These days when the trees have put on their autumnal tints are the gala days of the year.

October 1.  

October 1, 2016

 5 P. M. –– Just put a fugitive slave who has taken the name of Henry Williams, into the cars for Canada.

He escaped from Stafford County Virginia, to Boston last October; has been in Shadrach's place at the Cornhill Coffee-House; had been corresponding through an agent with his master, who is his father, about buying himself, his master asking $600, but he having been able to raise only $500.

Heard that there were writs out for two Williamses, fugitives, and was informed by his fellow-servants and employer that Augerhole Burns and others of the police had called for him when he was out.

Accordingly fled to Concord last night on foot, bringing a letter to our family from Mr. Lovejoy of Cambridge and another which Garrison had formerly given him on another occasion. 

He lodged with us, and waited in the house till funds were collected with which to forward him. Intended to dispatch him at noon through to Burlington, but when I went to buy his ticket, saw one at the depot who looked and behaved so much like a Boston policeman that I did not venture that time.

An intelligent and very well-behaved man, a mulatto.

The slave said he could guide himself by many other stars than the north star, whose rising and setting he knew. They steered for the north star even when it had got round and appeared to them to be in the south. They frequently followed the telegraph when there was no railroad.

The slaves bring many superstitions from Africa. The fugitives sometimes superstitiously carry a turf in their hats, thinking that their success depends on it. 

There is art to be used, not only in selecting wood for a withe, but in using it. Birch withes are twisted, I suppose in order that the fibres may be less abruptly bent; or is it only by accident that they are twisted?

These days when the trees have put on their autumnal tints are the gala days of the year, when the very foliage of trees is colored like a blossom. It is a proper time for a yearly festival, an agricultural show.


Candle-light. To Conantum. The moon not quite half full.

The twilight is much shorter now than a month ago, probably as the atmosphere is clearer and there is less to reflect the light.

The air is cool, and the ground also feels cold under my feet, as if the grass were wet with dew, which is not yet the case.

I go through Wheeler's corn-field in the twilight, where the stalks are bleached almost white, and his tops are still stacked along the edge of the field.

The moon is not far up above the southwestern horizon.

Looking west at this hour, the earth is an unvaried, undistinguishable black in contrast with the twilight sky. It is as if you were walking in night up to your chin.

There is no wind stirring. An oak tree in Hubbard's pasture stands absolutely motionless and dark against the sky.

The crickets sound farther off or fainter at this season, as if they had gone deeper into the sod to avoid the cold. There are no crickets heard on the alders on the causeway.

The moon looks colder in the water, though the water-bugs are still active.

There is a great change between this and my last moonlight walk. I experience a comfortable warmth when I approach the south side of a dry wood, which keeps off the cooler air and also retains some of the warmth of day.

The voices of travellers in the road are heard afar over the fields, even to Conantum house.

The stars are brighter than before.

The moon is too far west to be seen reflected in the river at Tupelo Cliff, but the stars are reflected. The river is a dark mirror with bright points feebly fluctuating.

I smell the bruised horsemint, which I cannot see, while I sit on the brown rocks by the shore.

I see the glow-worm under the damp cliff.

No whip poor-wills are heard to-night, and scarcely a note of any other bird.

At 8 o'clock the fogs have begun, which, with the low half-moon shining on them, look like cob webs or thin white veils spread over the earth. They are the dreams or visions of the meadow.

The second growth of the white pine is probably softer and more beautiful than the primitive forest ever afforded.

The primitive forest is more grand with its bare mossy stems and ragged branches, but exhibits no such masses of green needles trembling in the light.

The elms are generally of a dirty or brownish yellow now.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 1, 1851

The moon not quite half full.  See October 1, 1860 ("This is about the full of the moon (it fulled at 9 P.M the 29th) in clear, bright moonlight nights. We have fine and bright but cold days after it. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, October Moonlight

Birch withes are twisted, I suppose in order that the fibres may be less abruptly bent; or is it only by accident that they are twisted? See October 23, 1851 ("I observed to-day the Irishman who helped me survey twisting the branch of a birch for a withe, and before he cut it off.")

https://tinyurl.com/HDT511001

Fall dandelions stand thick in the meadows.

September 3.




Why was there never a poem on the cricket? Its creak seems to me to be one of the most prominent and obvious facts in the world, and the least heeded. In the report of a man's contemplations I look to see somewhat answering to this sound.

When I sat on Lee's Cliff the other day (August 29th), I saw a man working with a horse in a field by the river, carting dirt; and the horse and his relation to him struck me as very remarkable. There was the horse, a mere animated machine, — though his tail was brushing off the flies, his whole existence subordinated to the man's, with no tradition, perhaps no instinct, in him of independence and freedom, of a time when he was wild and free, completely humanized.

No compact made with him that he should have the Saturday afternoons, or the Sundays, or any holidays. His independence never recognized, it being now quite forgotten both by men and by horses that the horse was ever free. For I am not aware that there are any wild horses known surely not to be descended from tame ones.

