A very hot day

JULY 4, 2019

July 4. 

A sultry night the last; bear no covering; all windows open. 

8 a. m. — To Framingham. 

Great orange-yellow lily, some days, wild yellow lily, drooping, well out. 

Asclepias obtusifolia, also day or two. 

Some chestnut trees show at distance as if blossoming. 

Buckwheat, how long ? I probably saw 

Asclepias purpurascens (??) over the walls. 

A very hot day.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 4, 1854

To Framingham. See June 11, 1854 ("To Framingham with Mrs. Brown.")

Asclepias obtusifolia, also day or two. See June 29, 1853 ("Asclepias obtusifolia, a day or two.");  September 21, 1856 ("The Asclepias obtusifolia . . . A fairy-like casket, shaped like a canoe, with its closely packed imbricated brown seeds, with their yet compressed silvery parachutes like finest unsoiled silk in the right position above them, ready to be wafted some dry and breezy day to their destined places.”)

Some chestnut trees show at distance as if blossoming. See July 14, 1860 ("Perceive now the light-colored tops of chestnuts in bloom, and, when I come near them, an offensive, sickening odor, somewhat like that of the barberry blossoms, but worse.")

A very hot day. See July 3, 1854 ("It is gloriously hot, — the first of this weather.")

A pensive walk -- in season.

May 23. 

The poet must bring to Nature the smooth mirror in which she is to be reflected. 

I am surprised by the dark orange-yellow of the senecio. At first we had the lighter, paler spring yellows of willows, dandelion, cinquefoil, then the darker and deeper yellow of the buttercup; and then this broad distinction between the buttercup and the senecio, as the seasons revolve toward July. 

Every new flower that opens, no doubt, expresses a new mood of the human mind. Have I any dark or ripe orange-yellow thoughts to correspond? The flavor of my thoughts begins to correspond.

When the chaste and pensive eve draws on, suddenly the walker begins to reflect. A certain lateness in the sound releases me from the obligation to return in any particular season. I have passed the Rubicon of staying out. I have said to myself, that way is not homeward; I will wander further from what I have called my home - to the home which is forever inviting me. In such an hour the freedom of the woods is offered me, and the birds sing my dispensation. 

At Loring's Wood I hear and see a tanager.  

How he enhances the wildness and wealth of the woods! That contrast of a red bird with the green pines and the blue sky! Even when I have heard his note and look for him and find the fellow sitting on a dead twig of a pine, I am always startled. (They seem to love the darkest and thickest pines.) That incredible red, with the green and blue.

I am transported; these are not the woods I ordinarily walk in.

 
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 23, 1853

I am surprised by the dark orange-yellow of the senecio. See June 9, 1853 ("The meadows are now yellow with the golden senecio, a more orange yellow, mingled with the light glossy yellow of the buttercup") and note to June 6, 1858 ("Golden senecio is not uncommon now.")

How different the ramrod jingle of the chewink or any bird's note sounds now at 5 p. m. in the cooler, stiller air, when also the humming of insects is more distinctly heard, and perchance some impurity has begun to sink to earth strained by the air. Or is it, perchance, to be referred to the cooler, more clarified and pensive state of the mind, when dews have begun to descend in it and clarify it? Chaste eve! A certain lateness in the sound, pleasing to hear, which releases me from the obligation to return in any particular season. I have passed the Rubicon of staying out. I have said to myself, that way is not homeward; I will wander further from what I have called my home — to the home which is forever inviting me. In such an hour the freedom of the woods is offered me, and the birds sing my dispensation. 

In dreams the links of life are united: we forget that our friends are dead; we know them as of old. An abundance of pure white fringed polygalas, very delicate, by the path at Harrington's mud-hole. Thus many flowers have their nun sisters, dressed in white. 

At Loring's Wood heard and saw a tanager. That contrast of a red bird with the green pines and the blue sky! Even when I have heard his note and look for him and find the bloody fellow, sitting on a dead twig of a pine, I am always startled. (They seem to love the darkest and thickest pines.) That incredible red, with the green and blue, as if these were the trinity we wanted. Yet with his hoarse note he pays for his color. I am transported; these are not the woods I ordinarily walk in. He sunk Concord in his thought. How he enhances the wildness and wealth of the woods! This and the emperor moth make the tropical phenomena of our zone. There is warmth in the pewee's strain, but this bird's colors and his note tell of Brazil. Even in remotest woods the trivial noon has its rule and its limit. When the chaste and pensive eve draws on, suddenly the walker begins to reflect.

See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau May 23

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 © 2009-2021

An island in a pond.

May 25.

A fine, freshening air, a little hazy, that bathes and washes everything, saving the day from extreme heat. 

Walked to the hills south of Wayland by the road by Deacon Farrar’s. 

First vista just beyond Merron's (?), looking west down a valley, with a verdant columned elm at the extremity of the vale and the blue hills and horizon beyond. These are the resting-places in a walk. We love to see any part of the earth tinged with blue, cerulean, the color of the sky, the celestial color. 

I wonder that houses are not oftener located mainly that they may command particular rare prospects, every convenience yielding to this. The farmer would never suspect what it was you were buying, and such sites would be the cheapest of any. 

A site where you might avail yourself of the art of Nature for three thousand years, which could never be materially changed or taken from you, a noble inheritance for your children. The true sites for human dwellings are unimproved. They command no price in the market. 

Men will pay something to look into a travelling showman's box, but not to look upon the fairest prospects on the earth. A vista where you have the near green horizon contrasted with the distant blue one, terrestrial with celestial earth. The prospect of a vast horizon must be accessible in our neighborhood. Where men of enlarged views may be educated. An unchangeable kind of wealth, a real estate.

. . .

See Bunker Hill Monument and Charlestown from the Wayland hills, and westward, or west by south, an island in a pond.

What is the orange-yellow aster-like flower of the meadows now in blossom with a sweet-smelling stem when bruised ?

Now, at 8.30 o'clock P.M., I hear the dreaming of the frogs.  So it seems to me, and so significantly passes my life away. It is like the dreaming of frogs in a summer evening.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 25, 1851

Dreaming of the frogs. See June 13, 1851 ("The different frogs mark the seasons pretty well,- the peeping hyla, the dreaming frog, and the bullfrog."); May 25, 1852 ("I hear the first troonk of a bullfrog.”) ; May 25, 1855 ("Hear . . . the summer spray frog, amid the ring of toads.”); May 25, 1859 ("Hear within a day or two what I call the sprayey note of the toad, different and later than its early ring.") May 25, 1860 ("5 P.M. the toads ring loud and numerously.”) See also May 13, 1860 ("It is so warm that I hear the peculiar sprayey note of the toad generally at night."); May 16, 1853 ("Nature appears to have passed a crisis. . .. The sprayey dream of the toad has a new sound"); June 12, 1855 (“I hear the toad, which I have called “spray frog” falsely, still. . . .A peculiarly rich, sprayey dreamer, now at 2 P. M.! . . . This rich, sprayey note possesses all the shore. It diffuses itself far and wide over the water and enters into every crevice of the noon, and you cannot tell whence it proceeds”)

So significantly passes my life away. See July 19, 1851 ("I may say I am unborn. If my curve is large, why bend it to a smaller circle? If life is a waiting, so be it."); August 8, 1852 ("When the play - it may be the tragedy of life - is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned."); November 12, 1859 ("I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream.")