This is my year of observation.

July 2. 

July 2, 2014

Bigelow tells me that saddlers sometimes use the excrescence, the whitish fungus, on the birch to stick their awls in. Men find a use for everything at last. I saw one nailed up in his shop with an awl in it. 

Last night, as I lay awake, I dreamed of the muddy and weedy river on which I had been paddling, and I seemed to derive some vigor from my day's experience like the lilies which have their roots at the bottom. 

I have plucked a white lily bud just ready to expand, and, after keeping it in water for two days,  have turned back its sepals with my hand and touched the lapped points of the petals, when they sprang open and rapidly expanded in my hand into a perfect blossom, with the petals as perfectly disposed at equal intervals as on their native lakes, and in this case, of course, untouched by an insect. 

I cut its stem short and placed it in a broad dish of water, where it sailed about under the breath of the beholder with a slight undulatory motion. The breeze of his half-suppressed admiration it was that filled its sail. 

It was a rare-tinted one. A kind of popular aura that may be trusted, methinks. Men will travel to the Nile to see the lotus flower  who have never seen in their glory the lotuses of their native streams. 

The Mollugo verticillata, carpet-weed, is just beginning in the garden, and the Polygonum convolvulus, black bindweed. 

The spikes of the pale lobelia, some  blue, some white, passing insensibly from one to the other, and especially hard to distinguish in the twilight, are quite handsome now in moist ground, rising above the grass. 

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. 

I see the downy heads of the senecio gone to seed, thistle-like but small. 

The gnaphaliums and this are among the earliest to present this appearance. 

On my way to the Hubbard Bathing-Place, at sun-down. 

The blue-eyed grass shuts up before night, and me-thinks it does not open very early the next morning. 

The Cornus stolonifera, red osier, osier rouge, well out, and probably has been a day or two. I have got the order of the cornels, I think, pretty well. 

I see plenty of the Peltandra Virginica coming forward in Hubbard's meadow, and its lobes are more blunt than the sagittaria. 

Pogonias are very common in the meadows now. 

The seed-vessels of the Iris Virginica are formed. 

At the bathing-place there is [a] hummock which was floated on to the meadow some springs ago, now densely covered with the handsome red-stemmed wild rose, a full but irregular clump, from the ground, showing no bare stems below, but a dense mass of shining leaves and small red stems above in their midst, and on every side now, in the twilight, more than usually beautiful they appear. Countless roses, partly closed, of a very deep rich color, as if the rays of the departed sun still shone through them; a more spiritual rose this hour, beautifully blushing; and then the unspeakable beauty and promise of those fair swollen buds that spot the mass, which will blossom to-morrow, and the more distant promise of the handsomely formed green ones, which yet show no red, for few things are handsomer than a rosebud in any stage; these mingled with a few pure white elder blossoms and some rosaceous or pinkish meadow-sweet heads. I am confident that there can be nothing so beautiful in any cultivated garden, with all their varieties, as this wild clump. 

I afterwards found a similar though not so large and dense a clump of sweetbriars. Methinks their flowers are not so fragrant, and perhaps never of so deep a red. Perhaps they are more sure to open in a pitcher than the last. 

It is starlight. Near woods the veery is a steady singer at this hour. 

I notice that the lowest leaves of my potamogeton are pellucid and wavy, which  combined with their purplish tinge on the surface, makes me doubt if it be not the pulcher. 

Do the hardhack leaves stand up and hug the stem at night, that they show their under sides so? 

Nature is reported not by him who goes forth consciously as an observer, but in the fullness of life. To such a one she rushes to make her report. To the full heart she is all but a figure of speech. This is my year of observation and I fancy that my friends are also more devoted to outward observation than ever before, as if it were an epidemic. 

I cross the brook by Hubbard's little bridge. 

Now nothing but the cool invigorating scent which is perceived at night in these low meadowy places where the alder and ferns grow can restore my spirits. (I made it an object to find a new Parmelia caperata in fruit in each walk.) 

At this season, methinks, we do not regard the larger features of the landscape, as in the spring, but are absorbed in details. 

