A cock crows at noon.

July 25

Friday. A. M. — Up river to see hypericums out. 

Lycopus Virginicus, with its runners, perhaps some days, in Hosmer Flat Meadow. 

Whorled utricularia very abundantly out, apparently in its prime. 

Lysimachia ciliata some days. 

The Hieracium Canadense grows by the road fence in Potter's hydrocotyle field, some seven or eight inches high, in dense tufts! 

The haymakers getting in the hay from Hubbard's meadow tell me the cock says we are going to have a long spell of dry weather or else very wet.  

"Well, there 's some difference between them," I answer; "how do you know it? " 

"I just heard a cock crow at noon, and that 's a sure sign it will either be very dry or very wet." 

The Hypericum perforatum, corymbosum, and ellipticum are not open this forenoon, but the angulosum, Canadense, mutilum, and Sarothra are partly curled up (their petals) even by 9 a.m.; perhaps because it is very warm, for day before yesterday, methinks, I saw the mutilum and Sarothra open later. 

The street is now strewn with bark under the buttonwood at the brick house. Has not the hot weather taken the bark off? 

The air begins to be thick and almost smoky.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 25, 1856



The Hypericum perforatum, corymbosum, and ellipticum are not open this forenoon, but the angulosum, Canadense, mutilum, and Sarothra are partly curled up (their petals) even by 9 a.m. See July 26, 1856 ("Arranged the hypericums in bottles this morning and watched their opening.")  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)Compare August 21, 1851 (" I have now found all the hawkweeds. Singular these genera of plants, plants manifestly related yet distinct. They suggest a history to nature, a natural history in a new sense.”)

On the River Rolls II

We stop for the night

only three fourths of a mile 

below the last camp.

A very hard day's work is done. 

At evening I sit

by the edge of the river

listen to its roar.

Deep shadows settle

into the canon, sun down,

darkness coming on.

The waves are rolling

with crests of foam so white they

give light of their own.

A chute of water

strikes a great block of limestone

pile ups and rolls back.

At the sunken rocks

the water heaps up in mounds,

or even in cones.

At the surface rocks 

water strikes and is shot up 

as in a fountain.

And on the river tumbles and rolls.

John Wesley Powell, Exploration of the Colorado River, July 24, 1869

See On the River Rolls I.

In the low Flint's Pond Path, beyond Britton's, the tall rough goldenrod makes a thicket higher than my head.

July 24. 

P. M. — To Flint's Pond. 

July 24.

Solidago stricta, Ingraham Path, well out, some days.

Chimaphila maculata, three flowers, apparently but few days, while the umbellata is quite done there. Leaves just shooting up. 

See those light-bordered dark spots on tall and other goldenrod leaves (fungi (?) says Russell). In the low Flint's Pond Path, beyond Britton's, the tall rough goldenrod makes a thicket higher than my head.

Many hazelnut burs now look rough and reddish about the base. 

Tobacco-pipe much blackened, out a long time. 

I find, at the shallow stone wharf shore, three balls in good condition, walking about half the length of that shore. Methinks it was about a week earlier than this that they were found last year. 

There is on the surface of the water, washed up and floating about, a good deal of the eriocaulon, loosened up, perhaps, by pouts or other creatures, and also some other fine weeds with it. Yet the eriocaulon has but just begun to bloom!

So also the vallisneria has washed up some time in river. 

There is also a very fine rush (?) on the bottom there like hair. Is that a little submerged kind of utricularia or ranunculus on the sandy bottom in shallow water there, looking thin and dissolving from above, like a conferva? — like little regular green masses of conserve? 

The red lilies are completely out of bloom now at Smith's meadow pasture, but the yellow ones are still very abundant in the meadows. 

The Ranunculus Purshii is now very hard to meet with. Saw one double flower with sixteen petals (at least) in two rows. Time to get seeds of it. 

Hardhack well out, how long? 

The small purple fringed orchis, apparently three or four days at least. 

The fall has already come to skunk-cabbage and hellebore. Their yellow and black decaying leaves and stems now cover the floor of the swamps which they recently clothed in early green. 

The Lobelia Dortmanna still, but no full spikes. It is apparently the worse for the wear. The oldest stems of it are covered here and there with apparently the red ova of some insect. 

