Now after sunset the river is full of light in the dark landscape

August 14

No rain, only the dusty road spotted with the few drops which fell last night, — but there is quite a high and cool wind this morning.

Since August came in, we have begun to have considerable wind, as not since May, at least.

The roads nowadays are covered with a light-colored, powdery dust (this yesterday), several inches deep, which also defiles the grass and weeds and bushes, and the traveller is deterred from stepping in it.

The dusty weeds and bushes leave their mark on your clothes.

Mountain-ash berries orange (?), and its leaves half yellowed in some places.


3 P.M. To climbing fern with E. Hoar. 

It takes a good deal of care and patience to unwind this ' fern without injuring it. Sometimes same frond is half leaf, half fruit.  E. talked of sending one such leaf to G. Bradford to remind him that the sun still shone in America.

The uva-ursi berries beginning to turn.

August 14, 2014

6 P.M. To Hubbard Bath and Fair Haven Hill.

I notice now that saw-like grass seed where the mowers have done.

The swamp blackberries are quite small and rather acid.

Though yesterday was quite a hot day, I find by bathing that the river grows steadily cooler, as yet for a fortnight, though we have had no rain here.  Is it owing solely to the cooler air since August came in, both day and night, or have rains in the southwest cooled the stream within a week?

I now, standing on the shore, see that in sailing or floating down a smooth stream at evening it is an advantage to the fancy to be thus slightly separated from the land.

It is to be slightly removed from the common- place of earth.

To float thus on the silver-plated stream is like embarking on a train of thought itself.

You are surrounded by water, which is full of reflections; and you see the earth at a distance, which is very agreeable to the imagination.



I see the blue smoke of a burning meadow.

The clethra must be one of the most conspicuous flowers not yellow at present.

I sit three-quarters up the hill.

The crickets creak strong and loud now after sunset. No word will spell it.  It is a short, strong, regular ringing sound, as of a thousand exactly together, — though further off some alternate, repeated regularly and in rapid time, perhaps twice in a second.

Methinks their quire is much fuller and louder than a fortnight ago.

Ah ! I need solitude.

I have come forth to this hill at sunset to see the forms of the mountains in the horizon, to behold and commune with something grander than man.

Their mere distance and unprofanedness is an infinite encouragement.

It is with infinite yearning and aspiration that I seek solitude, more and more resolved and strong; but with a certain genial weakness that I seek society ever.

I hear the nighthawk squeak and a whip-poor-will sing.

I hear the tremulous squealing scream of a screech owl in the Holden Woods, sounding somewhat like the neighing of a horse, not like the snipe.


Now at 7.45, perhaps a half-hour after sunset, the river is quite distinct and full of light in the dark landscape,  -- 

a silver strip of sky

of the same color and 

brightness with the sky.

As I go home by Hayden's I smell the burning meadow.

I love the scent.

It is my pipe.

I smoke the earth.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 14, 1854

Mountain-ash berries orange (?) See July 28, 1859 ("Young purple finches eating mountain-ash berries (ours). "); August 25, 1859 ("Mountain-ash berries partly turned. Again see, I think, purple finch eating them.")

The uva-ursi berries beginning to turn. See July 16, 1855 ("Uva-ursi berries begin to redden."); September 21, 1856 ("Uva-ursi berries quite ripe.")

I find by bathing that the river grows steadily cooler. See August 12, 1854 ("I bathe at Hubbard's. The water is rather cool, comparatively."); September 6, 1854 ("Hubbard Bath . . . The water is again warmer than I should have believed; say an average summer warmth, yet not so warm as it has been. It makes me the more surprised that only that day and a half of rain should have made it so very cold when I last bathed here. "); September 12, 1854 ("bathing I find it colder again than on the 2d, so that I stay in but a moment. I fear that it will not again be warm."): September 24, 1854 (" It is now too cold to bathe with comfort."; September 26 1854 ("Took my last bath the 24th . Probably shall not bathe again this year. It was chilling cold.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Luxury of Bathing

I have come forth to this hill at sunset to see the forms of the mountains in the horizon, — to behold and commune with something grander than man. See December 27, 1851 ("The man is blessed who every day is permitted to behold anything so pure and serene as the western sky at sunset, while revolutions vex the world.");  June 5, 1854 ("I have come to this hill to see the sun go down, to recover sanity and put myself again in relation with Nature.”); July 24, 1853 ("On Fair Haven a quarter of an hour before sunset .. . .A golden sheen is reflected from the river so brightly, that it dazzles me as much as the sun . The now silver-plated river is burnished gold there,");  January 7, 1857 “This stillness, solitude, wildness of nature is . . . what I go out to seek. It is as if I always met in those places some grand, serene, immortal, infinitely encouraging, though invisible, companion, and walked with him”);  October 7, 1857 ("When I turn round half-way up Fair Haven Hill, by the orchard wall, and look northwest, I am surprised for the thousandth time at the beauty of the landscape, and I sit down to behold it at my leisure. I think that Concord affords no better view.")

August 14. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 14.

Now after sunset 

the river is full of light 

in the dark landscape

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, a silver strip of sky

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-540814

The moon is full, and I walk alone.

July 12.

July 12, 2012

8 P. M. Now at least the moon is full, and I walk alone, which is best by night, if not by day always.

Your companion must sympathize with the present mood. The conversation must be located where the walkers are, and vary exactly with the scene and events and the contour of the ground. 

