I was surprised, on turning round, to behold the serene and everlasting beauty of the world

 May 17. 

May 17, 2019

5 a. m. — To Island by boat.

 Everything has sensibly advanced during the warm and moist night. Some trees, as the small maples in the street, already look verdurous. The air has not sensibly cooled much. The chimney swallows are busily skimming low over the river and just touching the water without regard to me, as a week ago they did, and as they circle back overhead to repeat the experiment, I hear a sharp snap or short rustling of their wings. 

The button-bush now shows the first signs of life, on a close inspection, in its small round, smooth, greenish buds. 

The polygonums and pontederias are getting above water, the latter like spoons on long handles. 

The Cornus florida is blossoming; will be fairly out to-day.1 

The Polygonatum pubescens; one on the Island has just opened. This is the smaller Solomon's-seal.

 A thorn there will blossom to-day. 

The Viola palmata is out there, in the meadow. 

Everywhere the huckleberry's sticky leaves are seen expanding, and the high blueberry is in blossom. Now is the time to ad mire the very young and tender leaves. The blossoms of the red oak hang down under its young leaves as under a canopy. 

The petals have already fallen from the Amelanchier Botryapium, and young berries are plainly forming. 

I hear the wood pewee, — pe-a-wai. The heat of yesterday has brought him on. 

P. M. — To Corner Spring and Fair Haven Cliffs. 

Myosotis laxa is out a day or two. At first does not run; is short and upright like M. stricta.

 Golden senecio will be out by to-morrow at least.

 The early cinquefoil is now in its prime and spots the banks and hillsides and dry meadows with its dazzling yellow. How lively! It is one of the most interesting yellow flowers. 

The fields are also now whitened, perhaps as much as ever, with the houstonia. 

The buck-bean is out, apparently to-day, the singularly fuzzy- looking blossom. How inconspicuous its leaves now!

 The rhodora is peculiar for being, like the peach, a profusion of pink blossoms on a leafless stem. This shrub is, then, a late one to leaf out. 

The bobolink skims by before the wind how far without motion of his wings! sometimes borne sidewise as he turns his head — for thus he can fly — and tinkling, linking, incessantly all the way. 

How very beautiful, like the fairest flowers, the young black oak shoots with leaves an inch long now! like red velvet on one side and downy white on the other, with only a red edge. Compare this with the pinker white oak. 

The Salix nigra just in bloom.

May 19, 2023

 The trientalis, properly called star-flower, is a white star, single, double, or treble. 

The fringed polygala surprises us in meadows or in low woods as a rarer, richer, and more delicate color, with a singularly tender or delicate-looking leaf. 

As you approach midsummer, the color of flowers is more intense and fiery. The reddest flower is the flower especially. Our blood is not white, nor is it yellow, nor even blue. 

The nodding trillium has apparently been out a day or two. Methinks it smells like the lady's-slipper.

Also the Ranunculus recurvatus for a day or two. The small two or three leaved Solomon's- seal is just out.

 The Viola cucullata is sometimes eight inches high, and leaves in proportion. It must be the largest of the violets except perhaps the yellow. 

The V. blanda is almost entirely out of bloom at the spring. 

Returning toward Fair Haven, I perceive at Potter's fence the first whiff of that ineffable fragrance from the Wheeler meadow, — as it were the promise of strawberries, pineapples, etc., in the aroma of their flowers, so blandly sweet, — aroma that fitly fore runs the summer and the autumn's most delicious fruits. It would certainly restore all such sick as could be conscious of it. The odors of no garden are to be named with it. It is wafted from the garden of gardens. It appears to blow from the river meadow from the west or southwest, here about forty rods wide or more. If the air here always possessed this bland sweetness, this spot would become famous and be visited by sick and well from all parts of the earth. It would be carried off in bottles and become an article of traffic which kings would strive to monopolize. The air of Elysium cannot be more sweet. 

Cardamine hirsuta out some time by the ivy tree.

The Viola lanceolata seems to pass into the cucullata insensibly, but can that small round-leaved white violet now so abundantly in blossom in open low ground be the same with that large round-leaved one now about out of blossom in shady low ground ? *

Arabis rhomboidea just out by the willow on the Corner causeway. 

The Ranunculus repens perhaps yesterday, with its spotted leaves and its not recurved calyx though furrowed stem. Was that a very large Veronica serpyllifolia by the Corner Spring? Who shall keep with the lupines? They will apparently blossom within a week under Fair Haven. 

