A Blanding's Turtle on the hot sand of the new road at Beck Stow's Swamp.

July 6 . 

P. M. - To Beck Stow's.

Euphorbia maculata, good while.

Polygonum aviculare, a day or two.

Now a great show of elder blossoms.

Polygala sanguinea, apparently a day or more.

Galium asprellum in shade; probably earlier in sun.

Partridges a third grown.

Veery still sings and toad rings.

On the hot sand of the new road at Beck Stow's, headed toward the water a rod or more off, what is probably Cistudo Blandingii; had some green conferva (?) on its shell and body.

Length of upper shell, 6 inches; breadth behind, 4 5/8 ; tail beyond shell, 2 1/4.

Did not see it shut its box; kept running out its long neck four inches or more; could bend it directly back to the posterior margin of the second [?] dorsal plate.

Ran out its head further and oftener than usual.

The spots pale-yellow or buff.

Upper half of head and neck blackish, the former quite smooth for 13 inches and finely sprinkled with yellowish spots, the latter warty The snout lighter, with five perpendicular black marks.

Eyes large (?), irides dull green-golden.

Under jaw and throat clear chrome-yellow.

Under parts of neck and roots of fore legs duller yellow; inner parts behind duller yellow still.

Fore legs with black scales, more or less yellow spotted above; at root and beneath pale-yellow and yellowish.

Hind legs uniformly black above and but little lighter beneath.

Tail black all round.

No red or orange about the animal.

No hook or notch to jaw.

Plantain, some days, and gnaphalium, apparently two or three days.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 6, 1854

Beck Stow's. See July 17, 1852 ("Beck Stow's Swamp! What an incredible spot to think of in town or city! . . .deep and impenetrable, where the earth quakes for a rod around you at every step. . . and its verdurous border of woods imbowering it on every side") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, at Beck Stow's Swamp

Partridges a third grown. See July 5, 1856 ("Young partridges (with the old bird), as big as robins, make haste into the woods from off the railroad. ");July 5, 1857 ("Partridges big as quails"); July 7, 1854 ("Disturb two broods of partridges this afternoon, — one a third grown, flying half a dozen rods over the bushes, yet the old, as anxious as ever, rushing to me with the courage of a hen.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge

On the hot sand of the new road at Beck Stow's, what is probably Cistudo Blandingii. See March 13, 1859 (“On the northeast part of the Great Fields, I find the broken shell of a Cistudo Blandingii, on very dry soil. This is the fifth, then, I have seen in the town. All the rest were three in the Great Meadows (one of them in a ditch) and one within a rod or two of Beck Stow's Swamp”)

 A Blanding's Turtle 

on the hot sand of the new 

road at Beck Stow's Swamp

I drink at the black and sluggish run

July 6 . 

I can sound the swamps and meadows on the line of the new road to Bedford with a pole, as if they were water. 

It may be hard to break through the crust, but then it costs a very slight effort to force it down, sometimes nine or ten feet, where the surface is dry. 

Cut a straight sapling, an inch or more in (diameter]; sharpen and peel it that it may go down with the least obstruction.

The larch grows in both Moore's and Pedrick’s swamps. Do not the trees that grow there indicate the depth of the swamp?

I drink at the black and sluggish run which rises in Pedrick's Swamp and at the clearer and cooler one at Moore's Swamp, and, as I lie on my stomach, I am surprised at the quantity of decayed wood continually borne past. 

It is this process which, carried on for ages, formed this accumulation of soil. The outlets of a valley being obstructed, the decayed wood is no longer carried off but deposited near where it grew.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 6, 1853

It may be hard to break through the crust, but then it costs a very slight effort to force it down, sometimes nine or ten feet. See July 1, 1853 (“ In the swamp or meadow this side of Pedrick's . . . I ran a pole down nine feet”) Compare February 1, 1858 ("Measured Gowing's Swamp . . . the pole went hard at first, but broke through a crust of roots and sphagnum at about three feet beneath the surface, and I then easily pushed the pole down just twenty feet.")

