Apples are frozen on the trees and rattle like stones in my pocket.

November 11

November 11, 2017

7 Α . M. - To Hubbard Bathing-Place. 

A fine, calm, frosty morning, a resonant and clear air except a slight white vapor which escaped being frozen or perchance is the steam of the melting frost. 

Bracing cold, and exhilarating sunlight on russet and frosty fields. I wear mittens now. 

Apples are frozen on the trees and rattle like stones in my pocket. 

Aster puniceus left. 

A little feathery frost on the dead weeds and grasses, especially about water, - springs and brooks (though now slightly frozen), where was some vapor in the night. 

I notice also this little frostwork about the mouth of a woodchuck's hole, where, perhaps, was a warm, moist breath from the interior, perchance from the chuck! 

 А. M. - To Fair Haven Pond by boat. 

The morning is so calm and pleasant, winter-like, that I must spend the forenoon abroad.

The river is smooth as polished silver. 

A little ice has formed along the shore in shallow bays five or six rods wide. It is for the most part of crystals imperfectly united, shaped like birds' tracks, and breaks with a pleasant crisp sound when it feels the undulations produced by my boat. 

I hear a linaria-like mew from some birds that fly over. 

Some muskrat-houses have received a slight addition in the night. The one I opened day before yesterday has been covered again, though not yet raised so high as before. 

The hips of the late rose still show abundantly along the shore, and in one place nightshade berries. 

I hear a faint cricket (or locust?) still, even after the slight snow. 

I hear the cawing of crows toward the distant wood through the clear, echoing, resonant air, and the lowing of cattle. 

It is rare that the water is smooth in the forenoon. It is now as smooth as in a summer evening or a September or October afternoon.

There is frost on all the weeds that rise above the water or ice. 

The Polygonum Hydropiper is the most conspicuous, abundant, and enduring of those in the water. 

I see the spire of one white with frost-crystals, a perfect imitation at a little distance of its loose and narrow spike of white flowers, that have withered. 

I have noticed no turtles since October 31st, and no frogs for a still longer time. 

At the bathing-place I looked for clams, in summer almost as thick as paving-stones there, and found none. They have probably removed into deeper water and into the mud (?). When did they move? 

The jays are seen and heard more of late, their plumage apparently not dimmed at all. 

I counted nineteen muskrat-cabins between Hubbard Bathing-Place and Hubbard's further wood, this side the Hollowell place, from two to four feet high. They thus help materially to raise and form the river-bank. 

I opened one by the Hubbard Bridge. The floor of chamber was two feet or more beneath the top and one foot above the water. It was quite warm from the recent presence of the inhabitants. 

I heard the peculiar plunge of one close by.  The instant one has put his eyes noiselessly above water he plunges like a flash, showing tail, and with a very loud sound, the first notice you have of his proximity, –that he has been there, – as loud as if he had struck a solid substance. 

This had a sort of double bed, the whole about two feet long by one foot wide and seven or eight inches high, floored thinly with dry meadow-grass. 

There were in the water green butts and roots of the pontederia, which I think they eat. I find the roots gnawed off. Do they eat flagroot? A good deal of a small green hypnum-like river-weed forms the mouthfuls in their masonry. It makes a good sponge to mop the boat with! 

The wind has risen and sky overcast. 

I stop at Lee's Cliff, and there is a Veronica serpyllifolia out. Sail back. 

Scared up two small ducks, perhaps teal. I had not seen any of late. They have probably almost all gone south.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 11, 1853

I wear mittens now. See November 11, 1851 (”A bright, but cold day, finger-cold. One must next wear gloves, put his hands in winter quarters.”); See also February 12, 1854 ("I begin to dream of summer even. I take off my mittens.")

Apples are frozen on the trees and rattle like stones in my pocket. See November 11, 1850 ("Now is the time for wild apples. I pluck them as a wild fruit native to this quarter of the earth, fruit of old trees that have been dying ever since I was a boy and are not yet dead . . . Food for walkers. Sometimes apples red inside, perfused with a beautiful blush, faery food, too beautiful to eat, – apple of the evening sky, of the Hesperides.");  See also December 19, 1850 ("The wild apples are frozen as hard as stones, and rattle in my pockets, but I find that they soon thaw when I get to my chamber and yield a sweet cider.")