The Viola sagittata, of which Viola ovata is made a variety, is now very marked there. 

The V. pedata there presents the greatest array of blue of any flower as yet. The flowers are so raised above their leaves, and so close together, that they make a more indelible impression of blue on the eye; it is almost dazzling. I blink as I look at them, they seem to reflect the blue rays so forcibly, with a slight tinge of lilac. To be sure, there is no telling what the redder ovata might not do if they grew as densely, so many eyes or scales of blue side by side, forming small shields of that color four or five inches in diameter. The effect and intensity is very much increased by the numbers. 

I hear the first unquestionable nighthawk squeak and see him circling far off high above the earth. It is now about 5 o'clock p. m. 

The tree-toads are heard in the rather moist atmosphere, as if presaging rain. 

I hear the dumping sound of bull(?)frogs, telling the weather is warm. The paddocks, as if too lazy to be disturbed, say now to the intruder, " don't, don't, don't, don't ; " also in the morning after the first sultry night. 

The chinquapin oak may be said to flower and leave out at the same time with the ilicifolia. It is distinguished as well by its yellow catkins as by its leaves. 

Pyrus arbutifolia is out, to-day or yesterday. 

A Crataegus just out.

I sit now on a rock on the west slope of Fair Haven orchard, an hour before sunset, this warm, almost sultry evening, the air filled with the sweetness of apple blossoms (this is blossom week) , — or I think it is mainly that meadow fragrance still, — the sun partly concealed behind a low cloud in the west, the air cleared by last evening's thunder-shower, the river now beautifully smooth (though a warm, bland breeze blows up here), full of light and reflecting the placid western sky and the dark woods which overhang it. 

I was surprised, on turning round, to behold the serene and everlasting beauty of the world, it was so soothing. I saw that I could not go home to supper and lose it. It was so much fairer, serener, more beautiful, than my mood had been. 

The fields beyond the river have unexpectedly a smooth, lawn-like beauty, and in beautiful curves sweep round the edge of the woods. The rapidly expanding foliage of the deciduous (last evening's rain or moisture has started them) lights up with a lively yellow green the dark pines which we have so long been used to. Some patches (I speak of woods half a mile or more off) are a lively green, some gray or reddish-gray still, where white oaks stand. 

With the stillness of the air comes the stillness of the water. 

The sweetest singers among the birds are heard more distinctly now, as the reflections are seen more distinctly in the water, — the veery constantly now. 

Methinks this serene, ambrosial beauty could hardly have been but for last evening's thunder-shower, which, to be sure, barely touched us, but cleared the air and gave a start to vegetation. 

The elm on the opposite side of the river has now a thin but dark verdure, almost as dark as the pines, while, as I have said, the prevailing color of the deciduous woods is a light yellowish and sunny green. 

The woods rarely if ever present a more beautiful aspect from afar than now. 

Methinks the black oak at early leafing is more red than the red oak. 

Ah, the beauty of this last hour of the day — when a power stills the air and smooths all waters and all minds — that partakes of the light of the day and the stillness of the night ! 

Sit on Cliffs. 

The Shrub Oak Plain, where are so many young white oaks, is now a faint rose-color, almost like a distant peach orchard in bloom and seen against sere red ground. What might at first be taken for the color of some sere leaves and bare twigs still left, its tender red expanding leaves. 

You might say of the white oaks and of many black oaks at least, "When the oaks are in the red." 

The perfect smoothness of Fair Haven Pond, full of light and reflecting the wood so distinctly, while still occasionally the sun shines warm and brightly from behind a cloud, giving the completest contrast of sunshine and shade, is enough to make this hour memorable. 

The red pin cushion gall is already formed on the new black oak leaves, with little grubs in them, and the leaves, scarcely more than two inches long, are already attacked by other foes. 

Looking down from these rocks, the black oak has a very light hoary or faint silvery color; the white oak, though much less advanced, has a yet more hoary color; but the red oaks (as well as the hickories) have a lively, glossy aspen green, a shade lighter than the birch now, and their long yellowish catkins appear further advanced than the black. 

Some black as well as white oaks are reddish still. 

The new shoots now color the whole of the juniper (creeping) with a light yellow tinge. It appears to be just in blossom,1 and those little green berries must be already a year old; and, as it is called dioecious, these must be the fertile blossoms. 

This must be Krigia Virginica now budded, close by the juniper,  and will blossom in a day or two.

The low black berry, apparently, on Cliffs is out, earlier than else where, and Veronica arvensis (?), very small, obscure pale-blue flower, and, to my surprise, Linaria Canadensis. 