Farewell to those who will talk of nature unnaturally, whose presence is an interruption. I know but one with whom I can walk. I might as well be sitting in a bar-room with them as walk and talk with most. We are never side by side in our thoughts, and we cannot hear each other's silence. Indeed, we cannot be silent. We are forever breaking silence, that is all, and mending nothing.

How can they keep together who are going different ways! 

I start a sparrow from her three eggs in the grass, where she had settled for the night.

The earliest corn is beginning to show its tassels now, and I scent it as I walk, — its peculiar dry scent.

(This afternoon I gathered ripe blackberries, and felt as if the autumn had commenced. )

Now perchance many sounds and sights only remind me that they once said something to me, and are so by association interesting. I go forth to be reminded of a previous state of existence, if perchance any memento of it is to be met with hereabouts.

I have no doubt that Nature preserves her integrity. Nature is in as rude health as when Homer sang. We may at last by our sympathies be well.

I see a skunk on Bear Garden Hill stealing noiselessly away from me, while the moon shines over the pitch pines, which send long shadows down the hill.  Now, looking back, I see it shining on the south side of farmhouses and barns with a weird light, for I pass here half an hour later than last night.

I smell the huckleberry bushes.

I hear a human voice, — some laborer singing after his day's toil, which I do not often hear.  Loud it must be, for it is far away. Methinks I should know it for a white man's voice.

Some strains have the melody of an instrument.

Now I hear the sound of a bugle in the Corner,  reminding me of poetic wars; a few flourishes and the bugler has gone to rest.

At the foot of the Cliff hill I hear the sound of the clock striking nine, as distinctly as within a quarter of a mile usually, though there is no wind.

The moonlight is more perfect than last night; hardly a cloud in the sky, — only a few fleecy ones. There is more serenity and more light.

I hear that sort of throttled or chuckling note as of a bird flying high, now from this side, then from that.

Methinks when I turn my head I see Wachusett from the side of the hill.

I smell the butter-and-eggs as I walk.

I am startled by the rapid transit of some wild animal across my path, a rabbit or a fox, — or you hardly know, if it be not a bird.

Looking down from the cliffs, the leaves of the tree-tops shine more than ever by day.

Here and there a lightning-bug shows his greenish light over the tops of the trees.

As I return through the orchard, a foolish robin bursts away from his perch unnaturally, with the habits of man.

The air is remarkably still and unobjectionable on the hilltop, and the whole world below is covered as with a gossamer blanket of moonlight. It is just about as yellow as a blanket. It is a great dimly burnished shield with darker blotches on its surface. You have lost some light, it is true, but you have got this simple and magnificent stillness, brooding like genius.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 12, 1851

The moon is full, and I walk alone. See July 16, 1850 ("Many men walk by day; few walk by night. It is a very different season. Instead of the sun, there are the moon and stars; instead of the wood thrush, there is the whip-poor-will; instead of butterflies, fireflies, winged sparks of fire!"); August  31?, 1850 ("My friends wonder that I love to walk alone in solitary fields and woods by night . ")

I pass here half an hour later than last night. See July 11, 1851 ("We go toward Bear Garden Hill. The sun is setting. . . . The moon is silvery still, not yet inaugurated.")

(This afternoon I gathered ripe blackberries, and felt as if the autumn had commenced.) See August 18, 1856 ("As I go along the hillsides in sprout-lands, amid the Solidago stricta, looking for the blackberries left after the rain, the sun warm as ever, but the air cool nevertheless, I hear the steady (not intermittent) shrilling of apparently the alder cricket, clear, loud, and autumnal, a season sound. Hear it, but see it not. It reminds me of past autumns and the lapse of time, suggests a pleasing, thoughtful melancholy, like the sound of the flail. Such preparation, such an outfit has our life, and so little brought to pass.")

I smell the huckleberry bushes. See August 12, 1851 ("How wholesome the taste of huckleberries, when now by moonlight I feel for them amid the bushes!")

I hear a human voice, — some laborer singing after his day's toil. See August 15, 1851 ("I hear now from Bear Garden Hill — I rarely walk by moonlight without hearing — the sound of a flute, or a horn, or a human voice.")

Here and there a lightning-bug shows his greenish light over the tops of the trees. See August 5, 1851 ("I see a solitary firefly over the woods".)

July 12. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, July 12

Now at least the moon 

is full, and I walk alone, 

which is best by night.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021

Sunset in winter from a clearing in the woods.

December 20

Saturday. 2 P. M. – To Fair Haven Hill and plain below.

Saw a large hawk circling over a pine wood below me, and screaming, apparently that he might discover his prey by their flight.

Travelling ever by wider circles.

What a symbol of the thoughts, now soaring, now descending, taking larger and larger circles, or smaller and smaller. It flies not directly whither it is bound, but advances by circles, like a courtier of the skies. No such noble progress! How it comes round, as with a wider sweep of thought! But the majesty is in the imagination of the beholder, for the bird is intent on its prey.

Circling and ever circling, you cannot divine which way it will incline, till perchance it dives down straight as an arrow to its mark.

It rises higher above where I stand, and I see with beautiful distinctness its wings against the sky, primaries and secondaries, and the rich tracery of the outline of the latter (?), its inner wings, or wing-linings, within the outer, - like a great moth seen against the sky.

A will-o'-the-wind. Following its path, as it were through the vortices of the air. The poetry of motion.

Not as preferring one place to another, but enjoying each as long as possible. Most gracefully so surveys new scenes and revisits the old.