Some Gnaphalium uliginosum going to seed; how long?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 24, 1856

In the low Flint's Pond Path, beyond Britton's, the tall rough goldenrod makes a thicket higher than my head. See note to July 18, 1854 ("Methinks the asters and goldenrods begin, like the early ripening leaves, with midsummer heats.")

Botanizing with Russell; Bathing in Walden

July 23

July 23, 2016

9 a. m. — Up river for Nuphar Kalmiana with Russell.

Pasture thistle, not long. 

Hypericum Sarothra, not long, or perhaps some days. 

Antennaria margaritacea. Scutellaria lateriflora, apparently some days. 

R. says that my five-finger fungus is the Lycoperdon stellatum and can be found now. I find it in some places. (It is different from the white rough-coated puffball now found.) It was exhibited lately in Boston as the "resurrection plant " (! !) to compete with the one imported from Palestine. 

That what I have called fresh-water sponge is such, Spongea fluviatilis, and, like the marine, is uncertain whether vegetable or animal. When burned it leaves a mass of white spicula which have been mistaken for infusoria! 

Thinks the dry brown last-year’s plant I brought from Haskell's Island, Lakeville, the Epiphegus. 

That the Rubus Canadensis, low blackberry, is not found far west of us. 

That there is described — he thinks in Hooker's English Flora — a certain massing up of a conferva similar to that of my eriocaulon balls. Has seen a Mexican species, allied to the potato, cultivated hereabouts, which became a weed, — would not become larger than a walnut. 

Speaks of the young pouts with their bladders attached, accompanied by the old. 

That the berries of the celtis are pleasant to taste, those of the sassafras abominable. 

Showed me the Dulichium spathaceum, leaves in three ranks, so common along river, now in bloom; also the Carex lupulina (?) or retrorsa (?), hop sedge, with the inflated perigynia. 

Said that those reddish clusters of buds on a rush or carex were enlarged by disease. 

That the two white cotton-grasses (Eriophorum) were probably but one species, taller and shorter; also the two wool-grasses Scirpus — Trichophorum [sic] were probably but one species, the tall and short. 

That there was an account of the lecheas by Tuckerman in Silliman's Journal. 

P. M. — To Walden for hydropeltis. 

A young sternothserus which R. picked up recently dead, on the shore of the pond, was one and one sixteenth inches long, — the upper shell, — probably therefore a last year's one, or not yet one year old. Very high and sharp back, but broader than old. No hook to upper bill. 

That fern leaf on my coal (?) is probably the Newropteris as figured in Richardson's Botany. 

Saw at Hydropeltis Meadow a small bullfrog in the act of swallowing a young but pretty sizable apparently Rana palustris, such as now hop about, an inch and a half long. He took it down head foremost, and as the legs were slowly taken in, — stuffing himself, — for the legs were often straightened out, — I wondered what satisfaction it could be to the larger to have that cold slimy fellow, entire, lying head to tail within him! I sprang to make him disgorge, but it was too late to save him. Though I tossed the bullfrog out of the water, the palustris was entombed. So little while had he been in the light when he fell into that recess! 

Bathing in Walden, I find the water considerably colder at the bottom while I stand up to my chin, but the sandy bottom much warmer to my feet than the water. The heat passes through the water with[out] being absorbed by it much. 

The hydropeltis leaves so crowded they cannot lie flat, but their edges show (a good part the under side) as if blown up by wind. 

The water adder killed on the 15th and left hanging on a twig has decayed wonderfully. I perceive no odor, and it is already falling to pieces. I can see most of its ribs and through and through in many directions ! ! It is already mere skin and skeleton, as empty as [a] flute. I can count the bare ribs, and it [is] inoffensive to the smell. 

See apparently young goldfinches about, very freshly bright golden and black. 