Assisting that man to pull down that bank and spread it over the meadow; only keeping off the flies with his tail, and stamping, and catching a mouthful of grass or leaves from time to time, on his own account, all the rest for man. It seemed hardly worthwhile that he should be animated for this. It was plain that the man was not educating the horse; not trying to develop his nature, but merely getting work out of him.

That mass of animated matter seemed more completely the servant of man than any inanimate. For slaves have their holidays; a heaven is conceded to them, but to the horse none. Now and forever he is man's slave.

The more I considered, the more the man seemed akin to the horse; only his was the stronger will of the two.

For a little further on I saw an Irishman shovelling, who evidently was as much tamed as the horse. He had stipulated that to a certain extent his independence be recognized, and yet really he was but little more independent.

I had always instinctively regarded the horse as a free people somewhere, living wild. Whatever has not come under the sway of man is wild. In this sense original and independent men are wild, — not tamed and broken by society.

Now for my part I have such a respect for the horse's nature as would tempt me to let him alone; not to interfere with him, --  his walks, his diet, his loves. But by mankind he is treated simply as if he were an engine which must have rest and is sensible of pain.

Suppose that every squirrel were made to turn a coffee-mill! 

Suppose that the gazelles were made to draw milk-carts! 

There he was with his tail cut off, because it was in the way, or to suit the taste of his owner; his mane trimmed, and his feet shod with iron that he might wear longer.

What is a horse but an animal that has lost its liberty? 

What is it but a system of slavery? and do you not thus by insensible and unimportant degrees come to human slavery? 

Has lost its liberty! - and has man got any more liberty himself for having robbed the horse, or has he lost just as much of his own, and become more like the horse he has robbed?

Is not the other end of the bridle in this case, too, coiled round his own neck?

Hence stable-boys, jockeys, all that class that is daily transported by fast horses.

There he stood with his oblong square figure (his tail being cut off) seen against the water, brushing off the flies with his tail and stamping, braced back while the man was filling the cart.

It is a very remarkable and significant fact that, though no man is quite well or healthy, yet every one believes practically that health is the rule and disease the exception, and each invalid is wont to think himself in a minority, and to postpone somewhat of endeavor to another state of existence. But it may be some encouragement to men to know that in this respect they stand on the same platform, that disease is, in fact, the rule of our terrestrial life and the prophecy of a celestial life.

Where is the coward who despairs because he is sick? 

Every one may live either the life of Achilles or of Nestor.

Seen in this light, our life with all its diseases will look healthy, and in one sense the more healthy as it is the more diseased. Disease is not the accident of the individual, nor even of the generation, but of life itself. In some form, and to some degree or other, it is one of the permanent conditions of life. It is, nevertheless, a cheering fact that men affirm health unanimously, and esteem themselves miserable failures.

Here was no blunder. They gave us life on exactly these conditions, and me thinks we shall live it with more heart when we perceive clearly that these are the terms on which we have it.

Life is a warfare, a struggle, and the diseases of the body answer to the troubles and defeats of the spirit. Man begins by quarrelling with the animal in him, and the result is immediate disease.

In proportion as the spirit is the more ambitious and persevering, the more obstacles it will meet with. It is as a seer that man asserts his disease to be exceptional.

2 P. M. — To Hubbard's Swimming-Place and Grove in rain.

As I went under the new telegraph-wire, I heard it vibrating like a harp high overhead. It was as the sound of a far-off glorious life, a supernal life, which came down to us, and vibrated the lattice-work of this life of ours.?

The melons and the apples seem at once to feed my brain.

Here comes a laborer from his dinner to resume his work at clearing out a ditch notwithstanding the rain, remembering as Cato says, per ferias potuisse fossas veteres tergeri, that in the holidays old ditches might have been cleared out. One would think that I were the paterfamilias come to see if the steward of my farm has done his duty.

The ivy leaves are turning red.

Fall dandelions stand thick in the meadows.

How much the Roman must have been indebted to his agriculture, dealing with the earth, its clods and stubble, its dust and mire.

Their farmer consuls were their glory, and they well knew the farm to be the nursery of soldiers.

Read Cato to see what kind of legs the Romans stood on.

The leaves of the hardhack are somewhat appressed, clothing the stem and showing their downy under sides like white, waving wands. Is it peculiar to the season, or the rain, -- or the plant? 

Walk often in drizzly weather, for then the small weeds (especially if they stand on bare ground), covered with rain-drops like beads, appear more beautiful than ever, -- the hypericums, for instance. They are equally beautiful when covered with dew, fresh and adorned, almost spirited away, in a robe of dewdrops.

Some farmers have begun to thresh and winnow their oats.

Identified spotted spurge (Euphorbia maculata), apparently out of blossom.

Shepherd's-purse and chickweed.

