Evening Kosmos.

 August 31

Proserpinaca palustris, spear-leaved proserpinaca, mermaid-weed. (This in Hubbard's Grove on my way to Conantum.) 

A hornets' (?) nest in a rather tall huckleberry bush, the stems projecting through it, the leaves spreading over it. How these fellows avail themselves of the vegetables ! They kept arriving, the great fellows, but I never saw whence they came, but only heard the buzz just at the entrance. (With whitish abdomens.) At length, after I have stood before the nest five minutes, during which time they had taken no notice of me, two seemed to be consulting at the entrance, and then one made a threatening dash at me and returned to the nest. I took the hint and retired. They spoke as plainly as man could have done.

 I see that the farmers have begun to top their corn. Examined my old friend the green locust ( ? ), shrilling on an alder leaf. What relation does the fall dandelion bear to the spring dandelion ? 

There is a rank scent of tansy now on some roads, disagreeable to many people from being associated in their minds with funerals, where it is sometimes put into the coffin and about the corpse. 

I have not observed much St. John's-wort yet. 

Galium triflorum, three-flowered cleavers, in Conant's Spring Swamp; also fever-bush there, now budded for next year. 

Tobacco-pipe (Monotropa uniflora) in Spring Swamp Path.

 I came out of the thick, dark, swampy wood as from night into day. Having forgotten the daylight, I was surprised to see how bright it was. I had light enough, methought, and here was an afternoon sun illumining all the landscape . It was a surprise to me to see how much brighter an ordinary afternoon is than the light which penetrates a thick wood. 

One of these drooping clusters of potato balls would be as good a symbol, emblem, of the year's fertility as anything, - better surely than a bunch of grapes. Fruit of the strong soil, containing potash ( ? ).The vintage is come; the olive is ripe. 

"I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude;

And with forc'd fingers rude,

Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year; "

Why not for my coat-of -arms, for device, a drooping cluster of potato balls, - in a potato field ?  

What right has a New England poet to sing of wine, who never saw a vineyard, who obtains his liquor from the grocer, who would not dare, if he could, tell him what it is composed of. A Yankee singing in praise of wine! It is not sour grapes in this case, it is sweet grapes; the more inaccessible they are the sweeter they are. 

It seemed to me that the year had nothing so much to brag of as these potato balls. Do they not concern New-Englanders a thousand times more than all her grapes ? In Moore's new field they grow, cultivated with the bog hoe, manured with ashes and sphagnum. How they take to the virgin soil ! 

Shannon tells me that he took a piece of bog land of Augustus Hayden, cleared, turned up the stumps and roots and burned it over, making a coat of ashes six inches deep, then planted potatoes. He never put a hoe to it till he went to dig them; then between 8 o'clock A. M. and 5 P. M. he and another man dug and housed seventy - five bushels apiece !! 

Cohush now in fruit, ivory-white berries tipped now with black on stout red pedicels, - Actœa alba. Collinsonia Canadensis, horseweed  I had discovered this singular flower there new to me, and, having a botany by me, looked it out. What a surprise and disappointment, what an insult and impertinence to my curiosity and expectation, to have given me the name " horse- weed ! " 

Cohush Swamp is about twenty rods by three or four. Among rarer plants it contains the basswood, the black ( as well as white ) ash, the fever - bus, the cohush, the collinsonia, not to mention sassafras, poison sumach, ivy, agrimony, Arum triphyllum, ( sweet viburnum ( ? ) in hedges near by ), ground - nut, touch-me- not ( as high as your head ), and Eupatorium purpureum ( eight feet, eight inches high, with a large convex corymb ( hemi-spherical ) of many stories, fourteen inches wide; width of plant from tip of leaf to tip of leaf two feet, diameter of stalk one inch at ground, leaves seven in a whorl ). 

Rare plants seem to love certain localities. As if the original Conant had been a botanist and endeavored to form an arboretum. A natural arboretum ? The handsome sweet viburnum berries, now red on one cheek. It was the filiform crowfoot ( Ranunculus filiformis ) that I saw by the riverside the other day and to - day. The season advances apace.

 The flowers of the nettle-leaved vervain are now near the ends of the spike, like the blue. Utricularia inflata, whorled bladderwort, floating on the water at same place. Gentiana Saponaria budded. Gerardia flava at Conant's Grove. 

