Walking by moonliight til dawn.

September 9.

2 A.M. -The moon not quite full.

To Conantum via, road.

There is a low vapor in the meadows beyond the depot, dense and white, though scarcely higher than a man's head, concealing the stems of the trees. I see that the oaks, which are so dark and distinctly outlined, are illumined by the moon on the opposite side. This as I go up the back road.

A few thin, ineffectual clouds in the sky. 

I come out thus into the moonlit night, where men are not, as if into a scenery anciently deserted by men. The life of men is like a dream. It is three thousand years since night has had possession.

Go forth and hear the crickets chirp at midnight. Hear if their dynasty is not an ancient one and well founded. I feel the antiquity of the night.

She surely repossesses herself of her realms, as if her dynasty were uninterrupted, or she had underlain the day. No sounds but the steady creaking of crickets and the occasional crowing of cocks.

I go by the farmer's houses and barns, standing there in the dim light under the trees, as if they lay at an immense distance or under a veil. The farmer and his oxen now all asleep. Not even a watch-dog awake.

The human slumbers. There is less of man in the world.

The fog in the lowlands on the Corner road is never still. It now advances and envelops me as I stand to write these words, then clears away, with ever noiseless step. It covers the meadows like a web.

I hear the clock strike three.

Now at the clayey bank. The light of Orion's belt seems to show traces of the blue day through which it came to us. The sky at least is lighter on that side than in the west, even about the moon.

Even by night the sky is blue and not black, for we see through the veil of night into the distant atmosphere of day. I see to the plains of the sun, where the sunbeams are revelling.

The cricket's (?) song, on the alders of the causeway, not quite so loud at this hour as at evening. 

The moon is getting low. I hear a wagon cross one of the bridges leading into the town. I see the moonlight at this hour on a different side of objects. 

I smell the ripe apples many rods off beyond the bridge. A sultry night; a thin coat is enough.

On the first top of Conantum. I hear the farmer harnessing his horse and starting for the distant market, but no man harnesses himself, and starts for worthier enterprises. One cock-crow tells the whole story of the farmer's life.

The moon is now sinking into clouds in the horizon. I see the glow-worms deep in the grass by the little brookside in midst of Conantum. The moon shines dun and red. A solitary whip-poor-will sings.

The clock strikes four.

A few dogs bark. A few more wagons start for market, their faint rattling heard in the distance. 

I hear my owl without a name; the murmur of the slow-approaching freight-train, as far off, perchance, as Waltham; and one early bird.

The round, red moon disappearing in the west. I detect a whiteness in the east.

Some dark, massive clouds have come over from the west within the hour, as if attracted by the approaching sun, and have arranged themselves raywise about the eastern portal, as if to bar his coming. They have moved suddenly and almost unobservedly quite across the sky (which before was clear) from west to east.

No trumpet was heard which marshalled and advanced these dark masses of the west's forces thus rapidly against the coming day. Column after column the mighty west sent forth across the sky while men slept, but all in vain.

The eastern horizon is now grown dun-colored, showing where the advanced guard of the night are already skirmishing with the vanguard of the sun, a lurid light tingeing the atmosphere there, while a dark-columned cloud hangs imminent over the broad portal, untouched by the glare.

Some bird flies over, making a noise like the barking of a puppy.

It is yet so dark that I have dropped my pencil and cannot find it. It was a cuckoo.

The sound of the cars is like that of a rushing wind. They come on slowly. I thought at first a morning wind was rising.

And now (perchance at half-past four) I hear the sound of some far-off factory bell arousing the operatives to their early labors. It sounds very sweet here. It is very likely some factory which I have never seen, in some valley which I have never visited; yet now I hear this, which is its only matin bell, sweet and inspiring as if it summoned holy men and maids to worship and not factory girls and men to resume their trivial toil, as if it were the summons of some religious or even poetic community. 

My first impression is that it is the matin bell of some holy community who in a distant valley dwell, a band of spiritual knights, - thus sounding far and wide, sweet and sonorous, in harmony with their own morning thoughts. What else could I suppose fitting this earth and hour? Some man of high resolve, devoted soul, has touched the rope; and by its peals how many men and maids are waked from peaceful slumbers to fragrant morning thoughts! Why should I fear to tell that it is Knight's factory bell at Assabet? 

A few melodious peals and all is still again.

The whip-poor-wills now begin to sing in earnest about half an hour before sunrise, as if making haste to improve the short time that is left them. As far as my observation goes, they sing for several hours in the early part of the night, are silent commonly at midnight, - though you may meet [them] then sitting on a rock or flitting silently about, - then sing again just before sunrise.

It grows more and more red in the east – a fine-grained red under the overhanging cloud – and lighter too, and the threatening clouds are falling off to southward of the sun's passage, shrunken and defeated, leaving his path comparatively clear. The increased light shows more distinctly the river and the fog.

5 o'clock. - The light now reveals a thin film of vapor like a gossamer veil cast over the lower hills beneath the Cliffs and stretching to the river, thicker in the ravines, thinnest on the even slopes. The distant meadows towards the north beyond Conant's Grove, full of fog, appear like a vast lake out of which rise Annursnack and Ponkawtasset like rounded islands. Nawshawtuct is a low and wooded isle, scarcely seen above the waves. The heavens are now clear again. 

The vapor, which was confined to the river and meadows, now rises and creeps up the sides of the hills. I see it in transparent columns advancing clown the valley of the river, ghost-like, from hair Haven, and investing some wooded or rocky promontory, before free. are said to advance.

Annursnack is exactly like some round, steep, distant hill on the opposite shore of a large lake (and Tabor on the other side), with here and there some low Brush Island in middle of the waves (the tops of some oaks or elms).

Oh, what a sail I could take, if I had the right kind of bark, over to Annursnack! for there she lies four miles from land as sailors say. And all the farms and houses of Concord are at bottom of that sea. So I forget them, and my thought sails triumphantly over them.

