To see the lilies open

July 4.  Sunday.

July 4, 2022

3 A. M. - To Conantum, to see the lilies open.

I hear an occasional crowing of cocks in distant barns, as has been their habit for how many thousand years. It was so when I was young; and it will be so when I am old.

I hear the croak of a tree-toad as I am crossing the yard.

I am surprised to find the dawn so far advanced.  There is a yellowish segment of light in the east, paling a star and adding sensibly to the light of the waning and now declining moon.

There is very little dew on the uplands.

I hear a little twittering and some clear singing from the seringo and the song sparrow as I go along the back road, and now and then the note of a bullfrog from the river.

The light in the east has acquired a reddish tinge near the horizon.  Small wisps of cloud are already fuscous and dark, seen against the light, as in the west at evening.

It being Sunday morning, I hear no early stirring farmer driving over a bridge.  The crickets are not remarkably loud at this season. The sound of a whip-poor-will is wafted from the woods.  Now, on the Corner road, the hedges are alive with twittering sparrows, a bluebird or two, etc. 

The daylight now balances the moonlight.

How short the nights! The last traces of day have not disappeared much before 10 o'clock, or perchance 9.30, and before 3 A. M. you see them again in the east, probably 2.30, leaving about five hours of solid night, the sun so soon coming round again.

The robins sing, but not so loud and long as in the spring. I have not been awakened by them latterly in the mornings. Is it my fault? 

Ah! those mornings when you are awakened in the dawn by the singing, the matins, of the birds!

 

I hear the dumping sound of frogs now on the causeway.

Some small clouds in the east are reddish fuscous. There is no fog on the river nor in the meadows.

The kingbird twitters (?) on the black willows.

Methinks I saw the not yet extinguished lights of one or two fireflies in the darker ruts in the grass, in Conant's meadow.

The moon yields to the sun. She pales even in the presence of his dawn.

It is chiefly the spring birds that I hear at this hour, and in each dawn the spring is thus revived.

The notes of the sparrows and the bluebirds and the robin have a prominence now which they have not by day.

The light is more and more general, and some low bars begin to look bluish as well as reddish. (Else-where the sky wholly clear of clouds.) The dawn is at this stage far lighter than the brightest moonlight. I write by it. Yet the sun will not rise for some time.

Those bars are reddening more purplish, or lilac rather, light in the eastern sky. (And now, descending to the Cliff by the riverside, I cannot see the low horizon and its phenomena.)

I love to go through these old apple orchards so irregularly set out. Sometimes two trees standing close together. The rows of grafted fruit will never tempt me to wander amid them like these.

A bittern leaves the shore at my approach. I suppose it is he whose excrement has whitened the rocks, as if a mason had spilled his whitewash.

A nighthawk squeaks and booms, before sunrise.

The insects shaped like shad-flies (some which I see are larger and yellowish) begin to leave their cases (and selves?) on the stems of the grasses and the rushes in the water. I find them so weak they can hardly hold on.

I hear the black-bird's conqueree, and the kingfisher darts away with his alarum and outstretched neck.

Every lily is shut.

Sunrise. I see it gilding the top of the hill behind me, but the sun itself is concealed by the hills and woods on the east shore.

A very slight fog begins to rise now in one place on the river.

There is something serenely glorious and memorable to me in the sight of the first cool sunlight now gilding the eastern extremity of the bushy island in Fair Haven, that wild lake.

The subdued light and the repose remind me of Hades. In such sunlight there is no fever. It is such an innocent pale yellow as the spring flowers. It is the pollen of the sun, fertilizing plants. The color of the earliest spring flowers is as cool and innocent as the first rays of the sun in the morning falling on woods and hills.

The fog not only rises upward (about two feet), but at once there is a motion from the sun over the surface.

What means this endless motion of water-bugs collected in little groups on the surface and ceaselessly circling about their centre, as if they were a family hatched from the eggs on the under side of a pad? Is not this motion intended partly to balk the fishes? Methinks they did not begin to move till sunrise. Where were they? 

And now I see an army of skaters advancing in loose array, of chasseurs or scouts, as Indian allies are drawn in old books.

Now the rays of the sun have reached my seat, a few feet above the water; flies begin to buzz, mosquitoes to be less troublesome.

A hummingbird hums by over the pads up the river, as if looking, like myself, to see if lilies have blossomed.

The birds begin to sing generally, and, if not loudest, at least most noticeably on account of the quietness of the hour, just before -- a few minutes before -- sunrise. They do not sing so incessantly and earnestly, as a regular thing, half an hour later.

Carefully looking both up and down the river, I could perceive that the lilies began to open about fifteen minutes after the sun from over the opposite bank fell on them, which was perhaps three quarters of an hour after sunrise (which is about 4.30), and one was fully expanded about twenty minutes later.  When I returned over the bridge about 6.15, there were perhaps a dozen open ones in sight. 

It was very difficult to find one not injured by insects.  Even the buds which were just about to expand were frequently bored quite through, and the water had rotted them. You must be on hand early to anticipate insects.

One thimble-berry which will be quite ripe by to-morrow.

Indigo almost expanded.

I perceive the meadow fragrance on the causeway.

Bobolinks still.

I bring home a dozen perfect lily buds, — all I can find within many rods, — which have never yet opened; I prepare a large pan of water; I cut their stems quite short; I turn back their calyx-leaves with my fingers, so that they may float upright; I touch the points of their petals, and breathe or blow on them, and toss them in. They spring open rapidly, or gradually expand in the course of an hour, all but one or two. 