I hear the cawing of crows toward the distant wood. See November 1, 1853 ("I only hear some crows toward the woods."); January 12, 1855 ("I hear faintly the cawing of a crow far, far away, echoing from some unseen wood-side . . .I am part of one great creature with him; if he has voice, I have ears. I can hear when he calls.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow

I hear a faint cricket (or locust?) still, even after the slight snow. See November 8, 1853 ("Perchance I heard the last cricket of the season yesterday. They chirp here and there at longer and longer intervals, till the snow quenches their song."); November 11, 1858 ("I hear here a faint creaking of two or three crickets or locustæ. . . They are quite silent long before sunset.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cricket in November

The hips of the late rose still show abundantly along the shore. See July 23, 1860 ("The late rose is now in prime along the river, a pale rose-color but very delicate, keeping up the memory of roses."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Rose

November 11. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, November 11

I wear mittens now.

I hear the cawing of crows

toward the distant wood.

Apples are frozen on the trees and rattle like stones in my pocket.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Apples are frozen on the trees 

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-531111

August has been a month of berries and melons, small fruits.

September  2. 

P. M. – To Walden.

The seringo, too, has long been silent like other birds.

The red prinos berries ripe in sunny places.

Rose hips begin to be handsome.

Small flocks of pigeons are seen these days. Distinguished from doves by their sharper wings and bodies.

August has been a month of berries and melons, small fruits.

First in the descent from summer's culminating-point.

There is a stillness in nature for want of singing birds, commenced a month or more ago; only the crickets’ louder creak to supply their place.

I have not heard a bullfrog this long time.

The small cornel, or bunch-berry, is in bloom now (!!) near the pond.

What great tuft-like masses the cow-wheat makes now in sprout-lands! 

As I look over the pond now from the eastern shore, I am obliged to employ both my hands to defend my eyes against the reflected as well as the true sun, for they appear equally bright; and between my hands I look over the smooth and glassy surface of the lake.

The skaters make the finest imaginable sparkle.

Otherwise it is literally as smooth as glass, except where a fish leaps into the air or a swallow dips beneath its surface.

Sometimes a fish describes an arc of three or four feet in the air, and there is a bright flash where it emerges and another where it strikes the water.

A slight haze at this season makes the shore-line so much the more indistinct.

Looking across the pond from the Peak toward Fair Haven, which I seem to see, all the earth beyond appears insulated and floated, even by this small sheet of water, the heavens being seen reflected, as it were beneath it, so that it looks thin.

The scenery of this small pond is humble though very beautiful, and does not approach to grandeur, nor can it much concern one who has not long frequented it, or lived by its shore.

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

August has been a month of berries and melons. See August 10, 1853 ("August, royal and rich. Green corn now, and melons have begun. That month, surely, is distinguished when melons ripen.");August 12, 1854 ("It takes all the heat of the year to produce these yellow flowers. It is the 3 o'clock p. m. of the year when they begin to prevail, — when the earth has absorbed most heat, when melons ripen and early apples and peaches. It is already the yellowing year.")

First in the descent from summer's culminating-point. See June 6, 1857 ("Each season is but an infinitesimal point. It no sooner comes than it is gone. It has no duration."); July 5, 1852 ("We have become accustomed to the summer. It has acquired a certain eternity.") July 15, 1854 ("We seem to be passing a dividing line between spring and autumn, and begin to descend the long slope toward winter"); July 19, 1851 ("Yesterday it was spring, and to-morrow it will be autumn."); July 24, 1852 ("When the first crop of grass is off, and the aftermath springs, the year has passed its culmination."); July 26, 1853 ("This the afternoon of the year. How apt we are to be reminded of lateness, even before the year is half spent!");; July 28, 1854 ("Methinks the season culminated about the middle of this month, — . . . and, having as it were attained the ridge of the summer, commenced to descend the long slope toward winter, the afternoon and down-hill of the year"); August 5, 1854 ("It is one long acclivity from winter to midsummer and another long declivity from midsummer to winter."); August 6, 1852 ("Methinks there are few new flowers of late. An abundance of small fruits takes their place. Summer gets to be an old story. Birds leave off singing, as flowers blossoming."); August 6, 1852 ("Has not the year grown old ? . . . It is the signs of the fall that affect us most. It is hard to live in the summer content with it."); August 7, 1854 ("There is a light on the earth and leaves, as if they were burnished. It is the glistening autumnal side of summer."); August 7, 1854 (" Do you not feel the fruit of your spring and summer beginning to ripen?") August 18, 1853 ("What means this sense of lateness that so comes over one now, — as if the rest of the year were down-hill.") August 19, 1851("Nature rests no longer at her culminating point than at any other. If you are not out at the right instant, the summer may go by and you not see it.”); August 23, 1858 ("There is no plateau on which Nature rests at midsummer, but she instantly commences the descent to winter."); August 28, 1858 ("When. . . I see these bright leaves strewing the moist ground . . .I am reminded that I have crossed the summit ridge of the year and have begun to descend the other slope."