As I looked down where the village of Concord lay buried in fog, I thought of nothing but the surface of a lake, a summer sea over which to sail; no more than a voyager on the Dead Sea who had not read the Testament would think of Sodom and Gomorrah, once cities of the plain.

I only wished to get off to one of the low isles I saw in midst of the [sea] (it may have been the top of Holbrook's elm), and spend the whole summer day there.

Meanwhile the redness in the east had diminished and was less deep. (The fog over some meadows looked green.) 

I went down to Tupelo Cliff to bathe. A great bittern, which I had scared, flew heavily across the stream. 

The redness had risen at length above the dark cloud, the sun approaching. And next the redness became a sort of yellowish or fawn-colored light, and the sun now set fire to the edges of the broken cloud which had hung over the horizon, and they glowed like burning turf.

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

 Even by night the sky is blue and not black, for we see through the veil of night into the distant atmosphere of day. See ; January 21, 1853 ("The blueness of the sky at night — the color it wears by day — is an everlasting surprise to me, suggesting the constant presence and prevalence of light in the firmament, that we see through the veil of night to the constant blue, as by day."); February 12, 1860 ("There is an annual light in the darkness of the winter night. The shadows are blue, as the sky is forever blue."); May 11, 1853 ("Blue is the color of the day, and the sky is blue by night as well as by day, because it knows no night.") See also  Night and Moonlight (first published in the Atlantic Monthly, November 1863) ("Nevertheless, even by night the sky is blue and not black, for we see through the shadow of the earth into the distant atmosphere of day, where the sunbeams are reveling.")

We see through the veil

of night into the distant

atmosphere of day.

To see the lilies open

July 4.  Sunday.

July 4, 2022

3 A. M. - To Conantum, to see the lilies open.

I hear an occasional crowing of cocks in distant barns, as has been their habit for how many thousand years. It was so when I was young; and it will be so when I am old.

I hear the croak of a tree-toad as I am crossing the yard.

I am surprised to find the dawn so far advanced.  There is a yellowish segment of light in the east, paling a star and adding sensibly to the light of the waning and now declining moon.

There is very little dew on the uplands.

I hear a little twittering and some clear singing from the seringo and the song sparrow as I go along the back road, and now and then the note of a bullfrog from the river.

The light in the east has acquired a reddish tinge near the horizon.  Small wisps of cloud are already fuscous and dark, seen against the light, as in the west at evening.

It being Sunday morning, I hear no early stirring farmer driving over a bridge.  The crickets are not remarkably loud at this season. The sound of a whip-poor-will is wafted from the woods.  Now, on the Corner road, the hedges are alive with twittering sparrows, a bluebird or two, etc. 

The daylight now balances the moonlight.

How short the nights! The last traces of day have not disappeared much before 10 o'clock, or perchance 9.30, and before 3 A. M. you see them again in the east, probably 2.30, leaving about five hours of solid night, the sun so soon coming round again.

The robins sing, but not so loud and long as in the spring. I have not been awakened by them latterly in the mornings. Is it my fault? 

Ah! those mornings when you are awakened in the dawn by the singing, the matins, of the birds!

 

I hear the dumping sound of frogs now on the causeway.

Some small clouds in the east are reddish fuscous. There is no fog on the river nor in the meadows.

The kingbird twitters (?) on the black willows.

Methinks I saw the not yet extinguished lights of one or two fireflies in the darker ruts in the grass, in Conant's meadow.

The moon yields to the sun. She pales even in the presence of his dawn.

It is chiefly the spring birds that I hear at this hour, and in each dawn the spring is thus revived.

The notes of the sparrows and the bluebirds and the robin have a prominence now which they have not by day.

The light is more and more general, and some low bars begin to look bluish as well as reddish. (Else-where the sky wholly clear of clouds.) The dawn is at this stage far lighter than the brightest moonlight. I write by it. Yet the sun will not rise for some time.

Those bars are reddening more purplish, or lilac rather, light in the eastern sky. (And now, descending to the Cliff by the riverside, I cannot see the low horizon and its phenomena.)

I love to go through these old apple orchards so irregularly set out. Sometimes two trees standing close together. The rows of grafted fruit will never tempt me to wander amid them like these.

A bittern leaves the shore at my approach. I suppose it is he whose excrement has whitened the rocks, as if a mason had spilled his whitewash.

A nighthawk squeaks and booms, before sunrise.

The insects shaped like shad-flies (some which I see are larger and yellowish) begin to leave their cases (and selves?) on the stems of the grasses and the rushes in the water. I find them so weak they can hardly hold on.

I hear the black-bird's conqueree, and the kingfisher darts away with his alarum and outstretched neck.

Every lily is shut.

Sunrise. I see it gilding the top of the hill behind me, but the sun itself is concealed by the hills and woods on the east shore.

A very slight fog begins to rise now in one place on the river.

There is something serenely glorious and memorable to me in the sight of the first cool sunlight now gilding the eastern extremity of the bushy island in Fair Haven, that wild lake.

The subdued light and the repose remind me of Hades. In such sunlight there is no fever. It is such an innocent pale yellow as the spring flowers. It is the pollen of the sun, fertilizing plants. The color of the earliest spring flowers is as cool and innocent as the first rays of the sun in the morning falling on woods and hills.

The fog not only rises upward (about two feet), but at once there is a motion from the sun over the surface.

What means this endless motion of water-bugs collected in little groups on the surface and ceaselessly circling about their centre, as if they were a family hatched from the eggs on the under side of a pad? Is not this motion intended partly to balk the fishes? Methinks they did not begin to move till sunrise. Where were they? 

And now I see an army of skaters advancing in loose array, of chasseurs or scouts, as Indian allies are drawn in old books.

Now the rays of the sun have reached my seat, a few feet above the water; flies begin to buzz, mosquitoes to be less troublesome.

A hummingbird hums by over the pads up the river, as if looking, like myself, to see if lilies have blossomed.

