The colors of the world.

April 24. 

April 24, 2017

6 a. m. — Water has fallen an inch and a half since last night, — which is at a regular rate. 

Now that the sun shines and the sky is blue, the water is a dark blue which in the storm was light or whitish. It follows the sky's, though the sky is a lighter blue.

The lilac buds have looked as forward as any for many weeks. 

2 p. m. — To Carlisle Bridge via Flint's Bridge, bank of river, rear of Joel Barrett's, returning by bridle-road. 

The elms are now fairly in blossom. 

It is one of those clear, washing days, — though the air is cold, — such as succeed a storm, when the air is clear and flowing, and the cultivated ground and the roads shine. 

Passed Flint's road on the wall. 

Sorrel is well under weigh, and cinquefoil. 

White oaks still hold their leaves. 

The pitch pine is a cheerful tree at this season, with its lively yellow-green in the sunshine, while the landscape is still russet and dead-grass colored.

Sitting by the road beyond N. Barrett's, the colors of the world are: 

• overhead a very light blue sky, darkest in the zenith, lightest in the horizon, with scattered white clouds seeming thickest in the horizon;

• all around the undulating earth a very light tawny color, from the dead grass, with the reddish and gray of forests mingled with evergreen;

• and, in the lap of earth, very dark blue rippled water, answering to the light blue above; 

• the shadows of clouds flitting over all below;

• the spires of woods fringing the horizon on every side, and, nearer, single trees here and there seen with dark branches against the sky. T

• this tawny ground divided by walls and houses, white, light slate, and red sprinkled here and there. 

Ball's Hill and the rest are deep sunk in the flood. 

The level water-line appears to best advantage when it appears thus to cut the trees and hills. It looks as if the water were just poured into its basin and simply stood so high. No permanent shore gives you this pleasure.

Saw the honey-bees on the staminate flowers of the willow catkins by the roadside (such as I described April 23d), with little bottles of the yellow pollen, apparently, as big as pin-heads on their thighs. With these flowers, then, come bees. Is there honey in staminate flowers? 

The innocent odor of spring flowers, flavorless, as a breakfast. They will be more spiced by and by.

Went over the cladonia hills toward Tarbell's.

A small tree, an oak for instance, looks large on a bare hilltop. 

The farmers, whom the storm has delayed, are busily plowing and overhauling their manure. 

Observed the ants at work on a large ant-heap. They plainly begin as soon as the snow is off and the ground thawed. 

Gold-thread, an evergreen, still bright in the swamps.

The rattlesnake-plantain has fresh leaves. 

A wall running over the top of a rocky hill, with the light seen through its chinks, has a pretty effect. 

The sparrows, frogs, rabbits, etc., are made to resemble the ground for their protection; but so is the hawk that preys on them; but he is of a lighter color beneath, that creeping things over which he hovers may confound him with the sky. The marsh hawk is not easily distinguished from the meadow or the stems of the maples. 

The water is still over the causeway on both sides of Carlisle Bridge for a long distance. It is a straight flood now for about four miles. Fortunately for the bridge the wind has not been very high since the flood was at its height. 

The leaves of the hardhack, curled up, show their white under sides. 

On the bridle-road observed the interesting light-crimson star-like flowers of the hazel, the catkins being now more yellowish. 

This is a singular and interesting part of Concord, extensive and rather flat rocky pastures without houses or cultivated fields on any but this unused bridle-road, from which I hear the frogs peep. These are Channing's "moors." He went in on this road to chop, and this is the scene of his "Woodman." 

Heard again (in the village) that vetter-vetter-vetter- vetter-vef, or tchi-tchi-tchi-tchi-tchi-tchi-tchi' very rapidly repeated, which I heard April 23d, and perhaps the same that I saw April 17th (described April 18th). I am pretty sure it is the pine warbler, yellow beneath, with faint olivaceous marks on the sides, olivaceous above, tail forked, about the size of a yellow-bird. 

I have not seen the fox-colored sparrow for some weeks.

Thought I saw a loon on Walden yesterday.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 24, 1852

The pitch pine is a cheerful tree at this season, with its lively yellow-green in the sunshine, , while the landscape is still russet and dead-grass colored. See April 24, 1857 ("Now the sun comes out and shines on the pine hill west of Ball's Hill, lighting up the light-green pitch pines and the sand and russet-brown lichen-clad hill. That is a very New England landscape.")See also April 11, 1852 ("The light of the setting sun on the pitch pines on Fair Haven and Bear Hill lights them up warmly.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Pitch Pine.

The leaves of the hardhack, curled up, show their white under sides. See April 24, 1860 ("The meadow-sweet and hardhack have begun to leaf.”)

Saw the honey-bees on the staminate flowers of the willow catkins . . . with little bottles of the yellow pollen, apparently, as big as pin-heads on their thighs. See April 9, 1853 (“Bees also in the female willows, of course without pellets. It must be nectar alone there.”); April 17, 1855 (“A bee curved close on each half-opened catkin, intoxicated with its early sweet, —one perhaps a honey-bee, — so intent on its sweets or pollen that they do not dream of flying. Various kinds of bees — some of the honey bees — have little yellow masses of pollen on their thighs; some seem to be taking it into their mouths”) 

Willows now in bloom 

resound with the hum of bees 

this warm afternoon. 