Half an hour before sunset I was at Tupelo Cliff, when, looking up from my botanizing ( I had been examining the Ranunculus filiformis, the Sium latifolium ( ?? ), and the obtuse galium on the muddy shore), I saw the seal of evening on the river. There was a quiet beauty in the landscape at that hour which my senses were prepared to appreciate. The sun going down on the west side, that hand being already in shadow for the most part, but his rays lighting up the water and the willows and pads even more than before. His rays then fell at right angles on their stems. 

I sitting on the old brown geologic rocks, their feet submerged and covered with weedy moss (utricularia roots? ) Sometimes their tops are submerged. The cardinal-flowers standing by me. The trivialness of the day is past. The greater stillness, the serenity of the air, its coolness and transparency, the mistiness being condensed, are favorable to thought. (The pensive eve.) 

The coolness of evening comes to condense the haze of noon and make the air transparent and the outline of objects firm and distinct, and chaste  (chaste eve); even as I am made more vigorous by my bath, am more continent of thought. After bathing, even at noonday, a man realizes a morning or evening life. 

The evening air is such a bath for both mind and body. When I have walked all day in vain under the torrid sun, and the world has been all trivial, - as well field and wood as highway, - then at eve the sun goes down westward, and the wind goes down with it, and the dews begin to purify the air and make it transparent, and the lakes and rivers acquire a glassy stillness, reflecting the skies, the reflex of the day. 

I too am at the top of my condition for perceiving beauty. Thus, long after feeding, the diviner faculties begin to be fed, to feel their oats, their nutriment, and are not oppressed by the belly's load. It is abstinence from loading the belly anew until the brain and divine faculties have felt their vigor. Not till some hours does my food invigorate my brain, - ascendeth into the brain. We practice at this hour an involuntary abstinence. We are comparatively chaste and temperate as Eve herself; the nutriment is just reaching the brain.

 Every sound is music now. The grating of some distant boat which a man is launching on the rocky bottom, though here is no man nor inhabited house, nor even cultivated field, in sight, this is heard with such distinctness that I listen with pleasure as if it was [ sic ] music.

 The attractive point is that line where the water meets the land, not distinct, but known to exist. The willows are not the less interesting because of their nakedness below. How rich, like what we love to read of South American primitive forest, is the scenery of this river! What luxuriance of weeds, what depth of mud along its sides! These old antehistoric, geologic  ante-diluvian rocks, which only primitive wading birds, still lingering among us, are worthy to tread. 

The season which we seem to live in anticipation of is arrived. The water, indeed, reflects heaven because my mind does; such is its own serenity, its transparency and stillness. With what sober joy I stand to let the water drip from me and feel my fresh vigor, who have been bathing in the same tub which the muskrat uses! Such a medicated bath as only nature furnishes. A fish leaps, and the dimple he makes is observed now. How ample and generous was nature! My inheritance is not narrow. Here is no other this evening. 

Those resorts which I most love and frequent, numerous and vast as they are, are as it were given up to me, as much as if I were an autocrat or owner of the world, and by my edicts excluded men from my territories. Perchance there is some advantage here not enjoyed in older countries. 

There are said to be two thousand inhabitants in Concord, and yet I find such ample space and verge, even miles of walking every day in which I do not meet nor see a human being, and often not very recent traces of them . So much of man as there is in your mind, there will be in your eye . Methinks that for a great part of the time, as much as it is possible, I walk as one possessing the advantages of human culture, fresh from society of men, but turned loose into the woods, the only man in nature, walking and meditating to a great extent as if man and his customs and institutions were not . 

The catbird, or the jay, is sure of the whole of your ear now. Each noise is like a stain on pure glass. The rivers now, these great blue subterranean heavens, reflecting the supernal skies and red-tinted cloud. 

A fly (or gnat ?) will often buzz round you and persecute you like an imp. How much of imp-like, pestering character they express ! ( I hear a boy driving home his cows . ) 

What unanimity between the water and the sky! - one only a little denser element than the other. The grossest part of heaven. Think of a mirror on so large a scale ! 

Standing on distant hills, you see the heavens reflected, the evening sky, in some low lake or river in the valley, as perfectly as in any mirror they could be. Does it not prove how intimate heaven is with earth?