As if that hawk were made to be the symbol of my thought, how bravely he came round over those parts of the wood which he had not surveyed, taking in a new segment, annexing new territories! Without ”heave-yo!” it trims its sail. It goes about without the creaking of a block.

That America yacht of the air that never makes a tack, though it rounds the globe itself, takes in and shakes out its reefs without a flutter, -- its sky - scrapers all under its control.

Holds up one wing, as if to admire, and sweeps off this way, then holds up the other and sweeps that. If there are two concentrically circling, it is such a regatta as Southampton waters never witnessed.

Flights of imagination, Coleridgean thoughts.

So a man is said to soar in his thought, ever to fresh woods and pastures new. Rises as in thought. 

Snow-squalls pass, obscuring the sun, as if blown off from a larger storm. 

Since last Monday the ground has been covered half a foot or more with snow; and the ice also, before I have had a skate. Hitherto we had had mostly bare, frozen ground.

Red, white, green, and, in the distance, dark brown are the colors of the winter landscape. I view it now from the cliffs. The red shrub oaks on the white ground of the plain beneath make a pretty scene.

Most walkers are pretty effectually shut up by the snow.

I observe that they who saw down trees in the woods with a cross-cut saw carry a mat to kneel on. It is no doubt a good lesson for the woodchopper, the long day alone in the woods, and he gets more than his half dollar a cord. 

Say the thing with which you labor. It is a waste of time for the writer to use his talents merely. Be faithful to your genius. Write in the strain that interests you most. Consult not the popular taste. 

The red oak leaves are even more fresh and glossy than the white.

A clump of white pines, seen far westward over the shrub oak plain, which is now lit up by the setting sun, a soft, feathery grove, with their gray stems indistinctly seen, like human beings come to their cabin door, standing expectant on the edge of the plain, impress me with a mild humanity.

The trees indeed have hearts.

With a certain affection the sun seems to send its farewell ray far and level over the copses to them, and they silently receive it with gratitude, like a group of settlers with their children.

The pines impress me as human.

A slight vaporous cloud floats high over them, while in the west the sun goes down apace behind glowing pines, and golden clouds like mountains skirt the horizon.

Nothing stands up more free from blame in this world than a pine tree.


The dull and blundering behavior of clowns will as surely polish the writer at last as the criticism of men of thought. It is wonderful, wonderful, the unceasing demand that Christendom makes on you, that you speak from a moral point of view. Though you be a babe, the cry is, Repent, repent. The Christian world will not admit that a man has a just perception of any truth, unless at the same time he cries, "Lord be merciful to me a sinner."

What made the hawk mount? Did you perceive the manæuvre? Did he fill himself with air? Before you were aware of it, he had mounted by his spiral path into the heavens. 

Our country is broad and rich, for here, within twenty miles of Boston, I can stand in a clearing in the woods and look a mile or more, over the shrub oaks, to the distant pine copses and horizon of uncut woods, without a house or road or cultivated field in sight. 

Sunset in winter from a clearing in the woods, about Well Meadow Head. 

December 20, 2019

They say that the Indians of the Great Basin live on the almonds of the pine. Have not I been fed by the pine for many a year? 

Go out before sunrise or stay out till sunset. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 20, 1851

<<<<< December 19, 1851                                                December 21, 1851 >>>>>

The Christian world will not admit that a man has a just perception of any truth, unless at the same time he cries, "Lord be merciful to me a sinner." See 1850? (“Repentance is not a free and fair highway to God. A wise man will dispense with repentance It is shocking and passionate. God prefers that you approach him thoughtful, not penitent, though you are the chief of sinners. It is only by forgetting yourself that you draw near to him.”)

A large hawk circling over a pine wood below me, and screaming, apparently that he might discover his prey by their flight. See December 20, 1857 ("A hen-hawk circling over that wild region. See its red tail.");See also June 15, 1852 ("I hear the scream of a great hawk, sailing with a ragged wing against the high wood-side, apparently to scare his prey and so detect it "); June 8, 1853 ("As I stand by this pond, I hear a hawk scream, and, looking up, see, a pretty large one circling not far off and incessantly screaming, as I at first suppose to scare and so discover its prey, but its screaming is so incessant and it circles from time to time so near me, as I move southward, that I begin to think it has a nest near by and is angry at my intrusion into its domains."); October 28, 1857 ,("His scream . . . is a hoarse, tremulous breathing forth of his winged energy. But why is it so regularly repeated at that height? Is it to scare his prey, that he may see by its motion where it is, or to inform its mate or companion of its where about? ") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The hen-hawk

Red, white, green, and, in the distance, dark brown are the colors of the winter landscape. See  December 21, 1855 ("A few simple colors now prevail."); December 21, 1854 ("Fair Haven Pond, for instance, a perfectly level plain of white snow, untrodden as yet by any fisherman, surrounded by snow-clad hills, dark evergreen woods, and reddish oak leaves, so pure and still.") See also December 20, 1854 ("It has been a glorious winter day, its elements so simple, —the sharp clear air, the white snow everywhere covering the earth, and the polished ice."); February 13, 1860 ("It is surprising what a variety of distinct colors the winter can show us,")

The trees indeed have hearts . . . like a group of settlers with their children.The pines impress me as human. See February 15, 1841 ("The trees have come down to the bank to see the river go by.")

And he looked up, and said,

I see men as trees, walking.

— Mark 8:22-25.