The birds begin to sing generally, and, if not loudest, at least most noticeably on account of the quietness of the hour, just before -- a few minutes before -- sunrise. They do not sing so incessantly and earnestly, as a regular thing, half an hour later.

Carefully looking both up and down the river, I could perceive that the lilies began to open about fifteen minutes after the sun from over the opposite bank fell on them, which was perhaps three quarters of an hour after sunrise (which is about 4.30), and one was fully expanded about twenty minutes later.  When I returned over the bridge about 6.15, there were perhaps a dozen open ones in sight. 

It was very difficult to find one not injured by insects.  Even the buds which were just about to expand were frequently bored quite through, and the water had rotted them. You must be on hand early to anticipate insects.

One thimble-berry which will be quite ripe by to-morrow.

Indigo almost expanded.

I perceive the meadow fragrance on the causeway.

Bobolinks still.

I bring home a dozen perfect lily buds, — all I can find within many rods, — which have never yet opened; I prepare a large pan of water; I cut their stems quite short; I turn back their calyx-leaves with my fingers, so that they may float upright; I touch the points of their petals, and breathe or blow on them, and toss them in. They spring open rapidly, or gradually expand in the course of an hour, all but one or two. 

At 12.30 P. M., I perceive that the lilies in the river have begun to shut up. The water has gone down so much that I can stand on the shore and pluck as many as I want, and they are the fairest ones, concealed by the pickerel-weed, often the whole plant high and dry. I go again to the river at 2.30 P. M., and every lily is shut.

I will here tell the history of my rosaceous lilies plucked the 1st of July.

• They were buds at the bottom of a pitcher of water all the 2d, having been kept in my hat part of the day before.
• On the morning of the 3d I assisted their opening, and put them in water, as I have described; but they did not shut up at noon, like those in the river, but at dark, their petals, at least, quite tight and close.
• They all opened again in the course of the forenoon of the 4th, but had not shut up at 10 o'clock P. M., though I found them shut in the morning of the 5th.

May it be that they can bear only a certain amount of light, and these, being in the shade, remained open longer? ( I think not, for they shut up in the river that quite cloudy day, July 1st.) Or is their vitality too little to permit [them] to perform their regu- lar functions? 

Can that meadow fragrance come from the purple summits of the eupatorium? 

I looked down on the river behind Dodd's at 2.30 P. M., a slate-colored stream with a scarcely perceptible current, with a male and female shore; the former, more abrupt, of button-bushes and willows, the other, flat, of grass and pickerel-weed alone. Beyond the former, the water being deep, extends a border or fringe of green and purplish pads lying perfectly flat on the surface, but on the latter side the pads extend a half a rood or a rod beyond the pickerel-weed, — shining pads reflecting the light, dotted with white or yellow lilies. This sort of ruff does the river wear, and so the land is graduated off to water.

A tender place in nature, an exposed vein, and nature making a feint to bridge it quite over with a paddy film, with red-winged black- birds liquidly warbling and whistling on the willows, and kingbirds on the elms and oaks; these pads, if there is any wind, rippling with the water and helping to smooth and allay it. It looks tender and exposed, as if it were naturally subterranean, and now, with these shields of pads, held scale-like by long threads from the bottom, she makes a feint to bridge it.

So floats the Musketaquid over its segment of the sphere.

Methinks there is not even a lily, white or yellow, in Walden.

I see perfectly formed pouts by the shore of the river, one inch long.

The great spatterdock lily is a rich yellow at a little distance, and, seen lying on its great pads, it is an indispensable evidence of the fertility of the river.  The gratiola begins to yellow the mud by the riverside. The Lysimachia lanceolata var. hybrida is out, in the meadows. 

The Rosa nitida (?) appears to be now out of bloom.

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

the light of the waning and now declining moon. See June 30, 1852 ('Moon nearly full; rose a little before sunset.") See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, July Moonlight

To see the lilies open. See June 21, 1853 ("4.30 A.M.––Up river for lilies . . .The few lilies begin to open about 5."); July 1, 1852 ("...to see the white lilies in blossom...to breathe the atmosphere of lilies, and get the full impression which lilies are fitted to make"); July 11, 1852 ("The first lily I noticed opened about half an hour after sunrise, or at 5 o'clock."); July 17, 1854 ("I go to observe the lilies . . .I think that I could tell when it was 12 o'clock within half an hour by the lilies.")

They shut up in the river that quite cloudy day, July 1st. See July 1, 1852 ("The freshly opened lilies are a pearly white, and though the water amid the pads is quite unrippled, the passing air gives a slight oscillating, boat-like motion to and fro to the flowers, like boats held fast by their cables.After eating our luncheon at Rice's landing, I can not find one open anywhere for the rest of the day.")

The Rosa nitida (?) appears to be now out of bloom. See June 16, 1854 ("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."); July 8, 1854 ("The Rosa nitida I think has [been] some time done") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Rose

The Yankee belongs properly to the northern temperate fauna.

October 14.

Down the railroad before sunrise. A freight-train in the Deep Cut. The sun rising over the woods.

When the vapor from the engine rose above the woods, the level rays of the rising sun fell on it. It presented the same redness, — morning red, — inclining to saffron, which the clouds in the eastern horizon do.

There was but little wind this morning, yet I heard the telegraph harp. It does not require a strong wind to wake its strings; it depends more on its direction and the tension of the wire apparently. A gentle but steady breeze will often call forth its finest strains, when a strong but unsteady gale, blowing at the wrong angle withal, fails to elicit any melodious sound.

In the psychological world there are phenomena analogous to what zoologists call alternate reproduction, in which it requires several generations unlike each other to evolve the perfect animal. Some men's lives are but an aspiration, a yearning toward a higher state, and they are wholly misapprehended, until they are referred to, or traced through, all their metamorphoses.

We cannot pronounce upon a man's intellectual and moral state until we foresee what metamorphosis it is preparing him for.