At 12.30 P. M., I perceive that the lilies in the river have begun to shut up. The water has gone down so much that I can stand on the shore and pluck as many as I want, and they are the fairest ones, concealed by the pickerel-weed, often the whole plant high and dry. I go again to the river at 2.30 P. M., and every lily is shut.

I will here tell the history of my rosaceous lilies plucked the 1st of July.

• They were buds at the bottom of a pitcher of water all the 2d, having been kept in my hat part of the day before.
• On the morning of the 3d I assisted their opening, and put them in water, as I have described; but they did not shut up at noon, like those in the river, but at dark, their petals, at least, quite tight and close.
• They all opened again in the course of the forenoon of the 4th, but had not shut up at 10 o'clock P. M., though I found them shut in the morning of the 5th.

May it be that they can bear only a certain amount of light, and these, being in the shade, remained open longer? ( I think not, for they shut up in the river that quite cloudy day, July 1st.) Or is their vitality too little to permit [them] to perform their regu- lar functions? 

Can that meadow fragrance come from the purple summits of the eupatorium? 

I looked down on the river behind Dodd's at 2.30 P. M., a slate-colored stream with a scarcely perceptible current, with a male and female shore; the former, more abrupt, of button-bushes and willows, the other, flat, of grass and pickerel-weed alone. Beyond the former, the water being deep, extends a border or fringe of green and purplish pads lying perfectly flat on the surface, but on the latter side the pads extend a half a rood or a rod beyond the pickerel-weed, — shining pads reflecting the light, dotted with white or yellow lilies. This sort of ruff does the river wear, and so the land is graduated off to water.

A tender place in nature, an exposed vein, and nature making a feint to bridge it quite over with a paddy film, with red-winged black- birds liquidly warbling and whistling on the willows, and kingbirds on the elms and oaks; these pads, if there is any wind, rippling with the water and helping to smooth and allay it. It looks tender and exposed, as if it were naturally subterranean, and now, with these shields of pads, held scale-like by long threads from the bottom, she makes a feint to bridge it.

So floats the Musketaquid over its segment of the sphere.

Methinks there is not even a lily, white or yellow, in Walden.

I see perfectly formed pouts by the shore of the river, one inch long.

The great spatterdock lily is a rich yellow at a little distance, and, seen lying on its great pads, it is an indispensable evidence of the fertility of the river.  The gratiola begins to yellow the mud by the riverside. The Lysimachia lanceolata var. hybrida is out, in the meadows. 

The Rosa nitida (?) appears to be now out of bloom.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 4, 1852

the light of the waning and now declining moon. See June 30, 1852 ('Moon nearly full; rose a little before sunset.") See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, July Moonlight

To see the lilies open. See June 21, 1853 ("4.30 A.M.––Up river for lilies . . .The few lilies begin to open about 5."); July 1, 1852 ("...to see the white lilies in blossom...to breathe the atmosphere of lilies, and get the full impression which lilies are fitted to make"); July 11, 1852 ("The first lily I noticed opened about half an hour after sunrise, or at 5 o'clock."); July 17, 1854 ("I go to observe the lilies . . .I think that I could tell when it was 12 o'clock within half an hour by the lilies.")

They shut up in the river that quite cloudy day, July 1st. See July 1, 1852 ("The freshly opened lilies are a pearly white, and though the water amid the pads is quite unrippled, the passing air gives a slight oscillating, boat-like motion to and fro to the flowers, like boats held fast by their cables.After eating our luncheon at Rice's landing, I can not find one open anywhere for the rest of the day.")

The Rosa nitida (?) appears to be now out of bloom. See June 16, 1854 ("The Rosa nitida grows along the edge of the ditches, the half-open flowers showing the deepest rosy tints, so glowing that they make an evening or twilight of the surrounding afternoon, seeming to stand in the shade or twilight. Already the bright petals of yesterday's flowers are thickly strewn along on the black mud at the bottom of the ditch."); July 8, 1854 ("The Rosa nitida I think has [been] some time done") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Rose

Southeast wind with clouds hummingbird in the garden I suspect a storm.

September 15.

September 15, 2018

I have not seen not heard a bobolink for some days at least, numerous as they were three weeks ago, and even fifteen days. They depart early. 

I hear a nuthatch occasionally, but it reminds me of winter. 

P. M. — To Walden. I paddle about the pond, for a rarity. 

The eriocaulon, still in bloom there, standing thinly about the edge, where it is stillest and shallowest, in the color of its stern and radical leaves is quite in harmony with the glaucous water. Its radical leaves and fine root-fibres form a peculiar loose but thick and continuous carpet or rug on the sandy bottom, which you can lift up in great flakes, exposing the fine white beaded root-fibres. This evidently affords retreats for the fishes, musquash, etc., etc., and you can see where it has been lifted up into galleries by them. 

I see one or two pickerel poised over it. They, too, are singularly greenish and transparent, so as not to be easily detected, only a little more yellowish than the water and the eriocaulon; ethereal fishes, not far from the general color of heart-leaf and target-weed, unlike the same fish out of water.  

I notice, as I push round the pond close to the shore, with a stick, that the weeds are eriocaulon, two or three kinds of potamogeton, — one with a leaf an inch or two long, one with a very small, floating leaf, a third all immersed, four or five inches high and yellowish-green (this (vide press) is apparently an immersed form of P. hybridus),— target-weed, heart-leaf, and a little callitriche. There is but little of any of them, however, in the pond itself. 

It is truly an ascetic pond, and lives very sparingly on vegetables at any rate. 

I gather quite a lot of perfectly fresh high blueberries overhanging the south side, and there are many green ones among them still. They are all shrivelled now in swamps commonly. 