The small potamogeton, heterophyllus (?) or hybridus (?), out some time. Ludwigia alternifolia, five or six days.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 23, 1856

Bathing in Walden, I find the water considerably colder at the bottom while I stand up to my chin. See June 25, 1858 ("We bathe at Bittern Cliff. The water is exceedingly warm near the surface, but refreshingly cold four or five feet beneath. There must be twenty degrees difference at least"); July 3, 1854 ("What a luxury to bathe now! It is gloriously hot, — the first of this weather. I cannot get wet enough. I must let the water soak into me. I begin to inhabit the planet, and see how I may be naturalized at last.”); July 9, 1852 ("Bathing is an undescribed luxury. To feel the wind blow on your body, the water flow on you and lave you, is a rare physical enjoyment this hot day. . . .The pond water being so warm made the water of the brook feel very cold;. . .and when I thrust my arm down where it was only two feet deep, my arm was in the warm water of the pond, but my hand in the cold water of the brook.”); July 10, 1852 (" I make quite an excursion up and down the river in the water, a fluvial, a water walk. . . .Walking up and down a river in torrid weather with only a hat to shade the head.”);  July 17, 1860 ("The soft sand on the bottom of Walden, as deep as I can wade, feels very warm to my feet, while the water feels cold.");July 22, 1851("I bathe, and in a few hours I bathe again, not remembering that I was wetted before. When I come to the river, I take off my clothes and carry them over, then bathe and wash off the mud and continue my walk. I would fain take rivers in my walks endwise.”).  See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Luxury of Bathing


The water adder killed on the 15th. See July 15, 1856 ("It was about three feet long, but large round in proportion, with about one hundred and forty abdominal plates and a long, slender tail. . . .")

Young goldfinches about, very freshly bright golden and black. See May 6, 1860 ("A goldfinch apparently not quite in summer dress; with a dark-brown, not black, front.") See also July 10, 1854 (" Goldfinch oftener twitters over."); July 17, 1852 ("Again methinks I hear the goldfinch."); July 31, 1859 ("The goldfinch's note, the cool watery twitter, is more prominent now."); July 31, 1855 ("Have observed the twittering over of goldfinches for a week."); and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Goldfinch

Saturday afternoon we are putting together a sturdy garden cart at the edge of the garage when a sudden wind rises the trees begin to crack and the top of the large near-dead maple at the top of the driveway comes down with a crash blocking the way out. Then a heavy rain comes and thunder and rain and dark I decide to take a nap. I get up a couple of hours later when the power goes on and begin to clear the driveway starting with the small stuff. Jane comes out with her Japanese saw and I spend a lot of time first with the electric chainsaw which derails after each cut and eventually get my gas chainsaw going and cut the larger stuff. We end up loading my truck with all the tops of the tree and drive it up the driveway where we dump it near the entrance to the trail. 20160723

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

Do not tread on the heels your experience.

July 23.

I would fain keep a journal of those thoughts and impressions i am most liable to forget; that have in one sense the greatest remoteness, in another, the greatest nearness to me. Journal, January, 1851 

Do not tread on the heels of your experience. Be impressed without making a minute of it. Put an interval between the impression and the expression, - wait till the seed germinates naturally. Journal, July 23, 1851

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. August 19, 1851

Things must lie a little remote to be described. November 11, 1851

Hard and steady and engrossing labor with the hands, especially out of doors, is invaluable to the literary man and serves him directly. Here I have been for six days surveying in the woods, and yet when I get home at evening, somewhat weary at last, and beginning to feel that I have nerves, I find myself more susceptible than usual to the finest influences, as music and poetry. The very air can intoxicate me, or the least sight or sound, as if my finer senses had acquired an appetite by their fast. November 20, 1851

I wish to be translated to the future to observe what portions of my work have crumbled. January 1, 1852

Perhaps this is the main value of a habit of writing, of keeping a journal, - that so we remember our best hours and stimulate ourselves. To set down such choice experiences that my own writings inspire me and at last may make wholes of parts. Journal, January 22, 1852

I do not know but thoughts written down in a journal might be printed in the same form with greater advantage than if the related ones were brought together into separate essays. Journal, January 27, 1852

The forcible writer does not go far for his themes. His ideas are not far-fetched. January 29, 1852

The forcible writer stands bodily behind his words with his experience. He does not make books out of books, but he has been there in person.  February 3, 1852

Time never passes so rapidly and unaccountably as when I am engaged in recording my thoughts. Journal, February, 5, 1852

Write while the heat is in you. . . . The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts . . .cannot inflame the minds of his audience. Journal, February 10, 1852

I succeed best when I recur to my experience not too late, but within a day or two; when there is some distance, but enough of freshness. Journal, May 5, 1852

You only need to make a faithful record of an average summer day's experience and summer mood, and read it in the winter, and it will carry you back to more than that summer day alone could show. Journal, October 26, 1853