It is said that “the working bees. are barren females. The attributes of their sex seem to consist only in their solicitude for the welfare of the new generation, of which they are the natural guardians, but not the parents.” (Agassiz and Gould.) This phenomenon is paralleled in man by maiden aunts and bachelor uncles, who perform a similar function.

“The muskrat,” according to Agassiz and Gould, “ is found from the mouth of Mackenzie's River to Florida." It is moreover of a type peculiar to temperate America. He is a native American surely. He neither dies of consumption in New England nor of fever and ague at the South and West. Thoroughly acclimated and naturalized.

“The hyenas, wild-boars, and rhinoceroses of the Cape of Good Hope have no analogues on the American continent.” At the last menagerie I visited they told me that one of the hyenas came from South America! There is something significant and interesting in the fact that the fauna of Europe and that of the United States are very similar, pointing to the fitness of this country for the settlement of Europeans.

They say, “There are . . .  many species of animals whose numbers are daily diminishing, and whose extinction may be foreseen; as the Canada deer (Wapiti), the Ibex of the Alps, the Lämmergeyer, the bison, the beaver, the wild turkey, etc.” With these, of course, is to be associated the Indian.

They say that the house-fly has followed man in his migrations.

One would say that the Yankee belonged properly to the northern temperate fauna, the region of the pines.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 14, 1851

The telegraph harp. See note to January 3, 1852 ("Why was it made that man should be thrilled to his inmost being by the vibrating of a wire?")

The muskrat. . . peculiar to temperate America . . .a native American surely. See December 23, 1858 ("How perfectly at home the musquash is on our river.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash

The Bedford sunrise bell.

September 13 

Railroad causeway, before sunrise.

Here is a morning after a warm, clear, moonlight night almost entirely without dew or fog.

It has been a little breezy through the night, it is true; but why so great a difference between this and other mornings of late? I can walk in any direction in the fields without wetting my feet.

I see the same rays in the dun, buff, or fawn-colored sky now, just twenty minutes before sunrise, though they do not extend quite so far as at sundown the other night. Why these rays? What is it divides the light of the sun? Is it thus divided by distant inequalities in the surface of the earth, behind which the other parts are concealed, and since the morning atmosphere is clearer they do not reach so far?

Some small island clouds are the first to look red.

The cross-leaved polygala emits its fragrance as if at will. 

You are quite sure you smelled it and are ravished with its sweet fragrance, but now it has no smell. You must not hold it too near, but hold it on all sides and at all distances, and there will perchance be wafted to you sooner or later a very sweet and penetrating fragrance. What it is like you cannot surely tell, for you do not enjoy it long enough nor in volume enough to compare it. It is very likely that you will not discover any fragrance while you are rudely smelling at it; you can only remember that you once perceived it.

Both this and the caducous polygala are now somewhat faded.

Now the sun is risen. The sky is almost perfectly clear this morning; not a cloud in the horizon.

The morning is not pensive like the evening, but joyous and youthful, and its blush is soon gone. It is unfallen day.

The Bedford sunrise bell rings sweetly and musically at this hour, when there is no bustle in the village to drown it. Bedford deserves a vote of thanks from Concord for it. It is a great good at these still and sacred hours, when towns can hear each other. It would be nought at noon.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 13, 1851

The cross-leaved polygala emits its fragrance as if at will.  See August 27, 1851 ("Polygala cruciata, cross-leaved polygala, has a very sweet but intermittent fragrance, as of checkerberry and mayflowers combined.");); July 13, 1852 ("The Polygala sanguinea and P. cruciata in Blister's meadow, both numerous and well out. The last has a fugacious (?) spicy scent, in which, methinks, I detect the scent of nutmegs. Afterward I find that it is the lower part of the stem and root which is most highly scented, like checkerberry, and not fugacious"); see also August 13, 1856 ("The root of the Polygala verticillata also has the checkerberry odor.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,The Polygala

The morning is not pensive like the evening, but joyous and youthful, and its blush is soon gone. See July 3, 1840 (We will have a dawn, and noon, and serene sunset in ourselves.); July 18, 1851 ("It is a test question affecting the youth of a person , — Have you knowledge of the morning? Do you sympathize with that season of nature? Are you abroad early, brushing the dews aside ? If the sun rises on you slumbering, if you do not hear the morning cock-crow, if you do not witness the blushes of Aurora, if you are not acquainted with Venus as the morning star, what relation have you to wisdom and purity? "); December 29, 1851 ("What a fine and measureless joy the gods grant us by letting us know nothing about the day that is to dawn! . . . This day, yesterday, was as incredible as any other miracle."); 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"); June 17, 1852 ("Perhaps these mornings are the most memorable in the year, — after a sultry night and before a sultry day, — when, especially, the morning is the most glorious season of the day, when its coolness is most refreshing and you enjoy the glory of the summer gilded or silvered with dews, without the torrid summer's sun or the obscuring haze."); August 31, 1852 ("Morning is full of promise and vigor. Evening is pensive."); January 26, 1853 (“ I look back . . . not into the night, but to a dawn for which no man ever rose early enough.”); March 31, 1852("How can one help being an early riser and walker in that season when the birds begin to twitter and sing in the morning? March 22, 1853 ("As soon as these spring mornings arrive in which the birds sing, I am sure to be an early riser.. . .expecting the dawn in so serene and joyful and expectant a mood."); January 8, 1854 ("The morning hope is soon lost in what becomes the routine of the day, and we do not recover ourselves again until we land on the pensive shores of evening, shores which skirt the great western continent of the night."); 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.”); Walden (“ Only that day dawns to which we are awake.”); Walden ("We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, by an infinite expectation of the dawn.”); February 25, 1859 ("Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature, — if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you,— know that the morning and spring of your life are past.")

