A Book of the Seasons: Strawberries

 I would make a chart of our life,

know why just this circle of creatures completes the world.

Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852

June 13, 2024

Many strawberries

this season in meadows now –

just fairly begun 

 June 18, 1854

June 9. A strawberry half turned on the sand of the causeway side, — the first fruit or berry of the year that I have tasted. June 9, 1854

June 9. Got two or three handfuls of strawberries on Fair Haven . . . Little natural beds or patches on the sides of dry hills, where the fruit sometimes reddens the ground. June 9, 1853

June 10. Ripe strawberries, even in a meadow on sand thrown out of a ditch, hard at first to detect amid the red radical leaves. June 10, 1856

June 13. What a sweetness fills the air now in low grounds or meadows, reminding me of times when I went strawberrying years ago! It is as if all meadows were filled with some sweet mint. June 13, 1852

June 13. Stop to pick strawberries on Fair Haven. June 13, 1854

June 13. Strawberries. June 13, 1858

June 14. As soon as the rain is over I crawl out, straighten my legs, and stumble at once upon a little patch of strawberries within a rod, -- the sward red with them. These we pluck while the last drops are thinly falling. June 14, 1855

June 14. Early strawberries begin to be common. The lower leaves of the plant are red, concealing the fruit. June 14, 1859

June 15. Quite a feast of strawberries on Fair Haven, — the upland strawberry. The largest and sweetest on sand. The first fruit. June 15, 1852

June 15. Strawberries in the meadow now ready for the picker. They lie deep at the roots of the grass in the shade. You spread aside the tall grass, and deep down in little cavities by the roots of the grass you find this rich fruit. June 15, 1853

June 15. How interesting a thin patch of strawberry vines now on a rocky hillside, though the fruit is quite scarce! June 15, 1859

June 17. The season of hope and promise is past; already the season of small fruits has arrived. We are a little saddened, because we begin to see the interval between our hopes and their fulfillment. The prospect of the heavens is taken away, and we are presented only with a few small berries. Before sundown I reach Fair Haven Hill and gather strawberries. I find beds of large and lusty strawberry plants in sprout-lands, but they appear to run to leaves and bear very little fruit, having spent themselves in leaves by the time the dry weather arrives. It is those still earlier and more stinted plants which grow on dry uplands that bear the early fruit, formed before the droughts. But the meadows produce both leaves and fruit. June 17, 1854

June 18. There are many strawberries this season, in meadows now, just fairly begun there. June 18, 1854

June 19. Got quite a parcel of strawberries on the hill. June 19, 1853

June 20. I see where the crickets are eating the wild strawberries. June 20, 1854

July 2. Strawberries in the gardens have passed their prime. July 2, 1851

July 4. Strawberries were abundant by the roadside and in the grass on hillsides everywhere, with the seeds conspicuous, sunk in pits on the surface. July 4, 1858

July 12. I find many strawberries deep in the grass of the meadow near this Hosmer Spring; then proceed on my way with reddened and fragrant fingers, till it gets washed off at new springs. July 12, 1857

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau: Strawberries

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

tinyurl.com/hdt-straw

Heavy rain.

June 17. 

June 17, 2019

Rain, especially heavy rain, raising the river in the night of the 17th.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 17, 1859

Heavy rain, raising the river in the night. See note to June 17, 1860 ("A steady gentle rain here for several hours, and in the night again, the thunder, as yesterday, mostly forerunning or superficial to the shower. This the third day of thunder-showers in afternoon, though the 14th it did not rain here.");  June 20, 1860 ("More rain falls to-day than any day since March, if not this year.") See also June 14, 1858 ("The river is raised surprisingly by the rain of the 12th. The Mill Brook has been over the Turnpike."); June 15, 1858 ("Rains steadily again, and we have had no clear weather since the 11th. The river is remarkably high, far higher than before, this year, and is rising.")

The young bird, all down, with a tinge of fawn or cinnamon.

June 17. 

P. M. – To hawk's nest.

One egg is hatched since the 8th, and the young bird, all down, with a tinge of fawn or cinnamon, lies motionless on its breast with its head down and is already about four inches long! 

An hour or two after, I see the old hawk pursue a stake-driver which was flying over this spot, darting down at him and driving him off. The stake-driver comes beating along, like a long, ungainly craft, or a revenue cutter, looking into the harbors, and if it finds a fisherman there, standing out again. 