As for walking, the inhabitants of large English towns are confined almost exclusively to their parks and to the highways. The few footpaths in their vicinities "are gradually vanishing,” says Wilkinson, “under the encroachments of the proprietors." He proposes that the people's right to them be asserted and defended and that they be kept in a passable state at the public expense. "This," says he, “would be easily done by means of asphalt laid upon a good foundation" !!! So much for walking, and the prospects of walking, in the neighborhood of English large towns.

Think of a man -- he may be a genius of some kind -- being confined to a highway and a park for his world to range in! I should die from mere nervousness at the thought of such confinement. I should hesitate before I were born, if those terms could be made known to me beforehand. Fenced in forever by those green barriers of fields, where gentlemen are seated! Can they be said to be inhabitants of this globe? Will they be content to inhabit heaven thus partially?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 3, 1851

Disease is not the accident of the individual, nor even of the generation, but of life itself. In some form, and to some degree or other, it is one of the permanent conditions of life. Compare December 11. 1855 ("Beauty and music are not mere traits and exceptions. They are the rule and character. It is the exception that we see and hear ")

Fall dandelions stand thick in the meadows. See August 26, 1853 ("The fall dandelion is as conspicuous and abundant now in Tuttle's meadow as buttercups in the spring. It takes their place."); September 1, 1859 ("The autumnal dandelion is a prevailing flower now, but since it shuts up in the afternoon it might not be known as common unless you were out in the morning or in a dark afternoon.."); September 11, 1859 ("This being a cloudy and somewhat rainy day, the autumnal dandelion is open in the afternoon.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Autumnal Dandelion

Walk often in drizzly weather, for then the small weeds (especially if they stand on bare ground), covered with rain-drops like beads, appear more beautiful than ever, See September 2, 1859 ("The sarothra grows thickly, and is now abundantly in bloom, on denuded places, i.e., where the sod and more or less soil has been removed, by sandy roadsides.")  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

Was that country really designed by its Maker to produce slaves and tobacco?

June 8  Thursday.

A. M. — Gentle, steady rain storm.

The Rosa nitida bud which I plucked yesterday has blossomed to-day, so that, notwithstanding the rain, I will put it down to to-day.

P. M. – On river.

Sidesaddle, apparently to-morrow (?).

Earliest and common potamogeton.

Erigeron strigosus slowly opening, perhaps to-morrow.

Meadow-rue, with its rank dog-like scent.

Ribwort plantain is abundantly in bloom, fifteen or sixteen inches high; how long?

Utricularia vulgaris.

Young robins in nest.

June 8, 2024

Herndon, in his ”Exploration of the Amazon,” says that ”there is wanting an industrious and active population, who know what the comforts of life are, and who have artificial wants to draw out the great resources of the country.”

But what are the ”artificial wants” to be encouraged, and the ”great resources” of a country?

Surely not the love of luxuries like the tobacco and slaves of his native (?) Virginia, or that fertility of soil which produces these. The chief want is ever a life of deep experiences, – that is, character, — which alone draws out ”the great resources” of Nature.

When our wants cease to be chiefly superficial and trivial, which is commonly meant by artificial, and begin to be wants of character, then the great resources of a country are taxed and drawn out, and the result, the staple production, is poetry.

Have the ”great resources” of Virginia been drawn out by such ”artificial wants” as there exist? Was that country really designed by its Maker to produce slaves and tobacco, or something more even than freemen and food for freemen? 

Wants of character, aspirations, — this is what is wanted; but what is called civilization does not always substitute this for the barren simplicity of the savage.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 8, 1854


The Rosa nitida bud which I plucked yesterday has blossomed to-day See June 15, 1853 (“ I bring home the buds ready to expand, put them in a pitcher of water, and the next morning they open and fill my chamber with fragrance.”) [Rosa nitida (Shining rose) is a wild rose found in bogs, swamps, and wet thickets, which reaches the southern edge of its range in southern New England. It produces bright pink flowers in June and July that are 2 inches across,The stems are covered in many slender, straight prickles (unlike a similar wetland rose, R. palustris). The leaves are lustrous on both sides. ~GoBotany]. See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Rose

Sidesaddle, apparently to-morrow. See June 8, 1858 ("The sidesaddle-flower is out, — how long?") and note to June 12, 1856  (''Sidesaddle flower numerously out now.")  [Sarracenia purpurea, also known as the purple pitcher plant or northern pitcher plant, the only pitcher plant native to New England. ]  See also A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Pitcher Plant

The chief want is ever a life of deep experiences, which alone draws out ”the great resources” of Nature. See May 23, 1841 ("All nature is a new impression every instant"); May 10, 1853 ("He is the richest who has most use for nature as raw material of tropes and symbols with which to describe his life. ... If I am overflowing with life, am rich in experience for which I lack expression, then nature will be my language full of poetry,. . .I pray for such inward experience as will make nature significant”); May 23, 1853 ("The poet must bring to Nature the smooth mirror in which she is to be reflected.");  August 30, 1856 ("I get my new experiences . . . at Beck Stow's Swamp listening to the native wood thrush.”); October 18, 1856  ("T]he theme is nothing, the life is everything. All that interests the reader is the depth and intensity of the life excited. . . . That is, man is all in all, Nature nothing, but as she draws him out and reflects him.”); October 26, 1857 ("The perfect correspondence of Nature to man, so that he is at home in her!")