What you can recall of a walk on the second day will differ from what you remember on the first day, ... as any view changes to one who is journeying amid mountains when he has increased the distance.  January 10, 1854

In correcting my manuscripts . . . having purified the main body and thus created a distinct standard for comparison, I can review the rejected sentences and easily detect those which deserve to be readmitted. March 1, 1854

I find that I can criticise my composition best when I stand at a little distance from it. April 8, 1854

I find some advantage in describing the experience of a day on the day following. At this distance it is more ideal, like the landscape seen with the head inverted, or reflections in water. Journal April 20, 1854

In a journal it is important in a few words to describe the weather, or character of the day, as it affects our feelings. That which was so important at the time cannot be unimportant to remember. Journal, February 5, 1855

I find in my Journal that the most important events in my life, if recorded at all, are not dated. Journal, December 26, 1855

A journal is a record of experiences and growth, not a preserve of things well done or said. The charm of the journal must consist in a certain greenness, though freshness, and not in maturity. Here I cannot afford to be remembering what I said or did, but what I am and aspire to become. Journal, January 24, 1856

I do not perceive the poetic and dramatic capabilities of an anecdote or story which is told me, its significance, till some time afterwards. One of the qualities of a pregnant fact is that it does not surprise us, and we only perceive afterward how interesting it is, and then must know all the particulars. We do not enjoy poetry fully unless we know it to be poetry. Journal, October 1, 1856

If you are describing any occurrence, or a man, make two or more distinct reports at different times. Though you may think you have said all, you will to-morrow remember a whole new class of facts which perhaps interested most of all at the time, but did not present themselves to be reported. If we have recently met and talked with a man, and would report our experience, we commonly make a very partial report at first, failing to seize the most significant, picturesque, and dramatic points; we describe only what we have had time to digest and dispose of in our minds, without being conscious that there were other things really more novel and interesting to us, which will not fail to recur to us and impress us suitably at last. How little that occurs to us in any way are we prepared at once to appreciate! We discriminate at first only a few features, and we need to reconsider our experience from many points of view and in various moods, to preserve the whole fruit of it. Journal, March 24, 1857

Often I can give the truest and most interesting account of any adventure I have had after years have elapsed, for then I am not confused, only the most significant facts surviving in my memory. Indeed, all that continues to interest me after such a lapse of time is sure to be pertinent, and I may safely record all that I remember.  March 28, 1857

I would fain make two reports in my Journal, first the incidents and observations of to-day; and by tomorrow I review the same and record what was omitted before, which will often be the most significant and poetic part. I do not know at first what it is that charms me. The men and things of to-day are wont to lie fairer and truer in to-morrow’s memory.  March 27, 1857

Is not the poet bound to write his own biography? Is there any other work for him but a good journal? We do not wish to know how his imaginary hero, but how he, the actual hero, lived from day to day.  October 21, 1857

It is in vain to write on the seasons unless you have the seasons in you.  January 23, 1858

Most that is first written on any subject is a mere groping after it, mere rubble-stone and foundation. It is only when many observations of different periods have been brought together that [the writer] begins to grasp his subject and can make one pertinent and just observation. February 3, 1859

 

A transient acquaintance with any phenomenon is not sufficient to make it completely the subject of your muse. You must be so conversant with it as to remember it and be reminded of it long afterward, while it lies remotely fair and elysian in the horizon, approachable only by the imagination.  February 13, 1859 

In the composition it is the greatest art to find out as quickly as possible which are the best passages you have written, and tear the rest away. February 20, 1859 

Find out as soon as possible what are the best things in your composition, and then shape the rest to fit them. The former will be the midrib and veins of the leaf. March 11, 1859

The more you have thought and written on a given theme, the more you can still write. Thought breeds thought. It grows under your hands. February 13, 1860

In keeping a journal of one's walks and thoughts it seems to be worth the while to record those phenomena which are most interesting to us at the time. Such is the weather. Journal, January 25, 1860

With each fresh varnish of the air we frequent our oldest haunts with new love and reverence.

July 21. 

P. M. — To A. Wheeler's grape meadow. 

Mimulus, not long. Hypericum corymbosum, a day or two. Rusty cotton-grass, how long ? The small hypericums are open only in the forenoon. Pursley, also, in our garden opens now not till 8 a. m., and shuts up before 12 m. 