See a painted turtle digging at mid-afternoon. I have only to look at dry fields or banks near water to find the turtles laying there afternoons.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 17, 1858

One egg is hatched since the 8th. See June 8, 1858 (“The marsh hawk's eggs are not yet hatched. ”)

I see the old hawk pursue a stake-driver darting down at him and driving him off. See August 5, 1854 (“Near Lee's (returning), see a large bittern, pursued by small birds.”)

I have only to look at dry fields or banks near water to find the turtles laying. See June 16, 1855 (“ A painted tortoise just burying three flesh-colored eggs in the dry, sandy plain. . .Find near by four more about this business. ”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  The Painted Turtle

Navigating Cape Cod on foot

June 17. 

This morning had for breakfast fresh eels from Herring River, caught in an eel-pot baited with horseshoe clams cut up. Crossed Herring River, and went down to the shore and walked a mile or more eastward along the beach. 

This beach seems to be laid down too long on the map. The sea never runs very much here, since this shore is protected from the swell by Monomoy. The Harbor (?) of West Harwich is merely some wharves protected by a shoal offshore. Passed a place where they had been taking bluefish with a seine and, as usual, had left their backbones on the beach. There was a scup also, a good fish. 

A fish hawk (?) or eagle sailed low directly over my head as I sat on the bank. The bank is quite low there. I could see Monomoy, very low and indistinct, stretching much further south than I expected. The wooded portions of this, and perhaps of Nauset Beach further north, looked like islets on the water. You could not distinguish much without a glass, but the lighthouse and fishermen's houses at the south end loomed very large to the naked eye. 

I soon turned inland through the woods and struck north to the centre of Harwich. At a retired house where I inquired the road to Brewster, a woman told me that if I wanted to go to Brewster I had come a good deal out of my way, and yet she did not know where I had come from, and I was certainly taking the right course to keep in the way. But they presume that a traveller inquiring the way wishes to be anywhere but where he is. They take me for a roadster, and do not know where my way is. They take it for granted that my way is a direct one from village to village. 

I go along the settled road, where the houses are interspersed with woods, in an unaccountably desponding mood, but when I come out upon a bare and solitary heath am at once exhilarated. This is a common experience in my travelling. I plod along, thinking what a miserable world this is and what miserable fellows we that inhabit it, wondering what it is tempts men to live in it; but anon I leave the towns behind and am lost in some boundless heath, and life becomes gradually more tolerable, if not even glorious. 

After passing the centre of Harwich, with its seminary, I struck north to the ponds between Harwich and Brewster. Saw some white pond-lilies open that had been dropped by the roadside. Disturbed a very large water snake sunning on the bank of a pond-hole. 

At what is called on the map Hinckley's Pond, in Harwich, met with the first cranberry-patch. A man told me there were twelve acres here in all, in one body, owned by Albert Clark of Boston, and by others, and this was the largest patch on that part the Cape. They formed a handsome, perfectly level bed, a field, a redeemed meadow, adjoining the pond, the plants in perfectly straight rows eighteen inches apart, in coarse white sand which had been carted in. What with the runners and the moss, etc., between, they made a uniform green bed, very striking and handsome. 

Baker had complained that the cranberry vines were seriously injured by worms, would be, perhaps, destroyed. He and some others had turned theirs into English grass. They also are apt to become too thick and cease to bear well. They then sell them to others to set out for $5.00 a square rod, as another informed me by the pond. This was a large and interesting pond. 

A little further, I came to Long Pond, and passed between it and Bangs Pond by a low beach, and took my lunch on a pine hill with a flat summit, on the Brewster side of Long Pond, near the house of one Cohoon. This is a noble lake some two miles long, as a man there told me (the Historical Collections say the chain of ponds is three and two thirds miles long), with high, steep, sliding sand-banks, more or less wooded, and is the source of Herring River, which empties into the sound on the south. Connected with Bangs and Hinckley's Ponds. 

This high hill with a flat summit, on which was an open pitch pine wood, very suitable for picnics, appeared to be the best point to view it from. You could see at least three ponds at once. Situated about half way between the two seas, on the shore of this noble lake, it appeared to be the best place for an inland hotel on the Cape. What was that slender, succulent, somewhat samphire-like plant in the sand-bank by this pond? After bathing, I abandoned the road and struck across the country northeast by chart and compass, for Orleans, passing between this and another large pond called Sheep Pond, on the north, the country being at first woody, then open. 

After passing Sheep Pond I knocked at a house near the road from Brewster to Chatham to inquire the way to Orleans. This house was about a quarter of a mile from the road, in the fields, and the usual Sabbath like serenity reigned around it. There was no beaten perhaps, because the husband was gone to sea with his dirty boots. I inquired the way of another woman who lived on the road near by, who was just setting her dinner-table when I thought it must be mid-afternoon. 