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,

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

Seedling shrub oaks in a birch wood.

September 7. 

P. M. – To Cardinal Shore  

I see many seedling shrub oaks springing up in Potter's  field by the swamp-side, some (of last year) in the open pasture, but many more in the birch wood half a dozen rods west from the shrub oaks by the path. 

The former were dropped by the way. They plant in birch woods as in pines. This small birch wood has been a retreat for squirrels and birds. 

When I examine the little oaks in the open land there is always an effete acorn with them. 

Common rose hips as handsome as ever.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 7, 1860

They plant in birch woods as in pines. See June 3, 1856 (“As I have said before, it seems to me that the squirrels, etc., disperse the acorns, etc., amid the pines,") See also The Succession of Forest Trees ("It has long been known to observers that squirrels bury nuts in the ground, but I am not aware that any one has thus accounted for the regular succession of forests. . . .In short, they who have not attended particularly to this subject are but little aware to what an extent quadrupeds and birds are employed, especially in the fall, in collecting, and so disseminating and planting the seeds of trees.")


When I examine the little oaks in the open land there is always an effete acorn with them. See May 29, 1859 ("I pick up an oak tree three inches high with the acorn attached.")

Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring.

February 25

When it snowed yesterday very large flakes, an inch in diameter, Aunt said, “They are picking geese.” This, it seems, is an old saying.

Heard Staples, Tuttle, E. Wood, N. Barrett, and others this morning at the post-office talking about the profit of milk-farming. The general conclusion seemed to be that it was less profitable than it was three years ago. Yet Staples thought he could name half a dozen who had done well. He named one. He thought he could name eight or ten who had paid off the mortgages on their farms by this means within a few years. Tuttle said he would give him a good supper if he would name three. Staples named only the one referred to above, David Buttrick, but he added, looking at Tuttle, “There is yourself. You know you came to town with nothing in your pocket but an old razor, a few pennies, and a damned dull jack-knife, and n’t used the razor so much.”  

Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature, — if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you,— know that the morning and spring of your life are past. Thus may you feel your pulse. 

I heard this morning a nuthatch on the elms in the street. I think that they are heard oftener and again at the approach of spring, just as the phoebe note of the chickadee is; and so their gnah gnah is a herald of the spring. 

Joe Smith says that he saw blackbirds this morning. I hear that robins were seen a week or more ago. So the birds are quite early this year. 

P. M. —Up river on ice.

I see a handful of the scarlet Rosa Carolina hips in the crotch of a willow on some mud, a foot or more above the ice. They are partly eaten, and I think were placed there by a musquash. The rose bush, with a few hips on it, still stands in the ice within a few feet. Goodwin says he has seen their tracks eight or ten rods long to an apple tree near the water, where they have been for apples. 

Along edge of Staples’s meadow sprout-land, the young maples, some three years old, are stripped down, i. e. the lower branches for a foot or two, by the ice falling. This barks and wounds the young trees severely. 

The ice over the middle of the river is now alternately dark and whitish. I see the river beginning to show dark through the thinnest parts, in broad crescents convex up-stream, single or connected. 

