Beck Stow's Swamp!

July 17. 

Saturday. 

Cooler weather; a gentle steady rain, not shower; such coolness as rain makes; not sharp and invigorating, exhilarating, as in the spring, but thoughtful, reminding of the fall; still, moist, unoppressive weather, in which corn and potatoes grow; not a vein of the northwest wind or the northeast. The coolness of the west tempered with rain and mist. 

As I walked by the river last evening, I heard no toads. 

A coolness as from an earth covered with vegetation, such as the toad finds in the high grass. A verdurous coolness, not a snowy or icy one, in the shadow of the vapors which the heat makes rise from the earth. Can this be dog-dayish? 

P. M. — A summer rain. 

A gentle steady rain, long a-gathering, without thunder or lightning, — such as we have not, and, methinks, could not have had, earlier than this. 

To Beck Stow's. 

I pick raspberries dripping with rain beyond Sleepy Hollow. This weather is rather favorable to thought. On all sides is heard a gentle dripping of the rain on the leaves, yet it is perfectly warm. 

It is a day of comparative leisure to many farmers. Some go to the mill-dam and the shops; some go a-fishing. 

The Antennaria margaritacea, pearly everlasting, is out; and the thoroughworts, red and white, begin (?) to show their colors. 

Notwithstanding the rain, some children still pursue their blackberrying on the Great Fields.

Swamp-pink lingers still. 

Roses are not so numerous as they were. Some which I examine now have short, stout hooked thorns and narrow bracts. Is it the Rosa Carolina?

I love to see a clear crystalline water flowing out of a swamp over white sand and decayed wood, spring-like. The year begins to have a husky look or scent in some quarters. I remark the green coats of the hazelnuts, and hear the permanent jay. Some fields are covered now with tufts or clumps of indigo- weed, yellow with blossoms, with a few dead leaves turned black here and there.

Beck Stow's Swamp! What an incredible spot to think of in town or city! When life looks sandy and barren, is reduced to its lowest terms, we have no appetite, and it has no flavor, then let me visit such a swamp as this, deep and impenetrable, where the earth quakes for a rod around you at every step, with its open water where the swallows skim and twitter, its meadow and cotton-grass, its dense patches of dwarf andromeda, now brownish-green, with clumps of blue berry bushes, its spruces and its verdurous border of woods imbowering it on every side. 

The trees now in the rain look heavy and rich all day, as commonly at twilight, drooping with the weight of wet leaves. 

That Sericocarjrus conyzoides prevails now, and the entire-leaved erigeron still abounds everywhere. 

The meadows on the Turnpike are white with the meadow-rue now more than ever. They are filled with it many feet high. 

The Lysimachia lanceolata is very common too. All flowers are handsomer in rain. 

Methinks the sweet-briar is done. The hardhack, whose spires are not yet abundant, stands to me for agreeable coarseness. 

Swallows are active throughout this rain. 

Lobelia inflata, Indian-tobacco. Lappa major, burdock. Amaranthus hybridus, though not yet red. Verbena hastata, blue vervain. Gnaphalium uliginosum by the roadside, cudweed. 

Again methinks I hear the goldfinch, but not for a day or two the bobolink. 

At evening the prunellas in the grass like the sky glow purple, which were blue all day. 

The vetch I looked for is mown, but I find it fresh elsewhere. 

The caducous polygala has the odor of checkerberry at its root, and hence I thought the flower had a fugacious, spicy fragrance. Hypericum Canadense. 

The slender bell-flower, galium-like, with a triangular stem in low grounds now.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 17, 1852

Beck Stow's Swamp! What an incredible spot to think of. See July 14, 1853  (“Saw something blue, or glaucous, in Beck Stow's Swamp to-day; approached and discovered the Andromeda Polifolia, in the midst of the swamp at the north end, not long since out of bloom. "); May 24, 1854 ("Wade into Beck Stow's. . . . Surprised to find the Andromeda Polifolia in bloom and apparently past its prime at least a week or more.") August 30, 1856 ("I get my new experiences still, not at the opera listening to the Swedish Nightingale, but at Beck Stow's Swamp listening to the native wood thrush.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  at Beck Stow's Swamp