The sun goes down apace behind glowing pines, and golden clouds like mountains skirt the horizon. Compare December 19, 1851 ("Why should it be so pleasing to look into a thick pine wood where the sunlight streams in and gilds it? . . .Now the sun sets suddenly without a cloud– & with scarcely any redness following so pure is the atmosphere – only a faint rosy blush along the horizon."); December 21 1851 (Long after the sun has set, and downy clouds have turned dark, and the shades of night have taken possession of the east, some rosy clouds will be seen in the upper sky over the portals of the darkening west.");  December 23, 1851 (“Now the sun has quite disappeared, but the afterglow, as I may call it, apparently the reflection from the cloud beyond which the sun went down on the thick atmosphere of the horizon, is unusually bright and lasting. Long, broken clouds in the horizon, in the dun atmosphere, — as if the fires of day were still smoking there, — hang with red and golden edging like the saddle cloths of the steeds of the sun. ”); December 24, 1851 (“When I had got home and chanced to look out the window from supper, I perceived that all the west horizon was glowing with a rosy border.”); December 25, 1851 (“I go forth to see the sun set. Who knows how it will set, even half an hour beforehand?”)

Go out before sunrise or stay out till sunset. See January 20, 1852 ("To see the sun rise or go down every day would preserve us sane forever.”); November 4, 1852 ("I keep out-of-doors for the sake of the mineral, vegetable, and animal in me."); June 5, 1854 ("I have come to this hill to see the sun go down, to recover sanity and put myself again in relation with Nature.”); December 29, 1856 (“We must go out and re-ally ourselves to Nature every day."); September 13, 1859 ("You must be outdoors long, early and late."); November 13, 1857 ("See the sun rise or set if possible each day.")

I can stand in a clearing in the woods and look a mile or more, over the shrub oaks, to the distant pine copses and horizon of uncut woods, without a house or road or cultivated field in sight. See January 22, 1852 ("I see, one mile to two miles distant on all sides from my window, the woods, which still encircle our New England towns.  . . . How long will these last?")

Go out before sunrise or stay out till sunset. See December 27, 1851 ("The man is blessed who every day is permitted to behold anything so pure and serene as the western sky at sunset, while revolutions vex the world.");  January 17, 1852 (“In proportion as I have celestial thoughts, is the necessity for me to be out and behold the western sky sunset these winter days. That is the symbol of the unclouded mind that knows neither winter nor summer.");  January 20, 1852  ("To see the sun rise or go down every day would preserve us sane forever.");  June 5, 1854 ("I have come to this hill to see the sun go down, to recover sanity and put myself again in relation with Nature.”); December 29, 1856 (“We must go out and re-ally ourselves to Nature every day."); January 7, 1857 ("I have told many that I walk every day about half the daylight . . . I come out to these solitudes, where the problem of existence is simplified."); November 13, 1857 ("See the sun rise or set if possible each day."); September 13, 1859 ("You must be outdoors long, early and late.")

December 20.  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  December 20

Sunset in winter 

from a clearing in the woods –

gold clouds like mountains.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Sunset in winter from a clearing in the woods.

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-511220

My interest in the sun and the moon, in the morning and the evening.

July 26.

By my intimacy with nature I find myself withdrawn from man. My interest in the sun and the moon, in the morning and the evening, compels me to solitude.

The grandest picture in the world is the sunset sky.

In your higher moods what man is there to meet? You are of necessity isolated.

The mind that perceives clearly any natural beauty is in that instant withdrawn from human society.

My desire for society is infinitely increased; my fitness for any actual society is diminished.

Went to Cambridge and Boston to-day.

Dr. Harris says that my great moth is the Attacus luna; may be regarded as one of several emperor moths. They are rarely seen, being very liable to be snapped up by birds.

Once, as he was crossing the College Yard, he saw the wings of one coming down, which reached the ground just at his feet. What a tragedy! The wings came down as the only evidence that such a creature had soared, — wings large and splendid, which were designed to bear a precious burthen through the upper air.

So most poems, even epics, are like the wings come down to earth, while the poet whose adventurous flight they evidence has been snapped up [by] the ravenous vulture of this world.

If this moth ventures abroad by day, some bird will pick out the precious cargo and let the sails and rigging drift, as when the sailor meets with a floating spar and sail and reports a wreck seen in a certain latitude and longitude.

For what were such tender and defenseless organizations made?

The one I had, being put into a large box, beat itself — its wings, etc. — all to pieces in the night, in its efforts to get out, depositing its eggs, nevertheless, on the sides of its prison.

Perchance the entomologist never saw an entire specimen, but, as he walked one day, the wings of a larger species than he had ever seen came fluttering down.

The wreck of an argosy in the air. 

He tells me the glow-worms are first seen, he thinks, in the last part of August. Also that there is a large and brilliant glow-worm found here, more than an inch long, as he measured it to me on his finger, but rare. 

Perhaps the sunset glows are sudden in proportion as the edges of the clouds are abrupt, when the sun finally reaches such a point that his rays can be reflected from them.