Then, when the meadows were flooded, I looked far over them to the distant woods and the outlines of hills, which were more distinct. I should not have so much to say of extensive water or landscapes at this season. 

You are a little bewildered by the variety of objects. There must be a certain meagreness of details and nakedness for wide views. (The obtuse galium shows its minute white flowers in the meadows.) 

If I remember, the early part of June was cool, as also the latter, though we had some hot weather, perhaps, toward the middle. 

The clover heads are drying up except in meadows. 

9 o'clock. The full moon rising (or full last night) is revealed first by some slight clouds above the eastern horizon looking white, the first indication that she is about to rise, the traces of day not yet gone in the west . In the west, similar clouds, seen against a lighter sky, look dark and heavy. Now a lower cloud in the east reflects a more yellowish light. The moon, far over the round globe travelling this way, sends her light forward to yonder cloud, from which the news of her coming is reflected to us. 

The moon's aurora! it is without redness or fulgidness, like the dawn of philosophy, and its noon, too. At her dawning no cocks crow. How few creatures to hail her rising! Only some belated travellers that may be abroad this night. 

What graduated information of her coming! More and more yellow glows the low cloud, with concentrating light, and now the moon's edge suddenly appears above a low bank of cloud not seen before, and she seems to come forward apace without introduction, after all; and the steadiness with which she rises with undisturbed serenity, like a queen who has learned to walk before her court, is glorious, and she soon reaches the open sea of the heavens. She seems to advance (so, perchance, flows the blood in the veins of the beholder) by graceful sallying essays, trailing her garment up the sky.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 2, 1852

Nature is reported not by him who goes forth consciously as an observer, but in the fullness of life. See September 13, 1852 ("I must walk more with free senses. I must let my senses wander as my thoughts, my eyes see without looking. Carlyle said that how to observe was to look, but I say that it is rather to see, and the more you look the less you will observe. Be not preoccupied with looking. Go not to the object; let it come to you."); May 10, 1853 ("He is the richest who has most use for nature as raw material of tropes and symbols with which to describe his life. . . .I pray for such inward experience as will make nature significant."); May 6, 1854 ("There is no such thing as pure objective observation. Your observation, to be interesting, i. e. to be significant, must be subjective."

I have plucked a white lily bud just ready to expand, and, after keeping it in water for two days, have turned back its sepals with my hand and touched the lapped points of the petals, when they sprang open and rapidly expanded in my hand into a perfect blossom. See July 4, 1852 ("I bring home a dozen perfect lily buds. . .which have never yet opened; I prepare a large pan of water; I cut their stems quite short; I turn back their calyx-leaves with my fingers, so that they may float upright; I touch the points of their petals, and breathe or blow on them, and toss them in. They spring open rapidly, or gradually expand in the course of an hour.")

It is starlight. Near woods the veery is a steady singer at this hour. See June 28,1852 ("When I get nearer the wood, the veery is heard."). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Veery

The openness of the leafless woods by moonlight.

November 12.

November 12, 2021

Write often, write upon a thousand themes, rather than long at a time, not trying to turn too many feeble somersets in the air, and so come down upon your head at last. Antæus-like, be not long absent from the ground.

Those sentences are good and well discharged which are like so many little resiliencies from the spring floor of our life, — a distinct fruit and kernel itself, springing from terra firma. Let there be as many distinct plants as the soil and the light can sustain.

Take as many bounds in a day as possible. Sentences uttered with your back to the wall. Those are the admirable bounds when the performer has lately touched the spring board.

A good bound into the air from the air (sic) is a good and wholesome experience, but what shall we say to a man's leaping off precipices in the attempt to fly? He comes down like lead.

In the meanwhile, you have got your feet planted upon the rock, with the rock also at your back, and, as in the case of King James and Roderick Dhu, can say, —

 “Come one, come all! this rock shall fly 

   From its firm base as soon as I.” 

Such, uttered or not, is the strength of your sentence. Sentences in which there is no strain. A fluttering and inconstant and quasi inspiration, and ever memorable Icarian fall, in which your helpless wings are expanded merely by your swift descent into the pelagos beneath.