 We commonly sacrifice to supper this serene and sacred hour. Our customs turn the hour of sunset to a trivial time, as at the meeting of two roads, one coming from the noon, the other leading to the night. It might be [well] if our repasts were taken out-of-doors, in view of the sunset and the rising stars;

• if there were two persons whose pulses beat together, 
• if men cared for the κόσμος, or beauty of the world; 
• if men were social in a high and rare sense; 
• if they associated on high levels;
• if we took in with our tea a draught of the transparent, dew-freighted evening air;
• if, with our bread and butter, we took a slice of the red western sky;
• if the smoking, steaming urn were the vapor on a thousand lakes and rivers and meads. 

The air of the valleys at this hour is the distilled essence of all those fragrances which during the day have been filling and have been dispersed in the atmosphere. The fine fragrances, perchance, which have floated in the upper atmospheres have settled to these low vales ! 

I talked of buying Conantum once, but for want of money we did not come to terms. But I have farmed it in my own fashion every year since.

 I have no objection to giving the names of some naturalists, men of flowers, to plants, if by their lives they have identified themselves with them. There may be a few Kalmias. But it must be done very sparingly, or, rather, discriminatingly, and no man's name be used who has not been such a lover of flowers that the flowers themselves may be supposed thus to reciprocate his love. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 31, 1851

One made a threatening dash at me and returned to the nest. I took the hint. See August 7, 1854 ("A wasp stung me at one high blueberry bush on the forefinger of my left hand, just above the second joint. It was very venomous;. . . and the finger soon swelled much below the joint, so that I could not completely close the finger,") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. Wasps and Hornets

There is a rank scent of tansy now.  See August 9, 1851 ("Tansy now in bloom and the fresh white clethra")

Why not for my coat-of -arms, for device, a drooping cluster of potato balls. See July 28, 1860 ("A man shows me in the street a single bunch of potato-balls . . . to some extent emulating a cluster of grapes. The very sight of them supplies my constitution with all needed potash.")

The κόσμος, or beauty of the world. See August 6, 1852 ("All men beholding a rainbow begin to understand the significance of the Greek epithet applied to the world, — name for the world, — - Kosmos, or beauty"); January 5, 1856 ("Order, κóσμos.")

I have not observed much St. John's-wort yet. See September 1, 1853 ("Johnswort, the large and common, is about done.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

The pensive eve. See August 31, 1852 ("Evening is pensive. The serenity is far more remarkable to those who are on the water.")

I have no objection to giving the names of some naturalists, men of flowers, to plants . . . no man's name be used who has not been such a lover of flowers. See June 13, 1852 ("But Gray should not name it from the Governor of New York. . .If named after a man, it must be a man of flowers. . . .Name your canals and railroads after Clinton, if you please, but his name is not associated with flowers.")

A Book of the Seasons: November Sunsets.

And stepping westward seemed to be

A kind of heavenly destiny

~Wordsworth

Every sunset inspires me 

with the desire to go to a West

 as distant and as fair as that

 into which the sun goes down.

Henry Thoreau,  November 21, 1850

November 16, 2017

 

November 1.   

I see that the sun, when low, will shine into a thick wood, which you had supposed always dark, as much as twenty rods, lighting it all up, making the gray, lichen-clad stems of the trees all warm and bright with light, and a distinct black shadow behind each. As if every grove, however dense, had its turn.  November 1, 1857

  If you wish to count the scarlet oaks. do it now. Stand on a hilltop in the woods, when the sun is an hour high and the sky is clear, and every one within range of your vision will be revealed . . .The sun being just about to enter a long and broad dark-blue or slate-colored cloud in the horizon, a cold, dark bank, I saw that the reflection of Flint’s white house in the river, prolonged by a slight ripple so as to reach the reflected cloud, was a very distinct and luminous light blue. As the afternoons grow shorter, and the early evening drives us home to complete our chores, we are reminded of the shortness of life, . . .I leaned over a rail in the twilight on the Walden road, waiting for the evening mail to be distributed, when such thoughts visited me. I seemed to recognize the November evening as a familiar thing come round again, and yet I could hardly tell whether I had ever known it or only divined it. The November twilights just begun!   November 1, 1858

November 2. The sun sets. We come home in the autumn twilight, which lasts long and is remarkably light, the air being purer, — clear white light, which penetrates the woods, — is seen through the woods, — the leaves being gone. When the sun is set, there is no sudden contrast, no deep darkening, but a clear, strong white light still prevails, and the west finally glows with a generally diffused and moderate saffron-golden.  November 2, 1853

November 2, 2017

November 3. 