She directed me by a road or cart-path through the woods that ran due southeast, but I knew better than to follow this long. Concluded she meant the south part of Orleans, and so I struck off northeast by fainter cart-paths through the woods. I kept on through uninterrupted wood by various paths some what east of north for about an hour, avoiding those that ran southeast, because I knew by the map that there were large ponds east of me which I must go round on the north. 

At length, seeing no end to the woods, laying down my pack, I climbed an oak and looked off; but the woods bounded the horizon as far as I could see on every side, and eastward it was several miles, for on that side I observed a great depression where a large pond lay concealed in the forest. All the life I could see was a red-tailed or hen hawk circling not far above my head. This gave me a new idea of the extent of Cape Cod woodland. 

After a while, travelling by compass alone, without path, I fell into a more beaten path than I had left, and came very unexpectedly upon a house on the shore of the pond, in the midst of the woods, in the most secluded place imaginable. There was a small orchard even. It was mid-afternoon, and, to judge from appearances and from the sounds, you would have supposed that only the hens and chickens were at home; but after my first knock I heard a slight stir within, and though all was still immediately, they being afraid, I knew better than [to] give it up, but knocked all round the house at five doors in succession, there being two to a stoop, and by the time I got round to the first again there was a woman with a child in her arms there ready to answer my questions. 

I found that I had not come out of my way. 

Of the woods of the Cape which I walked through in Yarmouth, Dennis, Harwich, and Brewster, it is to be said that they are dry pine and oak woods, extensive but quite low, commonly, with an abundance of bear-berry and checkerberry in the more open parts, the latter forming an almost uninterrupted bed for great distances. 

I soon came out on the open hills in the northeast part of Brewster, from which I overlooked the Bay, some two miles distant. This was a grand place to walk. There were two or three more of those peculiar ponds with high, shiny sand-banks, by which you detected them before you saw the water, as if freshly scooped out of the high plains or a table-land. The banks were like those of the sea on the Back Side, though on a smaller scale, and they had clear sandy shores. One pond would often be separated from another by low curving beaches or necks of land. The features of the surrounding landscape simple and obvious. The sod, so short and barren, affords the best ground for walking. 

Brewster is much more hilly than Eastham. The latter is, indeed, quite flat. In short, Brewster, with its noble ponds, its bare hills, gray with poverty-grass and lichens, and its secluded cottages, is a very interesting town to an inlander. Saw a woman mending a fence nearly a mile from a house, using an axe. 

Barber appears to be mistaken about seeing both seas from the county road in this town, — to have misunderstood the Massachusetts Historical Collections. I passed over some hills there where pine seed had recently been planted with a hoe only, about four feet apart. At first I thought the turtles had been laying their eggs there, but I observed them in straight lines and detected some little pines an inch high just up. Some of the Cape roads are repaired with the coarsest bushes and roots, with such earth as adheres to them. 

Jeremiah's Gutter is what is called Boat Meadow River on the map. I saw the town bounds there. There, too, was somebody's Folly, who dug a canal, which the sand filled up again. 

About a mile north of this, I left the road and struck across west of the road to near the Eastham Meeting-house, crossing a part of that "beach" where once wheat grew, and by Great Pond, where a canal has been talked of. Passed some large tupelo trees. The greater part of Eastham an open plain, and also the southwest part of Wellfleet. 

Put up at the Traveller's Home (Cobb's), so called, at the Camp Ground, just within the woods. Cobb says he has known formerly one man in Eastham export twelve hundred bushels of grain from his own farm. Twenty of corn to an acre is an average crop in a fair year in his neighborhood, which is better soil than usual. Thought likely there was not more raised in the town now than used. 

Cobb thought the Nauset lights not of much use, because so often you could not see them, and if you could they would not prevent your coming ashore. Sailors preferred to depend on the "blue pigeon" (lead). He said that the inhabitants lived on the West or Bay Side, though no more fertile or fishy, because their harbors were there. On the Back Side they could not get off to fish more than once a fortnight, but on the West almost every day. He thought the Cape wasting on both sides there. That the Truro Insurance Company had a hard time to meet their payments. They import cedar posts from Maine, which, with rails, make a fence costing about seventy-five cents a rod, but they are not so durable as formerly, being made of younger trees. 