April 28, 1860

See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Bees

The interesting light-crimson star-like flowers of the hazel. See April 9, 1856 ("the stigmas already peep out, minute crimson stars"); April 11, 1856 ("the crimson stigmas of the hazel, like little stars peeping forth") April 13, 1855 ("many minute, but clear crystalline crimson stars at the end of a bare and seemingly dead twig.")

I am pretty sure it is the pine warbler, yellow beneath, with faint olivaceous marks on the sides, olivaceous above, tail forked, about the size of a yellow-bird. See April 9, 1856 ("Its bright yellow or golden throat and breast, etc., are conspicuous at this season, — a greenish yellow above, with two white bars on its bluish-brown wings. It sits often with loose-hung wings and forked tail.");  August 18, 1856 ("Clear-yellow throat and breast, greenish-yellow head, conspicuous white bar on wings, white beneath, forked tail, bluish legs. Can it be pine warbler? The note, thus faint, is not like it.")

I have not seen the fox-colored sparrow for some weeks. See April 24, 1855 ("Have not seen the F. hyemalis for a week.,"); April 17, 1855 ("A sudden warm day, like yesterday and this, takes off some birds and adds others. It is a crisis in their career. The fox-colored sparrows seem to be gone"). See also   A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Fox-colored Sparrow.

Thought I saw a loon on Walden yesterday. See October 8, 1852 ("At length, having come up fifty rods off, he uttered one of those prolonged unearthly howls, as if calling on the god of loons to aid him, and immediately there came a wind from the east and rippled the surface, and filled the whole air with misty rain.")

I hear a peculiar sound which I mistake for a woodpecker's tapping.

August 20. 

Thursday. 

P. M. – To Hubbard's Close. 

July 31, 2019

The hillside at Clintonia Swamp is in some parts quite shingled with the rattlesnake-plantain (Goodyera pubescens) leaves overlapping one another. The flower is now apparently in its prime. 

As I stand there, I hear a peculiar sound which I mistake for a woodpecker's tapping, but I soon see a cuckoo hopping near suspiciously or inquisitively, at length within twelve feet, from time to time uttering a hard, dry note, very much like a woodpecker tapping a dead dry tree rapidly, its full clear white throat and breast toward me, and slowly lifting its tail from time to time. Though somewhat allied to that throttled note it makes by night, it was quite different from that. 

I go along by the hillside footpath in the woods about Hubbard's Close. The Goodyera repens grows behind the spring where I used to sit, amid the dead pine leaves. Its leaves partly concealed in the grass. It is just done commonly. 

Helianthus, strumosus-like, at the south end of Stow's cold pool; how long?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 20, 1857

The hillside at Clintonia Swamp is in some parts quite shingled with the rattlesnake-plantain . . . See August 27, 1856 (“Goodyera pubescens, rattlesnake-plantain, is apparently a little past its prime. It is very abundant on Clintonia Swamp hillside. . .”)

A hard, dry note, very much like a woodpecker tapping. . .See May 29, 1856 (“A cuckoo’s note, loud and hollow, from a wood-side.”)

Helianthus, strumosus-like, at the south end of Stow's cold pool. . . See note to August 12, 1856 ("Am surprised to see still a third species or variety of helianthus . . . At edge of the last clearing south of spring. I cannot identify it. . . .In some respects it is most like H. strumosus, but not downy beneath.”)

There are many wild-looking berries about now.

August 27.

August 27, 2016

P. M. —To Clintonia Swamp and Cardinal Ditch.

Unusually cold last night.

Goodyera pubescens, rattlesnake-plantain, is apparently a little past its prime. It is very abundant on Clintonia Swamp hillside, quite erect, with its white spike eight to ten inches high on the sloping hillside, the lower half or more turning brown, but the beautifully reticulated leaves which pave the moist shady hillside about its base are the chief attraction. These oval leaves, perfectly smooth like velvet to the touch, about one inch long, have a broad white midrib and four to six longitudinal white veins, very prettily and thickly connected by other conspicuous white veins transversely and irregularly, all on a dark rich green ground.

Is it not the prettiest leaf that paves the forest floor? As a cultivated exotic it would attract great attention for its leaf. Many of the leaves are eaten. Is it by partridges? It is a leaf of firm texture, not apt to be partially eaten by insects or decayed, and does not soon wilt. So unsoiled and undecayed. It might be imitated on carpets and rugs. Some old withered stems of last year still stand.

On dry, open hillsides and fields the Spiranthes gracilis is very common of late, rising tall and slender, with its spiral of white flowers like a screw-thread at top; sometimes fifteen inches high.

There are, close by the former, the peculiar large dark blue indigo clintonia berries of irregular form and dark-spotted, in umbels of four or five on very brittle stems which break with a snap and on erectish stemlets or pedicels.

See no fringed gentian yet.

Veronica serpyllifolia again by Brister's Spring.

Krigia yesterday at Lee's Cliff, apparently again, though it may be uninterruptedly.

Tobacco-pipe still.