At Andromeda Pond, started nine black ducks just at sunset, as usual they circling far round to look at me . . . The sunsets begin to be interestingly warm.  November 3, 1852

Looking westward now, at 4 P.M., I see against the sunlight, where the twigs of a maple and black birch intermingle, a little gossamer or fine cobwebs, but much more the twigs, especially of the birch, waving slightly, reflect the light like cobwebs. It is a phenomenon peculiar to this season, when the twigs are bare and the air is clear. I cannot easily tell what is cobweb and what twig, but the latter often curve upward more than the other.  . . . Coming by Ebby Hubbard’s thick maple and pine wood, I see the rays of the sun, now not much above the horizon, penetrating quite through it to my side in very narrow and slender glades of light, peculiarly bright. It seems, then, that no wood is so dense but that the rays of the setting sun may penetrate twenty rods into it. November 3, 1857

November 4.  The sun is once or twice its diameter above the horizon, and the mountains north of it stand out grand and distinct, a decided purple . . . Now that the sun is actually setting, the mountains are dark-blue from top to bottom. As usual, a small cloud attends the sun to the portals of the day and reflects this brightness to us, now that he is gone. But those grand and glorious mountains, how impossible to remember daily that they are there, and to live accordingly! They are meant to be a perpetual reminder to us, pointing out the way. November 4, 1857

November 4, 2014

November 5. Last evening, the weather being cooler, there was an arch of northern lights in the north, with some redness. Thus our winter is heralded. November 5, 1860

November 5, 2024

November 7.  The sun sets while we are perched on a high rock in the north of Weston.  It soon grows finger cold.  November 7, 1851

November 8.  Looking from Pratt’s window at sunset, I saw that  purple or rosy light reflected from some old chestnut rails on the hilltop before his house. Methinks it is pinkish, even like the old cow-droppings in the pastures. So universally does Nature blush at last. The very herbage which has gone through the stomachs and intestines of the cow acquires at last a faint pinkish tinge.  November 8, 1858

November 9.   We had a true November sunset after a dark, cloudy afternoon. The sun reached a clear stratum just before setting, beneath the dark cloud, though ready to enter another on the horizon’s edge, and a cold, yellow sunlight suddenly illumined the withered grass of the fields around, near and far, eastward. Such a phenomenon as, when it occurs later, I call the afterglow of the year. November 9, 1858

November 9, 2024

November 10.  Dark-blue or slate-colored clouds in the west, and the sun going down in them. All the light of November may be called an afterglow. November 10, 1858

November 10, 2020

November 11.  

Every withered blade of grass and every dry weed, as well as pine-needle, reflects light. The lately dark woods are open and light; the sun shines in upon the stems of trees which it has not shone on since spring. The brilliancy of the autumn is wonderful, this flashing brilliancy, as if the atmosphere were phosphoric. The fall of the year is over. November 11, 1851

November 11, 2014

Bracing cold, and exhilarating sunlight on russet and frosty fields.  November 11, 1853

November 12.  From Fair Haven Hill, I see a very distant, long, low dark-blue cloud in the northwest horizon beyond the mountains, and against this I see, apparently, a narrow white cloud resting on every mountain and conforming exactly to its outline . . . for twenty miles along the horizon. . .The sun having set, my long dark cloud has assumed the form of an alligator, and where the sun has just disappeared it is split into two tremendous jaws, between which glows the eternal city, its crenate lips all coppery golden, its serrate fiery teeth. Its body lies a slumbering mass along the horizon. November 12, 1852

November 13. 

A cold and dark afternoon, the sun being behind clouds in the west. The landscape is barren of objects, the trees being leafless, and so little light in the sky for variety. November 13, 1851 

Now for twinkling light reflected from unseen windows in early twilight.  November 13, 1858

November 14. The clear, white, leafless twilight of November, and whatever more glowing sunset or Indian summer we have then is the afterglow of the year.   November 14, 1853

November 14, 2022

November 14, 2020

November 15.  Just after sundown, the waters become suddenly smooth, and the clear yellow light of the western sky is handsomely reflected in the water, making it doubly light to me on the water, diffusing light from below as well as above. November 15, 1853

November 15, 2023

November 16.   Some of our richest days are those in which no sun shines outwardly, but so much the more a sun shines inwardly. I love nature, I love the landscape, because it is so sincere. It never cheats me. November 16, 1850

November 16, 2023

November 16, 2024

November 17.  