At 10 p. m. I see high columns of fog, formed in the lowlands and lit by the moon, preparing to charge this higher ground. It is as if the sky reached the solid ground there, for they shut out the woods.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 26, 1852

My interest in the sun and the moon, in the morning and the evening, compels me to solitude.  See March 17, 1852 (“There is a moment in the dawn,. . . when we see things more truly than at any other time.”);  June 13, 1852 ("All things in this world must be seen with the morning dew on them, must be seen with youthful, early-opened, hopeful eyes"); August 31, 1852 ("The wind is gone down; the water is smooth; a serene evening is approaching; the clouds are dispersing. . . .The reflections are the more perfect for the blackness of the water. This is the most glorious part of this day, the serenest, warmest, brightest part, and the most suggestive. Evening is fairer than morning. Morning is full of promise and vigor. Evening is pensive. The serenity is far more remarkable to those who are on the water") ; January 26, 1853 (“ I look back . . . not into the night, but to a dawn for which no man ever rose early enough.”); May 17, 1853 ("Ah, the beauty of this last hour of the day — when a power stills the air and smooths all waters and all minds — that partakes of the light of the day and the stillness of the night"); August 11, 1853 (" What shall we name this season? — this very late afternoon, or very early evening, this season of the day most favorable for reflection, after the insufferable heats and the bustle of the day are over and before the twilight? The serene hour, the season of reflection! The pensive season.The few sounds now heard, far or near, are delicious. Each sound has a broad and deep relief of silence. It is not more dusky and obscure, but clearer than before. The poet arouses himself and collects his thoughts.");.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 A Book of the Seasons, The hour before sunset


The mind that perceives clearly any natural beauty is in that instant withdrawn from human society. See January 17, 1852 ("As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind. Some see only clouds there; some behold there serenity, purity, beauty ineffable."): June 21, 1852 ("The perception of beauty is a moral test."); November 18, 1857 ("You cannot perceive beauty but with a serene mind.")

Dr. Harris says that my great moth is the Attacus luna. See July 8, 1852  ("I found a remarkable moth lying flat on the still water as if asleep (they appear to sleep during the day), as large as the smaller birds. Five and a half inches in alar extent and about three inches the thing like the smaller figure in one position of the wings (with a remarkably narrow lunar-cut tail), of a sea-green color, with four conspicuous spots whitish within, then a red line, then yellowish border below or toward the tail, but brown, brown orange, and black above, toward head; a very robust body, covered with a kind of downy plumage, an inch and a quarter long by five eighths thick. The sight affected me as tropical, . . .  It suggests into what productions Nature would run if all the year were a July.")  See also June 27, 1858 ("See an Attacus luna in the shady path");June 27, 1859 ("At the further Brister's Spring, under the pine, I find an Attacus luna.");   June 29, 1859 ("I found the wing of an Attacus luna, — and July 1st another wing near Second Division, which makes three between June 27th and July 1st."); July 1, 1853 ; ("Saw one of those great pea-green emperor moths, like a bird, fluttering over the top of the woods this forenoon, 10 a. m., near Beck Stow's")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Luna Moth (Attacus luna)

July 26. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 26

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021

I go looking for green radical leaves while the storm blows overhead, and I forget how the time is passing.

March 8. 

March 8, 2019

A rainy day. P. M. — To Hill in rain.

To us snow and cold seem a mere delaying of the spring. How far we are from understanding the value of these things in the economy of Nature! The earth is still mostly covered with ice and snow. 

As usual, I notice large pools of greenish water in the fields, on an icy bottom, which cannot owe their greenness to the reflected blue mingled with the yellowish light at sundown, as I supposed in the case of the green ice and water in clear winter days, for I see the former now at midday and in a rain-storm, when no sky is visible. I think that these green pools over an icy bottom must be produced by the yellow or common earth stain in the water mingling with the blue which is reflected from the ice. Many pools have so large a proportion of this yellow tinge as not to look green but yellow. The stain, the tea, of withered vegetation — grass and leaves — and of the soil supplies the yellow tint. 

But perhaps those patches of emerald sky, sky just tinged with green, which we sometimes see, far in the horizon or near it, are produced in the same way as I thought the green ice was, — some yellow glow reflected from a cloud mingled with the blue of the atmosphere. One might say that the yellow of the earth mingled with the blue of the sky to make the green of vegetation.

I see, under the pitch pines on the southwest slope of the hill, the reddish bud-scales scattered on the snow which fell on the 4th, and also settled an inch into it, and, examining, I find that in a great many cases the buds have been eaten by some creature and the scales scattered about, or, being opened, have closed over a cavity. 

Many scales rest amid the needles. 

There is no track on the snow, which is soft, but the scales must have been dropped within a day or two. I see near one pine, however, the fresh track of a partridge and where one has squatted all night. Tracks might possibly have been obliterated by the rapid melting of the snow the last day or two. 

Yet I am inclined to think that these were eaten by the red squirrel; or was it the crossbill? for this is said to visit us in the winter. Have I ever seen a squirrel eat the pine buds?

There is a fine freezing rain with strong wind from the north; so I keep along under shelter of hills and woods, along their south sides, in my india-rubber coat and boots. 

Under the south edge of Woodis Park, in the low ground, I see many radical leaves of the Solidago altissima and another — I am pretty sure it is the S. stricta — and occasionally also of the Aster imdulatus, and all are more or less lake beneath. The first, at least, have when bruised a strong scent. Some of them have recently grown decidedly. 

So at least several kinds of goldenrods and asters have radical leaves lake-colored at this season. 

The common strawberry leaves, too, are quite fresh and a handsome lake- color beneath in many cases. 

There are also many little rosettes of the radical leaves of the Epilobium coloratum, half brown and withered, with bright-green centres, at least. And even the under side of some mullein leaves is lake or crimson also. 

There is but a narrow strip of bare ground reaching a few rods into the wood along the south edge, but the less ground there is bare, the more we make of it. 