C. is one who will not stoop to rise (to change the subject). He wants something for which he will not pay the going price. He will only learn slowly by failure, not a noble, but disgraceful, failure. This is not a noble method of learning, to be educated by inevitable suffering, like De Quincey, for instance.

Better dive like a muskrat into the mud, and pile up a few weeds to sit on during the floods, a foundation of your own laying, a house of your own building, however cold and cheerless.

Methinks the hawk that soars so loftily and circles so steadily and apparently without effort has earned this power by faithfully creeping on the ground as a reptile in a former state of existence. You must creep before you can run; you must run before you can fly. Better one effective bound upward with elastic limbs from the valley than a jumping from the mountain - tops in the attempt to fly.

The observatories are not built high but deep; the foundation is equal to the superstructure. It is more important to a distinct vision that it be steady than that it be from an elevated point of view.

Walking through Ebby Hubbard's wood this afternoon, with Minott, who was actually taking a walk for amusement and exercise, he said, on seeing some white pines blown down, that you might know that ground had been cultivated, by the trees being torn up so, for otherwise they would have rooted themselves more strongly.

Saw some very handsome canoe birches there, the largest I know, a foot in diameter and forty or fifty feet high. The large ones have a reddish cast, perhaps from some small lichen. Their fringes and curls give them an agreeable appearance.

Observed a peculiarity in some white oaks. Though they had a firm and close bark near the ground, the bark was very coarse and scaly, in loose flakes, above. Much coarser than the swamp white oak.

Minott has a story for every woodland path. He has hunted in them all. Where we walked last, he had once caught a partridge by the wing!


7 P. M. To Conantum.

A still, cold night.

The light of the rising moon in the east. Moonrise is a faint sunrise. And what shall we name the faint aurora that precedes the moonrise?

The ground is frozen and echoes to my tread. There are absolutely no crickets to be heard now. They are heard, then, till the ground freezes.

To-day I heard for the first time this season the crackling, vibrating sound which resounds from thin ice when a stone is cast upon it. So far have we got toward winter:

• It is doubtful if they who have not pulled their turnips will have a chance to get them.
• It is not of much use to drive the cows to pasture.
• I can fancy that I hear the booming of ice in the ponds.
• I hear no sound of any bird now at night, but sometimes some creature stirring, a rabbit, or skunk, or fox, betrayed now by the dry leaves which lie so thick and light.

The openness of the leafless woods is particularly apparent now by moonlight; they are nearly as bright as the open field.

It is worth the while always to go to the waterside when there is but little light in the heavens and see the heavens and the stars reflected. There is double the light that there is elsewhere, and the reflection has the force of a great silent companion.

There is no fog now o’nights.

I thought to-night that I saw glow-worms in the grass, on the side of the hill; was almost certain of it, and tried to lay my hand on them, but found it was the moonlight reflected from (apparently) the fine frost crystals on the withered grass, and they were so fine that they went and came like glow-worms. It had precisely the effect of twinkling glow-worms. They gleamed just long enough for glow-worms.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 12, 1851

The ground is frozen and echoes to my tread. See November 12, 1858 ("It is much the coldest day yet, and the ground is a little frozen and resounds under my tread.")

There are absolutely no crickets to be heard now. See note to November 12, 1853 ("I hear one cricket singing still, faintly deep in the bank, now after one whitening of snow. His theme is life immortal. The last cricket, full of cheer and faith, piping to himself, as the last man might.") See also November 9, 1851 (" I hear a cricket singing the requiem of the year . . . Soon all will be frozen up, and I shall hear no cricket chirp in the land.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cricket in November

I heard for the first time this season the crackling, vibrating sound which resounds from thin ice when a stone is cast upon it. See November 22, 1860 ("Though you are finger-cold toward night, and you cast a stone on to your first ice, and see the unmelted crystals under every bank, it is glorious November weather, and only November fruits are out.")