 How fair and memorable this prospect when you stand opposite to the sun, these November afternoons, and look over the red andromeda swamp - a glowing, warm brown red in the Indian-summer sun. November 17, 1859

The setting sun, too, is reflected from windows more brightly than at any other season. “November Lights" would be a theme for me. November 17, 1858

November 18.  

Now at sundown I hear the hooting of an owl, — hoo hoo hoo, hoorer hoo.. . .I rejoice that there are owls . . . This sound suggests the infinite roominess of nature, that there is a world in which owls live. November 18, 1851 

The sunlight is a peculiarly thin and clear yellow, falling on the pale-brown bleaching herbage of the fields at this season. There is no redness in it. This is November sunlight . . .very pale brown, bleaching, almost hoary fine grass or hay in the fields, akin to the frost which has killed it, and flakes of clear yellow sunlight falling on it here and there, — such is November.  November 18, 1857 

November 20.   

Each individual hair on every such shoot above the swamp is bathed in glowing sunlight and is directly conversant with the day god.  . . .Yesterday, just before sunset, and was admiring the various rich browns of the shrub oak plain across the river, . . . I was surprised to see a broad halo travelling with me and always opposite the sun to me, at least a quarter of a mile off and some three rods wide, on the shrub oaks. . . . The rare wholesome and permanent beauty of withered oak leaves of various hues of brown mottling a hillside, especially seen when the sun is low, — Quaker colors, sober ornaments, beauty that quite satisfies the eye.   November 20, 1858

November 20, 2023

November 21.    Seeing the sun falling . . .in an angle where this forest meets a hill covered with shrub oaks, affects me singularly, reinspiring me with all the dreams of my youth  . . . It is one of the avenues to my future . . . Every sunset inspires me with the desire to go to a West as distant and as fair as that into which the sun goes down. November 21, 1850  

November 22.  The light of the setting sun, just emerged from a cloud . . . after a raw and louring afternoon near the beginning of winter, is a memorable phenomenon November 22, 1851 

November 22, 2021

Noveomber 22, 2015

November 23.  Another such a sunset to-night as the last, while I was on Conantum. November 23, 1851

November 24.  Looking toward the sun, the andromeda in front of me is a very warm red brown and on either side of me, a pale silvery brown; looking from the sun, a uniform pale brown. November 24, 1857

November 24, 2023

November 25.

This afternoon the air was indescribably clear and exhilarating, and though the thermometer would have shown it to be cold, I thought that there was a finer and purer warmth than in summer . . .The warmth was hardly sensuous, but rather the satisfaction of existence . . . I experience such an interior comfort, far removed from the sense of cold, as if the thin atmosphere were rarefied by heat, were the medium of invisible flames, as if the whole landscape were one great hearthside . . .When I got up so high on the side of the Cliff the sun was setting like an Indian-summer sun.  There was a purple tint in the horizon. It was warm on the face of the rocks, and I could have sat till the sun disappeared, to dream there. It was a mild sunset such as is to be attended to.Just as the sun shines into us warmly and serenely, our Creator breathes on us and re-creates us. November 25, 1850

That kind of sunset which I witnessed on Saturday and Sunday is perhaps peculiar to the late autumn. The sun is unseen behind a hill. Only this bright white light like a fire falls on the trembling needles of the pine. November 25, 1851. 

When returning between Bear Hill and the railroad, the sun had set and there was a very clear amber light in the west, and, turning about, we were surprised at the darkness in the east, the crescent of night, almost as if the air were thick, a thick snow-storm were gathering, which, as we had faced the west, we were not prepared for; yet the air was clear. November 25, 1851

I shiver about awhile on Pine Hill, waiting for the sun to set. Methinks the air is dusky soon after four these days. The landscape looks darker than at any season, — like arctic scenery. There is the sun a quarter of an hour high, shining on it through a perfectly clear sky, but to my eye it is singularly dark or dusky. And now the sun has disappeared, there is hardly less light for half a minute. I should not know when it was down, but by looking for it as I stand at this height. November 25, 1857 

You are surprised, late these afternoons, a half an hour perhaps before sunset, . . . to see the singularly bright yellow light of the sun reflected from pines. . .through the clear, cold air, the wind, it may be, blowing strong from the northwest.. . . 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, 1858

November 26, 2022

November 27. 

The days are short enough now. The sun is already setting before I have reached the ordinary limit of my walk. November 27, 1853

November 28.

