The midsummer night's moon.

July 20.

 

July 20, 2012

To Nawshawtuct at moonrise with Sophia, by boat.

Moon apparently fulled yesterday.

A low mist in crusts the meadow, -- not so perceptible when we are on the water. Now we row through a thin low mist about as high as one's head, now we come to a place where there is no mist on the river or meadow, apparently where a slight wind stirs.

The gentle susurrus from the leaves of the trees on shore is very enlivening, as if Nature were freshening, awakening to some enterprise. There is but little wind, but its sound, incessantly stirring the leaves at a little distance along the shore, heard not seen, is very inspiriting. It is like an everlasting dawn or awakening of nature to some great purpose.

As we go up the hill we smell the sweet briar.

The trees are now heavy, dark masses without tracery, not as in spring or early in June; but I forgot to say that the moon was at first eclipsed by a vast black bank of cloud in the east horizon, which seemed to rise faster than it, and threatened to obscure it all the night.

But suddenly she rose above it, and when, a few moments after, we thought to look again for the threatening cloud-bank, it had vanished, or a mere filmy outline could be faintly traced beneath her.

It was the eclipse of her light behind it that made this evil look so huge and threatening, but now she had triumphed over it and eclipsed it with her light.

It had vanished, like an ugly dream.

So is it ever with evils triumphed over, which we have put behind us.

What was at first a huge dark cloud in the east which threatened to eclipse the moon the livelong night is now suddenly become a filmy vapor, not easy to be detected in the sky, lit by her rays.

She comes on thus, magnifying her dangers by her light, at first displaying, revealing them in all their hugeness and blackness, exaggerating, then casting them behind her into the light concealed.

She goes on her way triumphing through the clear sky like a moon which was threatened by dark clouds at her rising but rose above them. That black, impenetrable bank which threatened to be the ruin of all our hopes is now a filmy dash of vapor with a faint-purplish tinge, far in the orient sky.

From the hilltop we see a few distant lights in farmhouses down below, hard to tell where they are, yet better revealing where they are than the sun does.  But cottage lights are not conspicuous now as in the autumn.

As we looked, a bird flew across the disk of the moon.

Saw two skunks carrying their tails about some rocks. Singular that, of all the animated creation, chiefly these skunks should be abroad in this moonlight.

This is the midsummer night's moon.

We have come round the east side of the hill to see the moon from amid the trees. I like best to see its light falling far in amid the trees and along the ground before me, while itself is hidden behind them or one side.

It is cool, methinks with a peculiar coolness, as it were from the luxuriance of the foliage, as never in June. At any rate we have had no such sultry nights this month as in June.

There is a greater contrast between night and day now, reminding me that even in Hindostan they freeze ice in shallow vessels at night in summer (?).

There is a mist very generally dispersed, which gives a certain mellowness to the light, a wavingness apparently, a creaminess.

Yet the light of the moon is a cold, almost frosty light, white on the ground.

There are a few fireflies about. Green, their light looks sometimes, and crickets are heard.

You are pretty sure also to hear some human music, vocal or instrumental, far or near.

The masses of the trees and bushes would be called black, if our knowledge that they are leaves did not make us call them dark - green.

Here is the Pycnanthemum lanceolatum near the boat's place, which I scent in the dark. It has been out some days, for some flowers are quite withered.

I hear from the copses or bushes along the shore, returning, a faint everlasting fine song from some small cricket, or rather locust, which it required the stillness of night to reveal.

A bat hovers about us.

How oily smooth the water in this moonlight! And the apparent depth where stars are reflected frightens Sophia.

These Yankee houses and gardens seen rising beyond this oily moonlit water, on whose surface the circling insects are like sparks of fire, are like Italian dwellings on the shores of Italian lakes.

When we have left the boat and the river, we are surprised, looking back from the bank, to see that the water is wholly concealed under a white mist, though it was scarcely perceptible when we were in its midst.

The few bullfrogs are the chief music.

I do not know but walnuts are peculiarly handsome by moonlight, -- seeing the moon rising through them, and the form of their leaves.