The rhexia greets me in bright patches on meadow banks.

Ludwigia alternifolia still. It is abundant in Cardinal Ditch, twenty rods from road.

Bidens frondosa, how long?

Hypericum Canadense and mutilum now pretty generally open at 4 P.M., thus late in the season, it being more moist and cooler.

The cardinals in this ditch make a splendid show now, though they would have been much fresher and finer a week ago. They nearly fill the ditch for thirty-five rods perfectly straight, about three feet high. I count at random ten in one square foot, and as they are two feet wide by thirty-five rods, there are four or five thousand at least, and maybe more. They look like slender plumes of soldiers advancing in a dense troop, and a few white (or rather pale-pink) ones are mingled with the scarlet. That is the most splendid show of cardinal flowers I ever saw. They are mostly gone to seed, i. e. the greater part of the spike. 

Mimulus there still common.

Near the clintonia berries, I found the Polygonatum pubescens berries on its handsome leafy stem recurved over the hillside, generally two slaty-blue (but darkgreen beneath the bloom) berries on an axillary peduncle three quarters of an inch long, hanging straight down; eight or nine such peduncles, dividing to two short pedicels at end; the berries successively smaller from below upwards, from three eighths of an inch diameter to hardly more than one eighth.

There are many wild-looking berries about now.

The Viburnum Lentago begin to show their handsome red cheeks, rather elliptic-shaped and mucronated, one cheek clear red with a purplish bloom, the other pale green, now. Among the handsomest of berries, one half inch long by three eighths by two eighths, being somewhat flattish.

Then there are the Viburnum dentatum berries, in flattish cymes, dull leadcolored berries, depressed globular, three sixteenths of an inch in diameter, with a mucronation, hard, seedy, dryish, and unpalatable.

The large depressed globular hips of the moss rose begin to turn scarlet in low ground.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, August 27, 1856 

Is it not the prettiest leaf that paves the forest floor? See August 20, 1856 (“The hillside at Clintonia Swamp is in some parts quite shingled with the rattlesnake-plantain (Goodyera pubescens) leaves overlapping one another. The flower is now apparently in its prime. ”);  March 10, 1852 ("I see the reticulated leaves of the rattlesnake-plantain in the woods, quite fresh and green.”); June 12, 1853 ("The rattlesnake-plantain now surprises the walker amid the dry leaves on cool hillsides in the woods; of very simple form, but richly veined with longitudinal and transverse white veins. It looks like art.”) Also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,The Rattlesnake-Plantain

I see Hypericum Canadense and mutilum abundantly open at 4 p. m. See  August 15, 1859 ("Hypericum Canadense, Canadian St. John's-wort, distinguished by its red capsules."); August 17,1856 ("Hypericum Canadense well out at 2 p. m."); August 19, 1851 ("Now for the pretty red capsules or pods of the Hypericum Canadense");   August 19, 1856 ("I see Hypericum Canadense and mutilum abundantly open at 3 P. M.")  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

The cardinals in this ditch make a splendid show now, though they would have been much fresher and finer a week ago. . . . They look like slender plumes of soldiers advancing in a dense troop, . . .the most splendid show of cardinal flowers I ever saw. Compare August 20, 1851 ("In the dry ditch, near Abel Minott's house that was, I see cardinal-flowers, with their red artillery, reminding me of soldiers, — red men, war, and bloodshed. Some are four and a half feet high. Thy sins shall be as scarlet. Is it my sins that I see ? It shows how far a little color can go; for the flower is not large, yet it makes itself seen from afar, and so answers the purpose for which it was colored completely. It is remarkable for its intensely brilliant scarlet color. You are slow to concede to it a high rank among flowers, but ever and anon, as you turn your eyes away, it dazzles you and you pluck it. ")

The rhexia greets me in bright patches on meadow banks  See August 28, 1859 ("The rhexia in Ebby Hubbard's field is considerably past prime, and it is its reddish chalices which show most at a distance now. I should have looked ten days ago. Still it is handsome with its large yellow anthers against clear purple petals. It grows there in large patches with hardhack") See also   A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Rhexia Virginica (meadow-beauty)

Near the clintonia berries, I found the Polygonatum pubescens berries on its handsome leafy stem . See June 12, 1852 ("Clintonia borealis  amid the Solomon's-seals in Hubbard's Grove Swamp. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Solomon's Seal

The Polygonatum pubescens berries . . . generally two slaty-blue (but darkgreen beneath the bloom) . . ..  See  August 21, 1853 ("The polygonatum berries have been a bluish-green some time.”)

The Viburnum Lentago begin to show their handsome red cheeks,. . . See August 21, 1853 ("The Viburnum Lentago berries are but just beginning to redden on one cheek.”); August 23, 1853 (".How handsome now the cymes of Viburnum Lentago berries, flattish with red cheeks!”); August 25, 1852 ("The fruit of the Viburnum Lentago is now very handsome, with its sessile cymes of large elliptical berries, green on one side and red with a purple bloom on the other or exposed side, not yet purple, blushing on one cheek.”);August 27, 1854 ("Some Viburnum Lentago berries, turned blue before fairly reddening.”)