Returning slowly, I sit on the wall of the orchard by the white pine. 

Now the cows begin to low, and the river reflects the golden light of the sun just before his setting. The sough of the wind in the pines is more noticeable, as if the air were otherwise more still and hollow. 

The wood thrush has sung for some time. He touches a depth in me which no other bird's song does. He has learned to sing, and no thrumming of the strings or tuning disturbs you. Other birds may whistle pretty well, but he is the master of a finer-toned instrument. His song is musical, not from association merely, not from variety, but the character of its tone. It is all divine, — a Shakespeare among birds, and a Homer too. 

This sweetness of the air, does it not always first succeed a thunder-storm? Is it not a general sweetness, and not to be referred to a particular plant? 

He who cuts down woods beyond a certain limit exterminates birds. 

How red are the scales of some hickory buds, now turned back! 

The fragrance of the apple blossom reminds me of a pure and innocent and unsophisticated country girl bedecked for church.

The purple sunset is reflected from the surface of the river, as if its surface were tinged with lake. 

Here is a field sparrow that varies his strain very sweetly.

Coming home from Spring by Potter's Path to the Corner road in the dusk, saw a dead-leaf-colored hylodes; detected it by its expanding and relapsing bubble, nearly twice as big as its head, as it sat on an alder twig six inches from ground and one rod from a pool. 

The beach plum is out to-day.

The whip-poor- will sings. Large insects now fly at night. This is a somewhat sultry night. We must begin now to look out for insects about the candles.

The lilac out. 

Genius rises above nature; in spite of heat, in spite of cold, works and lives.


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

The Polygonatum pubescens; one on the Island has just opened. This is the smaller Solomon's-seal. See  May 12, 1858 ("The Polygonatum pubescens is strongly budded."); May 22, 1856 ("Polygonatum pubescens at rock.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Solomon's Seal

That ineffable fragrance from the Wheeler meadow, — as it were the promise of strawberries, pineapples, etc., in the aroma of their flowers. See May 16, 1852 (“The whole earth is fragrant as a bouquet held to your nose. A fine, delicious fragrance, which will come to the senses only when it will.”); May 16, 1854 ("The earth is all fragrant as one flower. . . .. Nature now is perfectly genial to man.”); May 6, 1855 ("that unaccountable fugacious fragrance, as of all flowers”)

The air filled with the sweetness of apple blossoms (this is blossom week). Compare May 27, 1857 ("This is blossom week, beginning last Sunday (the 24th).") and note to May 25, 1852 (It is blossom week with the apples.”).

I was surprised, on turning round, to behold the serene and everlasting beauty of the world. See May 1850 ("I still sit on its Cliff in a new spring day, and look over the awakening woods and the river, and hear the new birds sing, with the same delight as ever. It is as sweet a mystery to me as ever, what this world is. . . ."); May 5, 1852 ("Every part of the world is beautiful today.."). May 16, 1854 (" It is a splendid day, so clear and bright and fresh; the warmth of the air and the bright tender verdure putting forth on all sides make an impression of luxuriance and genialness, so perfectly fresh");  May 17, 1852 ("Now the sun has come out after the May storm, how bright, how full of freshness and tender promise and fragrance is the new world!"): May 18, 1852 ("The world can never be more beautiful than now.”); May 22, 1854 ("How many times I have been surprised  thus, on turning about on this very spot, at the fairness of the earth!”); October 7, 1857 ("When I turn round half-way up Fair Haven Hill, by the orchard wall, and look northwest, I am surprised for the thousandth time at the beauty of the landscape.”); March 18, 1858 ("When I get two thirds up the hill, I look round and am for the hundredth time surprised by the landscape of the river valley and the horizon with its distant blue scalloped rim.") See also August 6, 1852 ("All men beholding a rainbow begin to understand the significance of the Greek name for the world,- Kosmos, or beauty. We live, as it were, within the calyx of a flower.");  December 11, 1855 ("We get only transient and partial glimpses of the beauty of the world."); October 4, 1859 ("In what book is this world and its beauty described?”)