The target-weed still blooms a little in the Pout’s Nest, though half the leaves have turned a reddish orange, are sadly eaten, and have lost nearly all their gelatinous coating. But perfect fresh green leaves have expanded and are still expanding in their midst. The whole pool is covered, as it were, with one vast shield of reddish and green scales. As these leaves change and decay, the firmer parts along the veins retain their life and color longest, as with the heart-leaf. The leaves are eaten in winding lines about a tenth of an inch wide, scoring them all over in a curious manner, and also in spots. These look dark or black because they rest on the dark water. 

Looking closely, I am surprised to find how many frogs, mostly small, are resting amid these target leaves,  with their green noses out. Their backs and noses are exactly the color of this weed. They retreat, when disturbed, under this close shield. It is a frog’s paradise. 

I see, in the paths, pitch pine twigs gnawed off, where no cones are left on the ground. Are they gnawed off in order to come at the cones better? 

I find, just rising above the target-weed at Pout’s Nest, Scirpus subterminalis, apparently recently out of bloom. The culms two to three feet along, appearing to rise half an inch above the spikes. The long, linear immersed leaves coming off and left below. 

At entrance of the path (on Brister’s Path) near Staples and Jarvis found, apparently the true Danthonia spicata, still green. It is generally long out of bloom and turned straw-color. I will call the other (which I had so named), of Hosmer’s meadow, for the present, meadow oat grass, as, indeed, I did at first. 

A hummingbird in the garden. There is a southeast wind, with clouds, and I suspect a storm brewing. It is very rare that the wind blows from this quarter.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 15, 1858

I hear a nuthatch occasionally, but it reminds me of winter.  See October 20, 1856 (“Think I hear the very faint gnah of a nuthatch. Thus, of late, when the season is declining, many birds have departed, and our thoughts are turned towards winter . . . the nuthatch is heard again”); November 26, 1860 ("I hear the faint note of a nuthatch . . .a phenomenon of the late fall or early winter; for we do not hear them in summer that I remember. ...”); December 1, 1857 ("I thus always begin to hear this bird on the approach of winter, as if it did not breed here, but wintered here.”). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Nuthatch

I see one or two pickerel, singularly greenish and transparent ethereal fishes. See July 12, 1854 ("Observe a pickerel in the Assabet, about a foot long, headed up stream, quasi-transparent (such its color), with darker and lighter parts contrasted, very still while I float quite near ..”)   See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Pickerel

I gather quite a lot of perfectly fresh high blueberries overhanging the south side. See September 5, 1858  ("I find many high blueberries, quite fresh, overhanging the south shore of Walden.”)

There is a southeast wind, with clouds, and I suspect a storm brewing. It is very rare that the wind blows from this quarter. See September, 16, 1858 ("A southeast storm. . . . The trees are unprepared to resist a wind from this quarter. "); see also March 24, 1860 ("During the year the wind [at Cambridge] was southwest 130 days, northwest 87, northeast 59, south 33, west 29, east 14, southeast 10, north 3 days.")

I hear a nuthatch 

occasionally but it 

 reminds of winter. 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  A hummingbird in the garden. 

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

What kind of life it must be that is lived always in sight of mountains..

May 17

Louring and more or less rainy. 

P. M. – To Ledum Swamp. 

Near Baeomyces Bank, I see the Salix humilis showing its down or cotton, and also the S. tristis. Probably the last is wholly out of bloom some time. These, then, have ripe seed before the white maple. 

It rains gently from time to time as I walk, but I see a farmer with his boys, John Hosmer, still working in the rain, bent on finishing his planting. He is slowly getting a soaking, quietly dropping manure in the furrows. 

This rain is good for thought. It is especially agreeable to me as I enter the wood and hear the soothing dripping on the leaves. It domiciliates me in nature. The woods are the more like a house for the rain; the few slight noises sound more hollow in them; the birds hop nearer; the very trees seem still and pensive. The clouds are but a higher roof. The clouds and rain confine me to near objects, the surface of the earth and the trees. 

On the first holdings up in the intervals of the rain, the chewink is heard again, and the huckleberry-bird, and the evergreen-forest note, etc. 

I am coming in sight of the Charles Miles house. What a pleasant sandy road, soaking up the rain, that from the woods to the Miles house! The house becomes a controlling feature in the landscape when there is but one or two in sight. 

The red maple tops ten days ago looked like red paint scaling off, when seen against houses. Now they have acquired a browner red. 

The Populus grandidentata now shows large, silvery, downy, but still folded, leafets. 

You are more than paid for a wet coat and feet, not only by the exhilaration that the fertile moist air imparts, but by the increased fragrance and more gem-like character of expanding buds and leafets in the rain. All vegetation is now fuller of life and expression, some what like lichens in wet weather, and the grass. Buds are set in syrup or amber. 

May 17, 2018

Measured the large apple tree in front of the Charles Miles house. It is nine feet and ten inches in circumference at two and a half feet from the ground, the smallest place below the branches, which are now four, — once five, one being cut, — starting at about five feet from the ground, and each as big as a good-sized modern tree. The top is large. The trunk looks healthy and is scarcely larger at the ground than where measured. It is large for an oak, a sturdy-looking tree, reminding one of the portly bodies of some of our grandfathers. It is not grafted. Once stood by the fence. 

While I was measuring the tree, Puffer came along, and I had a long talk with him, standing under the tree in the cool sprinkling rain till we shivered. He said that he had seen pout-spawn attached to the under side of the white lily pads! ! He thought he knew it from having seen it in their bodies. He thought that the pickerel spawn was dropped in deep water and was devoured by pouts and eels. Wondered where eels bred, and how, for he never detected any spawn in them. Had been told (like Witherell) that they gendered into, i.e. copulated with, the clam. 