See no fringed gentian yet. See September 12, 1854 ("I cannot find a trace of the fringed gentian.”); September 14, 1855”( I see no fringed gentian yet.”) and September 14, 1856 ("Fringed gentian well out (and some withered or frost-bitten ?), say a week, though there was none to be seen here August 27th.”)

Hips of the moss rose begin to turn scarlet . . .See August 27, 1852 ("Hips of the early roses are reddening.”); August 29, 1854 ("The moss rose hips will be quite ripe in a day or two.”)

There are many wild-looking berries about now.

tinyurl.com/wildberriesHDT

Croaking frogs and peepers.

c

April 13

P. M. — To Second Division cowslips. 

A fair day, but a cool wind still, from the snow covered country in the northwest. It is, however, pleasant to sit in the sun in sheltered places. 

The small croaking frogs are now generally heard in all those stagnant ponds or pools in woods floored with leaves, which are mainly dried up in the summer. At first, perhaps, you hear but one or two dry croaks, but, if you sit patiently, you may hear quite a concert of them at last. — er-wah er-wah er-wah, with a nasal twang and twist. — and see them dimpling the surface here and there by their movements. But if you approach the pond-side,.they suddenly cease. 

We, hear them at J. P. Brown’s Pond, which is edged with ice still on the north. The water must be smooth and the weather pretty warm. 

There is still some icy snow in hollows under the north sides of woods. 

I see the feathers, apparently of a fox-colored sparrow, completely covering a stump, where some creature has devoured it. 

At a great ant-hill, the common half red, half-black ants are stirring, apparently clearing out rubbish from their nest. 

Great quantities of odoriferous sweetgale seed are collected with the scum at the outlet of Nut Meadow, for they float. The Alnus incana blossoms begin generally to show. The serrulata will undoubtedly blossom to-morrow in some places. 

The pine on the Marlborough road which I saw from my window has been sawed down the past winter. I try to count its circles; count sixty-one from centre to sap, but there the pitch conceals the rest completely. I guess there were fifteen more, at least. The tree was probably quite eighty years old. It was about two and a quarter feet in diameter. 

The common hazel just out. It is perhaps the prettiest flower of the shrubs that have opened. A little bunch of (in this case) half a dozen catkins, one and three quarters inches long, trembling in the wind, shedding golden pollen on the hand, and, close by, as many minute, but clear crystalline crimson stars at the end of a bare and seemingly dead twig. 

For two or three days in my walks, I had given the hazel catkins a fillip with my finger under their chins to see if they were in bloom, but in vain; but here, on the warm south side of a wood, I find one bunch fully out and completely relaxed. They know when to trust themselves to the weather. 

At the same time I hear through the wood the sharp peep of the first hylodes I have chanced to hear. 

Many cowslip buds show a little yellow, but they will not open there for two or three days. The road is paved with solid ice there. 

Returning by the steep side-hill just south of Holden’s wood-lot and some dozen or fourteen rods west of the open land, I saw, amid the rattlesnake-plantain leaves, what I suspect to be the Polygala paucifolia, -- some very beautiful oval leaves of a dull green (green turned dark) above, but beneath -- and a great many showed the under side -- a clear and brilliant purple (or lake?), growing and looking like checkerberry leaves, but more flaccid. It is three or four inches high, with the oval and revolute leaves at top and a few remote small bract-like leaves on the (three-sided) stern. This polygala is sometimes called flowering wintergreen, and, indeed, it is not only an evergreen but somewhat pyrola-like to the eye. 

See a sparrow without marks on throat or breast, running peculiarly in the dry grass in the open field beyond, and hear its song, and then see its white feathers in tail; the baywing. 

A small willow by the roadside beyond William Wheeler’s, to-morrow.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 13, 1855

A fair day, but a cool wind still, from the snow covered country in the northwest. It is, however, pleasant to sit in the sun in sheltered places. See April 8, 1859 (" Cold as it is, and has been for several weeks, in all exposed places, I find it unexpectedly warm in perfectly sheltered places where the sun shines. And so it always is in April. The cold wind from the northwest seems distinct and separable from the air here warmed by the sun.")

Stars at the end of a seemingly bare twig. See March 27, 1853 ("So minute that only an observer of nature, or one who looked for them, would notice it.”); April 11, 1856 (You thread your way amid the rustling oak leaves on some warm hillside sloping to the south, detecting no growth as yet . . . when, glancing along the dry stems, in the midst of all this dryness, you detect the crimson stigmas of the hazel, like little stars peeping forth, and perchance a few catkins are dangling loosely in the zephyr and sprinkling their pollen on the dry leaves beneath); April 24,1852 (""Observed the interesting light-crimson star-like flowers of the hazel, the catkins being now more yellowish.) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: the Hazel

Here, on the warm south side of a wood, I find one bunch fully out and completely relaxed. They know when to trust themselves to the weather. See May 7, 1854 ("Flowers are self-registering indicators of fairweather. I remember how I waited for the hazel catkins to become relaxed and shed their pollen, but they delayed, till at last there came a pleasanter and warmer day and I took off my greatcoat while surveying in the woods, and then, when I went to dinner at noon, hazel catkins in full flower were dangling from the banks by the roadside and yellowed my clothes with their pollen.”)