June 8, See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, June 8

Rosa nitida 

the bud I plucked yesterday 

has blossomed to-day 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Rosa nitida bud 

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-540608

A large flock of snow buntings, the white birds of the winter, rejoicing in the snow..

March 2  

Snowed last night and this morning, about seven inches deep, much more than during the winter, the first truly wintry-looking day so far as snow is concerned; but the snow is quite soft or damp, lodging in perpendicular walls on the limbs, white on black. But it is as yet neither wheeling nor sleighing, the ground being muddy. 

I remember to have seen these wood-lots being cut this winter: a little on the southwest edge of R. W. E.’s Pinnacle; Stow’s, up to east end of cold pool; northwest corner of Gowing’s, next Great Fields and Moore; an acre or more of the southwest part of the Dennis swamp by railroad; Cyrus Hosmer’s, southwest of Desert; and west of Marlborough road; except north part of last. 

I walk through the Colburn farm pine woods by railroad and thence to rear of John Hosmer’s. 

See a large flock of snow buntings, the white birds of the winter, rejoicing in the snow. I stand near a flock in an open field. They are trotting about briskly over the snow amid the weeds, —apparently pigweed and Roman wormwood, —as it were to keep their toes warm, hopping up to the weeds. 

Then they restlessly take to wing again, and as they wheel about one, it is a very rich sight to see them dressed in black and white uniforms, alternate black and white, very distinct and regular. Perhaps no colors would be more effective above the snow, black tips (considerably more) to wings, then clear white between this and the back, which is black or very dark again. 

One wonders if they are aware what a pleasing uniform appearance they make when they show their backs thus. They alight again equally near. Their track is much like a small crow’s track, showing a long heel and furrowing the snow between with their toes. 

The last new journal thinks that it is very liberal, nay, bold, but it dares not publish a child’s thought on important subjects, such as life and death and good books. It requires the sanction of the divines just as surely as the tamest journal does. If it had been published at the time of the famous dispute between Christ and the doctors, it would have published only the opinions of the doctors and suppressed Christ’s. 

There is no need of a law to check the license of the press. It is law enough, and more than enough, to itself. 

Virtually, the community have come together and agreed what things shall be uttered, have agreed on a platform and to excommunicate him who departs from it, and not one in a thousand dares utter anything else. There are plenty of journals brave enough to say what they think about the government, this being a free one; but I know of none, widely circulated or well conducted, that dares say what it thinks about the Sunday or the Bible. They have been bribed to keep dark. They are in the service of hypocrisy.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 2, 1858

Snowed last night and this morning, about seven inches deep. See March 2, 1857 ("An inch or two of snow falls, — all day about it, — and strangely blown away."); March 2, 1856 ("Has snowed three or four inches —very damp snow — in the night;")

I remember to have seen these wood-lots being cut this winter. See March 6, 1855 ("There is hardly a wood lot of any consequence left but the chopper’s axe has been heard in it this season. They have even infringed fatally on White Pond, on the south of Fair Haven Pond, shaved ofl’ the topknot of the Cliffs, the Colburn farm, Beck Stow’s, etc., etc.")

A large flock of snow buntings, the white birds of the winter, rejoicing in the snow.. See March 3, 1859 ("looking up, saw about fifteen snow buntings . . . sitting so still and quite white, seen against the white cloudy sky, they did not look like birds but the ghosts of birds. . .These were almost as white as snow balls"): March 20, 1852 ("As to the winter birds, — those which came here in the winter, - I saw . . .  in midwinter, the snow bunting, the white snowbird, sweeping low like snowflakes from field to field over the walls and fences."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snow Bunting

March 2. SeeA Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 2

 Flock of snow buntings

the white birds of the winter

 rejoicing in snow. 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  A large flock of snow buntings rejoicing in the snow.

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

***

Friday. It snows. We have 3 to 4 inches. We walk to the view taking a shortcut at the junction. As usual she gets ahead and I go straight to the chairs. It is too windy to sit and we continue on towards the Middle Pond. There’s a new Hemlock snapped in half in the little valley. It blocks where we spent all that time clearing the beech tree there.  The middle pond is open water for yard or so along the shore but eventually I hop onto the ice and cross. We are able to go down the cliff because the snow is perfect for walking then we take the Cliff Trail under the pine tree

 I hop onto ice

over open water and 

cross the middle pond.

zphx 20180302

The most wintry day of the winter.

February 20.

Snows all day. The most wintry day of the winter; yet not more than three inches on a level is fallen. 

We hear the names of the worthies of Concord, — Squire Cuming and the rest,—but the poor slave Casey seems to have lived a more adventurous life than any of them. Squire Cuming probably never had to run for his life on the plains of Concord.