Told of a winter some fifteen years ago when there was a freshet in February, and the snapping turtles thought it was spring and came up with it on to the meadows; but it froze, and the ice settled on them and killed them when the water went down, and they were found dead in great numbers in the spring, — one that must have weighed one hundred pounds. Had seen pickerel that had been frozen four or five hours brought to life in water. 

Said that the black snake laid eight or ten eggs in a field. Once killed a very large water adder, and counted over sixty little snakes in it an inch or two long, and that was not all. Once he was going along, saw a water adder and heard a low sound which it made with its mouth, and he saw as many as twenty-five little snakes run into its mouth. 

Says the foxes eat the Emys picta, which I believe he called grass turtles. He had seen where they had opened them. But they could not get at the box turtle. Found some young stake-drivers as he was mowing. 

When the hummingbird flew about the room yesterday, his body and tail hung in a singular manner be tween the wings, swinging back and forth with a sort of oscillating motion, not hanging directly down, but yet pulsating or teetering up and down. 

I see a chewink flit low across the road with its peculiar flirting, undulating motion. 

I thought yesterday that the view of the mountains from the bare hill on the Lincoln side of Flint's Pond was very grand. Surely they do not look so grand any where within twenty miles of them. 

And I reflected what kind of life it must be that is lived always in sight of them. I looked round at some windows in the middle of Lincoln and considered that such was the privilege of the inhabitants of these chambers; but their blinds were closed, and I have but little doubt that they are blind to the beauty and sublimity of this prospect. 

I doubt if in the landscape there can be anything finer than a distant mountain-range. They are a constant elevating influence.

Ranunculus acris, apparently in a day or two. 

Rhodora at Clamshell well out. 

Just after hearing my night-warbler I see two birds on a tree. 

The one which I examined — as well as I could without a glass — had a white throat with a white spot on his wings, was dark above and moved from time to time like a creeper, and it was about the creeper's size. [The plate of Sylvia Canadensis in New York Reports has since reminded me of this.]

The other bird, which I did not examine particularly, was a little larger and more tawny – Perhaps golden-crowned thrush.

It is remarkable how little way most men get in their account of the mysteries of nature. Puffer, after describing the habits of a snake or turtle, – some peculiarity which struck him in its behavior, — would say with a remarkable air as if he were communicating or suggesting something, possibly explaining something, “Now I take it that is Nature; Nature did that.”

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 17, 1858 

The clouds and rain confine me to near objects, the surface of the earth and the trees. See August 4, 1854 ("Rain and mist contract our horizon and we notice near and small objects"); September 20, 1857 ("The outlines of trees are more conspicuous and interesting such a day as this, being seen distinctly against the near misty background, – distinct and dark. "); December 16, 1855 ("The mist makes the near trees dark and noticeable, like pictures, and makes the houses more interesting, revealing but one at a time."); ;February 6, 1852 (A mistiness makes the woods look denser, darker and more primitive.); November 29, 1850 ("The trees and shrubs look larger than usual when seen through the mist...As you advance, the trees gradually come out of the mist and take form before your eyes.") See also November 7, 1855 ("I find it good to be out this still, dark, mizzling afternoon . . .The world and my life are simplified.")

Just after hearing my night-warbler I see two birds. See  May 16, 1858 ("A golden-crowned thrush hops quite near . . . Hear the night warbler."); May 19 , 1858. ("Heard the night-warbler begin his strain just like an oven-bird!") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  The Oven-bird

I seek a shelter under the Cliffs.

May 29.

P. M. — To Lee's Cliff. 

A fine-grained air, June-like, after a cloudy, rain- threatening or rainy morning. Sufficient with a still, clear air in which the hum of insects is heard, and the sunniness contrasts with the shadows of the freshly expanded foliage, like the glances of an eye from under the dark eyelashes of June. The grass is not yet dry. The birds sing more lively than ever now after the rain, though it is only 2 p. m. 

On the Corner road I overtake a short, thick-set young man dressed in thick blue clothes, with a large basket of scions, etc., on his arm, who has just come from Newton in the cars and is going to graft for Lafayette Garfield, thus late. He does not think much of the Baldwin, and still less of the Porter. The last is too sour! and, above all, does not bear well! ! Has set more scions of Williams' Favorite than of any other, and thinks much of Seaver's apple, a sweeting, etc. Verily, it is all de gustibus. Having occasion to speak of his father, who had been unfortunate, he said, " We boys (his sons) clubbed together and bought the old fellow a farm" just before he died. He had a very broad, round face, and short front teeth half buried in the gums, for he exposed the whole of his gums when he opened his mouth. 

I think I have noticed that coarse-natured farmers' boys, etc., have not a sufficiently fine and delicate taste to appreciate a high-flavored apple. It is commonly too acid for them, and they prefer some tame, sweet thing, fit only for baking, as a pumpkin sweeting. 

Men derive very various nutriment from the same nature, their common habitat, like plants. Some derive, as it were directly from the soil, a brawny body, and their cheeks bulge out like pumpkin sweetings. They seem more thoroughly naturalized here, and the elements are kinder to them. They have more of the wind and rain and meadow muck in their composition. They flourish in the swampy soil like vegetables and do not fear toothache or neuralgia. Some grow like a pumpkin pine, at least. They fish and hunt and get the meadow-hay. Compared with ordinary men, they grow like a Rohan potato beside a Lady's-Finger. Their system has great power of assimilation. The soil is native to them. As different elements go to the composition of two human bodies as the thoughts that occupy their brains are different. How much more readily one nature assimilates to beef and potatoes and makes itself a brawny body of them, than another! 

We sat and talked a spell at the Corner Spring. 

What is the new warbler I see and hear frequently now, with apparently a black head, white side-head, brown back, forked tail, and light legs? 