A good book is not made in the cheap and offhand manner of many of our scientific reports, ushered in by the message of the President communicating it to Congress, and the order of Congress that so many thousand copies be printed, with the letters of instruction for the Secretary of the Interior (or rather exterior); the bulk of the book being a journal of a picnic or sporting expedition by a brevet Lieutenant-Colonel, illustrated by photographs of the traveller’s footsteps across the plains and an admirable engraving of his native village as it appeared on leaving it, and followed by an appendix on the palaeontology of the route by a distinguished savant who was not there, the last illustrated by very finely executed engravings of some old broken shells picked up on the road. 

There are several men of whose comings and goings the town knows little. I mean the trappers. 

They may be seen coming from the woods and river, perhaps with nothing in their hands, and you do not suspect what they have been about. They go about their business in a stealthy manner for fear that any shall see out-of-the-way swamps and meadows and brooks to set or examine their traps for musquash or mink, and the owners of the land commonly know nothing of it. But, few as the trappers are here, it seems by Goodwin’s accounts that they steal one another’s traps.

All the criticism which I got on my lecture on Autumnal Tints at Worcester on the 22d was that I assumed that my audience had not seen so much of them as they had. But after reading it I am more than ever convinced that they have not seen much of them, — that there are very few persons who do see much of nature.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 25, 1859

Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. See August 23, 1853 ("Perhaps after middle age man ceases to be interested in the morning and in the spring.”); Walden (“To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what the clocks say . . . Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.”); and note to March 17, 1857 (“No mortal is alert enough to be present at the first dawn of the spring”)

I heard this morning a nuthatch on the elms in the street; and so their gnah gnah is a herald of the spring. See February 24, 1854 (“Nuthatches are faintly answering each other, — tit for tat, — on different keys, — a faint creak. Now and then one utters a loud distinct gnah.”); March 5, 1859 ("Going down-town this forenoon, I heard a white-bellied nuthatch on an elm within twenty feet, uttering peculiar notes and more like a song than I remember to have heard from it. . . . It was something like to-what what what what what, rapidly repeated, and not the usual gnah gnah; and this instant it occurs to me that this may be that earliest spring note which I hear, and have referred to a woodpecker! (This is before I have chanced to see a bluebird, blackbird, or robin in Concord this year.) It is the spring note of the nuthatch. . . . This herald of spring is commonly unseen, it sits so close to the bark.");April 25, 1859 (" I hear still the what what what of a nuthatch, and, directly after, its ordinary winter note of gnah gnah, quite distinct. I think the former is its spring note or breeding-note.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Nuthatch and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: The Spring Note of the Nuthatch

I hear that robins were seen a week or more ago. February 25, 1857 ("Goodwin says he saw a robin this morning.”); February 28, 1860 ("C. saw a dozen robins to-day on the ground on Ebby Hubbard's hill by the Yellow Birch Swamp.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Robins in Spring

February 25. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 25  

Feel your pulse – measure

your health by your sympathy

with morning and spring.

If the first bluebird 

does not thrill you– the morning  

of your life is past.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  Measure your health 

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-590225

Sally Cummings and Mike Murray are out on the Hill collecting apples and nuts.

October 5. 

Sunday. P. M. — To Hill and over the pastures westward. 

Sally Cummings and Mike Murray are out on the Hill collecting apples and nuts. Do they not rather belong to such children of nature than to those who have merely bought them with their money? There are few apples for them this year, however, and it is too early for walnuts (too late for hazelnuts). The grapes are generally gone, and their vines partly bare and yellowed, though without frost. 

I amuse myself on the hilltop with pulling to pieces and letting fly the now withered and dry pasture thistle tops. They have a much coarser pappus than the milkweeds. I am surprised, amid these perfectly withered and bleached thistles, to see one just freshly in flower. 

The autumnal dandelion is now comparatively scarce there. 

In the huckleberry pasture, by the fence of old barn boards, I notice many little pale-brown dome-shaped (puckered to a centre beneath) puff-balls, which emit their dust. When you pinch them, a smoke-like brown dust (snuff-colored) issues from the orifice at their top, just like smoke from a chimney. It is so fine and light that it rises into the air and is wafted away like smoke. They are low Oriental domes or mosques. Sometimes crowded together in nests, like a collection of humble cottages on the moor, in the coal pit or Numidian style; for there is suggested some humble hearth beneath, from which this smoke comes up, as it were the homes of slugs and crickets. 