I felt some nuts. They have already their size and that bracing, aromatic scent.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 20, 1853

The moon was at first eclipsed by a vast black bank of cloud in the east horizon, which threatened to obscure it all the night  See June 1, 1852 ("The moving clouds are the drama of the moonlight nights")

Singular that, of all the animated creation, chiefly these skunks should be abroad in this moonlight. See June 20, 1853 (“ The moon full. . . . Saw a little skunk coming up the river-bank in the woods at the White Oak.”); July 12, 1851 ("I see a skunk on Bear Garden Hill stealing noiselessly away from me, while the moon shines over the pitch pines")

There are a few fireflies about. See July 20, 1852 ("The stars are few and distant; the fireflies fewer still.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Fireflies

You are pretty sure also to hear some human music, vocal or instrumental, far or near. See June 14, 1851 ("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!"); July 12, 1851 ("I hear a human voice,"); August 5, 1851 ("I hear now from Bear Garden Hill — I rarely walk by moonlight without hearing — the sound of a flute, or a horn, or a human voice")

New lieferungs of the fall.

August 4

August 4, 2018

To Walden by poorhouse road. 

Have had a gentle rain, and now with a lowering sky, but still I hear the cricket. He seems to chirp from a new depth toward autumn, new lieferungs of the fall. 

The singular thought-inducing stillness after a gentle rain like this. It has allayed all excitement. 

I hear the singular watery twitter of the goldfinch, ter tweeter e et or e ee, as it ricochets over, he and his russet ( ?) female. 

The chirp of the constant chip-bird and the plaintive strain of the lark, also. 

I must make a list of those birds which, like the lark and the robin, if they do not stay all the year, are heard to sing longest of those that migrate. 

The bobolink and thrasher, etc., are silent. 

English-haying is long since done, only meadow-haying going on now. 

I smell the fragrant life-everlasting, now almost out; another scent that reminds me of the autumn. 

The little bees have gone to sleep amid the clethra blossoms in the rain and are not yet aroused. 

What is that weed somewhat like wormwood and amaranth on the ditch by roadside here? 

What the vine now budded like clematis in the wall? 

Most huckleberries and blueberries and low blackberries are in their prime now. 

A pleasant time to behold a small lake in the woods is in the intervals of a gentle rain-storm at this season, when the air and water are perfectly still, but the sky still overcast; first, because the lake is very smooth at such a time, second, as the atmosphere is so shallow and contracted, being low-roofed with clouds, the lake as a lower heaven is much larger in proportion to it. With its glassy reflecting surface, it is somewhat more heavenly and more full of light than the regions of the air above it. 

There is a pleasing vista southward over and through a wide indentation in the hills which form its shore, where their opposite sides slope to each other so as to suggest a stream flowing from it in that direction through a wooded valley, toward some distant blue hills in Sudbury and Framingham, Goodman's and Nobscot; that is, you look over and between the low near and green hills to the distant, which are tinged with blue, the heavenly color. 

Such is what is fair to mortal eyes. In the meanwhile the wood thrush sings in the woods around the lake.

Pycnanthemum lanceolatum, probably as early as the other variety, Hypericum corymbosum. Spotted St. John's-wort, some time in July. 

History has not been so truthfully or livingly, convincingly, written but that we still need the evidence, the oral testimony of an eye-witness. Hence I am singularly surprised when I read of the celebrated Henry Jenkins (who lived to be some one hundred and sixty nine years old), who used to preface his conversation in this wise, "About a hundred and thirty years ago, when I was butler to Lord Conyers," etc. I am surprised to find that I needed this testimony to be convinced of the reality of Lord Conyers's existence.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 4, 1852

Hear the cricket. He seems to chirp from a new depth toward autumn, new lieferungs of the fall. See August 4, 1851 ("I hear the note of a cricket, and am penetrated with the sense of autumn.”); August 4, 1856 ("Have heard the alder cricket some days. The turning-point is reached.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Cricket in August

I smell the fragrant life-everlasting, now almost out; another scent that reminds me of the autumn.See August 4, 1851 (“ I scent the sweet-scented life-everlasting, which is half expanded.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Aromatic Herbs

The singular thought-inducing stillness after a gentle rain like this. See August 7, 1853 (“When I came forth it was cloudy and from time to time drizzling weather, . . .  soothing and inducing reflection. The river is dark and smooth these days, reflecting no brightness but dark clouds, and the goldfinch is heard twittering over; though presently a thicker mist or mizzle falls, and you are prepared for rain. The river and brooks look late and cool. The stillness and the shade enable you to collect and concentrate your thoughts.”)