H.. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 20, 1858

The most wintry day of the winter. See February 19, 1858 ("Coldest morning this winter by our thermometer, -3° at 7.30.")

Walden ice.

February 18. 

I find Walden ice to be nine and a half plus inches thick, having gained three and a half inches since the 8th. 

The Rubus hispidus (sempervirens of Bigelow) is truly evergreen. 

There has been so little snow this winter that I have noticed it the more, — red, glossy, and, as it were, plaited. 

I see the ice, three inches thick, heaved up tentwise eighteen inches or more in height, near the shore, yet where the water is too deep for the bottom to have been heaved, as if some steam had heaved it. 

At Brister's further spring, the water which trickles off in various directions between and around little mounds of green grass half frozen, when it reaches the more mossy ground runs often between two perpendicular walls of ice, as at the bottom of a cañon, the top of these perfectly square-edged banks being covered with the moss that originally covered the ground (otherwise undisturbed) and extending several feet on each side at the same level. These icy cliffs are of a loose crystalline composition, with many parallel horizontal seams, as if built up. I suppose that the water flows just under the moss, and, freezing, heaves it one stage; then the next night, perchance, new water, flowing underneath, heaves the whole another stage; and so on, steadily lifting it up. 

Far from here, I see the surface of weeds and mud lifted up in like manner where there is no cañon or rill, but a puddle. 

George Minott tells me that he, when young, used often to go to a store by the side of where Bigelow's tavern was and kept by Ephraim Jones, – the Goodnow store. That was probably the one kept by my old trader. 

Told me how Casey, who was a slave to a man — Whitney — who lived where Hawthorne owns, —the same house, — before the Revolution, ran off one Sunday, was pursued by the neighbors, and hid him self in the river up to his neck till nightfall, just across the Great Meadows. He ran through Gowing's Swamp and came back that night to a Mrs. Cogswell, who lived where Charles Davis does, and got something to eat; then cleared far away, enlisted, and was freed as a soldier after the war. 

Whitney's boy threw snow balls at him the day before, and finally C., who was chopping in the yard, threw his axe at him, and W. said he was an ugly nigger and he must put him in jail. 

He may have been twenty years old when stolen from Africa; left a wife and one child there. Used to say that he went home to Africa in the night and came back again in the morning; i. e., he dreamed of home. Lived to be old. Called Thanksgiving “Tom Kiver.”

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 18, 1858

THE ALLEGORY OF THE STONEMASON..

THE ALLEGORY OF THE STONEMASON.

The wise man is restful, never restless or impatient.

 He each moment abides there where he is,

as some walkers actually rest the whole body at each step. 

Henry Thoreau  September 17, 1839 

 

September 11

Every artisan learns positively something by his trade. Each craft is familiar with a few simple, well-known, well-established facts, not requiring any genius to discover, but mere use and familiarity. You may go by the man at his work in the street every day of your life, and though he is there before you, carrying into practice certain essential information, you shall never be the wiser. Each trade is in fact a craft, a cunning, a covering an ability; and its methods are the result of a long experience.

There sits a stone-mason, splitting Westford granite for fence-posts . . . His hammer, his chisels, his wedges, his shims or half-rounds, his iron spoon, I suspect that these tools are hoary with age as with granite dust.

He learns as easily where the best granite comes from as he learns how to erect that screen to keep off the sun.  He knows that he can drill faster into a large stone than a small one, because there is less jar and yielding.

He deals in stone as the carpenter in lumber. In many of his operations only the materials are different.

• His work is slow and expensive.
• Nature is here hard to be overcome.
• He wears up one or two drills in splitting a single stone.
• He must sharpen his tools oftener than the carpenter.
• He fights with granite.
• He knows the temper of the rocks.
• He grows stony himself.
• His tread is ponderous and steady like the fall of a rock.

And yet by patience and art he splits a stone as surely as the carpenter or woodcutter a log.

So much time and perseverance will accomplish. See how surely he proceeds. He does not hesitate to drill a dozen holes, each one the labor of a day or two for a savage; he carefully takes out the dust with his iron spoon; he inserts his wedges, one in each hole, and protects the sides of the holes and gives resistance to his wedges by thin pieces of half-round iron (or shims); he marks the red line which he has drawn, with his chisel, carefully cutting it straight; and then how carefully he drives each wedge in succession, fearful lest he should not have a good split!

The habit of looking at men in the gross makes their lives have less of human interest for us. But though there are crowds of laborers before us, yet each one leads his little epic life each day. 

There is the stone mason . . . 

who, methought, was simply a stony man that hammered stone from breakfast to dinner, and dinner to supper, and then went to his slumbers.  But he, I find, is even a man like myself, for he feels the heat of the sun and has raised some boards on a frame to protect him. And now, at mid-forenoon, I see his wife and child have come and brought him drink and meat for his lunch and to assuage the stoniness of his labor, and sit to chat with him.