The small croaking frogs are now generally heard in all those stagnant ponds or pools in woods floored with leaves, which are mainly dried up in the summer. See March 31, 1857 ("The dry croaking and tut tut of the frogs (a sound which ducks seem to imitate, a kind of quacking...) is plainly enough down there in some pool in the woods, but the shrill peeping of the hylodes locates itself nowhere in particular."); April 8, 1852 ("To-day I hear the croak of frogs in small pond-holes in the woods, and see dimples on the surface, which I suppose that they make, for when I approach they are silent and the dimples are no longer seen. They are very shy.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wood Frog (Rana sylvatica)

At the same time I hear through the wood the sharp peep of the first hylodes I have chanced to hear. See  March 23, 1859 ("We hear the peep of one hylodes somewhere in this sheltered recess in the woods. And afterward, on the Lee side, I hear a single croak from a wood frog,");  March 31, 1855 ("I go listening for the croak of the first frog, or peep of a hylodes.");  April 18, 1855 ("Hylodes are peeping in a distant pool.") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The first frogs to begin calling

Still a cool wind but

pleasant to sit in the sun

in sheltered places.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Croaking frogs and peepers.

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-550413

A fog so thick.

February 16 

A thick fog without rain. 

Sounds sweet and musical through this air, as crows, cocks, and striking on the rails at a distance. 

In the woods by the Cut, in this soft air, under the pines draped with mist, my voice and whistling are peculiarly distinct and echoed back to me, as if the fog were a ceiling which made this hollow an apartment. Sounds are not dissipated and lost in the immensity of the heavens above you, but your voice, being confined by the fog, is distinct, and you hear yourself speak.  

The fog is so thick we cannot see the engine till it is almost upon us, and then its own steam, hugging the earth, greatly increases the mist. As usual, it is still more dense over the ice at the pond. 

Rattlesnake plantain. January 22, 2017

The ground is more than half bare, especially in open fields and level evergreen woods. It is pleasant to see there the bright evergreens of the forest floor, undimmed by the snow, — the Wintergreen, the great leaved pyrola, the shin-leaf, the rattlesnake-plantain, and the lycopodiums. I see where probably rabbits have nibbled of the leaves of the Wintergreen. 

It is pleasant to see elsewhere, in fields and on banks, so many green radical leaves only half killed by the winter.

I find in the leavings of the partridges numerous ends of twigs. They are white with them, some half an inch long and stout in proportion. Perhaps they are apple twigs. 

February 17, 2013

The bark ( and bud, if there was any ) has been entirely digested, leaving the bare, white, hard wood of the twig. Some of the ends of apple twigs looked as if they had been bitten off. It is surprising what a quantity of this wood they swallow with their buds. 

What a hardy bird, born amid the dry leaves, of the same color with them, that, grown up, lodges in the snow and lives on buds and twigs! Where apple buds are just freshly bitten off they do not seem to have taken so much twig with them. 

The drooping oak leaves show more red amid the pines this wet day, - agreeably so, — and I feel as if I stood a little nearer to the heart of nature.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 16, 1855

Sounds sweet and musical through this air, as crows, cocks, and striking on the rails at a distance. See February 8, 1860 ("A different sound comes to my ear now from iron rails which are struck, as from the cawing crows, etc. Sound is not abrupt, piercing, or rending, but softly sweet and musical."); February 24, 1852 ("I now hear at a distance the sound of the laborer's sledge on the rails. The very sound of men's work reminds, advertises, me of the coming of spring.”); April 9, 1853 ("The sound of the laborers' striking the iron rails of the railroad with their sledges, . . . echoing along between the earth and the low heavens.”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring:  The crowing of cocks, the cawing of crows

The fog is so thick we cannot see the engine till it is almost upon us, and then its own steam, hugging the earth, greatly increases the mist. See August 17, 1852 ("Cannot distinguish the steam of the engine toward Waltham from one of the morning fogs over hollows in woods."); December 3, 1856 ("The steam of the locomotive stretches low over the earth, enveloping the cars.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Steam of the Engine

It is pleasant to see there the bright evergreens of the forest floor,  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Lycopodiums

The leavings of the partridges. See February 13, 1855 ("I see where many have dived into the snow. . .and have invariably left much dung at the end of this hole.");  January 31, 1854 ("Many tracks of partridges there along the meadow-side in the maples, and their droppings where they appear to have spent the night about the roots and between the stems of trees. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge

February 16. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 16

February 15, 1855 <<<<<                                                                          >>>>> February 17, 1855

The fog is so thick

we cannot see the engine

almost upon us.

My voice is distinct

under the pines draped with mist –

you hear yourself speak.

Oak leaves show more red

 amid the pines this wet day –

 agreeably so. 

And I feel as if 

I stood a little nearer –

 the heart of nature.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A fog so thick.

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-550216

A morning walk

June 12. 

The note of the wood thrush answers to some cool unexhausted morning vigor in the hearer. 

Maple-leaved viburnum well out at Laurel Glen. 

The rattlesnake-plantain now surprises the walker amid the dry leaves on cool hillsides in the woods; of very simple form, but richly veined with longitudinal and transverse white veins. It looks like art. 