The larch grows in both Moore's and Pedrick’s swamps. See February 1, 1858 ("There were three or four larch trees three feet high or more between these holes, or over exactly the same water")

The new road to Bedford. See October 8, 1853 ("Surveying on the new Bedford road to-day,"); October 11, 1853 ("While surveying the Bedford road to-day."); July 1, 1853 (“I am surveying the Bedford road these days, and have no time for my Journal.”); May 3, 1859 ('Surveying the Bedford road.")

When we looked up in the night we saw the stars were bright as in winter.

July 6. 

Tuesday. 5.35 A. M. —Keep on through North Tamworth, and breakfast by shore of one of the Ossipee Lakes. 

July 6, 2018

Chocorua north-northwest. Hear and see loons and see a peetweet’s egg washed up. A shallow-shored pond, too shallow for fishing, with a few breams seen near shore; some pontederia and target weed in it. 

Travelling thus toward the White Mountains, the mountains fairly begin with Red Hill and Ossipee Mountain, but the White Mountain scenery proper on the high hillside road in Madison before entering Conway, where you see Chocorua on the left, Mote Mountain ahead, Doublehead, and some of the White Mountains proper beyond, i. e. a sharp peak. 

We fished in vain in a small clear pond by the road side in Madison. 

Chocorua is as interesting a peak as any to remember. You may be jogging along steadily for a day before you get round it and leave it behind, first seeing it on the north, then northwest, then west, and at last south westerly, ever stern, rugged and inaccessible, and omnipresent. It was seen from Gilmanton to Conway, and from Moultonboro was the ruling feature. 

The scenery in Conway and onward to North Conway is surprisingly grand. You are steadily advancing into an amphitheatre of mountains.

I do not know exactly how long we had seen one of the highest peaks before us in the extreme northwest, with snow on its side just below the summit, but a little beyond Conway a boy called it Mt. Washington. I think it was visible just before entering Conway village. If Mt. Washington, the snow must have been in Tuckerman’s Ravine, which, methinks, is rather too low. Perhaps it was that we afterward saw on Mt. Adams. There was the regular dark pyramid of Kearsarge at first in front, then, as you proceed to North Conway, on our right, with its deserted hotel on the summit, and Mote Mountain accompanies you on the left, and high, bare rocky precipices at last on the same side. 

The road, which is for the most part level, winds along the Saco through groves of maples, etc., on the level intervals, with so little of rugged New Hampshire under your feet, often soft and sandy road. The scenery is remarkable for this contrast of level interval with soft and shady groves, with mountain grandeur and ruggedness. Often from the midst of level maple groves, which remind you only of classic lowlands, you look out through a vista to the most New Hampshire generally, quite unexpected by me, and suggests a superior culture. 

We at length crossed the Saco from the left to the, right side of the valley, going over or through three channels. After leaving North Conway, the higher White Mountains were less seen, if at all. They had not appeared in pinnacles, as sometimes described, but broad and massive. 

Only one of the higher peaks or summits (called by the boy Mt. Washington) was conspicuous. The snow near the top was conspicuous here thirty miles off. The summit appeared dark, the rocks just beneath pale-brown (forenoon) (not flesh-colored like Chocorua), and below, green, wooded. 

The road to-day from Tamworth almost to the base of Mt. Washington was better on the whole, less hilly, than through Gilmanton to Tamworth; i. e., the hills were not so long and tedious. 

At Bartlett Corner we turned up the Ellis River and took our nooning on the bank of the river, by the bridge just this side of Jackson Centre, in a rock maple grove. Saw snow on Mt. Carter (?) from this road. There are but few narrow intervals on this road, — two or three only after passing Jackson, — and each is improved by a settler. We see the handsome Malva sylvestris, an introduced flower, by roadside, apparently in prime, and also in Conway, and hear the night warbler all along thus far. 

Saw the bones of a bear at Wentworth’s house, and camped, rather late, on right-hand side of road just beyond, or a little more than four miles from Jackson. The wood was canoe birch and some yellow (see little of the small white birch as far as to the neighborhood of the mountains), rock maple, spruce, fir, Populus tremuliformis, and one grandidentata, etc. 