 I pick raspberries dripping with rain.  See July 15, 1859 ("Raspberries, in one swamp, are quite abundant and apparently at their height. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Raspberry

Notwithstanding the rain, some children still pursue their blackberrying on the Great Fields. See July 16, 1851 ("Berries are just beginning to ripen, and children are planning expeditions after them."); July 24, 1853 ("This season of berrying is so far respected that the children have a vacation to pick berries"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Blackberries

Swallows are active throughout this rain. See A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, Birds in the Rain

Again methinks I hear the goldfinch, but not for a day or two the bobolink See July 7, 1859 ("The note of the bobolink has begun to sound rare?"); July 10, 1854 (" The singing birds at present are: . . .Rural: Song sparrow, seringos, flicker, kingbird, goldfinch, link of bobolink, cherry-bird. "); July 15, 1854 ("The robin sings still, but the goldfinch twitters over oftener, and I hear the link link of the bobolink, and the crickets creak more as in the fall."); July 15, 1856 ("Bobolinks are heard — their link, link — above and amid the tall rue which now whitens the meadows”);August 6, 1852 (“With the goldenrod comes the goldfinch. About the time his cool twitter is heard, does not the bobolink, thrasher, catbird, oven-bird, veery, etc., cease?”); August 10, 1853 ("the goldfinch sings. . . . . Of late, and for long time, only the link, link of bobolink."); August 10, 1854 ("The tinkling notes of goldfinches and bobolinks which we hear nowadays are of one character and peculiar to the season. They are nuts of sound, --ripened seeds of sound. . . like the sparkle on water.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Bobolink

At evening the prunellas in the grass like the sky glow purple, which were blue all day. See July 2, 1852 ("The prunella has various tints in various lights, now blue, now lilac. As the twilight deepens into night, its color changes. It always suggests freshness and coolness, from the places where it grows"); July 16, 1851  ("The prunella sends back a blue ray from under my feet as I walk.")

Bobolinks are heard

July 15

P. M. — To Hubbard's Close and Walden. 

Carrots by railroad, how long? 

I notice the froth concealing a grub, not only on trees and bushes, but on Potentilla Norvegica, Lechea (great-fruited), etc., etc., Pycnanthemum muticum, even Lobelia inflata, red clover, Aster puniceus. This spots my clothes when going through bushes. 

Both small hypericums, Canadense and mutilum, apparently some days at least by Stow's ditch.

Bobolinks are heard — their link, link — above and amid the tall rue which now whitens the meadows.

Checkerberry, a day or two. 

Spiranthes gracilis well out, in dry, slender grass by roadside. 

I do not notice the krigia out in my afternoon walks, and so it is not known by many, but in the morning its disk is very commonly seen. 

When I crossed the entrance to the pond meadow on a stick, a pout ran ashore and was lodged so that I caught it in the grass, apparently frightened. While I held it, I noticed another, very large one approach the shore very boldly within a few feet of me. Going in to bathe, I caught a pout on the bottom within a couple of rods of the shore. It seemed sick. Then, wading into the shallow entrance of the meadow, I saw a school of a thousand little pouts about three quarters of an inch long without any attending pout, and now have no doubt that the pout I had caught (but let go again) was tending them, and the large one was the father, apparently further off. The mother had perhaps gone into deep water to recruit after her air-bath. The young were pretty shy; kept in shallow water, and were taking pretty good care of themselves. If the water should suddenly fall, they might be caught in the meadow. 

Ludwigia alternifolia not quite; in a day or two. 

Amid the high grass or rushes by that meadow-side started a water adder. It was about three feet long, but large round in proportion, with about one hundred and forty abdominal plates and a long, slender tail. It was black above, with indistinct transverse brown bands. Under its head white; first half of belly white, with triangular of conical dark brown red marks on sides; the white gradually becomes more narrow and yellowish for the latter half of the abdomen, bordered by more numerous and still darker reddish marks, becoming confluent and alternating with silvery ones, giving a handsome regularly mottled or spotted look. Silvery across the belly. The barred part dark-reddish. Under the tail no reddish.