The red-eyed vireo is the bird most commonly heard in the woods.

Visited the great orchis which I am waiting to have open completely. It is emphatically a flower (within gunshot of the hawk's nest); its great spike, six inches by two, of delicate pale-purple flowers, which begin to expand at bottom, rises above and contrasts with the green leaves of the hellebore and skunk-cabbage and ferns (by which its own leaves are concealed) in the cool shade of an alder swamp. It is the more interesting for its rarity and the secluded situations in which it grows, owing to which it is seldom seen, not thrusting itself on the observation of men. It is a pale purple, as if from growing in the shade. It is not  remarkable in its stalk and leaves, which indeed are commonly concealed by other plants. 

Norway cinquefoil. A wild moss rose in Arethusa Meadow, where are arethusas lingering still.


The sidesaddle-flowers are partly turned up now and make a great show, with their broad red petals flapping like saddle ears (?)

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 12, 1853 


The note of the wood thrush . . . See June 22, 1853 ("This is the only bird whose note affects me like music, affects the flow and tenor of my thought, my fancy and imagination. . . . All that is ripest and fairest in the wilderness and the wild man is preserved and transmitted to us in the strain of the wood thrush.")

The red-eyed vireo is the bird most commonly heard in the woods. See June 11, 1852 (" The red-eye sings now in the woods, perhaps more than any other bird. “)

Visited the great orchis which I am waiting to have open completely. See note to June 20, 1859 ("Great purple fringed orchis")  See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Fringed Orchids

The sidesaddle-flowers . . . make a great show, with their broad red petals flapping like saddle ears. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Pitcher Plant

June 12. Sunday. P. M. — To Bear Hill.

 Maple-leaved viburnum well out at Laurel Glen, probably 9th.

The laurel probably by day after to morrow.

The note of the wood thrush answers to some cool unexhausted morning vigor in the hearer.

The leaf of the rattlesnake-plantain now surprises the walker amid the dry leaves on cool hillsides in the woods; of very simple form, but richly veined with longitudinal and transverse white veins.

It looks like art. Crows, like hawks, betray the neighborhood of their nests by harsh scolding at the intruder while they circle over the top of the wood.

The red-eyed vireo is the bird most commonly heard in the woods.

The wood thrush and the cuckoo also are heard now at noon. The round-leaved cornel fully out on Heywood Peak, but not in the woods. Did I mention that the sawed stump of the chestnut made a seat within the bower formed by its sprouts ? Going up Pine Hill, disturbed a partridge and her brood. She ran indeshabille directly to me, within four feet, while her young, not larger than a chicken just hatched, dispersed, flying along a foot or two from the ground, just over the bushes, for a rod or two. The mother kept close at hand to attract my attention, and mewed and clucked and made a noise as when a hawk is in sight. She stepped about and held her head above the bushes and clucked just like a hen. What a remarkable instinct that which keeps the young so silent and prevents their peeping and betraying themselves! The wild bird will run almost any risk to save her young. The young, I believe, make a fine sound at first in dispersing, something like a cherry-bird. I find beechnuts already about fully grown for size, where a tree overhangs Baker's hillside, and there are old nuts on the ground. Were they sound? This tree must have blossomed early, then. A light-green excrescence three inches in diameter on a panicled andromeda. The lint still comes off the bushes on to my clothes. The hedyotis long leaved out; only two or three plants to be found; probably some days.

Visited the great orchis which I am waiting to have open completely. It is emphatically a flower (within gunshot of the hawk's nest); its great spike, six inches by two, of delicate pale-purple flowers, which begin to expand at bottom, rises above and contrasts with the green leaves of the hellebore and skunk-cabbage and ferns (by which its own leaves are concealed) in the cool shade of an alder swamp. It is the more in teresting for its rarity and the secluded situations in which it grows, owing to which it is seldom seen, not thrusting itself on the observation of men. It is a pale purple, as if from growing in the shade. It is not  remarkable in its stalk and leaves, which indeed are commonly concealed by other plants.

Norway cinquefoil. A wild moss rose in Arethusa Meadow, where are arethusas lingering still.

The sidesaddle-flowers are partly turned up now and make a great show, with their broad red petals flapping like saddle ears ( ? ).

The tree-climbing ivy. Was it out as early as the other? Apparently so. I forgot to say that I visited my hawk's nest, and the young hawk was perched now four or five feet above the nest, still in the shade. It will soon fly. Now, then, in secluded pine woods, the young hawks sit high on the edges of their nests or on the twigs near by in the shade, waiting for their pinions to grow, while their parents bring to them their prey. Their silence also is remarkable, not to betray themselves, nor will the old bird go to the nest while you are in sight. She pursues me half a mile when I withdraw. The buds of young white oaks which have been frost-bitten are just pushing forth again. Are these such as were intended for next year at the base of the leaf -stalk ?

Through Deep Cut to Cliffs.

March 10.

Rattlesnake Plantain in winter.

I see flocks of a dozen bluebirds together. The warble of this bird is innocent and celestial, like its color.