A small lake in the woods. See Walden (“This small lake was of most value as a neighbor in the intervals of a gentle rain storm in August, when, both air and water being perfectly still, but the sky overcast, mid-afternoon had all the serenity of evening, and the wood-thrush sang around, and was heard from shore to shore. A lake like this is never smoother than at such a time; and the clear portion of the air above it being shallow and darkened by clouds, the water, full of light and reflections, becomes a lower heaven itself so much the more important. From a hill top near by, where the wood had recently been cut off, there was a pleasing vista southward across the pond, through a wide indentation in the hills which form the shore there, where their opposite sides sloping toward each other suggested a stream flowing out in that direction through a wooded valley, but stream there was none. That way I looked between and over the near green hills to some distant and higher ones in the horizon, tinged with blue.”) [a view from Heywood's Peak? ~ see walden pond a history p. 109]

As early as Hypericum corymbosum. Spotted St. John's-wort. See .July 9, 1854 ("Hypericum corymbosum, not yet ");July 11, 1854 ("Hypericum corymbosum in front of Lee's Cliff, a day or two"); July 21, 1856 ("Hypericum corymbosum, a day or two. The small hypericums are open only in the forenoon. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

August 4. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  August 4 

Most huckleberries

 blueberries and  blackberries 

are in their prime now.

Small lake in the woods

full of light and reflections

as the wood thrush sings.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, New lieferungs of the fall.

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 © 2009-2025

I go across lots like a hunting dog.

August 10

Sunday. 

The weather is fair and clear at last. The dog-days over at present, which have lasted since July 30th. 

P. M. — To Fair Haven Hill and Walden.

Fragrant everlasting, maybe some days. 

Rhus copallina not yet for two or three days. 

The Pycnanthemum incanum, the handsomest of the pycnanthemums, grows also at the west end the Knoll with the R. copallina. All the upper leaves are equally hoary there in the light. The corymbs are an inch across, and the flowers large and very prettily purple-spotted. They are swarming with great wasps of different kinds, and bees.

Hear the wood thrush still.

I go across lots like a hunting dog. With what tireless energy and abandonment they dash through the brush and up the sides of hills! I meet two white foxhounds, led by an old red one. How full of it they are! How their tails work! They are not tied to paths; they burst forth from the thickest shrub oak lot, and immediately dive into another as the fox did.

There are more varieties of blackberries between the low and the high than I take notice of. Vide that kind in the Well Meadow Field.

The fine (early sedge?) grass in the frosty hollows about Walden (where no bushes have sprung up) looks like an unkempt head. 

Vernonia, how long? 

The river has been rising all day. It is between two and a half and three feet higher than ten days ago. Even the white umbels of the sium are drowned, except here and there where they stand over the water. It is within nine and a half inches of the top of Hoar's wall at 6 p. m. 

The meadows have quite a springlike look, yet the grass conceals the extent of the flood. It appears chiefly where it is mown. Yet a quarter part as much rain would have raised the river more in the spring, so much of it was soaked up by the thirsty earth. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 10, 1856

They are swarming with great wasps of different kinds: Pycnanthemum incanum, with the common name hoary mountain-mint, wild basil or hoary basil, is a herbaceous perennial in the mint family. Pycnanthemum means "dense flower-clusters" in Greek, and the flowers are favored by butterflies, moths, and some species of wasps. ~ wikipedia

Hear the wood thrush still.  See August 10, 1854 ("The woods are comparatively still at this season"); August 12, 1851("I hear a wood thrush even now, long before sunrise, as in the heat of the day."); August 12, 1854 ("Have not heard a wood thrush since last week of July."); August 14, 1853 (" I hear no wood thrushes for a week"); August 18, 1852 ("The woods are very still. I hear only a faint peep or twitter from one bird, then the never-failing wood thrush, it being about sunrise,..").

I go across lots like a hunting dog.. . .See April 22, 1852 ("A strange dog accompanies us today, a hunting dog, gyrating about us at a great distance, beating every bush and barking at the birds, with great speed, gyrating his tail too all the while. Our dog sends off a partridge with a whir, far across the open field and the river, like a winged bullet. This stranger dog has good habits for a companion, he keeps so distant. He never trusts himself near us, though he accompanies us for miles.").

August 10. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau , August 10

 

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