I hear the first unquestionable nighthawk squeak and see him circling far off high above the earth.. See May 17, 1860 (" A nighthawk with its distinct white spots ") See also   April 1, 1853 ("Hear what I should not hesitate to call the squeak of the nighthawk , - only Wilson makes them arrive early in May"); April 19, 1853 ("Hear again that same nighthawk-like sound over a meadow at evening. "); May 5, 1852 ("No nighthawks heard yet.");  May 9, 1853 ("Now at starlight that same nighthawk or snipe squeak is heard but no hovering.");   May 16, 1859 ("At eve the first spark of a nighthawk. ");. May 25, 1852 (" First nighthawks squeak and boom") and also see  A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,, the Nighthawk

This sweetness of the air, does it not always first succeed a thunder-storm? See May 17, 1852 (" After a storm at this season, the sun comes out and lights up the tender expanding leaves, and all nature is full of light and fragrance, and the birds sing without ceasing, and the earth is a fairyland . . . how bright, how full of freshness and tender promise and fragrance is the new world! ") ; May 11, 1854 (" I suspect that summer weather may be always ushered in in a similar manner, — thunder-shower, rainbow, smooth water, and warm night.")

Surprised to behold 

the serene and everlasting 

beauty of the world.

Stone fruit II

March 28. 

P. M. — Paddle to the Bedford line. 

It is now high time to look for arrowheads, etc. I spend many hours every spring gathering the crop which the melting snow and rain have washed bare. When, at length, some island in the meadow or some sandy field elsewhere has been plowed, perhaps for rye, in the fall, I take note of it, and do not fail to repair thither as soon as the earth begins to be dry in the spring. If the spot chances never to have been cultivated before, I am the first to gather a crop from it. 

The farmer little thinks that another reaps a harvest which is the fruit of his toil. As much ground is turned up in a day by the plow as Indian implements could not have turned over in a month, and my eyes rest on the evidences of an aboriginal life which passed here a thousand years ago perchance. 

Especially if the knolls in the meadows are washed by a freshet where they have been plowed the previous fall, the soil will be taken away lower down and the stones left, — the arrow heads, etc., and soapstone pottery amid them, — some what as gold is washed in a dish or torn. 

I landed on two spots this afternoon and picked up a dozen arrowheads. It is one of the regular pursuits of the spring. As much as sportsmen go in pursuit of ducks, and gunners of musquash, and scholars of rare books, and travellers of adventures, and poets of ideas, and all men of money, I go in search of arrowheads when the proper season comes round again. 

So I help my self to live worthily, and loving my life as I should. 

It is a good collyrium to look on the bare earth, — to pore over it so much, getting strength to all your senses, like Antaeus. If I did not find arrowheads, I might, per chance, begin to pick up crockery and fragments of pipes, — the relics of a more recent man. Indeed, you can hardly name a more innocent or wholesome entertainment. As I am thus engaged, I hear the rumble of the bowling-alley's thunder, which has be gun again in the village. It comes before the earliest natural thunder. But what its lightning is, and what atmospheres it purifies, I do not know. Or I might collect the various bones which I come across. They would make a museum that would delight some Owen at last, and what a text they might furnish me for a course of lectures on human life or the like! I might spend my days collecting the fragments of pipes until I found enough, after all my search, to compose one perfect pipe when laid together. 

I have not decided whether I had better publish my experience in searching for arrowheads in three volumes, with plates and an index, or try to compress it into one. These durable implements seem to have been suggested to the Indian mechanic with a view to my entertainment in a succeeding period. After all the labor expended on it, the bolt may have been shot but once perchance, and the shaft which was devoted to it decayed, and there lay the arrowhead, sinking into the ground, awaiting me.

They lie all over the hills with like expectation, and in due time the husbandman is sent, and, tempted by the promise of corn or rye, he plows the land and turns them up to my view. 

Many as I have found, methinks the last one gives me about the same delight that the first did.

 Some time or other, you would say, it had rained arrowheads, for they lie all over the surface of America. 

You may have your peculiar tastes. Certain localities in your town may seem from association unattractive and uninhabitable to you. You may wonder that the land bears any money value there, and pity some poor fellow who is said to survive in that neighborhood. 

But plow up a new field there, and you will find the omnipresent arrow-points strewn over it, and it will appear that the red man, with other tastes and associations, lived there too. 

No matter how far from the modern road or meeting-house, no matter how near. 

They lie in the meeting-house cellar, and they lie in the distant cow-pasture. 

And some collections which were made a century ago by the curious like myself have been dispersed again, and they are still as good as new. 

You cannot tell the third-hand ones (for they are all second-hand) from the others, such is their persistent out-of-door durability; for they were chiefly made to be lost. 

They are sown, like a grain that is slow to germinate, broadcast over the earth. 

Like the dragon's teeth which bore a crop of soldiers, these bear crops of philosophers and poets, and the same seed is just as good to plant again. 

