7 August 1854 – 13 August 1854

It is inspiriting at last to hear the wind whistle and moan about my attic, after so much trivial summer weather, and to feel cool in my thin pants. Do you not feel the fruit of your spring and summer beginning to ripen, to harden its seed within you? Do not your thoughts begin to acquire consistency as well as flavor and ripeness? How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had a seed-time of character? Already some of my small thoughts — fruit of my spring life—are ripe, like the berries which feed the first broods of birds; and other some are prematurely ripe and bright, like the lower leaves of the herbs which have felt the summer’s drought. Seasons when our mind is like the strings of a harp which is swept, and we stand and listen. A man may hear strains in his thought far surpassing any oratorio. Sicyos. P. M. — To Peter’s, Beck Stow’s, and Walden. Liatris. Still autumnal, breezy with a cool vein in the wind; so that, passing from the cool and breezy into the sunny and warm places, you begin to love the heat of summer. It is the contrast of the cool wind with the warm sun. I walk over the pinweed-field. It is just cool enough in my thin clothes. There is a light on the earth and leaves, as if they were burnished. It is the glistening autumnal side of summer. I feel a cool vein in the breeze, which braces my thought, and I pass with pleasure over sheltered and sunny portions of the sand where the summer’s heat is un- diminished, and I realize what a friend I am losing. The pinweed does not show its stamens —I mean the L. thymifolia. It was open probably about July 25. This off side of summer glistens like a burnished shield. The waters now are some degrees cooler. Winds show the under sides of the leaves. The cool nocturnal creak of the crickets is heard in the mid-afternoon. Tansy is apparently now in its prime, and the early goldenrods have acquired a brighter yellow. From this off side of the year, this imbricated slope, with alternating burnished surfaces and shady ledges, much more light and heat are reflected (less absorbed), me- thinks, than from the springward side. In mid-sum- mer we are of the earth, — confounded with it, — and covered with its dust. Now we begin to erect our- selves somewhat and walk upon its surface. I am not so much reminded of former years, as of existence prior to years.

P. M.— To Annursnack via Assabet. A great spider three quarters of an inch long, with large yellow marks on the sides, in middle of a flat web. This is a day of sunny water. As I walk along the bank of the river, I look down a rod and see dis- tinctly the fishes and the bottom. The cardinals are in perfection, standing in dark recesses of the green shore, or in the open meadow. They are fluviatile, and stand along some river or brook, like myself. I see one large white maple crisped and tinged with a sort of rosaceous tinge, Just above the Golden Horn. The surface is very glassy there. ‘The foliage of most trees is now not only most dense, but a very dark green, — the swamp white oak, clethra, etc. The Salia Pur- shiana is remarkable for its fine and narrow leaves, — feathers, — of a very light or yellowish green, as if finely cut, against the dark green of other trees, yet not drooping or curved downward, but remarkably concealing its stems. Some silky cornel leaves are reddish next water. Very many leaves on hills are crisped and curled with drought. Black cherry ripe. The meadow-hay is sprinkled here and there on the river. On Annursnack I scare up many turtle doves from the stubble. Hear a supper horn — J. Smith's? —far away, blown with a long-drawn blast, which sounds like a strain of an eolian harp. The distance has thus refined it. I see some slight dun clouds in the east horizon, — perhaps the smoke from burning meadows.

Wednesday. — 'To Boston. “Walden ” published. Elder-berries. Waxwork yel- lowing.