Canoe birches there, the largest I know, a foot in diameter and forty or fifty feet high.  See May 18, 1851 ("The log of a canoe birch on Fair Haven, cut down the last winter, more than a foot in diameter at the stump; one foot in diameter at ten feet from the ground. . . . I counted about fifty rings"); November 2, 1851 ("Saw a canoe birch beyond Nawshawtuct, growing out of the middle of a white pine stump, which still showed the mark of the axe, sixteen inches in diameter at its bottom, or two feet from the ground, or where it had first taken root on the stump. "); July 24, 1857 ("[On the shore of Moosehead Lake] I measured a canoe birch, five and a half feet in circumference at two and a half from the ground.")

The light of the rising moon in the east. See November 7, 1851 ("At Walden are three reflections of the bright full (or nearly) moon, one moon and two sheens further off") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November Moonlight

The openness of the leafless woods is particularly apparent now by moonlight. See November 12, 1853 ("Moon nearly full. Trees stand bare against the sky again. This the first month in which they do ")

November 12. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November 12

That faint aurora –

the light of the rising moon

precedes the moonrise.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The openness of the leafless woods by moonlight.

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 © 2009-2022

An evening for poets to describe.

June 14.

Saturday.

Full moon last night.

Set out on a walk to Conantum at 7 P. M. A serene evening, the sun going down behind clouds, a few white or slightly shaded piles of clouds floating in the eastern sky, but a broad, clear, mellow cope left for the moon to rise into. An evening for poets to describe.

Met a man driving home his cow from pasture and stopping to chat with his neighbor; then a boy, who had set down his pail in the road to stone a bird most perseveringly, whom I heard afterward behind me telling his pail to be quiet in a tone of assumed anger, because it squeaked under his arm.

As I proceed along the back road I hear the lark still singing in the meadow, and the bobolink, and the gold robin on the elms, and the swallows twittering about the barns.

A small bird chasing a crow high in the air, who is going home at night.

All nature is in an expectant attitude.

Before Goodwin's house, at the opening of the Sudbury road, the swallows are diving at a tortoise-shell cat, who curvets and frisks rather awkwardly, as if she did not know whether to be scared or not.

And now, having proceeded a little way down this road, the sun having buried himself in the low cloud in the west and hung out his crimson curtains,  I hear, while sitting by the wall, the sound of the stake-driver at a distance, — like that made by a man pumping in a neighboring farmyard, watering his cattle, or like chopping wood before his door on a frosty morning, and I can imagine like driving a stake in a meadow.

The pumper.

I immediately went in search of the bird, but, after going a third of a mile, it did not sound much nearer, and the two parts of the sound did not appear to proceed from the same place.  What is the peculiarity of these sounds which penetrate so far on the keynote of nature? At last I got near to the brook in the meadow behind Hubbard's wood, but I could not tell if were further or nearer than that. When I got within half a dozen rods of the brook, it ceased, and I heard it no I suppose that I scared it.  As before I was further off than I thought, so now I was nearer than I thought.  It is not easy to understand how so small a creature can make so loud a sound by merely sucking in or throwing out water with pump-like lungs.

As yet no moon, but downy piles of cloud scattered here and there in the expectant sky.

Saw a blue flag blossom in the meadow while waiting for the stake-driver. 

It was a sound as of gulping water.

Where my path crosses the brook in the meadow there is a singularly sweet scent in the heavy air bathing the brakes, where the brakes grow, — the fragrance of the earth, as if the dew were a distillation of the fragrant essences of nature.

When I reach the road, the farmer going home from town invites me to ride in his high set wagon, not thinking why I walk, nor can I shortly explain. He remarks on the coolness of the weather.

The angelica is budded, a handsome luxuriant plant.

And now my senses are captivated again by a sweet fragrance as I enter the embowered willow causeway, and I know not if it be from a particular plant or all together, — sweet-scented vernal grass or sweet-briar.

Now the sun is fairly gone, I hear the dreaming frog, [toad?] and the whip-poor-will from some darker wood, — it is not far from eight,— and the cuckoo. The song sparrows sing quite briskly among the willows, as if it were spring again, and the blackbird's harsher note resounds over the meadows, and the veery's comes up from the wood.