They please me not a little by their resemblance to rude dome-shaped, turf-built cottages on the plain, wherein some humble but everlasting life is lived. Amid the low and withering grass or the stubble there they are gathered, and their smoke ascends between the legs of the herds and the traveller. I imagine a hearth and pot, and some snug but humble family passing its Sunday evening beneath each one. Some, when you press them harder, emit clear water — the relics of rain or dew — along with the dust, which last, how ever, has no affinity for it, but is quite dry and smoke like. 

I locate there at once all that is simple and admirable in human life. There is no virtue which their roofs exclude. I imagine with what contentment and faith I could come home to them at evening. I see some not yet ripe, still entire and rounded at top. When I break them open, they are found to be quite soggy, of a stringy white consistency, almost cream-like, riper and yellowish at top, where they will burst by and by. Many have holes eaten into them. On one I find a slug feeding, with a little hole beneath him, and a cricket has eaten out the whole inside of another in which he is housed. This before they are turned to dust. Large chocolate-colored ones have long since burst and are spread out wide like a shallow dish. 

Crickets are seen now moving slowly about in the paths, often with their heads only concealed in a burrow, as if looking out for winter quarters. I saw, on my return, a dozen crickets of various sizes gathered on an apple paring which I had dropped in the path when I came along. 

The sweet-briar rose hips are very handsome now, but these hips do not deserve to be coupled with haws as articles of food, even in extremities. They are very dry, hard, seedy, and unpalatable. I see some fresh-grown callitriche in some clear well-filled leafy pools which are commonly dry at this season.

The singular long pointed reddish bulbs in the axils of the Lysimachia stricta are one of the signs of the season, cool and late. 

It is well to find your employment and amusement in simple and homely things. These wear best and yield most. I think I would rather watch the motions of these cows in their pasture for a day, which I now see all headed one way and slowly advancing, — watch them and project their course carefully on a chart, and report all their behavior faithfully, — than wander to Europe or Asia and watch other motions there; for it is only ourselves that we report in either case, and perchance we shall report a more restless and worthless self in the latter case than in the first.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 5, 1856

Sally Cummings and Mike Murray are out on the Hill collecting apples and nuts. See October 23, 1857 ("Sal Cummings, a thorough countrywoman, conversant with nuts and berries, calls the soapwort gentian “blue vengeance,” mistaking the word. A masculine wild eyed woman of the fields. Somebody has her daguerreotype..")

Long pointed reddish bulbs in the axils of the Lysimachia stricta are one of the signs of the season . . . October 16, 1853 ("The Lysimachia stricta, with its long bulb-lets in the axils, how green and fresh by the shore of the pond!")

These cows in their pasture . . . which I now see all headed one way and slowly advancing. See July 5, 1853 ("Such a habit have cows in a pasture of moving forward while feeding."); September 27, 1851 ("The cows have been turned on to the meadow, but they gradually desert it, all feeding one way.")

I enjoy the warmth of the sun now that the air is cool

August 29.

It is a great pleasure to walk in this clearer atmosphere, though cooler. 

August 29, 2016

How great a change, and how sudden, from that sultry and remarkably hazy atmosphere to this clear, cool autumnal one, in which all things shine, and distance is restored to us! It is so cool that we are inclined to stand round the kitchen fire a little while these mornings, though we sit and sleep with open windows still.

The cymes of elder-berries, black with fruit, are now conspicuous. I see a boy already raking cranberries. The moss rose hips will be quite ripe in a day or two. Many birds nowadays resort to the wild black cherry tree, as here front of Tarbell's. I see them continually coming and going directly from and to a great distance, — cherry birds, robins, and kingbirds.

At Clamshell Bank the barn swallows are very lively, filling the air with their twittering now, at 6 p.m. They rest on the dry mullein-tops, then suddenly all start off together as with one impulse and skim about over the river, hill, and meadow. Some sit on the bare twigs of a dead apple tree. Are they not gathering for their migration?

I enjoy the warmth of the sun now that the air is cool, and Nature seems really more genial. I love to sit on the withered grass on the sunny side of the wall. My mistress is at a more respectful distance, for, by the coolness of the air, I am more continent in my thought and held aloof from her, while by the genial warmth of the sun I am more than ever attracted to her. 