The sun came out an hour or more ago, rapidly drying the foliage, and for the first time this year I noticed the little shades produced by the foliage which had expanded in the rain, and long narrow dark lines of shade along the hedges or willow-rows. It was like the first bright flashings of an eye from under dark eyelashes after shedding warm tears. 

Now I see a great dark low-arching cloud in the northwest already dropping rain there and steadily sweeping southeast, as I go over the first Conantum Hill from the spring. But I trust that its southwest end will drift too far north to strike me. The rest of the sky is quite serene, sprinkled here and there with bright downy, glowing summer clouds. The grass was not yet dried before this angry summer-shower cloud appeared. 

I go on, uncertain whether it is broad or thin and whether its heel will strike me or not. How universal that strawberry-like fragrance of the fir-balsam cone and wilted twig! My meadow fragrance (also perceived on hillsides) reminds me of it. Methinks that the fragrance of the strawberry may stand for a large class of odors, as the terebinthine odors of firs and arbor-vitae and cedar (as the harp stands for music). There is a certain sting to it, as to them. 

Black shrub oaks well out. 

Oxalis stricta. 

The Veronica serpyllifolia, now erect, is commonly found in moist depressions or hollows in the pastures, where perchance a rock has formerly been taken out and the grass is somewhat thicker and deeper green; also in the grassy ruts of old, rarely used cart-paths.

Red and black oaks are out at Lee's Cliff, well out, and already there are crimson spots on the red oak leaves. Also the fine red mammilla galls stud the black cherry leaves. Galls begin with the very unfolding of the leaves. 

Solomon’s Seal
5/20/2017
(avesong)

The Polygonatum pubescens out there. 

Some, nay most, Turritis stricta quite out of bloom. 

Fair Haven Lake now, at 4.30 p. m., is perfectly smooth, reflecting the darker and glowing June clouds as it has not before. Fishes incessantly dimple it here and there, and I see afar, approaching steadily but diagonally toward the shore of the island, some creature on its surface, maybe a snake, — but my glass shows it to be a muskrat, leaving two long harrow-like ripples behind. Soon after, I see another, quite across the pond on the Baker Farm side, and even distinguish that to be a muskrat. The fishes, methinks, are busily breeding now. These things I see as I sit on the top of Lee's Cliff, looking into the light and dark eye of the lake. 

The heel of that summer-shower cloud, seen through the trees in the west, has extended further south and looks more threatening than ever. As I stand on the rocks, examining the blossoms of some forward black oaks which close overhang it, I think I hear the sound of flies against my hat. No, it is scattered raindrops, though the sky is perfectly clear above me, and the cloud from which they come is yet far on one side. 

I see through the tree-tops the thin vanguard of the storm scaling the celestial ramparts, like eager light infantry, or cavalry with spears advanced. But from the west a great, still, ash-colored cloud comes on. The drops fall thicker, and I seek a shelter under the Cliffs. 

I stand under a large projecting portion of the Cliff, where there is ample space above and around, and I can move about as perfectly protected as under a shed. To be sure, fragments of rock look as if they would fall, but I see no marks of recent ruin about me. 

Soon I hear the low all-pervading hum of an approaching hummingbird circling above the rock, which afterward I mistake several times for the gruff voices of men approaching, unlike as these sounds are in some respects, and I perceive the resemblance even when I know better. Now I am sure it is a hummingbird, and now that it is two farmers approaching. But presently the hum becomes more sharp and thrilling, and the little fellow suddenly perches on an ash twig within a rod of me, and plumes himself while the rain is fairly beginning. He is quite out of proportion to the size of his perch. It does not acknowledge his weight. 

I sit at my ease and look out from under my lichen-clad rocky roof, half-way up the Cliff, under freshly leafing ash and hickory trees on to the pond, while the rain is falling faster and faster, and I am rather glad of the rain, which affords me this experience. The rain has compelled me to find the cosiest and most homelike part of all the Cliff. 

The surface of the pond, though the rain dimples it all alike and I perceive no wind, is still divided into irregular darker and lighter spaces, with distinct boundaries, as it were watered all over. Even now that it rains very hard and the surface is all darkened, the boundaries of those spaces are not quite obliterated. The countless drops seem to spring again from its surface like stalagmites. 

A mosquito, sole living inhabitant of this antrum, settles on my hand. I find here sheltered with me a sweet-briar growing in a cleft of the rock above my head, where perhaps some bird or squirrel planted it. Mulleins beneath. Galium Aparine, just begun to bloom, growing next the rock; and, in the earth-filled clefts, columbines, some of whose cornucopias strew the ground. Ranunculus bulbosus in bloom; saxifrage; and various ferns, as spleenwort, etc. Some of these plants are never rained on. I perceive the buttery-like scent of barberry bloom from over the rock, and now and for some days the bunches of effete white ash anthers strew the ground. 

It lights up a little, and the drops fall thinly again, and the birds begin to sing, but now I see a new shower coming up from the southwest, and the wind seems to have changed somewhat. Already I had heard the low mutterings of its thunder — for this is a thunder- shower — in the midst of the last. It seems to have shifted its quarters merely to attack me on a more exposed side of my castle. Two foes appear where I had expected none. But who can calculate the tactics of the storm? 

It is a first regular summer thunder-shower, preceded by a rush of wind, and I begin to doubt if my quarters will prove a sufficient shelter. I am fairly besieged and know not when I shall escape. I hear the still roar of the rushing storm at a distance, though no trees are seen to wave. 