According to Pratt's History, first camp-meeting in 1828.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 17, 1857

A Book of the Seasons: June 17 (crickets, fog, rain, haze, turtles, pogonias, berries, thunder, more rain, fireflies)

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

June 17.

Our view is confined

horizon near, no mountains –

hazy June weather.

As white and yellow 

flowers give place to the rose

and soon red lily 

so yellow spring sun 

becomes red sun of June heat –

midsummer flower.

June 17, 1854

June 17, 2016

The sound of the crickets at dawn after these first sultry nights seems like the dreaming of the earth still continued into the daylight. June 17, 1852

The earth-song of the cricket! Before Christianity was, it is. Health! health! health! is the burden of its song. June 17, 1852

Perhaps these mornings are the most memorable in the year, — after a sultry night and before a sultry day, — when, especially, the morning is the most glorious season of the day, when its coolness is most refreshing and you enjoy the glory of the summer gilded or silvered with dews, without the torrid summer's sun or the obscuring haze. June 17, 1852

At early dawn, the windows being open, I hear a steady, breathing, cricket-like sound from the chip-bird, ushering in the day. June 17, 1852

No fog this morning. June 17, 1852

Another breezy night and no fog this morning. June 17. 1853

Rain, especially heavy rain, raising the river in the night of the 17th. June 17, 1859

Quite a fog this morning. June 17, 1860

A cold fog. June 17, 1854 

Another remarkably hazy day; our view is confined, the horizon near, no mountains; as you look off only four or five miles, you see a succession of dark wooded ridges and vales filled with mist. It is dry, hazy June weather. June 17, 1854

We are more of the earth, farther from heaven, these days. We are getting deeper into the mists of earth. June 17, 1854

The season of hope and promise is past; already the season of small fruits has arrived. We are a little saddened, because we begin to see the interval between our hopes and their fulfillment. The prospect of the heavens is taken away, and we are presented only with a few small berries. June 17, 1854

Amelanchier berries begin to be red and softer and eatable, though not ripe . June 17. 1853

The birds sing well this morning, well as ever. The brown thrasher drowns the rest. Lark first, and, in the woods, the red-eye, veery, chewink, oven-bird, wood thrush. June 17, 1852

The evergreen-forest bird at old place in white pine and oak tops, top of Brister's Hill on right. I think it has black wings with white bars. Is it not the black-throated green warbler? June 17, 1854

The unmistakable tanager sits on the oaks at midday and sings with a hoarse red-eye note, pruit, prewee, prewa, prear, prea (often more notes), some of the latter notes clearer, without the r. It does not sing so continuously as the red-eye, but at short intervals repeats its half-dozen notes. June 17, 1854

One of the nighthawk's eggs is hatched. June 17. 1853 .

Was ever bird more completely protected, both by the color of its eggs and of its own body that sits on them, and of the young bird just hatched? June 17. 1853 .

It seems a singular place for a bird to begin its life, – to come out of its egg, – this little pinch of down, – and lie still on the exact spot where the egg lay, on a flat exposed shelf on the side of a bare hill, with nothing but the whole heavens, the broad universe above, to brood it when its mother was away. June 17. 1853

One [marsh hawk] egg is hatched since the 8th, and the young bird, all down, with a tinge of fawn or cinnamon, lies motionless on its breast with its head down and is already about four inches long! June 17, 1858

I see the old hawk pursue a stake-driver which was flying over this spot, darting down at him and driving him off. June 17, 1858

See a painted turtle digging at mid-afternoon. I have only to look at dry fields or banks near water to find the turtles laying there afternoons.  June 17, 1858 

The pogonias, adder's-tongue arethusas, I see nowadays, getting to be numerous, are far too pale to compete with the A. bulbosa, and then their snake-like odor is much against them. June 17. 1853

The dense fields of blue-eyed grass now blue the meadows, as if, in this fair season of the year, the clouds that envelop the earth were dispersing, and blue patches began to appear, answering to the blue sky. The eyes pass from these blue patches into the surrounding green as from the patches of clear sky into the clouds. June 17. 1853

Carex flava out, possibly a week. June 17, 1860

A small thunder-shower comes up in the south-west. The thunder sounds like moving a pile of boards in the attic.  June 17, 1852

About 1 P.M., notice thunder-clouds in west and hear the muttering. As yesterday, it splits at sight of Concord and goes south and north. June 17, 1860

We see the increasing outline of the slate-colored falling rain from the black cloud. It passes mainly to the south. We feel only the wind of it at first, but after it appears to back up and we get some rain.  June 17, 1852