It is a stone fruit. Each one yields me a thought. I come nearer to the maker of it than if I found his bones. 

His bones would not prove any wit that wielded them, such as this work of his bones does. It is humanity inscribed on the face of the earth, patent to my eyes as soon as the snow goes off, not hidden away in some crypt or grave or under a pyramid. No disgusting mummy, but a clean stone, the best symbol or letter that could have been transmitted to me. 

The Red Man, his mark 

At every step I see it, and I can easily supply the "Tahatawan" or 'Mantatuket " that might have been written if he had had a clerk. 

It is no single inscription on a particular rock, but a footprint — rather a mind-print — left everywhere, and altogether illegible. No vandals, however vandalic in their disposition, can be so industrious as to destroy them. 

Time will soon destroy the works of famous painters and sculptors, but the Indian arrowhead will balk his efforts and Eternity will have to come to his aid.

They are not fossil bones, but, as it were, fossil thoughts, forever reminding me of the mind that shaped them.

 I would fain know that I am treading in the tracks of human game, — that I am on the trail of mind, — and these little reminders never fail to set me right. When I see these signs I know that the subtle spirits that made them are not far off, into whatever form transmuted. What if you do plow and hoe amid them, and swear that not one stone shall be left upon another ? They are only the less like to break in that case. When you turn up one layer you bury another so much the more securely. They are at peace with rust. This arrow-headed character promises to outlast all others. The larger pestles and axes may, perchance, grow scarce and be broken, but the arrowhead shall, perhaps, never cease to wing its way through the ages to eternity. 

It was originally winged for but a short flight, but it still, to my mind's eye, wings its way through the ages, bearing a message from the hand that shot it. Myriads of arrow-points lie sleeping in the skin of the revolving earth, while meteors revolve in space. The footprint, the mind-print of the oldest men. 

When some Vandal chieftain has razed to the earth the British Museum, and, perchance, the winged bulls from Nineveh shall have lost most if not all of their features, the arrowheads which the museum contains will, perhaps, find themselves at home again in familiar dust, and resume their shining in new springs upon the bared surface of the earth then, to be picked up for the thousandth time by the shepherd or savage that may be wandering there, and once more suggest their story to him. Indifferent they to British Museums, and, no doubt, Nineveh bulls are old acquaintances of theirs, for they have camped on the plains of Mesopotamia, too, and were buried with the winged bulls. 

They cannot be said to be lost nor found. Surely their use was not so much to bear its fate to some bird or quadruped, or man, as it was to lie here near the surface of the earth for a perpetual reminder to the generations that come after. As for museums, I think  it is better to let Nature take care of our antiquities. These are our antiquities, and they are cleaner to think of than the rubbish of the Tower of London, and they are a more ancient armor than is there. It is a re commendation that they are so inobvious, — that they occur only to the eye and thought that chances to be directed toward them. When you pick up an arrowhead and put it in your pocket, it may say : 

"Eh, you think you have got me, do you ? But I shall wear a hole in your pocket at last, or if you put me in your cabinet, your heir or great-grandson will forget me or throw me out the window directly, or when the house falls I shall drop into the cellar, and there I shall lie quite at home again. Ready to be found again, eh ? Perhaps some new red man that is to come will fit me to a shaft and make me do his bidding for a bow-shot. What reck I ?" 

As we were paddling over the Great Meadows, I saw at a distance, high in the air above the middle of the meadow, a very compact flock of blackbirds advancing against the sun. Though there were more than a hundred, they did not appear to occupy more than six feet in breadth, but the whole flock was dashing first to the right and then to the left. When advancing straight toward me and the sun, they made but little impression on the eye, — so many fine dark points merely, seen against the sky, — but as often as they wheeled to the right or left, displaying their wings flat wise and the whole length of their bodies, they were a very conspicuous black mass. This fluctuation in the amount of dark surface was a very pleasing phenomenon. It reminded me [of] those blinds whose sashes [sic] ting nearly all the light and now entirely excluding it; so the flock of blackbirds opened and shut. But at length they suddenly spread out and dispersed, some flying off this way, and others that, as, when a wave strikes against a cliff, it is dashed upward and lost in fine spray. So they lost their compactness and impetus and broke up suddenly in mid-air. 

We see eight geese floating afar in the middle of the meadow, at least half a mile off, plainly (with glass) much larger than the ducks in their neighborhood and the white on their heads very distinct. When at length they arise and fly off northward, their peculiar heavy undulating wings, blue-heron-like and unlike any duck, are very noticeable. 