In this deep vale between the mountains, the sun set very early to us, but we saw it on the mountains long after. Heard at evening the wood thrush, veery, white-throated sparrow, etc., and I found a fresh nest in a fir, made of hemlock twigs, etc., when I was getting twigs for a bed. The mosquitoes troubled us in the evening and just before dawn, but not seriously in the middle of the night. This, I find, is the way with them generally. 

Wentworth said he was much troubled by the bears. They killed his sheep and calves and destroyed his corn when in the milk, close by his house. He has trapped and killed many of them and brought home and reared the young. 

When we looked up in the night we saw that the stars were bright as in winter, owing to the clear cold air.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 6, 1858

When we looked up in

the night we saw the stars were

bright as in winter

The season of small fruits.

July 6.  

Rubus triflorus well ripe. 

The beach plums have everywhere the crescent-shaped mark made by the curculio, — the few that remain on.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 6, 1857

Rubus triflorus well ripe. See  June 30, 1854 ("Rubus triflorus berries, some time, — the earliest fruit of a rubus. The berries are very scarce, light red, semitransparent, showing the seed"); July 2, 1851 ("Some of the raspberries are ripe, the most innocent and simple of fruits");  July 11, 1857 ("I see more berries than usual of the Rubus triflorus in the open meadow near the southeast corner of the Hubbard meadow blueberry swamp.. . .They are dark shining red and, when ripe, of a very agreeable flavor and somewhat of the raspberry's spirit.") See also May 21, 1856 ("Rubus triflorus abundantly out at the Saw Mill Brook");  May 29, 1858 ("Rubus triflorus, well out, at Calla Swamp, how long?");  June 7, 1857 ("Rubus triflorus still in bloom");  and also  June 17, 1854 ("[T]he season of small fruits has arrived. ")  July 5, 1852 ("Nature offers fruits now as well as flowers"); July 6, 1851 ("Now grass is turning to hay, and flowers to fruits."); and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Raspberry

A Book of the Seasons: July 6.

July 6

July 6, 2018

The grass in the fields and meadows is not so fresh and fair as it was a fortnight ago. It is dryer and riper and ready for the mowers. Now June is past. June is the month for grass and flowers. Now grass is turning to hay, and flowers to fruits.  Already I gather ripe blueberries on the hills. 

It is wonderful 

 our senses ever span so vast 

an interval 

 that first faint tinge of 

moonlight from the east before 

day has departed 

 that grass is turning  

to hay and flowers to fruit - 

that now June is past 

July 6, 1851

When we looked up in

the night we saw the stars were

bright as in winter

July 6, 1858

For a week or more

grass now seriously in the

way of the walker.

July 6, 1859

Rained last night as well

as all yesterday and some

of the night before.

July 6, 1860

Grass and flowers pass.

Now grass is turning to hay

and flowers to fruits.

July 6, 1861

July 6, 2015

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 © 2009-2023

The anxious peet of a peetweet, hovering over its young.

July 6.

P. M. — To Assabet Bath. 

Campanula aparinoides, roadside opposite centaurea, several days. Early low blueberries ripe. 

Cross the river at bath place. On the sandy bank opposite, see a wood tortoise voraciously eating sorrel leaves, under my face. 

In A. Hosmer’s ice-bared meadow south of Turnpike, hear the distressed or anxious peet of a peetweet, and see it hovering over its young, half grown, which runs beneath and suddenly hides securely in the grass when but few feet from me. 

White avens, evidently Bigelow’s Geum album (which Gray makes only a variety of G. Virginianum), a good while, very rough and so much earlier than the G. Virginianum that only one flower remains. The heads have attained their full size, with twisted tails to the awns, while the other will not open for some days. I think Bigelow must be right. 

Lysimachia lanceolata, a day or two. 

Rhus typhina in our yard; how long? Did not see it out in New Bedford ten days ago. 