Such a day as this, I resort where the partridges, etc., do — to the bare ground and the sheltered sides of woods and hills — and there explore the moist ground for the radical leaves of plants, while the storm blows overhead, and I forget how the time is passing. If the weather is thick and stormy enough, if there is a good chance to be cold and wet and uncomfortable, in other words to feel weather-beaten, you may consume the afternoon to advantage thus browsing along the edge of some near wood which would scarcely detain you at all in fair weather, and you will be as far away there as at the end of your longest fair-weather walk, and come home as if from an adventure. 

There is no better fence to put between you and the village than a storm into which the villagers do not venture out. 

I go looking for green radical leaves.

What a dim and shadowy existence have now to our memories the fair flowers whose localities they mark! How hard to find any trace of the stem now, after it has been flattened under the snows of the winter! I go feeling with wet and freezing fingers amid the withered grass and the snow for these prostrate stems, that I may reconstruct the plant. 

But greenness so absorbs our attention that sometimes I do not see the former rising from the midst of those radical leaves when it almost puts my eyes out.

The shepherd's-purse radical leaves are particularly bright. 

I see there a dead white pine, some twenty-five feet high, which has been almost entirely stripped of its bark by the woodpeckers. 

Where any bark is left, the space between it and the wood is commonly closely packed with the gnawings of worms, which appear to have consumed the inner bark. But where the bark is gone, the wood also is eaten to some depth, and there are numerous holes penetrating deep into the wood. 

Over all this portion, which is almost all the tree, the woodpeckers have knocked off the bark and enlarged the holes in pursuit of the worms.

The fine rain with a strong north wind is now forming a glaze on my coat. When I get home the thermometer is at 29°. So a glaze seems to be formed when a fine rain is falling with the thermometer very little below the freezing-point.

Men of science, when they pause to contemplate "the power, wisdom, and goodness" of God, or, as they sometimes call him, "the Almighty Designer," speak of him as a total stranger whom it is necessary to treat with the highest consideration. They seem suddenly to have lost their wits.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 8, 1859


I see near one pine, however, the fresh track of a partridge and where one has squatted all night. See March 8, 1857  ("A partridge goes off from amid the pitch pines.")

Such a day as this, I explore the moist ground for the radical leaves of plants, while the storm blows overhead, and I forget how the time is passing. See February, 5, 1852 ("Time never passes so rapidly and unaccountably as when I am engaged in recording my thoughts. The world may perchance reach its end for us in a profounder thought, and Time itself run down.”); January 27, 1858 ("Time never passes so quickly and unaccountably, as when I am engaged in composition, i. e. in writing down my thoughts. Clocks seem to have been put forward."); see April 29, 1852 (“The art of life, of a poet's life, is, not having anything to do, to do something.”)

If there is a good chance to be cold and wet and uncomfortable, in other words to feel weather-beaten, you may consume the afternoon to advantage. See December 25, 1856 ("Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary."); February 28, 1852 (“To get the value of the storm we must be out a long time and travel far in it, so that it may fairly penetrate our skin, . . . and there be no part in us but is wet or weather beaten, - so that we become storm men instead of fair weather men.”)

The shepherd's-purse radical leaves are particularly bright. See January 23, 1855 ("The radical leaves of the shepherd’s-purse, seen in green circles on the water-washed plowed grounds, remind me of the internal heat and life of the globe, anon to burst forth anew")

Men of science speak of him as a total stranger whom it is necessary to treat with the highest consideration. They seem suddenly to have lost their wits. See March 5, 1852 ("It is encouraging to know that, though every kernel of truth has been carefully swept out of our churches, there yet remains the dust of truth on their walls, so that if you should carry a light into them they would still, like some powder-mills, blow up at once.")

The sunny south side of this swamp.

November 25. 


P. M. —To Ministerial Swamp. 

I go through the Dennis Swamp by railroad. See a few high blueberry buds which have fairly started, expanded into small red leaves, apparently within a few weeks. 

The Rubus hispidus is now very common and conspicuous amid the withered grass and leaves of the swamp, with its green or reddened leaves; also the gold-thread.

The prinos berries on their light-brown twigs are quite abundant and handsome. 

While most keep close to their parlor fires this cold and blustering Thanksgiving afternoon, and think with compassion of those who are abroad, I find the sunny south side of this swamp as warm as their parlors, and warmer to my spirit. Aye, there is a serenity and warmth here which the parlor does not suggest, enhanced by the sound of the wind roaring on the northwest side of the swamp a dozen or so rods off. What a wholesome and inspiring warmth is this! 

Bigtooth aspen, November 25, 2018

I see aspen (tremuliformis) leaves, which have long since fallen, turned black, which also shows the relation of this tree to the willow, many species of which also turn black. 

Pass Tarbell’s behind. The farmer, now on the downhill of life, at length gets his new barn and barn cellar built, far away in some unfrequented vale. This for twoscore years he has struggled for. This is his poem done at last, — to get the means to dig that cavity and rear those timbers aloft. How many millions have done just like him!—or failed to do it! There is so little originality, and just so little, and just as much, fate, so to call it, in literature. With steady struggle, with alternate failure and success, he at length gets a barn cellar completed, and then a tomb. You would say that there was a tariff on thinking and originality.

I pass through the Ministerial Swamp and ascend the steep hill on the south cut off last winter. In the barren poplar hollow just north of the old mountain cranberry is another, the largest, patch of it (i. e. bear-berry) that I remember in Concord. 

How often I see these aspens standing dead in barren, perhaps frosty, valleys in the woods! Most shrub oaks there have lost their leaves (Quercus ilicifolia), which, very fair and perfect, cover the ground. 