The Bedford sunrise bell rings sweetly and musically at this hour. See January 2, 1842 ("The ringing of the church bell is a much more melodious sound than any that is heard within the church."); August 8, 1851 (“I hear the nine o'clock bell ringing in Bedford. Pleasantly sounds the voice of one village to another. ”); January 2, 1853 ("The bells are particularly sweet this morning."); January 21, 1853 ("In this stillness and at this distance, I hear the nine-o'clock bell in Bedford five miles off, which I might never hear in the village, but here its music surmounts the village din and has something very sweet and noble and inspiring in it, associated, in fact, with the hooting of owls."); ; April 15, 1855 ("The sound of church bells . . ., sounds very sweet to us on the water this still day").  See also  March 3, 1841 ("Nature always possesses a certain sonorousness , as in the hum of insects, the booming of ice, the crowing of cocks in the morning, and the barking of dogs in the night, which indicates her sound state. God's voice is but a clear bell sound. I drink in a wonderful health, a cordial, in sound. The effect of the slightest tinkling in the horizon measures my own soundness. I thank God for sound; it always mounts, and makes me mount. I think I will not trouble myself for any wealth, when I can be so cheaply enriched.")

Almost every plant, however humble, has its day.

 

September 10. 

 

Lowell to Boston and Concord.

There was a frost this morning, as my host, who keeps a market, informed me.

Leaving Lowell at 7 A. M. in the cars, I observed and admired the dew on a fine grass in the meadows, which was almost as white and silvery as frost when the rays of the newly risen sun fell on it.

Some of it was probably the frost of the morning melted.

I saw that this phenomenon was confined to one species of grass, which grew in narrow curving lines and small patches along the edges of the meadows or lowest ground, grass with very fine stems and branches, which held the dew; in short, that it was what I had falsely called Eragrostis capillaris, but which is probably the Sporobolus serotinus, almost the only, if not the only, grass there in its prime.

And thus this plant has its day.

Owing to the number of its а very fine branches, now in their prime, it holds the dew like a cobweb,-a clear drop at the end and lesser drops or beads all along the fine branches and stems. 

It grows on the higher parts of the meadows, where other herbage is thin, and is the less apt to be cut; and, seen toward the sun not long after sunrise, it is very conspicuous and bright a quarter of a mile off, like frostwork.

Call it dew-grass.

I find its hyaline seed.

September 10, 2022

Almost every plant, however humble, has thus its day, and sooner or later becomes the characteristic feature of some part of the landscape or other.

Almost all other grasses are now either cut or withering, and are, beside, so coarse comparatively that they can never present this phenomenon.

It is only a grass that is in its full vigor, as well as fine-branched (capillary), that can thus attract and uphold the dew.

This is noticed about the time the first frosts come.

If you sit at an open attic window almost anywhere, about the 20th of September, you will see many a milkweed down go sailing by on a level with you, though commonly it has lost its freight, — notwithstanding that you may not know of any of these plants growing in your neighborhood.

My host, yesterday, told me that he was accustomed once to chase a black fox [Like the silver, made a variety of the red by Baird.] from Lowell over this way and lost him at Chelmsford. Had heard of him within about six years. A Carlisle man also tells me since that this fox used to turn off and run northwest from Chelmsford, but that he would soon after return.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 10, 1860

Almost every plant, however humble, has its day. See March 18, 1853 ("These plants waste not a day, not a moment, suitable to their development."); August 26, 1856 ("Each humblest plant, or weed, as we call it, stands there to express some thought or mood of ours."); August 30, 1851 ("This plant acts not an obscure, but essential, part in the revolution of the seasons. May I perform my part as well!");  September 13, 1852 ("How earnestly and rapidly each creature, each flower, is fulfilling its part while its day lasts!"); September 17, 1857 ("How perfectly each plant has its turn! – as if the seasons revolved for it alone."); October 22, 1858 ("When you come to observe faithfully the changes of each humblest plant, you find, it may be unexpectedly, that each has sooner or later its peculiar autumnal tint or tints")


My host, yesterday, told me that he was accustomed once to chase a black fox. See January 30, 1855 ("Minott to-day enumerates the red, gray, black, and what he calls the Sampson fox. He says, “It’s a sort of yaller fox, but their pelts ain’t good for much.” He never saw one, but the hunters have told him of them. He never saw a gray nor a black one.") See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Fox

Dew on a fine grass

white and silvery as frost –

the newly risen sun.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,   Almost every plant, however humble, has its day.

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-600910

The perception of truth vs. the collection of facts.

December 16.

The east was glowing with a narrow but ill-defined crescent of light, the blue of the zenith mingling in all possible proportions with the salmon-color of the horizon.

The woods were this morning covered with thin bars of vapor, — the evaporation of the leaves according to Sprengel, — which seemed to have been suddenly stiffened by the cold.

And now the neighboring hilltops telegraph to us poor crawlers of the plain the Monarch's golden ensign in the east, and anon his “long levelled rules” fall sector wise, and humblest cottage windows greet their lord.

FACTS 

How indispensable to a correct study of Nature is a perception of her true meaning.

The fact will one day flower out into a truth. The season will mature and fructify what the understanding had cultivated.

Mere accumulators of facts — collectors of materials for the master-workmen — are like those plants growing in dark forests, which “put forth only leaves instead of blossoms.”

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 16, 1837

The blue of the zenith mingling in all possible proportions with the salmon-color of the horizon. See April 16, 1855 ("I could see very clearly the pale salmon of the eastern horizon reflected there and contrasting with an intermediate streak of skim-milk blue, — now, just after sunrise.")

And now the neighboring hilltops telegraph the Monarch's golden ensign in the east, and anon humblest cottage windows greet their lord. See April 16, 1856 ("5.30 A. M. — A little sunshine at the rising. I see it first reflected from E. Wood’s windows before I can see the sun.")