Fishes are dimpling the surface of the river, seizing the insects which alight.

A solitary fisherman in his boat inhabits the scene.

As I rose the hill beyond the bridge, I found myself in a cool, fragrant, dewy, up-country, mountain morning air, a new region. When I had issued from the willows on to the bridge, it was like coming out of night into twilight, the river reflected so much light.)

The moon was now seen rising over Fair Haven and at the same time reflected in the river, pale and white like a silvery cloud, barred with a cloud, not promising how it will shine anon.

Now I meet an acquaintance coming from a remote field in his hay-rigging, with a jag of wood; who reins up to show me how large a woodchuck he has killed, which he found eating his clover. But now he must drive on, for behind comes a boy taking up the whole road with a huge roller drawn by a horse, which goes lumbering and bouncing along, getting out of the way of night,— while the sun has gone the other way, — and making such a noise as if it had the contents of a tinker's shop in its bowels, and rolls the whole road smooth like a newly sown grain-field.

In Conant's orchard I hear the faint cricket-like song of a sparrow saying its vespers, as if it were a link between the cricket and the bird. The robin sings now, though the moon shines silverly, and the veery jingles its trill.

I hear the fresh and refreshing sound of falling water, as I have heard it in New Hampshire. It is a sound we do not commonly hear.

I see that the whiteweed is in blossom, which, as I had not walked by day for some time, I had not seen before.

How moderate, deliberate, is Nature! How gradually the shades of night gather and deepen, giving man ample leisure to bid farewell to-day, conclude his day's affairs, and prepare for slumber!

The twilight seems out of proportion to the length of the day. Perchance it saves our eyes.

Now for some hours the farmers have been getting home. Since the alarm about mad dogs a couple of years ago there are comparatively few left to bark at the traveller and bay the moon. All nature is abandoned to me.

You feel yourself — your body, your legs, — more at night, for there is less beside to be distinctly known, and hence perhaps you think yourself more tired than you are.

I see indistinctly oxen asleep in the fields, silent in majestic slumber, like the sphinx, — statuesque, Egyptian, reclining. What solid rest! How their heads are supported! 

A sparrow or a cricket makes more noise.

From Conant's summit I hear as many as fifteen whip poor-wills — or whip-or-I-wills — at once, the succeeding cluck sounding strangely foreign, like a hewer at work elsewhere.

The moon is accumulating yellow light and triumphing over the clouds, but still the west is suffused here and there with a slight red tinge, marking the path of the day. Though inexperienced ones might call it night, it is not yet.

Dark, heavy clouds lie along the western horizon, exhibiting the forms of animals and men, while the moon is behind a cloud. Why do we detect these forms so readily? — whales or giants reclining, busts of heroes, Michael-Angelic.

There is the gallery of statuary, the picture gallery of man, — not a board upon an Italian's head, but these dark figures along the horizon, the board some Titan carries on his head. What firm and heavy outlines for such soft and light material!

How sweet and encouraging it is to hear the sound of some artificial music from the midst of woods or from the top of a hill at night, borne on the breeze from some distant farmhouse, — the human voice or a flute! That is a civilization one can endure, worth having. I could go about the world listening for the strains of music: Men use this gift but sparingly, methinks.

What should we think of a bird which had the gift of song but used it only once in a dozen years, like the tree which blossoms only once in a century?

Now the dorbug comes humming by, the first I have heard this year.

In three months it will be the Harvest Moon. I cannot easily believe it. Why not call this the Traveller's Moon?  It would be as true to call the last (the May) the Planter's Moon as it is to call September's the Harvest Moon, for the farmers use one about as little as the other.

Perhaps this is the Whip-poor-will's Moon.

The bullfrog now, which I have not heard before, this evening.

It is nearly nine.

They are much less common and their note more intermittent than that of the dreamers.

I scared up a bird on a low bush, perchance on its nest. It is rare that you start them at night from such places.