Now I begin to see, under the clouds in the west horizon, a clear crescent of yellowish sky, and suddenly a glorious yellow sunlight falls on all the eastern landscape -- russet fields and hillsides, evergreens and rustling oaks and single leafless trees. In addition to the clearness of the air at this season, the light is all from one side, and, none being absorbed or dissipated in the heavens, but it being reflected both from the russet earth and the clouds, it is intensely bright, and all the limbs of a maple seen far eastward rising over a hill are wonderfully distinct and lit. I think that we have some such sunsets as this, and peculiar to the season, every year.  I should call it the russet afterglow of the year.  November 29, 1853

Sunlight reflected from the many ascending twigs of bare young chestnuts and birches . . . remind me of the lines of gossamer at this season, being almost exactly similar to the eye. It is a true November phenomenon. November 28, 1856 

We make a good deal of the early twilights of these November days, they make so large a part of the afternoon. November 28, 1859

November 29.  

About 4 o'clock, the sun sank below some clouds, or they rose above it, and it shone out with that bright, calm, memorable light which I have else where described, lighting up the pitch pines and everything . . . When I got out of the wood. . .the softness of the sunlight on the russet landscape, the smooth russet grassy fields and meadows, was very soothing, the sun now getting low in a November day. November 29, 1852

Suddenly a glorious yellow sunlight falls on all the eastern landscape — russet fields and hillsides, evergreens and rustling oaks and single leafless trees. In addition to the clearness of the air at this season, the light is all from one side, and . . . is intensely bright, and all the limbs of a maple seen far eastward rising over a hill are wonderfully distinct and lit. I think that we have some such sunsets as this, and peculiar to the season, every year. I should call it the russet afterglow of the year.  November 29, 1853   

November 30. 

Already, a little after 4 o'clock, the sparkling windows and vanes of the village, seen under and against the faintly purple-tinged, slate-colored mountains, remind me of  a village in  a mountainous country at twilight, where early lights appear. I think that this peculiar sparkle without redness, a cold glitter, is peculiar to this season. November 30, 1852

Though there were some clouds in the west, there was a bright silver twilight before we reached our boat  . . . A red house could hardly be distinguished at a distance, but a white one appeared to reflect light on the landscape. At first we saw no redness in the sky, but only some peculiar dark wisp-like clouds in the west, but on rising a hill I saw a few red stains like veins of red quartz on a ground of feldspar. The river was perfectly smooth except the upwelling of its tide, and as we paddled home westward, the dusky yellowing sky was all reflected in it, together with the dun-colored clouds and the trees, and there was more light in the water than in the sky. 

November 30, 1853

November 14, 2020

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November Sunsets

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 © 2009-2022

Counting trees in Conant's Swamp

November 23.

November 23, 2019

Sunday. 

The trees (counting all three inches in diameter) in Conantum Swamp are:

        Bass                                              6
        Black ash                                      8
        Elm                                              10 (See if all are really elms.)
        Red (?) oak                                   2
        White ash                                      2
        Walnut                                           3
        Apple                                             5
        Maple                                            9
        Hornbeam                                     2
        Swamp white (?) oak                    1

Dogwood also there is, and cone-bearing willow, and what kind of winterberry with a light-colored bark?

Another such a sunset to-night as the last, while I was on Conantum.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 23, 1851

Another such a sunset. See November 22, 1851 ("The light of the setting sun, just emerged from a cloud . . .after a raw and louring afternoon near the beginning of winter, is a memorable phenomenon.") See also November 9, 1858 (“ We had a true November sunset after a dark, cloudy afternoon. The sun reached a clear stratum just before setting, beneath the dark cloud, though ready to enter another on the horizon’s edge, and a cold, yellow sunlight suddenly illumined the withered grass of the fields around, near and far, eastward. Such a phenomenon as, when it occurs later, I call the afterglow of the year."); November 10, 1858 ("Dark-blue or slate-colored clouds in the west, and the sun going down in them. All the light of November may be called an afterglow."); November 14, 1853 ("The clear, white, leafless twilight of November, and whatever more glowing sunset or Indian summer we have then is the afterglow of the year.”); November 17, 1858 ( The setting sun, too, is reflected from windows more brightly than at any other season. “November Lights" would be a theme for me. "); November 25, 1850 ("When I got up so high on the side of the Cliff the sun was setting like an Indian-summer sun. "); November 25, 1851 ("That kind of sunset which I witnessed on Saturday and Sunday is perhaps peculiar to the late autumn. The sun is unseen behind a hill. Only this bright white light like a fire falls on the trembling needles of the pine."); November 25, 1858 ("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,."); November 25, 1850 ("When I got up so high on the side of the Cliff the sun was setting like an Indian-summer sun."); November 29, 1852 ("About 4 o'clock, the sun sank below some clouds, or they rose above it, and it shone out with that bright, calm, memorable light which I have else where described, lighting up the pitch pines and everything."); November 29, 1853 ("Suddenly a glorious yellow sunlight falls on all the eastern landscape. . . I think that we have some such sunsets as this, and peculiar to the season, every year. I should call it the russet afterglow of the year.")