Early for several mornings I have heard the sound of a flail.  It leads me to ask if I have spent as industrious a spring and summer as the farmer, and gathered as rich a crop of experience.

If so, the sound of my flail will be heard by those who have ears to hear, separating the kernel from the chaff all the fall and winter, and a sound no less cheering it will be . . .  

Have you commenced to thresh your grain? 

The lecturer must commence his threshing as early as August, that his fine flour may be ready for his winter customers. The fall rains will make full springs and raise his streams sufficiently to grind his grist. We shall hear the sound of his flail all the fall, early and late.

For him there is no husking-bee, but he does it all alone and by hand, at evening by lamplight, with the barn door shut and only the pile of husks behind him for warmth. For him, too, I fear there is no patent corn-sheller, but he does his work by hand, ear by ear, on the edge of a shovel over a bushel, on his hearth, and after he takes up a handful of the yellow grain and lets it fall again, while he blows out the chaff; and he goes to bed happy when his measure is full. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 29, 1854

It is so cool that we are inclined to stand round the kitchen fire . See  August 29, 1859 ("It is so cool a morning that for the first time I move into the entry to sit in the sun.") .See also  September 11, 1853 "Cool weather. Sit with windows shut, and many by fires. . . .The air has got an autumnal coolness which it will not get rid of again.")

The sound of a flail . . . leads me to ask if I have spent as industrious a spring and summer as the farmer, and gathered as rich a crop of experience. See August 9, 1853 ("This is the season of small fruits. I trust, too, that I am maturing some small fruit as palatable in these months, which will communicate my flavor to my kind."); August 18, 1853 (“The season of flowers or of promise may be said to be over, and now is the season of fruits; but where is our fruit?") July 31, 1856 ("I hear the distant sound of a flail, and thoughts of autumn occupy my mind, and the memory of past years."); August 18, 1856 ("It reminds me of past autumns and the lapse of time, suggests a pleasing, thoughtful melancholy, like the sound of the flail"); September 13,1858 ("From many a barn these days I hear the sound of the flail.") September 14, 1859 ("Now all things suggest fruit and the harvest, and flowers look late, and for some time the sound of the flail has been heard in the barns."); October 31, 1860 ("I hear the sound of the flailing . . . and gradually draw near to it from the woods, thinking many things")

August 29. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 29

How sudden a change

this clear cool autumnal air

in which all things shine.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, I enjoy the warmth of the sun now that the air is cool

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-540829

To Walden

August 27.

Crickets sound much louder after the rain in this cloudy weather.  Hips of the early roses are reddening.  Lower leaves of the smooth sumach are red. Hear chic-a-day-day-day and crow; but, for music, reduced almost to the winter quire. Young partridges two-thirds grown burst away. The leaves of some young maples in the water about the pond are now quite scarlet, running into dark purple-red.

Paddle round the pond.  Viewed from a hilltop, it is blue in the depths and green in the shallows, but from a boat it is seen to be a uniform dark green.  The shore is so steep that much of the way a single leap will carry you into water over your head. It is nowhere muddy, and the bottom is not to be touched, scarcely even seen again, except for the transparency of the water, till it rises on the other side. Both fishes and plants are clean and bright, like the element they live in.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 27, 1852

Viewed from a hilltop, it is blue in the depths and green in the shallows, but from a boat it is seen to be a uniform dark green. . . .See September 1, 1852 ("Viewed from the hilltop, it reflects the color of the sky. Beyond the deep reflecting surface, near the shore, it is a vivid green. "): See also Walden ("Walden is blue at one time and green at another, even from the same point of view. Lying between the earth and the heavens, it partakes of the color of both. Viewed from a hill top it reflects the color of the sky, but near at hand it is of a yellowish tint next the shore where you can see the sand, then a; light green, which gradually deepens to a uniform dark green in the body of the pond. In some lights, viewed even from a hill top, it is of a vivid green next the shore.”)

A brisk walk with the little brown dog in the damp woods this morning,  wood asters shining in the dim light  along the trail swept clean from yesterdays thunder shower – taking the turn home surprised to see how bright green the trees against the sky. August 27, 2022.