You are surprised, late these afternoons, a half an hour perhaps before sunset, after walking in the shade or on looking round from a height, to see the singularly bright yellow light of the sun reflected from pines, especially pitch pines, or the withered oak leaves, through the clear, cold air, the wind, it may be, blowing strong from the northwest. Sunlight in summer falling on green woods is not, methinks, such a noticeable phenomenon. I stand on that high hill south of the swamp cut off by C. (?) Wheeler last winter, and when I look round northeast I am greatly surprised by the very brilliant sunlight of which I speak, surpassing the glare of any noontide, it seems to me.

November 25, 2018

H.. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 25, 1858

See a few high blueberry buds which have fairly started, expanded into small red leaves. See November 6, 1853 (“The remarkable roundish, plump red buds of the high blueberry.”); November 23, 1857 (“You distinguish it by its gray spreading mass; its light-gray bark, rather roughened; its thickish shoots, often crimson; and its plump, roundish red buds.”)


The Rubus hispidus is now very common and conspicuous amid the withered grass and leaves of the swamp, with its green or reddened leaves. See February 18, 1858 (“The Rubus hispidus (sempervirens of Bigelow) is truly evergreen.”);  August 4, 1854 (“The swamp blackberry on high land, ripe a day or two.”); August 6, 1856 (“Rubus hispidus ripe.”); August 15, 1852 ("The swamp blackberry begins.”); August 23, 1856 (“ At the Lincoln bound hollow, Walden, there is a dense bed of the Rubus hispidus, matting the ground seven or eight inches deep, and full of the small black fruit, now in its prime. It is especially abundant where the vines lie over a stump. Has a peculiar, hardly agreeable acid.”); November 16, 1858 (“Rubus hispidus leaves last through the winter, turning reddish”); November 20, 1858 (“the Rubus hispidus leaves last all winter like an evergreen”)

 Rubus hispidus is a small, herb-like shrub up to 8 inches tall. with the common names swamp dewberry, bristly dewberry, bristly groundberry, groundberry, hispid swamp blackberry or running swamp blackberry. It is a species of dewberry in the rose family, closely related to the blackberries.The twigs are red and have bristles. Flowers in small clumps, each with five white rounded petals. The berries, dark purple, almost black, are rather bitter for culinary use, and so this plant is generally not cultivated. ~wkipedia

I find the sunny south side of this swamp as warm as their parlors, and warmer to my spirit. See November 25, 1850 ("Tthere was a finer and purer warmth than in summer; a wholesome, intellectual warmth, in which the body was warmed by the mind's contentment. The warmth was hardly sensuous, but rather the satisfaction of existence."); see also January 7, 1857 (“I come out to these solitudes, where the problem of existence is simplified. ”)

By steamer Acorn from Provincetown to Boston, in the fog.

June 22. 

the Acorn
(Courtesy Sandwich Glass Museum)

Monday. Took the steamer Acorn [?] about 9 a. m. for Boston, in the fog. 




The captain said that the mate to the whale taken on the 17th had been about the steamer all night. 

It was a thick fog with some rain, and we saw no land nor a single sail, till near Minot's Ledge. The boat stopped and whistled once or twice. 

The monotony was only relieved by the numerous petrels, those black sea-swallows, incessantly skimming over the undulating [surface], a few inches above and parallel with it, and occasionally picking some food from it. Now they dashed past our stern and now across our bows, as if we were stationary, though going at the rate of a dozen knots an hour. 

It is remarkable what great solitudes there may be on this bay, notwithstanding all its commerce, and going from Boston to Provincetown you might be wrecked in clear weather, without being seen by any passing vessel. 

Once, when the fog lifted a little and the boat was stopped, and the engine whistled, I thought that I saw an open sea without an object for three or four miles at least. We held on, and it suddenly thickened up again, and yet in three minutes, notwithstanding the fog, we saw the light-boat right ahead. This shows how deceptive and dangerous fogs are. I should have said we might have run half an hour without danger of striking any object. 

The greatest depth in the Bay between Long Point, Provincetown, and Manomet, Plymouth, according to Coast Survey charts, is about twenty-five fathoms. 

Get home at 5 p. m. 

It seems that Sophia found an Attacus Cecropia out in my chamber last Monday, or the 15th. It soon went to laying eggs on the window-sill, sash, books, etc., of which vide a specimen. Though the window was open (blinds closed), it did not escape. Another was seen at the window outside the house on the south side (mother's chamber) on the 21st, which S. took in, supposing it the first which had got out, but she found the first still in the chamber. This, too, she says, went right to laying eggs. I am not sure whether this, too, came from the other cocoon.

Neither was quite so large as the one I had. The second had broken off the better part of its wings. Their bodies were quite small, perhaps because they were empty of eggs. I let them go. The eggs are large, pretty close together, glued to the wood or paper.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 22, 1857

Attacus Cecropia . . . neither quite so large as the one I had. See June 18, 1857 ("They brought me an Attacus Cecropia . . . Its body was large like the one I have preserved, while the two I found to have come out in my chamber meanwhile, and to have laid their eggs, had comparatively small bodies. "); June 2, 1855 ("I gave it ether and so saved it in a perfect state. As it lies, not spread to the utmost, it is five and nine tenths inches by two and a quarter.")

It is plain for miles without a tree . . . That solitude was sweet to me as a flower.

June 21. 

Sunday. 