The black, sheldrake, etc., move their wings rapidly, and remind you of paddle-wheel steamers. Methinks the wings of the black duck appear to be set very far back when it is flying. The meadows, which are still covered far and wide, are quite alive with black ducks. 

When walking about on the low east shore at the Bedford bound, I heard a faint honk, and looked around over the water with my glass, thinking it came from that side or perhaps from a farmyard in that direction. I soon heard it again, and at last we detected a great flock passing over, quite on the other side of us and pretty high up. From time to time one of the company uttered a short note, that peculiarly metallic, clangorous sound. These were in a single undulating line, and, as usual, one or two were from time to time crowded out of the line, apparently by the crowding of those in the rear, and were flying on one side and trying to recover their places, but at last a second short line was formed, meeting the long one at the usual angle and making a figure somewhat like a hay-hook. I suspect it will be found that there is really some advantage in large birds of passage flying in the wedge form and cleaving their way through the air, — that they really do overcome its resistance best in this way, — and perchance the direction and strength of the wind determine the comparative length of the two sides. 

The great gulls fly generally up or down the river valley, cutting off the bends of the river, and so do these geese. These fly sympathizing with the river, — a stream in the air, soon lost in the distant sky. 

We see these geese swimming and flying at midday and when it is perfectly fair. 

If you scan the horizon at this season of the year you are very likely to detect a small flock of dark ducks moving with rapid wing athwart the sky, or see the undulating line of migrating geese against the sky. 

Perhaps it is this easterly wind which brings geese, as it did on the 24th. 

Ball's Hill, with its withered oak leaves and its pines, looks very fair to-day, a mile and a half off across the water, through a very thin varnish or haze. It reminds me of the isle which was called up from the bottom of the sea, which was given to Apollo. 

How charming the contrast of land and water, especially a temporary island in the flood, with its new and tender shores of waving outline, so withdrawn yet habitable, above all if it rises into a hill high above the water and contrasting with it the more, and if that hill is wooded, suggesting wildness ! 

Our vernal lakes have a beauty to my mind which they would not possess if they were more permanent. Everything is in rapid flux here, suggesting that Nature is alive to her extremities and superficies. To-day we sail swiftly on dark rolling waves or paddle over a sea as smooth as a mirror, unable to touch the bottom, where mowers work and hide their jugs in August; coasting the edge of maple swamps, where alder tassels and white maple flowers are kissing the tide that has risen to meet them. 

But this particular phase of beauty is fleeting. Nature has so many shows for us she cannot afford to give much time to this. In a few days, perchance, these lakes will have all run away to the sea. 

Such are the pictures which she paints. When we look at our masterpieces we see only dead paint and its vehicle, which suggests no liquid life rapidly flowing off from beneath. In the former case — in Nature — it is constant surprise and novelty. In many arrangements there is a wearisome monotony. We know too well what [we] shall have for our Saturday's dinner, but each day's feast in Nature's year is a surprise to us and adapted to our appetite and spirits. She has arranged such an order of feasts as never tires. Her motive is not economy but satisfaction. 

As we sweep past the north end of Poplar Hill, with a sand-hole in it, its now dryish, pale-brown mottled sward clothing its rounded slope, which was lately saturated with moisture, presents very agreeable hues. In this light, in fair weather, the patches of now dull- greenish mosses contrast just regularly enough with the pale-brown grass. It is like some rich but modest- colored Kidderminster carpet, or rather the skin of a monster python tacked to the hillside and stuffed with earth. 


These earth colors, methinks, are never so fair as in the spring. Now the green mosses and lichens contrast with the brown grass, but ere long the surface will be uniformly green. I suspect that we are more amused by the effects of color in the skin of the earth now than in summer. Like the skin of a python, greenish and brown, a fit coat for it to creep over the earth and be concealed in. Or like the skin of a pard, the great leopard mother that Nature is, where she lies at length, exposing her flanks to the sun. I feel as if I could land to stroke and kiss the very sward, it is so fair. It is homely and domestic to my eyes like the rug that lies before my hearth-side. Such ottomans and divans are spread for us to recline on. Nor are these colors mere thin superficial figures, vehicles for paint, but wonderful living growths, — these lichens, to the study of which learned men have devoted their lives, — and libraries have been written about them. The earth lies out now like a leopard, drying her lichen and moss spotted skin in the sun, her sleek and variegated hide. I know that the few raw spots will heal over. Brown is the color for me, the color of our coats and our daily lives, the color of the poor man's loaf.  The bright tints are pies and cakes, good only for October feasts, which would make us sick if eaten every day. 