The flat euphorbia is now in prime on the sandy path beyond Potter's Desert, five-finger fungus path.

Plucked a handful of huckleberries from one bush! The Vaccinium vacillans thick enough to go picking, and probably for a day or two in some places. 

Low blackberries thick enough to pick in some places, three or four days. 

Thimble-berries about the 12th, and V. Pennsylvanicum much longer. 

These hot afternoons I go panting through the close sprout-lands and copses, as now from Cliff Brook to Wheeler meadow, and occasionally come to sandy places a few feet in diameter where the partridges have dusted themselves. 

[Gerard, the lion-killer of Algiers, speaks of seeing similar spots when tracking or patiently waiting the lion there, and his truth in this particular is a confirmation of the rest of his story. But his pursuit dwarfs this fact and makes it seem trivial.] 

Shall not my pursuit also contrast with the trivialness of the partridges' dusting? It is interesting to find that the same phenomena, however simple, occur in different parts of the globe. 

I have found an arrowhead or two in such places even. 

Far in warm, sandy woods in hot weather, when not a breath of air is stirring, I come upon these still sandier and warmer spots where the partridges have dusted themselves, now all still and deserted, and am not relieved, yet pleased to find that I have been preceded, by any creature. 

Grapes ready to stew. 

Mr. Russell writes me to-day that he visited the locality of the Magnolia glauca the 18th, on Cape Ann, and saw lingering still a few flowers and flower-buds. It is quite open and rising above the bushes. 

The brook cress might be called river cress, for it is very abundant rising above the surface in all the shallower parts of the river. 

Verbena hastata, apparently several days. 

Sonchus, some time. 

July 21, 2020

This has been a peculiarly fine afternoon. When I look about casually, am surprised at the fairness of the landscape. Though warm, it is clear and fresh, and the air imparts to all surfaces a peculiar fine glaucous color, full of light, without mistiness, like the under side of the Salix lucida (?) leaves at present.  Not only the under sides of the leaves, but the very afternoon landscape, has become glaucous. 

Now, when the fashionable world goes to Saratoga, Nahant, and Newport, we frequent our oldest haunts with new love and reverence and sail into new ports with each fresh varnish of the air.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 21, 1856

When I look about casually, am surprised at the fairness of the landscape. See note to May 22, 1854 ("How many times I have been surprised thus, on turning about on this very spot, at the fairness of the earth!")

We frequent our oldest haunts with new love and reverence and sail into new ports with each fresh varnish of the air. See October 18, 1855 (“Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.”); August 30, 1856 (“[T]here are square rods in Middlesex County as purely primitive and wild as they were a thousand years ago. . .  I believe almost in the personality of such planetary matter, feel something akin to reverence for it, can even worship it as terrene, titanic matter extant in my day. We are so different we admire each other, we healthily attract one another. I love it as a maiden”) 

July 21. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 21

Sandy places where

partridges dusted themselves

this hot afternoon.

Surprised – the fairmess

of the afternooon landscape,

clear fresh full of light.

With each fresh varnish

we frequent our oldest haunts

with new reverence.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: New love and reverence.

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 ©  2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-560721

A middle-sized copper-colored devil's-needle.

July 20

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

Button-bush, apparently two or three days. 

I suspect that those very variously formed leaves in and about woods which come to naught — like the sium in deep water — are of the nabalus. 

Caught a middle-sized copper-colored devil's-needle (with darker spots on wings), sluggish, on a grass stem, with many dark-colored elliptical eggs packed closely to outside, under its breast.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 20, 1856

A middle-sized copper-colored devil's-needle. See June 13, 1854 ("I float homeward over water almost perfectly smooth, my sail so idle that I count ten devil's-needles resting along it at once."); July 17, 1854 ("I am surprised to see crossing my course in middle of Fair Haven Pond great yellowish devil's-needles, flying from shore to shore."); July 27, 1856 ("A great devil's-needle alights on my paddle...");A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Devil's-needle

June 13. 

Floating homeward, I 

count devil's-needles at rest 

on my idle sail.

July 17.

Flying shore to shore, 

yellowish devil's-needles 

cross their Atlantic. 

July 27

A devil's-needle 

keeps its place on my paddle

against a strong wind.

July 27, 1856