About 3 P. M. begins a steady gentle rain here for several hours, and in the night again, the thunder, as yesterday, mostly forerunning or superficial to the shower. June 17, 1860

This the third day of thunder-showers in afternoon, though the 14th it did not rain here. June 17, 1860

Before sundown I reach Fair Haven Hill and gather strawberries. I find beds of large and lusty strawberry plants in sprout-lands, but they appear to run to leaves and bear very little fruit. June 17, 1854

The sun goes down red again, like a high-colored flower of summer. As the white and yellow flowers of spring are giving place to the rose, and will soon to the red lily, etc., so the yellow sun of spring has become a red sun of June drought, round and red like a midsummer flower, production of torrid heats. June 17, 1854

In the damp, warm evening after the rain, the fireflies appear to be more numerous than ever. June 17, 1852

*****

See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau:

Blue-eyed grass

The Snakemouth Orchid

The Cricket in Spring

 First fireflies in June

 The Painted Turtle

The Black-throated Green Warbler

 The Scarlet Tanager

The Nighthawk

the Marsh Hawk (Northern Harrier)

*****

The earth-song of the cricket! See June 13, 1851 ("I listen to the ancient, familiar, immortal, dear cricket sound under all others, and as these cease I become aware of the general earth-song.”); May 18, 1860 ("The creak of the cricket has been common on all warm, dry hills, banks, etc., for a week, - inaugurating the summer."); July 14, 1851 (“It is a sound from within, not without.You cannot dispose of it by listening to it. In proportion as I am stilled I hear it. It reminds me that I am a denizen of the earth.”); and note to June 4, 1857 ("One thing that chiefly distinguishes this season from three weeks ago is that fine serene undertone or earth-song as we go by sunny banks and hillsides, the creak of crickets, which affects our thoughts so favorably, imparting its own serenity.")

Perhaps these mornings are the most memorable in the year . . . when, especially, the morning is the most glorious season of the day. See Walden (“The morning is the most memorable season of the day, the awakening hour. ”)

its coolness is most refreshing and you enjoy the glory of the summer gilded or silvered with dews, without the torrid summer's sun or the obscuring haze. See June 23, 1854 (“. . . the air is beautifully clear, showing the glossy and light-reflecting greenness of the woods. It is a great relief to look into the horizon. There is more room under the heavens”); See Also June 26, 1853 (" Summer returns without its haze. We see infinitely further into the horizon on every side, and the boundaries of the world are enlarged."); June 23, 1852 (“ It is an agreeably cool and clear and breezy day, when all things appear as if washed bright and shine . . . You can see far into the horizon.”)

The season of hope and promise is past; already the season of small fruits has arrived. Compare August 9, 1853 ("This is the season of small fruits. I trust, too, that I am maturing some small fruit as palatable in these months, which will communicate my flavor to my kind.");August 18, 1853 (“The season of flowers or of promise may be said to be over, and now is the season of fruits; but where is our fruit ? The night of the year is approaching. What have we done with our talent?”)

Heavy rain, raising the river in the night. See June 14, 1858 ("The river is raised surprisingly by the rain of the 12th. The Mill Brook has been over the Turnpike."); June 15, 1858 ("Rains steadily again, and we have had no clear weather since the 11th. The river is remarkably high, far higher than before, this year, and is rising.")

The unmistakable tanager sits on the oaks at midday . . .The evergreen-forest bird at old place. See June 16, 1856 ("Heard around, from within the Purgatory, not only Wilson’s thrush, but evergreen forest note and tanager; and saw chip-squirrels within it ")

One of the nighthawk's eggs is hatched. See June 1, 1853 ("Walking up this side-hill, I disturb a nighthawk eight or ten feet from me, which goes down the hill, half fluttering, half hopping, as far as I can see. . . .Without moving, I look about and see its two eggs on the bare ground”); June 7, 1853 ("Visit my nighthawk on her nest.”); June 16, 1854 ("The nighthawk in full blast. "); June 18, 1853 (" I see a nighthawk in the twilight , flitting near the ground.")

Another remarkably hazy day; our view is confined, the horizon near, no mountains. Compare June 23, 1854 (“. . . the air is beautifully clear, showing the glossy and light-reflecting greenness of the woods. It is a great relief to look into the horizon. There is more room under the heavens”); See Also June 26, 1853 (" Summer returns without its haze. We see infinitely further into the horizon on every side, and the boundaries of the world are enlarged."); June 23, 1852 (“ It is an agreeably cool and clear and breezy day, when all things appear as if washed bright and shine . . . You can see far into the horizon.”)