See a sparrow, perhaps a song sparrow, flitting amid the young oaks where the ground is covered with snow. I think that this is an indication that the ground is quite bare a little further south. 

Probably the spring birds never fly far over a snow-clad country.

A wood-chopper tells me he heard a robin this morning.

I see the reticulated leaves of the rattlesnake-plantain in the woods, quite fresh and green.

What is the little chickweed-like plant already springing up on the top of the Cliffs? There are some other plants with bright-green leaves which have either started somewhat or have never suffered from the cold under the snow. 

Summer clenches hands with summer under the snow.

I am pretty sure that I hear the chuckle of a ground squirrel among the warm and bare rocks of the Cliffs. 

The earth is perhaps two thirds bare to-day. The mosses are now very handsome, like young grass pushing up.

Hear the phoebe note of the chickadee to-day for the first time. I had at first heard their day-day-day ungratefully,-- ah! you but carry my thoughts back to winter, -- but anon I find that they too have become spring birds; they have changed their note. Even they feel the influence of spring.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 10, 1852

I see flocks of a dozen bluebirds together. See March 10, 1853 ("What was that sound that came on the softened air? It was the warble of the first bluebird from that scraggy apple orchard yonder. When this is heard, then has spring arrived");  March 10, 1855 ("You are always surprised by the sight of the first spring bird or insect; they seem premature, and there is no such evidence of spring as themselves, so that they literally fetch the year about. It is thus when I hear the first robin or bluebird or, looking along the brooks, see the first water-bugs out circling. But you think, They have come, and Nature cannot recede.");  March 10, 1859 ("And already, when near the road, I hear the warble of my first Concord bluebird, borne to me from the hill through the still morning air, and, looking up, I see him plainly, though so far away, a dark speck in the top of a walnut.. . . The bluebird on the apple tree, warbling so innocently to inquire if any of its mates are within call, — the angel of the spring! Fair and innocent, yet the offspring of the earth. The color of the sky above and of the subsoil beneath. Suggesting what sweet and innocent melody (terrestrial melody) may have its birthplace between the sky and the ground") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Listening for the Bluebird

See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,   Signs of the Spring: the Song Sparrow Sings

I see the reticulated leaves of the rattlesnake-plantain in the woods, quite fresh and green. See  August 27, 1856 ("Is it not the prettiest leaf that paves the forest floor?”) ; June 12, 1853 ("The rattlesnake-plantain now surprises the walker amid the dry leaves on cool hillsides in the woods; of very simple form, but richly veined with longitudinal and transverse white veins. It looks like art.”) Also 
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Rattlesnake-Plantain

Hear the phoebe note of the chickadee to-day for the first time.  See January 9, 1858 ("Some chickadees come flitting close to me, and one utters its spring note, phe-be, for which I feel under obligations to him"); February 9, 1856 ("I hear a phoebe note from a chickadee.");  February 24, 1857 ("A chickadee with its winter lisp flits over, and I think it is time to hear its phebe note, and that instant it pipes it forth. ");  March 1, 1854 ("I hear the phoebe or spring note of the chickadee, and the scream of the jay is perfectly repeated by the echo from a neighboring wood.”); March 1, 1856 ("I hear several times the fine-drawn phe-be note of the chickadee, which I heard only once during the winter. Singular that I should hear this on the first spring day. “); March 11, 1854 ("Air full of birds, — bluebirds, song sparrows, chickadee (phoebe notes), and blackbirds. Bluebirds' warbling curls in elms.”); March 14, 1852 ("I see a flock of blackbirds and hear their conqueree. The ground is mostly bare now. Again I hear the chickadee's spring note.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring, the spring note of the chickadee

Summer clenches hands 

with summer under the snow –

springing bright-green leaves.

My facts shall be falsehoods

November 9.

In our walks C. takes out his note-book sometimes and tries to write as I do, but all in vain. He soon puts it up again, or contents himself with scrawling some sketch of the landscape. Observing me still scribbling, he will say that he confines himself to the ideal, purely ideal remarks; he leaves the facts to me.

Sometimes, too, he will say a little petulantly, "I am universal; I have nothing to do with the particular and definite."

I, too, would fain set down something beside facts.

Facts should only be as the frame to my pictures; they should be material to the mythology which I am writing; not facts to assist men to make money, farmers to farm profitably, in any common sense; facts to tell who I am, and where I have been or what I have thought: as now the bell rings for evening meeting, and its volumes of sound, like smoke which rises from where a cannon is fired, make the tent in which I dwell.

My facts shall be falsehoods to the common sense. I would so state facts that they shall be significant, shall be myths or mythologic. Facts which the mind perceived, thoughts which the body thought -- with these I deal.

James P. Brown's retired pond, now shallow and more than half dried up, seems far away and rarely visited, known to few, though not far off. It is encircled by an amphitheatre of low hills, on two opposite sides covered with high pine woods, the other sides with young white oaks and white pines respectively. I am affected by beholding there reflected this gray day, so unpretendingly, the gray stems of the pine wood on the hillside and the sky, - that mirror, as it were a permanent picture to be seen there, a permanent piece of idealism.