And now the forked flashes descending to the earth succeed rapidly to the hollow roars above, and down comes the deluging rain. I hear the alarmed notes of birds flying to a shelter. The air at length is cool and chilly, the atmosphere is darkened, and I have forgotten the smooth pond and its reflections. The rock feels cold to my body, as if it were a different season of the year. 

I almost repent of having lingered here; think how far I should have got if I had started homeward. But then what a condition I should have been in! Who knows but the lightning will strike this cliff and topple the rocks down on me? The crashing thunder sounds like the overhauling of lumber on heaven's loft. 

And now, at last, after an hour of steady confinement, the clouds grow thin again, and the birds begin to sing. They make haste to conclude the day with their regular evening songs (before the rain is fairly over) according to the program. 

The pepe on some pine tree top was heard almost in the midst of the storm. One or two bullfrogs trump. They care not how wet it is. 

Again I hear the still rushing, all-pervading roar of the withdrawing storm, when it is at least half a mile off, wholly beyond the pond, though no trees are seen to wave. It is simply the sound of the countless drops falling on the leaves and the ground. You were not aware what a sound the rain made. 

Several times I attempt to leave my shelter, but return to it. My first stepping abroad seems but a signal for the rain to commence again. Not till after an hour and a half do I escape. After all, my feet and legs are drenched by the wet grass.

Those great hickory buds, how much they contained! You see now the large reddish scales turned back at the base of the new twigs. Suddenly the buds burst, and those large pinnate leaves stretched forth in various directions. 

I see and hear the cuckoo. The Salix nigra, apparently several days, at Corner Bridge. Many of the black spruce have the terminal twigs dead. They are a slow-growing tree. 

It is encouraging to see thrifty-growing white pines by their side, which have added three feet to their height the last year. 

With all this opportunity, this comedy and tragedy, how near all men come to doing nothing! 

It is strange that they did not make us more intense and emphatic, that they do not goad us into some action. Generally, with all our desires and restlessness, we are no more likely to embark in any enterprise than a tree is to walk to a more favorable locality. The seaboard swarms with adventurous and rowdy fellows, but how unaccountably they train and are held in check! They are as likely to be policemen as anything. It exhausts their wits and energy merely to get their living, and they can do no more. 

The Americans are very busy and adventurous sailors, but all in somebody's employ, — as hired men. I have not heard of one setting out in his own bark, if only to run down our own coast on a voyage of adventure or observation, on his own account. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 29, 1857

The shadows of the freshly expanded foliage, like the glances of an eye from under the dark eyelashes of June. See June 4, 1855 ("dark shadows on field and wood are the more remarkable by contrast with the light yellow-green foliage now, and when they rest on evergreens they are doubly dark, like dark rings about the eyes of June."); June 9. 1856 ("Now I notice where an elm is in the shadow of a cloud,—the black elm-tops and shadows of June. It is a dark eyelash which suggests a flashing eye beneath.”); June 11, 1856 (“I observe and appreciate the shade, as it were the shadow of each particular leaf on the ground. . . . It reminds me of the thunder-cloud and the dark eyelash of summer.”). See also .note to June 6, 1855 ("The dark eye and shade of June”).and  To the Maiden in the East from The Dial (October 1842) and A Week ("The lightning's silent gleam, / Startling my drowsy dream,/ Seemed like the flash / Under thy dark eyelash.")

Looking into the light and dark eye of the lake. See June 26, 1852 ("The smooth reflecting surface of woodland lakes in which the ice is just melted. Those liquid eyes of nature, blue or black or even hazel, deep or shallow, clear or turbid; green next the shore, the color of their iris.”)
The Veronica serpyllifolia, now erect, is commonly found in moist depressions ... See May 12, 1857 ("Veronica serpyllifolia is abundantly out at Corner Spring”); May 17, 1856 ("Veronica serpylléfolia abundant now on banks, erected.”)

Ranunculus bulbosus in bloom. See May 29, 1859 ("The Ranunculus bulbosus are apparently in prime.")

Oxalis stricta.  May 26, 1852 ("Walking home from surveying, the fields are just beginning to be reddened with sorrel.”); May 22, 1854 (" . . the sorrel beginning to redden the fields with ruddy health, — all these things make earth now a paradise.”)

The Polygonatum pubescens out there. See May 25, 1852 (“Polygonatum pubescens ready to bloom.”); May 22, 1856 (“Polygonatum pubescens at rock.”); May 21, 1856 ("The Polygonatum pubescens there, in shade, almost out; perhaps elsewhere already.”);  May 12, 1855 ("One flower of the Polygonatum pubescens open there [under Lee’s Cliff]; probably may shed pollen to-morrow.”).

Soon I hear the low all-pervading hum of an approaching hummingbird circling above the rock . . See May 17, 1856 ("There, along with me in the deep, wild swamp . . . Its hum was heard afar at first, like that of a large bee, bringing a larger summer.”)

It is a first regular summer thunder-shower, preceded by a rush of wind . . . See May 10, 1857 (" a sudden shower with some thunder and lightning; the first.")

With R. W. E. to Perez Blood’s auction.

June 2. 

Carum, i. e. caraway, in garden. 

Saw most hummingbirds when cherries were in bloom, — on them. 

P. M. —With R. W. E. to Perez Blood’s auction.

Telescope sold for fifty-five dollars; cost ninety-five plus ten. 

See Camilla on rye, undulating light and shade; not 19th of April. 

Returned by bridle-road. 

Myrica cerifera, possibly yesterday. Very few buds shed pollen yet; more, probably, to-day. Leaves nearly an inch long, and shoot and all no more.

English hawthorn will open apparently in two days.

Agassiz tells his class that the intestinal worms in the mouse are not developed except in the stomach of the cat. 

5 P. M. —To Azalea nudiflora, which is in prime.

Ranunculus recurvatus the same; how long? 