I have only to look at dry fields or banks near water to find the turtles laying. See June 16, 1855 (“ A painted tortoise just burying three flesh-colored eggs in the dry, sandy plain. . .Find near by four more about this business. ”) 

The dense fields of blue-eyed grass now blue the meadows. See June 6, 1855 (“Blue-eyed grass maybe several days in some places.”); June 15, 1851 (“The blue-eyed grass, well named, looks up to heaven.”); June 15, 1852 ("The fields are blued with blue-eyed grass, — a slaty blue. "); June 15, 1859 ("Blue-eyed grass at height."); June 19, 1853 ("I see large patches of blue-eyed grass in the meadow across the river from my window")

One egg is hatched since the 8th. See June 8, 1858 (“The marsh hawk's eggs are not yet hatched. ”)

See a painted turtle digging at mid-afternoon. See  June 16, 1855 ("A painted tortoise just burying three flesh-colored eggs in the dry, sandy plain near the thrasher’s nest.. . . Find near by four more about this business. ");June 18, 1855 (" I see a painted tortoise just beginning its hole; then another a dozen rods from the river on the bare barren field near some pitch pines.")

The pogonias, adder's-tongue arethusas. See June 21, 1852 ("The adder's-tongue arethusa smells exactly like a snake.");.July 7, 1852 ("The Arethusa bulbosa, "crystalline purple;" Pogonia ophioglossoides, snake-mouthed arethusa, "pale purple;" and the Calopogon pulchellus, grass pink, "pink purple," make one family in my mind, — next to the purple orchis, or with it, — being flowers par excellence, all flower, all color, with inconspicuous leaves, naked flowers, . . .the pogonia has a strong snaky odor."); July 2, 1857 (“Pogonia ophioglossoides apparently in a day or two.”); July 8, 1857 (“Find a Pogonia ophioglossoides with a third leaf and second flower an inch above the first flower.”); August 1, 1856 ("Snake-head arethusa still in the meadow”) See also Reports on the herbaceous plants and on the quadrupeds of Massachusetts 199 (1840) ("(Pogonia ophioglossoides.) Snake-mouthed Arethusa, from which genus it was taken; stem nearly a foot high, with a single flower, nodding and pale-purple, and one oval-lanceolate leaf, and a leafy bract near the flower; lip fimbriate; swamps; July. The flower resembles a snake's head, whence its specific name.")

A marsh hawk egg hatched ... I see the old hawk pursue a stake-driver darting down at him and driving him off. See June 16, 1860 ("A marsh hawk's nest on the Great Meadows this afternoon, with three eggs considerably developed."); August 5, 1854 (“Near Lee's (returning), see a large bittern, pursued by small birds.”)

The thunder, as yesterday, mostly forerunning or superficial to the shower. See  June 15, 1860 (“A thunder-shower in the north goes down the Merrimack.”); June 16, 1860 ("Thunder-showers show themselves about 2 P.M. in the west, but split at sight of Concord and go east on each side.”); June 16, 1854 ("Three days in succession, — the 13th, 14th, and 15th, — thunder-clouds, with thunder and lightning, have risen high in the east, threatening instant rain, and yet each time it has failed to reach us.”)

The fireflies appear to be more numerous than ever. See June 16, 1860 (" The meadows full of lightning-bugs to-night; first seen the 14th.") Compare July 20, 1852 ("The stars are few and distant; the fireflies fewer still.”)

June 17, 2019

If you make the least correct 

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

April 7, 1853 

June 16  <<<<<  June 17 >>>>>  June 18

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, June 17

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

 https://tinyurl.com/HDT17June

The cedar swamp, source of Assabet.

June 17
(avesong)

June 17. 

Go to Blake’s. Indigo-bird on his trees. 

A. M. — Ride with him and Brown and Sophia round a part of Quinsigamond Pond into Shrewsbury. 

The southerly end of the pond covered for a great distance with pads of yellow and white lily. Measured one of the last: nine and seven eighths inches long by nine and six eighths, with sharp lobes, etc., and a. reddish petiole. Small primrose well out; how long?

The cedar swamp, source of Assabet, must be partly in Grafton, as well as Westboro near railroad, according to a farmer in Shrewsbury. 

P. M. —Went to Rev. Horace James’s reptiles (Orthodox). He had, set up, a barred owl, without horns and a little less than the cat owl. Also a large lobe-footed bird which I think must have been a large grebe, killed in Fitchburg. 