Corylus rostrata differs from  common in the twig being smooth and not glandular-hairy. 

Scutellaria galericulata, some time. Polygonum sagittatum, almost. 

That green sponge plant gathered yesterday is remarkably slow to dry; though it has been many hours exposed to the sun and wiped with many papers and has been a whole day exposed to the air, it is far from dry yet. It is more pungent and strong-scented than ever and sickens me to stay in the room with a little of it.

H. D  Thoreau, Journal, July 15, 1856

Both small hypericums, Canadense and mutilum, apparently some days. See  July 26, 1856  ("Arranged the hypericums in bottles this morning and watched their opening.");   August 19, 1856 ("I see Hypericum Canadense and mutilum abundantly open at 3 p. M. Apparently they did not bear the dry, hot weather of July so well. They are apparently now in prime."); August 27, 1856  (" Hypericum Canadense and mutilum now pretty generally open at 4 P.M., thus late in the season, it being more moist and cooler."); See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

Bobolinks are heard — their link, link — above and amid the tall rue which now whitens the meadows. See July 15, 1854 ("The goldfinch twitters over oftener, and I hear the link link of the bobolink, and the crickets creak more as in the fall. All these sounds dispose our minds to serenity. We seem to be passing, or to have passed, a dividing line between spring and autumn."); July 16, 1852 ("I hear the link link, fall-like note of the bobolink (?) in the meadows; he has lost the bobo off. Is it the goldfinch that goes twittering over, but which I cannot see?"); See also  July 12 1856 ("Rue is beginning now to whiten the meadows on all hands."); July 17, 1852 ("The meadows on the Turnpike are white with the meadow-rue now more than ever.") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Bobolink

"Checkerberry," a day or two: American wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbent). See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Checkerberry

A  water adder about three feet long, but large round in proportion, with about one hundred and forty abdominal plates and a long, slender tail. See July 23, 1856 ("The water adder killed on the 15th and left hanging on a twig. . . is already mere skin and skeleton, ") and note to April 26, 1857 ("I have the same objection to killing a snake that I have to the killing of any other animal, yet the most humane man that I know never omits to kill one.")

July 15. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau July 15

Bobolinks link link

amid the tall rue that now

whitens the meadow.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Bobolinks are heard 

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 © 2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-560715

In Painted-Cup Meadow.

May 28 

Rainy. To Painted-Cup Meadow. 

Potentilla argentea, maybe several days. 

Trifolium pratense.

A seringo or yellow-browed (?) sparrow’s nest about ten or twelve rods southwest of house-leek rock, between two rocks which are several rods apart northwest and southeast; four eggs. The nest of coarse grass stubble, lined with fine grass, and is two thirds at least covered by a jutting sod. Egg, bluish-white ground, thickly blotched with brown, yet most like a small ground bird’s egg, rather broad at one end, pretty fresh.

A cricket creaks. 

Hypoxis erecta, maybe a day or two. 

Thalictrum dioicum [early meadow-rue]abundantly out, apparently in prime, male and female, some effete, perhaps a week, near wall in Painted-Cup Meadow, fifteen to eighteen inches high. I think it was a mass of young Thalictrum Cornuti leaves which had that rank, dog-like scent.

Painted-cup pollen a good while ago. 

Saw, under an apple tree, nearly half a pint of some white grub with a light reddish head, like a small potato-worm, one inch long, and part of a snake-skin, making the greater part of the faeces of some animal, — chiefly the grubs, — a formless soft mass. Skunk?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 28, 1856

May 28, 2026

Painted-Cup Meadow. See May 29, 1856 ("What a flowery place, a vale of Enna, is that  meadow! Painted Cup, Erigeron bellidifolius, Thalictrum dioicum, Viola Muhlenbergii, fringed polygala, buck-bean, pedicularis, orobanche, etc., etc. Where you find a rare flower, expect to find more rare ones”) June 3, 1853 (“A large meadow full of [painted-cup], and yet very few in the town have ever seen it.”);

Trifolium pratense. See May 28, 1854 ("Red clover at Clamshell, a day or two.”) 