. . . There are many rocks lying there for him to split from end to end, and he will surely do it . . . But how many moral blocks are lying there in every man's yard, which he surely will not split nor earnestly endeavor to split. There lie the blocks which will surely get split, but here lie the blocks which will surely not get split.

Do we say it is too hard for human faculties? But does not the mason dull a basketful of steel chisels in a day, and yet, by sharpening them again and tempering them aright, succeed?

One would say that mankind had much less moral than physical energy, that any day you see men following the trade of splitting rocks, who yet shrink from undertaking apparently less arduous moral labors, the solving of moral problems.

Moral effort! Difficulty to be overcome!!! Why, men work in stone, and sharpen their drills when they go home to dinner!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 11, 1851

 Each trade is in fact a craft, a cunning, a covering an ability; and its methods are the result of a long experience. See March 11, 1859 ("What we do best or most perfectly is what we have most thoroughly learned by the longest practice, and at length it falls from us without our notice."); January 12, 1852 ("Go not so far out of your way for a truer life; keep strictly onward in that path alone which your genius points out. Do the things which lie nearest to you, but which are difficult to do.") 

So much time and perseverance will accomplish. See November 8, 1860 ("How persevering Nature is, and how much time she has to work in, though she works slowly."); August 2, 1859 ("There is a certain moral and physical sluggishness and standstill at midsummer.")

Each trade is a craft –

its methods the result of

long experience.

 

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 © 2009-2015

Another round red sun of dry and dusty weather – Stawberries in season.

June 18.

The Rosa lucida is pale and low on dry sunny banks like that by Hosmer's pines. 

There are many strawberries this season, in meadows now, just fairly begun there. The meadows, like this Nut Meadow, are now full of the taller grasses, just beginning to flower.

Ovenbird

Observe in two places golden-crowned thrushes, near whose nests I must have been, hopping on the lower branches and in the underwood, — a somewhat sparrow-like bird, with its golden-brown crest and white circle about eye, carrying the tail somewhat like a wren, and inclined to run along the branches. Each had a worm in its bill, no doubt intended for its young. That is the chief employment of the birds now, gathering food for their young. I think I heard the anxious peep of a robin whose young have just left the nest.

Small grasshoppers very abundant in some dry grass. 

Another round red sun of dry and dusty weather to-night, — a red or red-purple helianthus. Every year men talk about the dry weather which has now begun as if it were something new and not to be expected.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 18, 1854

And more today on slavery:

My advice to the State is simply this: to dissolve her union with the slaveholder instantly. ... And to each inhabitant of Massachusetts, to dissolve his union with the State, as long as she hesitates to do her duty.

See May 29, 1854 , June 9, 1854, June 16, 1854, June 17, 1854 and ""Slavery in Massachusetts.

The Rosa lucida is pale and low on dry sunny banks. See June 13, 1854 ("Is not the rose-pink Rosa lucida paler than the R. nitida?"); June 16, 1854 ("The R. lucida, with its broader and duller leaves, but larger and perhaps deeper-colored and more purple petals, perhaps yet higher scented, and its great yellow centre of stamens.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Rose

There are many strawberries this season, in meadows now, just fairly begun there. See June 17, 1854 ("Already the season of small fruits has arrived.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: Strawberries

Observe in two places golden-crowned thrushes, near whose nests I must have been . . . See June 10, 1855 ("Oven-bird’s nest with four eggs two thirds hatched, under dry leaves, composed of pine-needles and dry leaves and a hair or two for lining,”)

Another round red sun.  See June 17, 1854 ("The sun goes down red again, like a high-colored flower of summer.")

I think I heard the anxious peep of a robin whose young have just left the nest. See June 10, 1853 ("We hear the cool peep of the robin calling to its young, now learning to fly.") See also May 13, 1853 ("A robin's nest, with young, on the causeway."): May 24, 1855 ("Young robins some time hatched");June 9, 1856 ("A young robin abroad. "); June 15, 1855 ("Robin’s nest in apple tree, twelve feet high — young nearly grown."): June 15, 1852 ("Young robins,speck dark-led,"); June 20, 1855 (" A robin’s nest with young, which was lately, in the great wind, blown down and somehow lodged on the lower part of an evergreen by arbor,—without spilling the young!")

Every year men talk about the dry weather which has now begun as if it were something new and not to be expected. See July 7, 1853 ("Now is that annual drought which is always spoken of as something unprecedented and out of the common course.")

June18. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 18

Many strawberries 

this season in meadows now –

just fairly begun.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Strawberries in Season

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-540618

Already the season of small fruits has arrived.

June 17.

June 17, 2019

A cold fog. 

These mornings those who walk in grass are thoroughly wetted above mid-leg. All the earth is dripping wet. I am surprised to feel how warm the water is, by contrast with the cold, foggy air.

From the Hill I am reminded of more youthful mornings, seeing the dark forms of the trees eastward in the low grounds, partly within and against the shining white fog, the sun just risen over it. The mist fast rolling away eastward from them, their tops at last streaking the mist and dividing it into vales. All beyond them a submerged and unknown country, as if they grew on the sea shore. 