One side of each wave and ripple is dark and the other light blue, reflecting the sky, — as I look down on them from my boat, — and these colors (?) combined produce a dark blue at a distance. These blue spaces ever remind me of the blue in the iridescence produced by oily matter on the surface, for you are slow to regard it as a reflection of the sky. The rippling undulating surface over which you glide is like a changeable blue silk garment. 

Here, where in August the bittern booms in the grass, and mowers march en echelon and whet their scythes and crunch  the ripe wool-grass, raised now a  few feet, you scud before the wind in your tight bark and listen to the surge (or sough ?) of the great waves sporting around you, while you hold the steering-oar and your mast bends to the gale and you stow all your ballast to windward. The crisped sound of surging waves that rock you, that ceaseless roll and gambol, and ever and anon break into your boat. 

Deep lie the seeds of the rhexia now, absorbing wet from the flood, but in a few months this mile-wide lake will have gone to the other side of the globe; and the tender rhexia will lift its head on the drifted hum mocks in dense patches, bright and scarlet as a flame, — such succession have we here, — where the wild goose and countless wild ducks have floated and dived above them. So Nature condenses her matter. She is a thousand thick. So many crops the same surface bears. 

Undoubtedly the geese fly more numerously over rivers which, like ours, flow northeasterly, — are more at home with the water under them. Each flock runs the gantlet of a thousand gunners, and when you see them steer off from you and your boat you may remember how great their experience in such matters may be, how many such boats and gunners they have seen and avoided between here and Mexico, and even now, perchance (though you, low plodding, little dream it), they see one or two more lying in wait ahead. They have an experienced ranger of the air for their guide. The echo of one gun hardly dies away before they see another pointed at them. How many bullets or smaller shot have sped in vain toward their ranks! Ducks fly more irregularly and shorter distances at a time. The geese rest in fair weather by day only in the midst of our broadest meadow or pond. So they go, anxious and earnest to hide their nests under the pole. 

The gulls seem used to boats and sails and will often fly quite near without manifesting alarm.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 28, 1859

See November 2, 1852 (“The pond, dark before, was now a glorious and indescribable blue, mixed with dark, perhaps the opposite side of the wave, a sort of changeable or watered-silk blue, more cerulean if possible than the sky itself, which was now seen overhead. It required a certain division of the sight, however, to discern this. Like the colors on a steel sword-blade.”); April 9, 1859 (“ You could sit there and watch these blue shadows playing over the surface like the light and shade on changeable silk, for hours. Looking down from a hillside partly from the sun, these points and dashes look dark-blue, almost black. Standing low and more opposite to the sun, then all these dark-blue ripples are all sparkles too bright to look at. Water agitated by the wind is both far brighter and far darker than smooth water.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Blue Waters in Spring

Each found arrow-point 

wings its way through the ages, 

bearing a message. 

It is a stone fruit,

mind-print of the oldest men.

Each one yields a thought.

My life is an ecstasy.

July 16.

The morning and the evening are sweet to me. Nature develops as I develop, and grows up with me. I wonder if a mortal has ever known what I know.

My life is ecstasy. I am all alive, and inhabit my body with inexpressible satisfaction. Both its weariness and its refreshment are sweet to me. To have such sweet impressions made on me, such ecstasies begotten of the breezes! 

I  am astonished. I am daily intoxicated. There comes to me  such an indescribable, infinite, all-absorbing, divine, heavenly pleasure, a sense of elevation and expansion --  and yet I have had nought to do with it. This is a pleasure, a joy, an existence that I have not procured myself. I am dealt with by superior powers.

The maker of me is improving me. When I detect this interference I am profoundly moved. With all your science can you tell how it is, and whence it is, that light comes into the soul?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  July 16, 1851

I am all alive, and inhabit my body with inexpressible satisfaction. See November 25, 1850 ("The satisfaction of existence. . . .Just as the sun shines into us warmly and serenely, our Creator breathes on us and re-creates us."); December 11, 1855 ("To perceive freshly, with fresh senses, is to be inspired. My body is all sentient. As I go here or there, I am tickled by this or that I come in contact with, as if I touched the wires of a battery.  The age of miracles is each moment thus returned. Now it is wild apples, now river reflections, now a flock of lesser redpolls.”) March 30, 1853 ("Ah, those youthful days! are they never to return? when the walker . . . sees, hears, scents, tastes, and feels only himself, - the phenomena that show themselves in him, - his expanding body, his intellect and heart.”) August 23, 1852 ("There is something invigorating in this air, which I am peculiarly sensible is a real wind blowing from over the surface of a planet.”)