To observe the sun set.

July 23

July 23, 2015 

As the light in the west fades, the sky there,

 seen between the clouds, has a singular clarity and serenity. 

P. M. – To Annursnack.

Herbage is drying up; even weeds are wilted, and the corn rolls.

Agriculture is a good school in which to drill a man. Successful farming admits of no idling.

Now is the haying season.

How active must these men be, all the country over, that they may get through their work in season! A few spoiled windrows, all black and musty, have taught them that they must make hay while the sun shines, and get it in before it rains.

Much that I had taken to be the lanceolate loosestrife is the heart-leaved, especially by the Corner road.

Pycnanthemum muticum, mountain mint. Have I not mistaken this for the other species heretofore? 

The dwarf choke-cherry is ripe now, long before the rum cherry.

Also the Pyrus arbutifolia.

Cnicus pumilus, pasture thistle. [Cirsium pumilum.]

Chenopodium hybridum, maple-leaved goose-foot.

What is that white hairy plant with lanceolate leaves and racemes now, with flat burs, one to three, and a long spine in the midst, and five ovate calyx-leaves left (these turned to one side of the peduncle), burs very adhesive, close to road in meadow just beyond stone bridge on right; long out of bloom? 

Every man says his dog will not touch you. Look out, nevertheless.

Twenty minutes after seven, I sit at my window to observe the sun set.

The lower clouds in the north and southwest grow gradually darker as the sun goes down, since we now see the side opposite to the sun, but those high overhead, whose under sides we see reflecting the day, are light.

The small clouds low in the western sky were at first dark also, but, as the sun descends, they are lit up and aglow all but their cores.

Those in the east, though we see their sunward sides, are a dark blue, presaging night, only the highest faintly glowing.

A roseate redness, clear as amber, suffuses the low western sky about the sun, in which the small clouds are mostly melted, only their golden edges still revealed.

The atmosphere there is like some kinds of wine, perchance, or molten cinnabar, if that is red, in which also all kinds of pearls and precious stones are melted.

Clouds generally near the horizon, except near the sun, are now a dark blue.

(The sun sets.) It is half past seven.

The roseate glow deepens to purple.

The low western sky is now, and has been for some minutes, a splendid map, where the fancy can trace islands, continents, and cities beyond compare.

The glow forsakes the high eastern clouds; the uppermost clouds in the west now darken, the glow having forsaken them too; they become a dark blue, and anon their undersides reflect a deep red, like heavy damask curtains, after they had already been dark.

The general redness gradually fades into a pale reddish tinge in the horizon, with a clear white light above it, in which the clouds grow more conspicuous and darker and darker blue, appearing to follow in the wake of the sun, and it is now a quarter to eight, or fifteen minutes after sunset, twenty-five minutes from the first.

A quarter of an hour later, or half an hour after sunset, the white light grows cream colored above the increasing horizon redness, passing through white into blue above.

The western clouds, high and low, are now dark fuscous, not dark blue, but the eastern clouds are not so dark as the western.

Now, about twenty minutes after the first glow left the clouds above the sun's place, there is a second faint fuscous or warm brown glow on the edges of the dark clouds there, sudden and distinct, and it fades again, and it is early starlight, but the tops of the eastern clouds still are white, reflecting the day.

The cream color grows more yellowish or amber.

About three quarters of an hour after sunset the evening red is deepest, i. e. a general atmospheric redness close to the west horizon.

There is more of it, after all, than I expected, for the day has been clear and rather cool, and the evening red is what was the blue haze by day.

The moon, now in her first quarter, now begins to preside, — her light to prevail, — though for the most part eclipsed by clouds.