White maple keys conspicuous. 

In the first volume of Brewster’s “Life of Newton ” I read that with one of the early telescopes they could read the “ Philosophical Transactions ” at five hundred feet distance.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 2, 1856

Perez Blood (1785  - 1856) was an amateur astronomer living in Concord near the Carlisle border. In 1847 HDT and Emerson looked through Blood’s 85 power telescope and saw "Saturn’s rings, and the mountains in the moon, and the shadows in their craters, and the sunlight on the spurs of the mountains in the dark portion . . ..”   On July 7, 1851 with Anthony Wright HDT looked through  Blood's telescope a second time, and concluded " I am still contented to see the stars with my naked eye.” See September 29, 1854 (“ When I look at the stars, nothing which the astronomers have said attaches to them . . . One might say that all views through a telescope or microscope were purely visionary, for it is only by his eye and not by any other sense —not by his whole man —that the beholder is there where he is presumed to be. It is a disruptive mode of viewing as far as the beholder is concerned.”)

Carum, i. e. caraway, in garden. See June 3, 1855 ("Caraway in garden apparently three days out.")
Telescope sold for fifty-five dollars . . . See March 13, 1854 ("Bought a telescope to-day for eight dollars. . . . Saw the squares of achromatic glass from Paris which Clark uses; fifty-odd dollars apiece.")

Ranunculus recurvatus [in prime] . . . See May 26, 1855 ("Ranunculus recurvatus at Corner Spring up several days at least; pollen.")

To Azalea nudiflora, which is in prime. See May 25, 1856 ("Azalea nudiflora in garden."); June 2, 1855 ("The Azalea nudiflora now in its prime"): May 29, 1855 ("Azalea nudiflora in garden");May 31, 1853 ("I am going in search of the Azalea nudiflora.")

White maple keys conspicuous. See June 6, 1855 ("The white maple keys are about half fallen.It is remarkable that this happens at the time the emperor moth (cecropia) comes out."); June 2, 1855 ("From that cocoon of the Attacus cecropiawhich I found. . . came out this forenoon a splendid moth. "); May 29, 1854 ("The white maple keys have begun to fall and float down the stream like the wings of great insects.”)

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

There, along with me in the deep, wild swamp, above the andromeda, amid the spruce.

MAY 17, 2016

May 17. Rain still or lowering. 

P. M. —To my boat at Cardinal Shore, thence to Lee’s Cliff.

Kingbird. 

The beech twigs I gathered the 15th show anthers to-day in chamber; so it probably blossoms to-day or to-morrow in woods. 

Vaccinium vacillans apparently a day or two at least.

Veronica serpylléfolia abundant now on banks, erected. 

Maryland yellow throat heard afar in meadows, as I go along the road towards Hubbard’s Bridge. 

It is warm, but still overcast and sprinkling occasionally, near the end of the rain, and the birds are very lively. A goldfinch twitters over. 

In the dry lupine bank pasture, about fifteen rods from the river, apparently travelling up the hill, I see a box tortoise, the first I have found in Concord. 

Beside being longer (its upper shell five and one half by four and one fourth inches), it is much flatter and more oblong, less oval, than the one I found on Cape Cod last July. Especially it is conspicuously broader and flatter forward. The two rear marginal plates have a triangular sinus between them while the Cape Cod ones come to a point.The fifth and sixth marginal plates do not project by their edges beyond the shell.

The yellow marks are much narrower, and more interrupted and like Oriental characters, than in the Cape Cod one. The sternum also is less oval, uniformly blackish-brown except a few slight bone-[?] or horn-colored blotches, while the Cape Cod one is light yellow with a few brown blotches. The scales of the sternum in this are much less sharp-angled than in the Cape Cod one. The sternum more hollow or depressed. 

The tail about three eighths of an inch long only, beyond the anus (?). The bill is very upright:  A beak like any Caesar's. Forelegs covered  with orange-colored scales. Hind ones mostly brown or bronze with a few orange spots. 

Beside the usual hiss, uttered in the evening as I was carrying it, a single, as it were involuntary, squeak much like a croaking frog. Iris, bright light red, or rather vermilion, remarkable. Head, brown above with yellow spots; orange beneath and neck. 

The river is about a foot lower than on the 13th, notwithstanding yesterday’s and to-day’s rain. At the Kalmia Swamp, see and hear the redstart, very lively and restless, flirting and spreading its reddish tail. 

The sylvias — S. Americana and redstart and summer yellowbird, etc. — are very lively there now after the rain, in the warm, moist air, amid the hoary bursting buds of maples, oaks, etc. 

I stand close on the edge of the swamp, looking for the kalmia. Nothing of its flower to be seen yet. The rhodora there will open in a day or two. 

Meanwhile I hear a loud hum and see a splendid male hummingbird coming zigzag in long tacks, like a bee, but far swifter, along the edge of the swamp, in hot haste. He turns aside to taste the honey of the Andromeda calyculata (already visited by bees) within a rod of me. This golden-green gem. Its burnished back looks as if covered with green scales dusted with gold. It hovers, as it were stationary in the air, with an intense humming before each little flower-bell of the humble Andromeda calyculata, and inserts its long tongue in each, turning toward me that splendid ruby on its breast, that glowing ruby. Even this is coal-black in some lights! 

There, along with me in the deep, wild swamp, above the andromeda, amid the spruce. Its hum was heard afar at first, like that of a large bee, bringing a larger summer. This sight and sound would make me think I was in the tropics, —in Demerara or Maracaibo. [Another on our cherry blossoms the next day. A long, slender black bill.]