See the sun reflected up from the Assabet to the hill top, through the dispersing fog, giving to the water a peculiarly rippled, pale-golden hue.

Another remarkably hazy day; our view is confined, the horizon near, no mountains; as you look off only four or five miles, you see a succession of dark wooded ridges and vales filled with mist. It is dry, hazy June weather. 

We are more of the earth, farther from heaven, these days.  We are getting deeper into the mists of earth.

The season of hope and promise is past; already the season of small fruits has arrived. We are a little saddened, because we begin to see the interval between our hopes and their fulfillment. The prospect of the heavens is taken away, and we are presented only with a few small berries. 

Before sundown I reach Fair Haven Hill and gather strawberries. I find beds of large and lusty strawberry plants in sprout-lands, but they appear to run to leaves and bear very little fruit, having spent themselves in leaves by the time the dry weather arrives. It is those still earlier and more stinted plants which grow on dry uplands that bear the early fruit, formed before the droughts. But the meadows produce both leaves and fruit.

The sun goes down red again, like a high-colored flower of summer. As the white and yellow flowers of spring are giving place to the rose, and will soon to the red lily, etc., so the yellow sun of spring has become a red sun of June drought, round and red like a midsummer flower, production of torrid heats.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 17, 1854

Another remarkably hazy day; our view is confined, the horizon near, no mountains.  See June 21, 1856 (”Very hot day, as was yesterday, -— 98° at 2 P. M., 99° at 3, and 128° in sun”); June 25, 1858 (“Hotter than yesterday and, like it, muggy or close. So hazy can see no mountains.");  Compare June 23, 1854 (“.The air is beautifully clear  . . It is a great relief to look into the horizon. There is more room under the heavens”); See Also June 23, 1852 (“ It is an agreeably cool and clear and breezy day, when all things appear as if washed bright and shine . . . You can see far into the horizon.”); June 26, 1853 (" Summer returns without its haze. We see infinitely further into the horizon on every side, and the boundaries of the world are enlarged.")

The season of hope and promise is past; already the season of small fruits has arrived. Compare
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 ? The night of the year is approaching. What have we done with our talent?”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: Strawberries

A red sun of June drought, round and red like a midsummer flower, production of torrid heats.See
May 5, 1859 ("The sun sets red (first time), followed by a very hot and hazy day ");June 5, 1854 ("The sun goes down red and shorn of his beams, a sign of hot weather,"); June 18, 1854 ("Another round red sun of dry and dusty weather to-night, – a red or red-purple helianthus.")

June 17. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 17

Note: Today there is more on Anthony Burns:

The judges and lawyers, and all men of expedience, consider not whether the Fugitive Slave Law is right, but whether it is what they call constitutional. They try the merits of the case by a very low and incompetent standard. Pray, is virtue constitutional, or vice? Is equity constitutional, or iniquity? It is as impertinent, in important moral and vital questions like this, to ask whether a law is constitutional or not, as to ask whether it is profitable or not. They persist in being the servants of man, and the worst of men, rather than the servants of God. Sir, the question is not whether you or your grandfather, seventy years ago, entered into an agreement to serve the devil, and that service is not accordingly now due; but whether you will not now, for once and at last, serve God . . . and obey that eternal and only just Constitution which he, and not any Jefferson or Adams, has written in your being . . . .

Some men act as if they believed that they could safely slide down-hill a little way, — or a good way, — and would surely come to a place, by and by, whence they could slide up again. This is expediency, or choosing that course which offers the fewest obstacles. But there is no such thing as accomplishing a moral reform by the use of expediency or policy. There is no such thing as sliding up-hill. In morals the only sliders are backsliders.

See May 29, 1854 , June 9, 1854, June 16, 1854 and ""Slavery in Massachusetts.

As white and yellow

flowers give place to the rose

and soon red lily

yellow sun of spring

becomes red sun of June heat –

midsummer flower.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Season of Small Fruits

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

tinyurl.com/hdt-540617

A fine ripple and sparkle on the pond, seen through the mist...

Sunset, June 16, 2014

June 16.  As the sun went down last night, round and red in a damp misty atmosphere, so now it rises in the same manner, though there is no dense fog.

.                   

Sunrise June 16, 2014

Three days in succession, — the 13th, 14th, and 15th, — thunder-clouds, with thunder and lightning, have risen high in the east, threatening instant rain, and yet each time it has failed to reach us. Thus it is almost invariably, methinks, with thunder-clouds which rise in the east; they do not reach us.  

The warmer, or at least drier, weather has now prevailed about a fortnight. Once or twice the sun has gone down red, shorn of his beams. There have been showers all around us, but nothing to mention here yet. 

Panicled cornel well out on Heywood Peak. 

There is a cool east wind, — and has been afternoons for several days, — which has produced a very thick haze or a fog.  

There is a fine ripple and sparkle on the pond, seen through the mist.