He distinguished the Rana halecina in the alcohol by more squarish (?) spots. Showed me the horned frog (?), (or toad ?); also alive in bottle, with moss and water, the violet-colored salamander (S. venenosa) with yellow spots (five or six inches long), probably same I found in stump at Walden; and, in spirits, smaller, the S. erythronota, with a conspicuous red back. What looked like mine, or the common one in springs here, was Triton niger. I think he said Holbrook made the water ones tritons and land ones salamanders. Another small one, all red, with spots; another with a line of red spots on each side; and others. 

He finds a variety of Emys guttata with striated scales (mentioned by Holbrook and Storer). Saw a common box turtle shell with initials in sternum. One thought that what ever was cut in the scale was renewed in the new scale. Saw, in spirits, the Heterodon platyrhinus from Smithfield, R. I., flat-snouted, somewhat like a striped snake; and a very small brown snake. James gave me some of the spawn of a shellfish from a string of them a foot long.

At Natural History Rooms, a great cone from a southern pine and a monstrous nutshell from the East Indies (?); seed of the Lodoicea Sechellarum, Seychelles Islands.

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

 The cedar swamp, source of Assabet, must be partly in Grafton, as well as Westboro near railroad, according to a farmer in Shrewsbury. Compare See June 10, 1853 ("We continued on, round the head of “Cedar Swamp,” and may say that we drank at the source of it or of Saw Mill Brook, where a spring is conducted through a hollow log to a tub for cattle. . . .What shall this great wild tract over which we strolled be called? ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cedar Swamps

Already the season of small fruits has arrived.

June 17.

June 17, 2019

A cold fog. 

These mornings those who walk in grass are thoroughly wetted above mid-leg. All the earth is dripping wet. I am surprised to feel how warm the water is, by contrast with the cold, foggy air.

From the Hill I am reminded of more youthful mornings, seeing the dark forms of the trees eastward in the low grounds, partly within and against the shining white fog, the sun just risen over it. The mist fast rolling away eastward from them, their tops at last streaking the mist and dividing it into vales. All beyond them a submerged and unknown country, as if they grew on the sea shore. 

See the sun reflected up from the Assabet to the hill top, through the dispersing fog, giving to the water a peculiarly rippled, pale-golden hue.

Another remarkably hazy day; our view is confined, the horizon near, no mountains; as you look off only four or five miles, you see a succession of dark wooded ridges and vales filled with mist. It is dry, hazy June weather. 

We are more of the earth, farther from heaven, these days.  We are getting deeper into the mists of earth.

The season of hope and promise is past; already the season of small fruits has arrived. We are a little saddened, because we begin to see the interval between our hopes and their fulfillment. The prospect of the heavens is taken away, and we are presented only with a few small berries. 

Before sundown I reach Fair Haven Hill and gather strawberries. I find beds of large and lusty strawberry plants in sprout-lands, but they appear to run to leaves and bear very little fruit, having spent themselves in leaves by the time the dry weather arrives. It is those still earlier and more stinted plants which grow on dry uplands that bear the early fruit, formed before the droughts. But the meadows produce both leaves and fruit.

The sun goes down red again, like a high-colored flower of summer. As the white and yellow flowers of spring are giving place to the rose, and will soon to the red lily, etc., so the yellow sun of spring has become a red sun of June drought, round and red like a midsummer flower, production of torrid heats.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 17, 1854

Another remarkably hazy day; our view is confined, the horizon near, no mountains.  See June 21, 1856 (”Very hot day, as was yesterday, -— 98° at 2 P. M., 99° at 3, and 128° in sun”); June 25, 1858 (“Hotter than yesterday and, like it, muggy or close. So hazy can see no mountains.");  Compare June 23, 1854 (“.The air is beautifully clear  . . It is a great relief to look into the horizon. There is more room under the heavens”); See Also June 23, 1852 (“ It is an agreeably cool and clear and breezy day, when all things appear as if washed bright and shine . . . You can see far into the horizon.”); June 26, 1853 (" Summer returns without its haze. We see infinitely further into the horizon on every side, and the boundaries of the world are enlarged.")

The season of hope and promise is past; already the season of small fruits has arrived. Compare
August 9, 1853 ("This is the season of small fruits. I trust, too, that I am maturing some small fruit as palatable in these months, which will communicate my flavor to my kind.");August 18, 1853 (“The season of flowers or of promise may be said to be over, and now is the season of fruits; but where is our fruit ? The night of the year is approaching. What have we done with our talent?”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: Strawberries

A red sun of June drought, round and red like a midsummer flower, production of torrid heats.See
May 5, 1859 ("The sun sets red (first time), followed by a very hot and hazy day ");June 5, 1854 ("The sun goes down red and shorn of his beams, a sign of hot weather,"); June 18, 1854 ("Another round red sun of dry and dusty weather to-night, – a red or red-purple helianthus.")