A seringo or yellow-browed (?) sparrow’s nest . . . Egg, bluish-white ground, thickly blotched with brown. See April 22, 1856 ("The seringo . . . with a very distinct yellow line over the eye,_and the rhythm of its strain is ker chick | ker che | ker-char—r-r-r-r | chick, the last two bars being the part chiefly heard."); June 26, 1856 ("Saw, apparently, the F. Savanna near their nests (my seringo note), restlessly flitting about me from rock to rock within a rod. Distinctly yellow-browed and spotted breast . . . Audubon says that the eggs of the Savannah sparrow “are of a pale bluish color, softly mottled with purplish brown,”. . . apparently my seringo’s egg of  May 28th.”); See also Guide to Thoreau’s Birds ("Thoreau frequently called the Savannah Sparrow . . .  the seringo or seringo-bird, but he also applied the name to other small birds.")

 A cricket creaks. See  May 22, 1854 ("First observe the creak of crickets . . . Their strain is unvaried as Truth. Only in their saner moments do men hear the crickets.");  May 24, 1857 ("Hear the first cricket as I go through a warm hollow, bringing round the summer with his everlasting strain"); May 26, 1852 ("To-night I hear many crickets. They have commenced their song. They bring in the summer"); May 27, 1859 (" A peculiarity of these days is the first hearing of the crickets' creak, suggesting philosophy and thought. No greater event transpires now."); May 30, 1855 ("Is it not summer now when the creak of the crickets begins to be general?") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cricket in Spring

Hypoxis erecta, maybe a day or two. See  June 15, 1851 ("The Hypoxis erecta, yellow Bethlehem-star, where there is a thick, wiry grass in open path; should be called yellow-eyed grass, methinks."); A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Yellow Bethlehem-star

Thalictrum dioicum abundantly out, apparently in prime, male and female, some effete. See May 15, 1858 ("Thalictrum dioicum abundant, apparently in prime; how long? It is a very interesting, graceful, and delicate plant, especially the sterile, with its pretty, commonly purple, petal-like sepals, and its conspicuous long yellow anthers in little bare clusters (?), trembling over the meadow.")

I think it was a mass of young Thalictrum Cornuti leaves which had that rank, dog-like scent. See May 29, 1856 ("To return to Painted-Cup Meadow, I do not perceive the rank odor of Thalictrum Cornuti expanding leaves to-day. How more than fugacious it is! Evidently this odor is emitted only at particular times.")

Painted-cup pollen a good while ago. See May 8, 1853 ("Surprised by the brilliant pale scarlet flowers of the painted-cup (Castilleja coccinea) just coming into bloom . . .the most high-colored and brilliant flower yet, not excepting the columbine . . . It is all the more interesting for being a painted leaf and not petal . . . It is a flaming leaf. The very leaf has flowered; not the ripe tints of autumn, but the rose in the cheek of infancy; a more positive flowering."); May 29, 1856 ("Found a painted-cup with more yellow than usual in it, and at length Edith found one perfectly yellow.”) June 3, 1853 ("The painted-cup is in its prime. It reddens the meadow, – Painted-Cup Meadow. It is a splendid show of brilliant scarlet. . . might be called flame-flower, or scarlet-tip. Here is a large meadow full of it, and yet very few in the town have ever seen it") [Scarlet painted-cup (Castilleja coccinea) is an annual herb that is hemiparasitic . . . formerly found in several New England states, but is now apparently restricted to Connecticut, where only a small handful of populations remain. GoBotany]

The faeces of some animal. . . Skunk? See  January 24, 1860 ("The droppings of a skunk left on a rock, perhaps at the beginning of winter, were full of grasshoppers' legs.");  March 28, 1855 (" I see where a skunk (apparently) has been probing the sod. . . I dig up there a frozen and dead white grub, the large potato grub; this I think he was after.");   April 15, 1856 ("Near the water are many recent skunk probings, as if a drove of pigs had passed along last night, death to many beetles and grubs."); May 4, 1855 ("See where a skunk has probed last night, and large black dung with apparently large ants’ heads and earth or sand and stubble or insects’ wings in it; probably had been probing a large ants’ hill") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Skunk

May 28. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 28

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 ©  2009-2026