The fact will one day flower out into a truth. See June 19, 1852 (“Facts collected by a poet are set down at last as winged seeds of truth.”); February 18, 1852 ("I have a commonplace-book for facts and another for poetry, but I find it difficult always to preserve the vague distinction which I had in my mind, for the most interesting and beautiful facts are so much the more poetry and that is their success. ... I see that if my facts were sufficiently vital and significant, ... I should need but one book of poetry to contain them all.") February 23. 1860 ("A fact stated barely is dry. It must be the vehicle of some humanity in order to interest us. It is like giving a man a stone when he asks you for bread.")

December 16. See A Book of the Seasons, By Henry Thoreau, December 16 

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 ©  2009-2023

tinyurl.com/hdt371216

The never-failing wood thrush inviting the day once more to enter his pine woods.

August 17.

Twenty minutes before 5 a. m. — To Cliffs and Walden.

Dawn.

No breathing of chip-birds nor singing of robins as in spring, but still the cock crows lustily.

The creak of the crickets sounds louder.

As I go along the back road, hear two or three song sparrows.

This morning's red, there being a misty cloud there, is equal to an evening red.

The woods are very still. I hear only a faint peep or twitter from one bird, then the never-failing wood thrush, it being about sunrise, and after, on the Cliff, the phoebe note of a chickadee, a night-warbler, a creeper (?), and a pewee (?), and, later still, the huckleberry-bird and red-eye, but all few and faint.

Cannot distinguish the steam of the engine toward Waltham from one of the morning fogs over hollows in woods.

Lespedeza violacea var. (apparently) angustifolia (?), sessiliflora of Bigelow. Also another L. violacea, or at least violet, perhaps different from what I saw some time since.

Gerardia pedicularia, bushy gerardia, almost ready.

The white cornel berries are dropping off before they are fairly white.

Is not the hibiscus a very bright pink or even flesh- color? It is so delicate and peculiar. I do not think of any flower just like it. It reminds me of some of the wild geraniums most. It is a singular, large, delicate, high-colored flower with a tree-like leaf.

Gaylussada frondosa, blue-tangle, dangle-berry, ripe perhaps a week.

Weston of Lincoln thought there were more grapes, both cultivated and wild, than usual this year, because the rose-bugs had not done so much harm. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal August 17, 1852

The never-failing wood thrush about sunrise. See  August 10, 1856 ("Hear the wood thrush still."); August  12, 1851 ("I hear a wood thrush even now, long before sunrise. . .The wood thrush, that beautiful singer, inviting the day once more to enter his pine woods.") Compare August 12, 1854 ("Have not heard a wood thrush since last week of July. "); August 14, 1853 ("I hear no wood thrushes for a week.")

Lespedeza violacea.  See August 19, 1856 ("I spent my afternoon among the desmodiums and lespedezas, sociably. . . .  All the lespedezas are apparently more open and delicate in the woods, and of a darker green, especially the violet ones. When not too much crowded, their leaves are very pretty and perfect.") and  note to August 14, 1856 ("A short elliptic-leaved Lespedeza violacea, loose and open in Veery Nest Path, at Flint's Pond. In press.")

Bushy gerardia, almost ready. See August 12, 1856 ("Gerardia pedicularia, how long?"); August 23, 1856 ("On the west side of Emerson's Cliff, I notice many Gerardia pedicularia out. A bee is hovering about one bush");August 24, 1858 ("Climbing the hill at the bend, I find Gerardia Pedicularia, apparently several days, or how long?")

Walden is still covered with ice.

April 16. 

I have not seen a tree sparrow, I think, since December. 

5.30 A. M. — To Pinxter Swamp over Hill. 

A little sunshine at the rising. I, standing by the river, see it first reflected from E. Wood’s windows before I can see the sun. 

Standing there, I hear that same stertorous note of a frog or two as was heard the 13th, apparently from quite across all this flood, and which I have so often observed before. What kind is it? It seems to come from the edge of the meadow, which has been recently left bare. Apparently this low sound can be heard very far over the water. 

The robins sing with a will now. What a burst of melody! It gurgles out of all conduits now; they are choked with it. There is such a tide and rush of song as when a river is straightened between two rocky walls. It seems as if the moming’s throat were not large enough to emit all this sound. 

The robin sings most before 6 o’clock now. I note where some suddenly cease their song, making a quite remarkable vacuum. 

As I walk along the bank of the Assabet, I hear the yeep yeep yeep yeeep yeeep yeep, or perhaps peop, of a fish hawk, repeated quite fast, but not so shrill and whistling as I think I have heard it, and directly I see his long curved wings undulating over Pinxter Swamp, now flooded. 

From the hilltop I see bare ground appearing in ridges here and there in the Assabet meadow.

A grass-bird, with a sort of spot on its breast, sings, here here hé, che che che, chit chit chit, t’ chip chip chip chip chip. The latter part especially fast. 

The F. juncorum says, phe phe phe phe ph-ph-p-p-p-p-p-p-p-p-p, faster and faster; flies as I advance, but is heard distinctly still further off. 

A moist, misty, rain-threatening April day. About noon it does mizzle a little. The robin sings throughout it. It is rather raw, tooth-achy weather. 

P. M. —Round Walden. 

The Stellaria media is abundantly out. I did not look for it early, it was so snowy. It evidently blossomed as soon after the 2d of April—when I may say the snow began to go off in earnest—as possible.  The shepherd’s-purse, too, is well out, three or four inches high, and may have been some days at least.

Cheney’s elm shows stamens on the warm side pretty numerously. Probably that at Lee’s Cliff a little earlier.

Plowing and planting are now going on commonly. As I go down the railroad, I see two or three teams in the fields. Frost appears to be out of most soil. 

I see a pine warbler, much less yellow than the last, searching about the needles of the pitch and white pine. Its note is somewhat shorter, -- a very rapid and continuous trill or jingle which I remind myself of by wetter wetter wetter wetter wet’, emphasizing the last syllable. 