What were these reflections to the cows alone! Were these things made for cows' eyes mainly? You shall go over behind the hills, where you would suppose that otherwise there was no eye to behold, and find this piece of magic a constant phenomenon there. It is not merely a few favored lakes or pools that reflect the trees and skies, but the obscurest pond-hole in the most unfrequented dell does the same.

These reflections suggest that the sky underlies the hills as well as overlies them, and in another sense than in appearance.

I am a little surprised on beholding this reflection, which I did not perceive for some minutes after looking into the pond, as if I had not regarded this as a constant phenomenon. What has become of Nature's common sense and love of facts, when in the very mud-puddles she reflects the skies and trees?

I knew that this pond was early to freeze; I had for gotten that it reflected the hills around it. So retired! which I must think even the sordid owner does not know that he owns. It is full of little pollywogs now. Pray, when were they born? 

November 9, 2024

To-day the mountains seen from the pasture above are dark blue, so dark that they look like new mountains and make a new impression, and the intervening town of Acton is seen against them in a new relation, a new neighborhood.

Pitch pine cones very beautiful, not only the fresh leather-colored ones but especially the dead gray onescovered with lichens, the scales so regular and close, like an impenetrable coat of mail. These are very hand some to my eye; also those which have long since opened regularly and shed their seeds.

An abundance of the rattlesnake plantain in the woods by Brown's Pond, now full of a fine chaffy seed (?). 

Now the leaves are gone the birds' nests are revealed, the brood being fledged and flown. There is a perfect adaptation in the material used in constructing a nest. There is one which I took from a maple on the cause way at Hubbard's Bridge. It is fastened to the twigs by white woolen strings (out of a shawl?), which it has picked up in the road, though it is more than half a mile from a house; and the sharp eyes of the bird have discovered plenty of horsehairs out of the tail or mane, with which to give it form by their spring; with fine meadow hay for body, and the reddish woolly material which invests the ferns in the spring (apparently) for lining.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 9, 1851


I would so state facts that they shall be significant, shall be myths or mythologic. See February 18, 1852 ("I have a commonplace-book for facts and another for poetry, but I find it difficult always to preserve the vague distinction which I had in my mind, for the most interesting and beautiful facts are so much the more poetry and that is their success. ... I see that if my facts were sufficiently vital and significant, ... I should need but one book of poetry to contain them all."); April 18, 1852 (“I am serene and satisfied when … … the events of the day have a mythological character, and the most trivial is symbolical.”);  June 19, 1852 ("Facts collected by a poet are set down at last as winged seeds of truth, samaræ, tinged with his expectation  Oh may my words be verdurous and sempiternal as the hills!Facts fall from the poetic observer as ripe seeds."); May 10, 1853 (“Nature will be my language full of poetry, all nature will fable, and every natural phenomenon be a myth. … I pray for such inward experience as will make nature significant”); May 31, 1853 (“Some incidents in my life have seemed far more allegorical than actual; they were so significant that they plainly served no other use. That is, they have been like myths or passages in a myth, rather than mere incidents or history, which have to wait to become significant.”)

Facts which the mind perceived, thoughts which the body thought. See December 31, 1859 (“Do you suppose they were a race of consumptives and dyspeptics who in- vented Grecian mythology and poetry ? The poet's words are , " You would almost say the body thought ! " I quite say it . “) 

I am a little surprised on beholding this reflection, which I did not perceive for some minutes after looking into the pond  . . . See November 2, 1857 ("I think that most men, as farmers, hunters, fishers, etc., walk along a river's bank, or paddle along its stream, without seeing the reflections. Their minds are not abstracted from the surface, from surfaces generally. It is only a reflecting mind that sees reflections. "); October 7, 1857 ("Unless you look for reflections, you commonly will not find them.")

To-day the mountains seen from the pasture above are dark blue, so dark that they look like new mountains and make a new impression, and the intervening town of Acton is seen against them in a new relation. See November 9, 1850 ("It is a pleasant surprise to walk over a hill where an old wood has recently been cut off, and, on looking round, to see, instead of dense ranks of trees almost impermeable to light, distant well-known blue mountains in the horizon and perchance a white village over an expanded open country. ")

November 9. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November 9

To-day the mountains 

are dark blue – so dark that they 

look like new mountains.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, My facts shall be falsehoods

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 © 2009-2024

I, too, would fain set down something beside facts. Facts should only be as the frame to my pictures; they should be material to the mythology which I am writing; not facts to assist men to make money, farmers to farm profitably, in any common sense; 

facts to tell who I am, and where I have been or what I have thought: as now the bell rings for evening meeting, and its volumes of sound, like smoke which rises from where a cannon is fired, make the tent in which I dwell. 

My facts shall be falsehoods to the common sense, I would so state facts that they shall be significant, shall be myths or mythologic.

Facts which the mind perceived, thoughts

 which the body thought, – with these I deal. 

I, too, cherish vague and misty forms, vaguest when the cloud at which I gaze is dissipated quite and naught but the skyey depths are seen. 

I would so state facts 

that they shall be significant

facts to tell who I am 

and where I have been 

or what I have thought

facts the mind perceived

thoughts the body thought

as now the bell rings 

and volumes of sound make the 

tent in which I dwell.

November 9, 1851