of this end, at least about four rods wide, and almost every one of the now dry and brown flower-heads has a cobweb on it. I perceive that the slender semicircular branchlets so fit to the grooved or flattened culm as still, when pressed against it, to make it cylindrical! —very neatly. 

The monotropa is still pushing up. Red choke-berry, apparently not long. 

At Goose Pond I scare up a small green bittern. It plods along low, a few feet over the surface, with limping flight, and alights on a slender water-killed stump, and voids its excrement just as it starts again, as if to lighten itself. 

Edward Bartlett brings me a nest found three feet from the ground in an arbor-vitae, in the New Burying Ground, with one long-since addled egg in it. It is a very thick, substantial nest, five or six inches in diameter and rather deep; outwardly of much coarse stubble with its fine root-fibres attached, loose and dropping off, around a thin casing of withered leaves; then finer stubble within, and a lining of fine grass stems and horse hair. 

The nest is most like that found on Cardinal Shore with an addled pale-bluish egg, which I thought a wood thrush’s at first, except that that has no casing of leaves. It is somewhat like a very large purple finch’s nest, or perchance some red-wing’s with a hair lining. 

The egg is three quarters of an inch long, rather broad at one end (or for length), greenish-white with brown dashes or spots, becoming a large conspicuous purple-brown blotch at the large end; almost exactly like — but a little greener (or bluer) and a little smaller — the egg found on the ground in R. W. E.’s garden. 

Do the nest and egg belong together? Was not the egg dropped by a bird of passage in another’s nest? Can it be an indigo-bird’s nest? I take it to be too large.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 31, 1858

The birches have lately lost a great many of their lower leaves, which now cover and yellow the ground.  See August 13, 1854 (“At Thrush Alley, I am surprised to behold how many birch leaves have turned yellow, — every other one, — while clear, fresh, leather-colored ones strew the ground with a pretty thick bed under each tree.”); August 31, 1856 (“The birches on Wheeler's meadow have begun to yellow, apparently owing to the [high] water.”)

High blackberries are abundant in Britton’s field. At a little distance you would not suspect that there were any. See note to August 31, 1857 (“An abundance of fine high blackberries behind Britton's old camp on the Lincoln road, now in their prime there, which have been overlooked.”)

Some ground-nuts are washed out. See August 31, 1857  (“Am surprised to see on the bottom and washing up on to the shore many little farinaceous roots or tubers like very small potatoes, in strings. . . . I never saw so many ground-nuts before.”)

A small green bittern plods along low, a few feet over the surface, with limping flight.  See  May 16, 1855  ("A green bittern with its dark-green coat and crest, sitting watchful, goes off with a limping peetweet flight.”); August 2, 1856 ("A green bittern comes, noiselessly flapping, with stealthy and inquisitive looking to this side the stream and then that, thirty feet above the water.") and note to July 30, 1856 ("A green bittern. . .with heavy flapping flight, its legs dangling")

A bobolink's egg.

June 24. 

Very hot weather. 

Aralia hispida at Cliffs. 

Epilobium, how long? 

Storrow Higginson gives me a bobolink's egg. It is a regular oval, seven eighths by five eighths inch. It is a dark cream-color with pretty large spots of brown, sometimes blackish, chiefly at the large end, and very faint, more internal pale-purplish spots equally dispersed.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 24, 1858

A bobolink's egg. It is a dark cream-color with pretty large spots of brown, sometimes blackish. See June 12, 1857 (“ At Natural History Rooms. — The egg found on ground in R. W. E.'s garden some weeks since cannot be the bobolink's, for that is about as big as a bay-wing's but more slender, dusky-white, with numerous brown and black blotches.”)

We are baptized into nature.

May 25.

P. M. — With Ricketson to my boat under Fair Haven Hill. 

In Hubbard's Grove, hear the shrill chattering of downy woodpeckers, very like the red squirrel's tche tche. 

Thermometer at 87° at 2.30 p. m. 

It is interesting to hear the bobolinks from the meadow sprinkle their lively strain along amid the tree-tops as they fly over the wood above our heads. It resounds in a novel manner through the aisles of the wood, and at the end that fine buzzing, wiry note. 

The black spruce of Holden's, apparently yesterday, but not the 23d. 

What a glorious crimson fire as you look up to the sunlight through the thin edges of the scales of its cones! So intensely glowing in their cool green beds! while their purplish sterile blossoms shed pollen on you. 

Took up four young spruce and brought them home in the boat. 

After all, I seem to have distinguished only one spruce, and that the black, judging by the cones, — perhaps the dark and light varieties of it, for the last is said to be very like the white spruce. The white spruce cones are cylindrical and have an entire firm edge to the scales, and the needles are longer. 

Though the river is thus high, we bathe at Cardinal Shore and find the water unexpectedly warm and the air also delicious. Thus we are baptized into nature.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 25, 1857

What a glorious crimson fire as you look up to the sunlight through the thin edges of the scales of its cones! . . . while their purplish sterile blossoms shed pollen on you. See May 21, 1857 ("The staminate buds of the black spruce are quite a bright red."); May 22, 1856 ("The red and cream-colored cone-shaped staminate buds of the black spruce will apparently shed pollen in one to three days?"); June 10, 1855 (" The white spruce cones are now a rich dark purple, more than a half inch long.")

Thus we are baptized into nature. See May 23, 1857 ("I wade in the swamp for the kalmia, amid the water andromeda and the sphagnum, scratching my legs with the first and sinking deep in the last. The water is now gratefully cool to my legs, so far from being poisoned in the strong water of the swamp. It is a sort of baptism for which I had waited. ")

We want no completeness but intensity of life.

May 24. 

A. M. — To Hill.

White ash, apparently yesterday, at Grape Shore but not at Conantum. What a singular appearance for some weeks its great masses of dark-purple anthers have made, fruit-like on the trees! 

A very warm morning. Now the birds sing more than ever, methinks, now, when the leaves are fairly expanding, the first really warm summer days. 

The water on the meadows is perfectly smooth nearly all the day. 

At 3 p. m. the thermometer is at 88°. 

It soon gets to be quite hazy. 

Apple out. 

Heard one speak to-day of his sense of awe at the thought of God, and suggested to him that awe was the cause of the potato-rot. 

The same speaker dwelt on the sufferings of life, but my advice was to go about one's business, suggesting that no ecstasy was ever interrupted, nor its fruit blasted. As for completeness and roundness, to be sure, we are each like one of the laciniae of a lichen, a torn fragment, but not the less cheerfully we expand in a moist day and assume unexpected colors. We want no completeness but intensity of life. 

Hear the first cricket as I go through a warm hollow, bringing round the summer with his everlasting strain.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 24, 1857

At 3 p. m. the thermometer is at 88°. See May 24, 1856 ("To-day is suddenly overpowering warm. Thermometer at 1 P. M., 94° in the shade!")

It soon gets to be quite hazy. See May 24, 1860 ("Looking into the northwest horizon, I see that Wachusett is partially concealed by a haze.")

We each ... assume unexpected colors. We want no completeness but intensity of life. See October 18, 1856 ("[L]ife is everything. All that interests the reader is the depth and intensity of the life excited.")

Hear the first cricket as I go through a warm hollow, bringing round the summer . . . . See May 22, 1854 ("Only in their saner moments do men hear the crickets."); May 26, 1852 ("To-night I hear many crickets. They have commenced their song. They bring in the summer.")

May 24. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 24 

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