There is a young red mulberry in the lower hedge beneath the celtis. 

G. Emerson says the sweet-briar was doubtless introduced, yet, according to Bancroft, Gosnold found it on the Elizabeth Isles.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 6, 1856

On the sandy bank opposite, see a wood tortoise voraciously eating sorrel leaves, under my face. See June 28, 1860 (" meet to-day with a wood tortoise . . .in Hosmer's sandy bank field north of Assabet Bridge, deliberately eating sorrel.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Wood Sorrel; A Book of the Seasons, the Wood Turtle (Emys insculpta)

The distressed or anxious peet of a peetweet, . . .hovering over its young. See July 2, 1860 ("the alarm note of the peetweets, concerned about their young."); June 21, 1855 ("Peetweets make quite a noise calling to their young with alarm.")

Walked from post-office to lighthouse. Fog till eight or nine, and short grass very wet.

July 6.

Rode to North Truro very early in the stage or covered wagon, on the new road, which is just finished as far as East Harbor Creek. 

Blackfish on the shore. 

Walked from post-office to lighthouse. Fog till eight or nine, and short grass very wet. 

Board at James Small’s, the lighthouse, at $3.50 the week. 

Polygala polygama well out, flat, ray-wise, all over the fields. Cakile Americana, sea-rocket, the large weed of the beach, some time and going to seed, on beach. Pasture thistle (Cirsium pumilum), out some time. A great many white ones. 

The boy, Isaac Small, got eighty bank swallows’ eggs out of the clay-bank, i. e. above the clay. Small says there are a few great gulls here in summer.

I see small (?) yellow-legs. Many crow blackbirds in the dry fields hopping about. 

Upland plover near the lighthouse breeding. Small once cut off one’s wing when mowing in the field next the lighthouse as she sat on her eggs.

Many seringo-birds, apparently like ours. 

They say mackerel have just left the Bay, and fishermen have gone to the eastward for them. Some, however, are catching cod and halibut on the back side. 

Cape measures two miles in width here on the great chart.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 6, 1855

Board at James Small’s, the lighthouse, at $3.50 the week. See June 18, 1857 ("Small says that the lighthouse was built about sixty years ago.")

A pickerel lies in wait.

July 6.

July 6, 2012

In selecting a site in the country, let a lane near your house, grass-grown, cross a sizable brook where is a watering-place. 

I see a pickerel in the brook showing his whitish greedy upper lips projecting over the lower. How well concealed he is! He is generally of the color of the muddy bottom or the decayed leaves and wood that compose it, and the longitudinal white stripe on his back and the transverse ones on his sides are the color of the yellowish sand here and there exposed. He heads upstream and keeps his body perfectly motionless, however rapid the current, chiefly by the motion of his narrow pectoral fins, though also by the waving of his other fins and tail as much as necessary, which a frog might mistake for that of weeds. Thus, concealed by his color and stillness, like a stake, he lies in wait for frogs or minnows. Now a frog leaps in, and he darts forward three or four feet.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 6, 1852

See July 12, 1854 ("There is a constant motion of the pectoral fins and also a waving motion of the ventrals, apparently to resist the stream, and a slight waving of the anal, apparently to preserve its direction. It darts off at last by a strong sculling motion of its tail.")See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Pickerel

June, the month for grass and flowers, is now past.

July 6.

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. 

Ah! but that first faint tinge of moonlight . . . a silvery light from the east before day had departed in the west. What an immeasurable interval there is between the first tinge of moonlight which we detect, lighting with mysterious, silvery, poetic light the western slopes, like a paler grass, and the last wave of daylight on the eastern slopes! 

It is wonderful how our senses ever span so vast an interval, how from being aware of the one we become aware of the other.

It is now a free, flowing wind, with wet clouds in the sky. Though the sun shines, from time to time I hear a few drops of rain falling on the leaves, but feel none. All serious showers go round me and get out of my way.

June, the month for grass and flowers, is now past. The red clover heads are now turned black. It is but a short time that their rich bloom lasts.  