As the light in the west fades, the sky there, seen between the clouds, has a singular clarity and serenity.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 23, 1852

Now is the haying season. See August 5, 1854 ("We are now in the midst of the meadow-haying season.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Haymaking

Much that I had taken to be the lanceolate loosestrife is the heart-leaved, especially by the Corner road. See July 22, 1852 ("Is not that the Lysimachia ciliata, or hairy-stalked loosestrife, by the Corner road, not the lanceolata?"); July 24, 1853 ("Lysimachia ciliata and, by the causeway near, the ovate-leaved, quite distinct from the lanceolate")

Cnicus pumilus, pasture thistle. See July 23, 1856 ("Pasture thistle, not long.") See also  August 6, 1852 ("I find a bumblebee asleep in a thistle blossom (a pasture thistle)") August 15, 1851 ("Cnicus pumilus, pasture thistle. How many insects a single one attracts ! While you sit by it, bee after bee will visit it, and busy himself probing for honey and loading himself with pollen, regardless of your over shadowing presence. He sees its purple flower from afar, and that use there is in its color."); October 11, 1856 ("A pasture thistle with many fresh flowers and bees on it.")

The dwarf choke-cherry is ripe now. See July 13, 1852 ("The northern wild red cherry of the woods is ripe, handsome, bright red, but scarcely edible; also, sooner than I expected, ") July 18, 1853 ("The Cerasus Virginiana, or choke-cherry, is turning, nearly ripe.") and note to July 25, 1853 ("Cerasus Virginiana, — choke-cherry, — just ripe."); also  August 15, 1852 ("The red choke-berry is small and green still. I plainly distinguish it, also, by its woolly under side.); August 21, 1854 ("Red choke-berries are dried black; ripe some time ago."); August 25, 1854 (Choke-berries are very abundant there, but mostly dried black."); See also July 19, 1852 ("The Cerasus pumila ripe.");July 28, 1856 ("Sand cherry ripe. The fruit droops in umble-like clusters, two to four peduncles together, on each side the axil of a branchlet or a leaf.") August 10, 1860 ("Sand cherry is well ripe — some of it — and tolerable, better than the red cherry or choke-cherry."); August 11, 1852 ("The rum cherry is ripe."); August 15, 1852 (' In E. Hubbard's swamp I gather some large and juicy and agreeable rum cherries. They are much finer than the small ones on large trees; quite a good fruit. The birds make much account of them.")

Also the Pyrus arbutifolia. [Black choke-berry]  See July 19, 1854 ("Black choke-berry, several days."); July 24, 1853 ("The black choke-berry, probably some days."); August 12, 1858 ("I am also interested in the rich-looking glossy black choke-berries which nobody eats, but which bend down the bushes on every side,—sweetish berries with a dry, and so choking, taste. Some of the bushes are more than a dozen feet high."); September 6, 1857 (" I see in the swamp black choke berries twelve feet high at least and in fruit.")

I sit at my window to observe the sun set. See December 23, 1851 ("I see that there is to be a fine, clear sunset, and make myself a seat in the snow on the Cliff to witness it."); December 25, 1851 (“I go forth to see the sun set. Who knows how it will set, even half an hour beforehand ?”); 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."); August 14, 1854 ("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.”); November 4, 1857 ("I climb Pine Hill just as the sun is setting,"); November 13, 1857 ("See the sun rise or set if possible each day."); December 23, 1859 ("I ascended Ball's Hill to see the sun set.")

About three quarters of an hour after sunset the evening red is deepest. See July 20, 1852 ("And now the evening redness deepens till all the west or northwest horizon is red; as if the sky were rubbed there with some rich Indian pigment, a permanent dye; as if the Artist of the world had mixed his red paints on the edge of the inverted saucer of the sky. An exhilarating, cheering redness, most wholesome."); July 21, 1852 ("Do we perceive such a deep Indian red after the first starlight at any other season as now in July?"); July 26, 1852 ("The grandest picture in the world is the sunset sky")

As the light in the west fades, the sky there, seen between the clouds, has a singular clarity and serenity. See December 14, 1852 ("Ah, who can tell the serenity and clarity of a New England winter sunset? "); January 17, 1852 ("Those western vistas through clouds to the sky show the clearest heavens, clearer and more elysian than if the whole sky is comparatively free from clouds. As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind. Some see only clouds there; some behold there serenity, purity, beauty ineffable.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Western Sky

July 23. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 23

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