Walden is still covered with ice, which is still darker green and more like water than before. A large tract in the middle is of a darker shade and particularly like water. Mr. Emerson told me yesterday that there was a large tract of water in the middle! This ice trembles like a batter for a rod around when I throw a stone on to it. One as big as my fist, thrown high, goes through. It appears to be three or four inches thick. It extends quite to the shore on the north side - and is there met by snow. 

The needles of the pines still show where they were pressed down by the great burden of snow last winter. I see a maple twig eaten off by a rabbit four and a quarter feet from the ground, showing how high the snow was there. 

Golden saxifrage at Hubbard’s Close. 

Frogs sit round Callitriche Pool, where the tin is cast. We have waste places — pools and brooks, etc., -— where to cast tin, iron, slag, crockery, etc. No doubt the Romans and Ninevites had such places. To what a perfect system this world is reduced! A place for everything and everything in its place!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 16, 1856

Walden is still covered with ice. See April 13, 1856 ("dark-green clear ice,...quite hard still. At a little distance you would mistake it for water; further off still . . .it is blue as in summer.“). Only in 1852 did Walden’s ice last past April 16th. See Walden ("In 1845 Walden was first completely open on the 1st of April; in '46, the 25th of March; in '47, the 8th of April; in '51, the 28th of March; in '52, the 18th of April; in '53, the 23rd of March; in '54, about the 7th of April.) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Ice-Out

I see a pine warbler, much less yellow than the last.   See April 9, 1856 ("Its bright yellow or golden throat and breast, etc., are conspicuous at this season.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, the Pine Warbler.

The F. juncorum says, phe phe phe phe ph-ph-p-p-p-p-p-p-p-p-p, faster and faster; flies as I advance, but is heard distinctly still further off. See April 27, 1852 ("Heard the field or rush sparrow this morning (Fringilla juncorum), George Minott's "huckleberry-bird." . . .sounding like phe, phe, phe, pher-pher-tw-tw-tw-t-t-t-t, — the first three slow and loud, the next two syllables quicker, and the last part quicker and quicker, becoming a clear, sonorous trill or rattle, like a spoon in a saucer"); April 13, 1854 ("hear the F. juncorum, -- phẽ- phẽ- phẽ- phẽ- phẽ-, pher-phẽ-ē-ē-ē-ē-ē-ē-ē-ē. How . . ., clear and distinct, “like a spoon in a cup,” the last part very fast and ringing") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Field Sparrow

Callitriche Pool, where the tin is cast.  See April 16, 1855 ("This pool dries up in summer. The very pools, the receptacles of all kinds of rubbish, now, soon after the ice has melted, so transparent and of glassy smoothness and full of animal and vegetable life, are interesting and beautiful objects.”)

The Stellaria media and shepherd’s-purse out. See April 2, 1856 ("Some of the earliest plants are now not started because covered with snow, as the stellaria and shepherd’s purse.”); April 14, 1855 ("Most of the stellaria has been winter-killed, but I find a few flowers on a protected and still green sprig, probably not blossomed long.”); April 25, 1855 ("Shepherd’s-purse will bloom to-day”).

Cheney’s elm shows stamens on the warm side pretty numerously. Probably that at Lee’s Cliff a little earlier. See April 17, 1855 (“The flowers of the common elm at Lee’s are now loose and dangling, apparently well out a day or two in advance of Cheney’s, but I see no pollen. ”)

The robins sing with a will now. The robin sings most before 6 o’clock now. See April 16, 1855 (The robins, etc., blackbirds, song sparrows sing now on all hands just before sunrise, perhaps quite as generally as at any season"")See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Robins in Spring

A quarter moon in the sky

follows us  back through the old growth trees

coming home after our walk at dusk, 

orange sky in the west,

to end a perfect day, we hear

the first hermit thrush,.
 astonishing.

April 16, 2016 zphx

To the hilltop for a sunrise

April 16. 

5 A. M. 

Clear and cool. A frost whitens the ground; yet a mist hangs over the village. There is a thin ice, reaching a foot from the water’s edge, which the earliest rays will melt. 

I scare up several snipes feeding on the meadow’s edge. It is remarkable how they conceal themselves when they alight on a bare spit of the meadow. I look with my glass to where one alighted four rods off, and at length detect its head rising amid the cranberry vines and withered grass blades,--which last it closely resembles in color, -- with its eye steadily fixed on me. 

The robins, etc., blackbirds, song sparrows sing now on all hands just before sunrise, perhaps quite as generally as at any season. 

Going up the hill, I examine the tree-tops for hawks. What is that little hawk about as big as a turtle dove on the top of one of the white oaks on top of the hill? It appears to have a reddish breast. Now it flies to the bare top of a dead tree. Now some crows join, and it pursues one, diving at it repeatedly from above, down a rod or more, as far as I can see toward the hemlocks. 

Returning that way, I come unexpectedly close to this hawk perched near the top of a large aspen by the river right over my head. He seems neither to see nor hear me. At first I think it a new woodpecker. I have a fair view of all its back and tail within forty feet with my glass. 

Its back is, I should say, a rather dark ash, spotted, and so barred, wings and back, with large white spots, woodpecker-like (not well described in books), probably on the inner vanes of the feathers, both secondaries and primaries, and probably coverts. The tail conspicuously barred with black, three times beyond the covering and feathers and once at least under them. Beneath and under tail, mainly a dirty white with long and conspicuous femoral feathers, unlike sparrow hawk. Head darker and bill dark. 

It is busily pruning itself, and suddenly pitches off downward. What I call a pigeon hawk, probably sharp-shinned. 

In the meanwhile hear the quivet through the wood, and, looking, see through an opening a small compact flock of pigeons flying low about. 

From the Hill-top look to the Great Meadows with glass. They are very smooth, with a slight mist over them, but I can see very clearly the pale salmon of the eastern horizon reflected there, contrasting with an intermediate streak of skim-milk blue, — now, just after sunrise.