Nemopanthes on that very swamp-edge. Vaccinium corymbosum (?) or the high blueberry. 

Hear the first veery note and doubtless the Muscicapa olivacea. 

The Sylvia Americana (parti-colored warbler, etc.) is very numerous there, darting about amid the hoary buds of the maples and oaks, etc. It seems the most restless of all birds, blue more or less deep above, with yellow dust on the back, yellow breast, and white beneath (the male with bright—orange throat, and some with a rufous crescent on breast); wings and tail, dark, black, with two white bars or marks, dark bill and legs. 

At Lee’s the Turritis stricta pods three inches long, and plant two and a half feet high by measure. Get some to press. Myosotis stricta above there, maybe several days. Ranunculus bulbosils a day or two at least. Arenaria serpyllifolia. 

Mrs. Ripley showed me, from her son Gore in Minnesota, a few days ago, the first spring flower of the prairie there, a hairy-stemmed, slender-divisioned, and hairy-involucred, six-petalled blue flower, probably a species of hepatica. No leaves with it. Not described in Gray. 

Yellow columbine well out at Lee’s, one rod from rock, one rod east of ash. 

How plainly we are a part of nature! For we live like the animals around us. All day the cow is cropping the grass of yonder meadow, appropriating, as it were, a part of the solid earth into herself, except when she rests and chews the end; and from time to time she wends her way to the river and fills her belly with that. Her food and drink are not scarce and precious, but the commonest elements of which nature is composed. The dry land in these latitudes, except in woods and deserts, is almost universally clothed with her food, and there are inland seas, ready mixed, of the wine that she loves. The Mississippi is her drink, the prairie grass her food.

The shrub oak and some other oak leafets, just expanding, now begin to be pretty. 

Within the shell of my box turtle, in the cavity be tween its thighs and its body, were small dry leaves and seeds, showing where it laid. From these I should say it had come from amidst the alders.

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

. . . A splendid male hummingbird coming zigzag. . . bringing a larger summer. . . See May 16, 1852 ("I hear a hummingbird about the columbines.");  May 15, 1855 ("Hear a hummingbird in the garden.");May 16, 1858 ("A hummingbird yesterday came into the next house and was caught.")

Kingbird. . . . Maryland yellow throat heard afar in meadows . . .Hear the first veery note and doubtless the Muscicapa olivacea. See May 17, 1860; ("By Sam Barrett's meadow-side I see a female Maryland yellow-throat busily seeking its food amid the dangling fruit of the early aspen, in the top of the tree.");  May 10, 1853 (" New days, then, have come, ushered in by the warbling vireo, yellowbird, Maryland yellow-throat, and small pewee, and now made perfect by the twittering of the kingbird . . . and, in the woods, the veery note."); May 18, 1855 ("First veery strain."); May 23, 1857 ("Hear the first veery strain.")


The Muscicapa olivacea or  Red-eyed Flycatcher a/k/a Red-eyed Vireo (Vireo olivaceus.)

An olive-sided flycatcher?

May 15

May 15.  P. M. —To Beck Stow’s. 

Suddenly very warm. 

Hear a hummingbird in the garden. Pear blossomed, -- some perhaps yesterday. Locust, black and scarlet oak, and some buttonwoods leaf. 

A yellow butterfly. 

I hear from the top of a pitch pine in the swamp that loud, clear, familiar whistle which I have sometimes wrongly referred to the wood pewee,  whip-ter-phe-ee. Is it the whip-tom-kelly note which Soane and Wilson gave to the red-eye, but which Nuttall says he never heard from it? Some times ter-phee-e. This is repeated at considerable intervals, the bird sitting quite still a long time. I saw it dart out once, catch an insect, and return to its perch muscicapa-like.  As near as I could see it had a white throat, was whitish, streaked with dark, beneath, darker tail and wings, and maybe olivaceous shoulders; bright yellow within bill. Probably M. Cooperi.

Andromeda calyculata begins to leaf -- separate twigs from blossoming ones. Andromeda Polifolia just open.

Buck-bean, apparently in three days (in house the 18th). 

The 13th, saw large water-bugs (Gyrinus) crawled up high on rocks. 

Watch a pine warbler on a pitch pine, slowly and faithfully searching it creeper-like. It encounters a black and white creeper on the same tree; they fly at each other, and the latter leaves, apparently driven off by the first. This warbler shuts its bill each time to produce its peculiar note. 

Rhodora will apparently open in two or three days. 

See and hear for a moment a small warbler-like bird in Nemopanthes Swamp which sings somewhat like tchut a-worieter-worieter-worieter-woo. 

The greater part of the large sugar maples on the Common leaf. Large red maples generally are late to leaf. 

H. D. Thoreau,  Journal, May 15, 1855

A white throat, was whitish, streaked with dark, beneath, darker tail and wings, and maybe olivaceous shoulders; bright yellow within bill. Probably M. Cooperi. See  June 5, 1856. ("The Muscicapa Cooperi sings pe pe pe’, sitting on the top of a pine, and shows white rump”); June 8, 1856 ("At Cedar Swamp, saw the pe-pe catching flies like a wood pewee, darting from its perch on a dead cedar twig from time to time and returning to it. ...black crown with some crest, yellowish (?) bill, gray-brown back, black tail, two faint whitish bars on wings, a dirty cream-white throat, and a gray or ash white breast and beneath, whitest in middle"); June 10, 1855 ("Nuttall thus describes the Muscicapa Cooperi, olive sided flycatche  or pe - pe . . . head darker, without discolored spot ; sides olive grey; lateral space beneath the wing white; lower mandible purplish horn color; tail nearly even and extending but little beyond the closed wings. ” No white on tail") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Olive-sided flycatcher or pe-pe