Peabody says that the nighthawk retires to rest about the time the whip-poor-will begins its song. The whip poor-will begins now at 7.30. I hear the nighthawk after 9 o'clock.

He says it flies low in the evening, but it also flies high, as it must needs do to make the booming sound.

I hear the lowing of cows occasionally, and the barking of dogs.

The pond by moonlight, which may make the object in a walk, suggests little to be said.

Where there was only one firefly in a dozen rods, I hastily ran to one which had crawled up to the top of a grass head and exhibited its light, and instantly another sailed in to it, showing its light also; but my presence made them extinguish their lights. The latter retreated, and the former crawled slowly down the stem.

It appeared to me that the first was a female who thus revealed her place to the male, who was also making known his neighborhood as he hovered about, both showing their lights that they might come together.  It was like a mistress who had climbed to the turrets of her castle and exhibited there a blazing taper for a signal, while her lover had displayed his light on the plain. If perchance she might have any lovers abroad.

Not much before 10 o'clock does the moonlight night begin.

When man is asleep and day fairly forgotten, then is the beauty of moonlight seen over lonely pastures where cattle are silently feeding.

Then let me walk in a diversified country, of hill and dale, with heavy woods one side, and copses and scattered trees and bushes enough to give me shadows.

Returning, a mist is on the river. The river is taken into the womb of Nature again.

Now is the clover month, but haying is not yet begun.

Evening. — Went to Nawshawtuct by North Branch. 

Overtaken by a slight shower. The same increased fragrance from the ground-sweet-fern, etc.-as in the night, and for the like reason probably.

The houstonias still blossom freshly, as I believe they continue to do all summer.

The fever-root in blossom; pictured in Bigelow's “Medical Botany."

Triosteum perfoliatum, near the top of Hill, under the wall, looks somewhat like a milkweed.

The Viburnum dentatum, very regularly toothed, just ready to blossom; sometimes called arrow-wood.

Nature seems not [to] have designed that man should be much abroad by night, and in the moon proportioned the light fitly. By the faintness and rareness of the light compared with that of the sun, she expresses her intention with regard to him.



H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 14, 1851

I hear, while sitting by the wall, the sound of the stake-driver at a distance,. . . .  The pumper. See April 24, 1854 ("I hear the loud and distinct pump-a-gor of a stake-driver. Thus he announces himself.”); May 9, 1853 ("The pump-like note of a stake-driver from the fenny place across the Lee meadow."); May 20, 1856 ("See and hear a stake-driver in the swamp. It took one short pull at its pump and stopped."); October 26, 1858 ("[Minott] says that some call the stake-driver “'belcher squelcher,” and some, “wollerkertoot. ” I used to call them “pump-er-gor’. ” Some say “slug-toot.”)

And now my senses are captivated again by a sweet fragrance as I enter the embowered willow causeway, and I know not if it be from a particular plant or all together. See June 20, 1853 ("Walking amid the bushes and the ferns just after moonrise, I am refreshed with many sweet scents which I cannot trace to their source.")

Fishes are dimpling the surface of the river, seizing the insects which alight. See June 9, 1854 ("The fishes continue to leap by moonlight. A full moon."); June 2, 1860 ("Water-bugs dimple the surface now quite across the river, in the moonlight, for it is a full moon.")

The moon was now seen rising and at the same time reflected in the river, pale and white like a silvery cloud. See June 30, 1852 ("Moon nearly full; rose a little before sunset. . . . At first a mere white cloud,"); April 30, 1852 ("Then when I turned, I saw in the east, just over the woods, the modest, pale, cloud-like moon, two thirds full, looking spirit-like on these daylight scenes.")  See also May 28, 1853 ("Last night in the dark [the lupines]were all a pale, whitish color like the moon by day — a mere dull luminousness, as if they reflected light absorbed by day. ")

The moon is accumulating yellow light and triumphing over the clouds. See June 1, 1852 ("You can never foretell the fate of the moon, -- whether she will prevail over or be obscured by the clouds half an hour hence. The traveller's sympathy with the moon makes the drama of the shifting clouds interesting.")