June 21, 2020

About noon it cleared up, and after dinner I set out for Provincetown, straight across the country to the Bay where the new road strikes it, directly through the pine plantation about one mile from the lighthouse. The pines have apparently not done so well here as in some other places on the Cape. 

I observed a tuft of crow-berry, together with poverty-grass, about one mile west of the light. This part of Truro affords singularly interesting and cheering walks for me, with regular hollows or dimples shutting out the sea as completely as if in the midst of the continent, though when you stand on the plain you commonly see the sails of vessels standing up or down the coast on each side of you, though you may not see the water. At first you may take them for the roofs of barns or houses. 

It is plain for miles without a tree, where the new telegraph-wires are a godsend to the birds, affording them something to perch upon. That solitude was sweet to me as a flower. I sat down on the boundless level and enjoyed the solitude, drank it in, the medicine for which I had pined, worth more than the bear-berry so common on the Cape. 

As I was approaching the Bay through a sandy hollow a mile east of High Head, I found two or three arrow-points and a rude axe or hammer, a flattish stone from the beach with a deep groove chipped around it. 

The beach on the Bay Side was completely strewn with seaweed (the grassy kind), which does not grow on the Atlantic side, as if the Bay were a meadow compared with the Atlantic. The beach was harder than the Back Side, the hardest part being on the weed at high-water line. The skulls and backbones of black-fish, their vertebrae and spinal processes, and disk-shaped bones, five inches in diameter, from the spine were strewn all along. These looked like rough crackers. 

Also the ribs of whale (probably humpbacked), — they get humpback and finback and right whales, I heard, — six feet long, lay under the bank, hardly to be distinguished from their gray rails. Some of those whale ribs, ten inches wide, were from time to time set up in the sand, like mile stones (or bones); they seemed to answer that purpose along the new road. 

They had taken a whale in Provincetown Harbor on the previous 17th, and stripped off the blubber at one of the wharves. I saw many dogfish whose livers had been extracted. 

At East Harbor River, as I sat on the Truro end of the bridge, I saw a great flock of mackerel gulls, one hundred at least, on a sandy point, whitening the shore there like so many white stones on the shore and in the water, uttering all together their vibrating shrill note. They had black heads, light bluish-slate wings, and light rump and tail and beneath. From time to time all or most would rise and circle about with a clamor, then settle again on the same spot close together. 

Soon after crossing the bridge, I turned off and ascended Mt. Ararat. It exhibited a remarkable landscape: on the one side the desert, of smooth and spotless palest fawn-colored sand, slightly undulating, and beyond, the Atlantic; on the other, the west, side, a few valleys and hills, densely clothed with a short, almost moss-like (to look down at) growth of huckleberry, blueberry, bear-berry, josh-pear (which is so abundant in Provincetown), bayberry, rose, checkerberry, and other bushes, and beyond, the Bay. All these bushes formed an even and dense covering to the sand-hills, much as bear-berry alone might. It was a very strange scenery. You would think you might be in Labrador, or some other place you have imagined. The shrubbery at the very summit was swarming with mosquitoes, which troubled me when I sat down, but they did not rise above the level of the bushes. 

At the Pilgrim House, though it was not crowded, they put me into a small attic chamber which had two double beds in it, and only one window, high in a corner, twenty and a half inches by twenty-five and a half, in the alcove when it was swung open, and it required a chair to look out conveniently. Fortunately it was not  a cold night and the window could be kept open, though at the risk of being visited by the cats, which appear to swarm on the roofs of Provincetown like the mosquitoes on the summits of its hills. 

I have spent four memorable nights there in as many different years, and have added considerable thereby to my knowledge of the natural history of the cat and the bedbug. Sleep was out of the question. A night in one of the attics of Provincetown! to say nothing of what is to be learned in entomology. It would be worth the while to send a professor there, one who was also skilled in entomology. Such is your Pilgerruhe or Pilgrims'-Rest. Every now and then one of these animals on its travels leaped from a neighboring roof on to mine, with such a noise as if a six-pounder had fallen within two feet of my head, — the discharge of a catapult, — a twelve-pounder discharged by a catapult, — and then followed such a scrambling as banished sleep for a long season, while I watched lest they came in at the open window. A kind of foretaste, methought, of the infernal regions. I didn't wonder they gave quit claim deeds of their land here. My experience is that you fare best at private houses. The barroom may be defined a place to spit. 

"Soon as the evening shades prevail,

The cats take up the wondrous tale."

At still midnight, when, half awake, half asleep, you seem to be weltering in your own blood on a battle field, you hear the stealthy tread of padded feet belonging to some animal of the cat tribe, perambulating the roof within a few inches of your head. 

I had already this evening called on Mr. Atwood, the Representative of the town and one of the commissioners appointed by the legislature to superintend the experiments in the artificial breeding of fishes. He said that he knew (I think) eighty-two kinds of fishes there. 

When Mr. Pool, the Doorkeeper of the House of Representatives, — if that is his name and title, — who makes out a list of the Representatives and their professions, asked him his business, he answered, "Fisherman." At which Pool was disturbed and said that no representative had ever called himself a fisherman before. It would not do to print it so. And so Atwood is put down as "Master Mariner"! ! So much for American democracy. I reminded him that Fisherman had been a title of honor with a large party ever since the Christian Era at least. When next we have occasion to speak of the apostles I suppose we should call them "Master Mariners"! 

Atwood said that his brother here took the bone shark recently which I read was thirty feet long. 

Fog again at night.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 21, 1857