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

What I call a pigeon hawk, probably sharp-shinned. See May 4, 1855 ("I think that what I have called the sparrow hawk falsely, and latterly pigeon hawk, is also the sharp-shinned (vide April 26th and May 8th, 1854, and April 16th, 1855 ("for the pigeon hawk’s tail is white-barred.")  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the sharp-shinned hawk.

The robins, etc., blackbirds, song sparrows sing now on all hands just before sunrise, perhaps quite as generally as at any season. See April 16, 1856 ("The robins sing with a will now. What a burst of melody! It gurgles out of all conduits now; they are choked with it. There is such a tide and rush of song as when a river is straightened between two rocky walls. It seems as if the morning’s throat were not large enough to emit all this sound.")  See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Robins in Spring

A striped snake rustles

down a dry open hillside

in the withered grass.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, To the hilltop for a sunrise

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

Northern lights, rainbow, ice, snow, hail, pollywogs and mice.

March 13 

Northern lights last night. Rainbow in east this morning. 

6.30 A. M. — The river is low, very low for the season. It has been falling ever since the freshet of February 18th. Now, about sunrise, it is nearly filled with the thin, half cemented ice-crystals of the night, which the warmer temperature of day apparently has loosened. They grate against the bushes and wheel round in great fields with a slight crash and piling up.

I hear the rapid tapping of the woodpecker from over the water.

P. M. — To Hubbard’s Close. I am surprised to see, not only many pollywogs through the thin ice of the warm ditches, but, in still warmer, stagnant, unfrozen holes in this meadow, half a dozen small frogs, probably Rana palustris. 

Coming through the stubble of Stow’s rye-field in front of the Breed house, I meet with four mice-nests in going half a dozen rods. They lie flat on the ground amid the stubble; are flattened spheres, the horizontal diameter about five inches, the perpendicular considerably less, composed of grass or finer stubble, and on taking them up you do not at once detect the entrance with your eye, but rather feel it with your finger on the side; lined with the finest of the grass. 

These were undoubtedly - probably - made when the snow was on the ground, for their winter residence, while they gleaned the rye-field, and when the snow went off they scampered to the woods. I think they were made by the Mus leucopus.

I look into many woodchucks’ holes, but as yet they are choked with leaves and there is no sign of their having come abroad. 

March 13, 2025

At evening the raw, overcast day concludes with snow and hail. 

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

Northern lights last night.  See note to  November 5, 1860 ("An arch of northern lights in the north, with some redness."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Northern Lights

Rainbow in east this morning. See February 23, 1860 ("About 4 P. M. a smart shower, ushered in by thunder and succeeded by a brilliant rainbow and yellow light from under the dark cloud in the west.."); March 15. 1859 ("two brilliant rainbows at sunset, the first of the year."); April 9, 1855 ("In the afternoon it rained, but the sun set clear,. . .producing the first rainbow I have seen or heard of except one long ago in the morning . . . Why are they so rare in the winter? ") and note to May 11, 1854 ("A rainbow on the brow of summer")

I hear the rapid tapping of the woodpecker from over the water. See March 11, 1859 (“But methinks the sound of the woodpecker tapping is as much a spring note as any these mornings; it echoes peculiarly in the air of a spring morning.); March 15, 1854 ("I hear that peculiar, interesting loud hollow tapping of a woodpecker from over the water.”); March 18, 1853 ("The tapping of the woodpecker about this time.”); March 30, 1854 ("At the Island I see and hear this morning the cackle of a pigeon woodpecker at the hollow poplar; had heard him tapping distinctly from my boat's place."); April 14, 1856 ("Hear the flicker’s . . . tapping sounds afar over the water . It is a hollow sound which rings distinct to a great distance, especially over water."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring, woodpeckers tapping

I meet with four mice-nests. See March 6, 1855 ("a nice warm globular nest some five inches in diameter, amid the sphagnum and cranberry vines , etc., -made of dried grass and lined with a still finer grass. The hole was on one side, and the bottom was near two inches thick. See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse

I am surprised to see, not only many pollywogs through the thin ice of the warm ditches, but, in still warmer, stagnant, unfrozen holes in this meadow, half a dozen small frogs, probably Rana palustris. See  February 23, 1857 ("I have seen signs of the spring. I have seen a frog swiftly sinking in a pool, or where he dimpled the surface as he leapt in.");  March 7, 1855 ("I see many tadpoles of medium or full size in deep warm ditches in Hubbard’s meadow. They may probably be seen as soon as the ditches are open, thus earlier than frogs."); March 10, 1853 ("Channing says he saw pollywogs."); March 22, 1860 ("The phenomena of an average March . . .salamanders and pollywogs are more commonly seen, and also those little frogs (sylvatica males?) at spring-holes and ditches"); March 30, 1859 ("Little pollywogs two inches long are lively"); April 24, 1858 ("The pollywogs must be a long time growing, for I see those of last year not more than two inches long, also some much larger. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Frogs, and Turtles Stirring 

I look into many woodchucks’ holes. See March 5, 1857 ("See the tracks of a woodchuck in the sand-heap about the mouth of his hole, where he has cleared out his entry."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring; The Woodchuck Ventures Out

The raw, overcast day concludes with snow and hail. See March 14, 1855 ("Three inches of snow in the morning, and it snows a little more during the day, with occasional gleams of sunshine. Winter back again in prospect"); March 15, 1855 ("Foul weather all day, -- at first a fine snow, and finally rain. Now, at 9 P. M., a clear sky. And so the storm which began evening of 13th ends.") See alao January 21, 1855 ("The snow is turning to rain through a fine hail."); March 2, 1854 ("Warm air has come to us from the south, but charged with moisture, which will yet distill in rain or congeal into snow and hail."); March 31, 1852 ("A cold, raw day with alternating hail-like snow and rain.")

March 13, A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 13

Northern lights last night. 

Rainbow in east this morning. 

— The river is low

I hear the rapid

tapping of the woodpecker 

over the water. 

March 13, 1855

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Northern lights, rainbow, ice, snow, hail, pollywogs and mice.

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-550313