June 17. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 17

Note: Today there is more on Anthony Burns:

The judges and lawyers, and all men of expedience, consider not whether the Fugitive Slave Law is right, but whether it is what they call constitutional. They try the merits of the case by a very low and incompetent standard. Pray, is virtue constitutional, or vice? Is equity constitutional, or iniquity? It is as impertinent, in important moral and vital questions like this, to ask whether a law is constitutional or not, as to ask whether it is profitable or not. They persist in being the servants of man, and the worst of men, rather than the servants of God. Sir, the question is not whether you or your grandfather, seventy years ago, entered into an agreement to serve the devil, and that service is not accordingly now due; but whether you will not now, for once and at last, serve God . . . and obey that eternal and only just Constitution which he, and not any Jefferson or Adams, has written in your being . . . .

Some men act as if they believed that they could safely slide down-hill a little way, — or a good way, — and would surely come to a place, by and by, whence they could slide up again. This is expediency, or choosing that course which offers the fewest obstacles. But there is no such thing as accomplishing a moral reform by the use of expediency or policy. There is no such thing as sliding up-hill. In morals the only sliders are backsliders.

See May 29, 1854 , June 9, 1854, June 16, 1854 and ""Slavery in Massachusetts.

As white and yellow

flowers give place to the rose

and soon red lily

yellow sun of spring

becomes red sun of June heat –

midsummer flower.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Season of Small Fruits

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

tinyurl.com/hdt-540617

A singular place for a bird to begin its life

June 17.

Friday. Another breezy night and no fog this morning. 

The pogonias, adder's-tongue arethusas, I see nowadays, getting to be numerous, are far too pale to compete with the A. bulbosa, and then their snake-like odor is much against them.

The dense fields of blue-eyed grass now blue the meadows, as if, in this fair season of the year, the clouds that envelop the earth were dispersing, and blue patches began to appear, answering to the blue sky. The eyes pass from these blue patches into the surrounding green as from the patches of clear sky into the clouds. 

If a man walks in the woods for love of them and  see his fellows with impartial eye afar, for half his days, he is esteemed a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods, he is esteemed industrious and enterprising-making earth bald before its time.

 Amelanchier berries begin to be red  and softer and eatable, though not ripe . 

P. M. To Walden . 

I did not mention yesterday the great devil's-needle with his humped back, which hovered over the boat and, though headed across its course, and not appearing to fly in the direction in which the boat was moving, yet preserved his relation to the boat perfectly. What steamer can reverse its paddle-wheels as he can? 

A remarkably strong south wind this afternoon, and cool. The greenness about the edge of Walden is very striking when seen from the Peak nowadays. Is it in the fall?

One of the nighthawk's eggs is hatched. The young is unlike any that I have seen, exactly like a pinch of rabbit's fur or down of that color dropped on the ground, not two inches long, with a dimpling or geometrical or somewhat regular arrangement of minute feathers in the middle, destined to become the wings and tail. Yet even it half opens its eye, and peeps if I mistake not. 

Was ever bird more completely protected, both by the color of its eggs and of its own body that sits on them, and of the young bird just hatched? Accordingly the eggs and young are rarely discovered. There is one egg still, and by the side of it this little pinch of down, flattened out and not observed at first, and a foot down the hill has rolled a half of the egg it came out of. 

It seems a singular place for a bird to begin its life, -to come out of its egg, - this little pinch of down, - and lie still on the exact spot where the egg lay, on a flat exposed shelf on the side of a bare hill, with nothing but the whole heavens, the broad universe above, to brood it when its mother was away.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 17. 1853

The dense fields of blue-eyed grass now blue the meadows. See June 15, 1851 ("The blue-eyed grass, well named, looks up to heaven."); See  also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Blue-Eyed Grass

One of the nighthawk's eggs is hatched. See  June 1, 1853 ("Walking up this side-hill, I disturb a nighthawk eight or ten feet from me, which goes down the hill, half fluttering, half hopping, as far as I can see. . . .Without moving, I look about and see its two eggs on the bare ground”); June 7, 1853 ("Visit my nighthawk on her nest.”) A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,, the Nighthawk