The white clover is black or withering also.  Blue-eyed grass is now rarely seen. The grass in the fields is dryer and riper and ready for the mowers. Now grass is turning to hay, and flowers to fruits. 

Already I gather ripe blueberries on the hills. 

The red-topped grass is in its prime, tingeing the fields with red.

H. D. Thoreau,  Journal, July 6, 1851 

June, the month for grass and flowers, is now past. Now grass is turning to hay, and flowers to fruits. See July 2, 1854 ("The spring now seems far behind, yet I do not remember the interval. ") July 5, 1852 (" Nature offers fruits now as well as flowers"); July 7, 1852 ("And now that there is an interregnum in the blossoming of flowers, so is there in the singing of the birds."); July 13, 1860 ("The vernal freshness of June is passed."); August 6, 1852 ("Methinks there are few new flowers of late. An abundance of small fruits takes their place. Summer gets to be an old story. Birds leave off singing, as flowers blossoming.");

The red-topped grass is in its prime, tingeing the fields with red. See July 13, 1860 ("First we had the June grass reddish-brown, and the sorrel red, of June; now the red-top red of July.)

July 6. Sunday. 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, like a cucullo 1 of a water-bug. Ah! but that first faint tinge of moonlight on the gap ! (seen some time ago), — a silvery light from the east before day had departed in the west. What an immeasurable interval there is between the first tinge of moonlight which we detect, lighting with mysterious, silvery, poetic light the western slopes, like a paler grass, and the last wave of daylight on the eastern slopes ! It is wonderful how our senses ever span so vast an interval, how from being aware of the one we become aware of the other. And now the night wind blows, . . The red clover heads are now turned black. They no longer impart that rosaceous tinge to the meadows and fertile fields. It is but a short time that their rich bloom lasts. The white is black or withering also. Whiteweed still looks white in the fields. Blue-eyed grass is now rarely seen.

 The grass in the fields and meadows is not so fresh and fair as it was a fortnight ago. It is dryer and riper and ready for the mowers. Now June is past. June is the month for grass and flowers. Now grass is turning to hay, and flowers to fruits. Already I gather ripe blueberries on the hills. 

The red-topped grass is in its prime, tingeing the fields with red. It is a free, flowing wind, with wet clouds in the sky, though the sun shines. The distant hills look unusually near in this atmosphere. Acton meeting-houses seen to stand on the side of some hills, Nagog or Nashoba, beyond, as never before. Nobscot looks like a high pasture in the sunlight not far off. From time to time I hear a few drops of rain falling on the leaves, but none is felt and the sun does not cease to shine. All serious showers go round me and get out of my way.

it is wonderful 

our senses ever span so 

vast an interval

that first faint tinge of

moonlight from the east before

day has departed

that grass is turning 

to hay and flowers to fruit

that now June is past

Two walks in the woods.

July 6.

A morning walk alone to sit in the woods where I have never been. Down the dry waterfall and back by the boulder trail. Start a new path over an old fallen maple past an animal den. 

At dusk we bushwack well off the lower stream to an overlook on neighbors' land. Walking home in the heat through the darkening woods my retinal flashes are fireflies!

Zphx, 20100706

July 6

July 6.

Rained last night, as well as all yesterday and some of the night before.

Three quarters of an inch has fallen.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 6, 1860

Rained last night, as well

as all yesterday and some

of the night before.

Tacking in a sea of grass

July 6.

Grass now for a week or more has been seriously in the way of the walker, but already I take advantage of the few fields that are mowed. It requires skillful tacking, a good deal of observation, and experience to get across the country now.

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

Tacking . . . to get across the country.... See July 4, 1860 ("We are wading and navigating at present in a sort of sea of grass, which yields and undulates under the wind like water"); July 8, 1851 ("The yellow, waving, rustling rye extends far up and over the hills on either side, leaving only a narrow and dark passage at the bottom of a deep ravine . ... These long grain-fields which you must respect, - must go round, - occupying the ground like an army.")

Grass now for a week

or more seriously in the

way of the walker.