June 16, 2014

The Rosa nitida grows along the edge of the ditches, the half-open flowers showing the deepest rosy tints, so glowing that they make an evening or twilight of the surrounding afternoon, seeming to stand in the shade or twilight. Already the bright petals of yesterday's flowers are thickly strewn along on the black mud at the bottom of the ditch. 

• The R. nitida, the earlier (?), with its narrow shiny leaves and prickly stem and its moderate-sized rose pink petals. 
• The R. lucida, with its broader and duller leaves, but larger and perhaps deeper-colored and more purple petals, perhaps yet higher scented, and its great yellow centre of stamens. 
• The smaller, lighter, but perhaps more delicately tinted R. rubiginosa. 

One and all drop their petals the second day. I bring home the buds of the three ready to expand at night, and the next day they perfume my chamber.

Add to these the white lily (just begun), also the swamp-pink, and probably morning-glory, and the great orchis, and mountain laurel (now in prime), and perhaps we must say that the fairest flowers are now to be found. 

It is eight days since I plucked the great orchis; one is perfectly fresh still in my pitcher. It may be plucked when the spike is only half opened, and will open completely and keep perfectly fresh in a pitcher more than a week. 

Do I not live in a garden, — in paradise? I can go out each morning before breakfast — I do — and gather these flowers with which to perfume my chamber where I read and write, all day.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 16, 1854

Thunder-clouds which rise in the east; they do not reach us. See June 15, 1860 ("A thunder-shower in the north goes down the Merrimack."); June 16, 1860 (" Thunder-showers show themselves about 2 P.M. in the west, but split at sight of Concord and go past on each side")

There is a cool east wind, — and has been afternoons for several days, — which has produced a very thick haze or a fog. See June 23, 1854 ("There has been a foggy haze, dog-day-like, for perhaps ten days"); See also April 30, 1856 ("Early in the afternoon, or between one and four, the wind changes . . . and a fresh cool wind from the sea produces a mist in the air") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Sea-turn

I bring home the buds of the three ready to expand at night, and the next day they perfume my chamber. See June 23, 1852 ("I take the wild rose buds to my chamber and put them in a pitcher of water, and they will open there the next day, and a single flower will perfume a room ;and then, after a day, the petals drop off, and new buds open."); June 15, 1853 ("I bring home the[wild rose] buds ready to expand, put them in a pitcher of water, and the next morning they open and fill my chamber with fragrance.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Rose

 It is eight days since I plucked the great orchis; one is perfectly fresh still in my pitcher. See June 9, 1854 ("Find the great fringed orchis out apparently two or three days.Two are almost fully out, two or three only budded.A large spike of peculiarly delicate pale-purple flowers growing in the luxuriant and shady swamp . . .I think that no other but myself in Concord annually finds it. . . . It lifts its delicate spike amid the hellebore and ferns in the deep shade of the swamp. "); June 19, 1852 (" The orchis keeps well. One put in my hat this morning, and carried all day, will last fresh a day or two at home"); June 21, 1852 (" The purple orchis is a good flower to bring home. It will keep fresh many days, and its buds open at last in a pitcher of water") See also Henry Thoreau, A Book of the Seasons, The purple fringed orchids

My chamber where I read and write, all day. See H Daniel Peck, Thoreau's Morning Work (noting that Thoreau "'set aside regular intervals, usually in the morning, for [the Journal's] composition, and typically wrote several days' entries at a sitting, working from notes that he accumulated during his [after-noon] walks' of the previous several days") See also  July 23, 1851 (" If I should reverse the usual, — go forth and saunter in the fields all the forenoon, then sit down in my chamber in the afternoon, which it is so unusual for me to do,-it would be like a new season to me, and the novelty of it (would) inspire me. . . .Is the literary man to live always or chiefly sitting in a chamber through which nature enters by a window only? What is the use of the summer? . . . I expand more surely in my chamber, as far as expression goes . . . but here outdoors is the place to store up influences.")

Note. Today HDT extends his comments on the extradition of Anthony Burns:

But what signifies the beauty of nature when men are base? We walk to lakes to see our serenity reflected in them. When we are not serene, we go not to them. Who can be serene in a country where both rulers and ruled are without principle? The remembrance of the baseness of politicians spoils my walks. My thoughts are murder to the State; I endeavor in vain to observe nature; my thoughts involuntarily go plotting against the State. I trust that all just men will conspire.

We have used up all our inherited freedom . . . It is not an era of repose. If we would save our lives, we must fight for them . . . Why will men be such fools as to trust to lawyers for a moral reform? I do not believe that there is a judge in this country prepared to decide by the principle that a law is immoral and therefore of no force.

See May 29, 1854 , June 9, 1854 and "Slavery in Massachusetts,"

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

Thus it is methinks

with thunder-clouds in the east –

they do not reach us.

It is eight days since 

I plucked the great orchis still 

fresh in my pitcher.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A fine ripple and sparkle on the Pond

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

 

tinyurl.com/hdt-540616