This is a pleasure, a joy, an existence that I have not procured myself. See May 23, 1854("There was a time when the beauty and the music were all within, and I sat and listened to my thoughts, and there was a song in them. I sat for hours on rocks and wrestled with the melody which possessed me. I sat and listened by the hour to a positive though faint and distant music . . .. When I walked with a joy which knew not its own origin.")

My life was ecstasy. In youth, before I lost any of my senses, I can remember that I was all alive, and inhabited my body with inexpressible satisfaction; both its weariness and its refreshment were sweet to me  This earth was the most glorious musical instrument, and I was audience to its strains. To have such sweet impressions made on us, such ecstasies begotten of the breezes! I can remember how I was astonished. I said to myself, — I said to other , “There comes into my mind such an indescribable , infinite , all - absorbing , divine , heavenly pleasure , a sense of elevation and expansion, and [ I ] have had nought to do with it . I perceive that I am dealt with by superior powers. This is a pleasure, a joy, an existence which I have not procured myself  I speak as a witness on the stand , and tell what I have perceived." The morning and the evening were sweet to me, and I led a life aloof from society of men. I wondered if a mortal had ever known what I knew. I looked in books for some recognition of a kindred experience, but, strange to say, I found none 


What more glorious condition of being can we imagine than from impure to be becoming pure? It is almost desirable to be impure that we may be the subject of this improvement. That I am innocent to my self! That I love and reverence my life! That I am better fitted for a lofty society to-day than I was yesterday! To make my life a sacrament! What is nature without this lofty tumbling? May I treat myself with more and more respect and tenderness. May I not for get that I am impure and vicious. May I not cease to love purity. May I go to my slumbers as expecting to arise to a new and more perfect day. May I so live and refine my life as fitting myself fofa society ever higher than I actually enjoy. May I treat myself tenderly as I would treat the most innocent child whom I love; may I treat children and my friends as my newly dis covered self. Let me forever go in search of myself; never for a moment think that I have found myself; be as a stranger to myself, never a familiar, seeking acquaintance still. May I be to myself as one is to me whom I love, a dear and cherished object. What temple, what fane, what sacred place can there be but the innermost part of my own being? The possibility of my own improvement, that is to be cherished. As I regard myself, so I am. O my dear friends, I have not forgotten you. I will know you to-morrow. I associate you with my ideal self. I had ceased to have faith in myself. I thought I was grown up and become what I was intended to be, but it is earliest spring with me. In relation to virtue and innocence the oldest man is in the beginning spring and vernal season of life. It is the love of virtue makes us young ever. That is the fountain of youth, the very aspiration after the perfect. I love and worship myself with a love which absorbs my love for the world. The lecturer suggested to me that I might become better than I am. Was it not a good lecture, then? May I dream not that I shunned vice ; may I dream that I loved and practiced virtue.

Stone Fruit

March 28.

I have not decided whether I had better publish my experience in searching for arrowheads in three volumes, with plates and an index, or try to compress it into one.

Myriads of arrow-points lie sleeping in the skin of the revolving earth, while meteors revolve in space.

The footprint, the mind-print of the oldest men. They are sown, like a grain that is slow to germinate, broadcast over the earth.

They bear crops of philosophers and poets. 

• The same seed is just as good to plant again. 
• They cannot be said to be lost nor found. 
• They occur only to the eye and thought that chances to be directed toward them.

A stone fruit. Each one yields me a thought.

So I help myself to live worthily, and loving my life as I should, I go in search of arrowheads when the proper season comes round again.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 28, 1859 [For full entry see March 28, 1859 ("Some time or other, you would say, it had rained arrowheads, for they lie all over the surface of America. ")]

Loving my life as I should. See July 16, 1851 ("May I treat myself tenderly as I would treat the most innocent child whom I love; may I treat children and my friends as my newly discovered self. Let me forever go in search of myself; never for a moment think that I have found myself; be as a stranger to myself, never a familiar, seeking acquaintance still. May I be to myself as one is to me whom I love, a dear and cherished object. ...[May] I love and worship myself with a love which absorbs my love for the world."); August 15, 1851 ("May I love and revere myself above all the gods that men have ever invented. May I never let the vestal fire go out in my recesses.")