4.30 a. mM. — To Cliffs. A high fog. As I go along the railroad, I observe the darker green of early-mown fields. A cool wind at this hour over the wet foliage, as from over moun- tain-tops and uninhabited earth. The large primrose conspicuously in bloom. Does it shut by day? The woods are comparatively still at this season. I hear only the faint peeping of some robins (a few song sparrows on my way), a wood pewee, kingbird, crows, before five, or before reaching the Springs. Then a chewink or two, a cuckoo, jay, and later, re- turning, the link of the bobolink and the goldfinch. That is a peculiar and distinct hollow sound made by the pigeon woodpecker’s wings, as it flies past near you. The Aralia nudicaulis is another plant which for some time, and perhaps more generally than any, yellows the forest floor with its early fall, or turning, as soon as its berries have ripened, along with hellebore, skunk-cabbage, convallarias, etc. Ambrosia. At length, as I return along the back road, at 6.30, the sun begins to eat through the fog. | The tinkling notes of goldfinches and bobolinks which we hear nowadays are of one character and peculiar to the season. They are not voluminous flowers, but rather nuts, of sound, —ripened seeds of sound. It is the tinkling of ripened grains in Nature’s basket. It is like the sparkle on water, —a sound produced by friction on the crisped air. For a day or two I have inclined to wear a thicker, or fall, coat. P. M. — Clematis Brook via Conantum. A cloudy afternoon and rather cool, but not threaten- ing rain soon. Dangle-berries ripe how long? — one of the handsomest berries. On the southwest side of Conant’s Orchard Grove, saw from twenty rods off some patches of purple grass,' which painted a stripe of hillside next the woods for half a dozen rods in length. It was as high-colored and interesting, though not so bright, as the patches of rhexia. On examination I found it to be a kind of grass a little less than a foot high, with but few green blades and a fine spreading purple top in seed; but close at hand it was but a dull purple and made but little impression on the eye, was even difficult to detect where thin. But, viewed in a favorable light fifteen rods off, it was of a fine lively purple color, enriching the earth very much. It was the more surprising be- cause grass Is commonly of a sombre and humble color. { was charmed to see the grass assume such a rich color and become thus flower-like. Though a darker purple, its effect was similar to that of the rhexia.’ Hardly any dog-days yet. The air is quite clear now. Aster macrophyllus near beaked hazel by roadside, some time. That sort of sweet-william (?) pink, with viscidness below the joints, but not pubescent, against the Minott house; how long?

P. M.— To Assabet Bath. I have heard since the Ist of this month the steady creaking cricket. Some are digging early potatoes. I notice a new growth of red maple sprouts, small red- dish leaves surmounting light-green ones, the old being dark-green. Green lice on birches. Aster Tradescantt, two or three days in low ground; flowers smaller than A. dumosus, densely racemed, with short peduncles or branchlets, calyx-scales narrower and more pointed. Ammannia humilis (?) (a new plant), perhaps three weeks at northeast end of Wheeler’s brush fence meadow, like an erect isnardia, 2. e. Iudwigia palustris, with small wrinkled yellowish petals with a purplish vein.

Saturday. Watermelon. P. M. — To Conantum by boat. Methinks I heard a few toads till about the middle of July. To-day there is an uncommonly strong wind, against which I row, yet in shirt-sleeves, trusting to sail back. It is southwest. I see twelve painted tor- toises on a rail only five feet long, and perhaps some were scared off before I observed them. The Bidens Beckii yellows the side of the river just below the Hubbard Path, but is hardly yet in fullest flower generally. I see goldfinches nowadays on the lanceo- late thistles, apparently after the seeds. It takes all the heat of the year to produce these yellow flowers. It is the 3 o’clock p. m. of the year when they begin to prevail, — when the earth has absorbed most heat, when melons ripen and early apples and peaches. The cranberry cheeks begin to redden. Viburnum dentatum berries. Hazelnut husks now have a reddish edge, being ripe. Is not this a sign? It is already the yellowing year. Viburnum nudum berries generally green, but some, higher and more exposed, of a deep, fiery pink on one cheek and light green on the other, and a very few dark purple or without bloom, black already. I put a bunch with only two or three black ones in my hat, the rest pink or green. When I got home more than half were turned black,—and ripe!! A singularly sudden chemical change. Another cluster which had no black ones was a third part turned. It is surpris- ing how very suddenly they turn from this deep pink to a very dark purple or black, when the wine which they contain is mature. They are a very pretty, irregu- larly elliptical berry, one side longer than the other, and particularly interesting on account of the mixture of light-green, deep-pink, and dark-purple, and also withered berries, in the same cyme.

First marked dog-day; sultry and with misty clouds. For ten days or so we have had compara- tively cool, fall-like weather. I remember only with a pang the past spring and summer thus far. I have not been an early riser. So- ciety seems to have invaded and overrun me. I have drank tea and coffee and made myself cheap and vulgar. My days have been all noontides, without sacred mornings and evenings. I desire to mise early henceforth, to associate with those whose influence is elevating, to have such dreams and waking thoughts that my diet may not be indifferent to me. P. M. — To Bare Hill, Lincoln, via railroad. I have not chanced to hear the bullfrogs trump much, if any, since the middle of July. This is a quite hot day again, after cooler weather. A few small red maples about * blush now a dull red. For about a month I think I have particularly noticed the light under sides of leaves, especially maples. I see small flocks of grass-birds, etc. In Macintosh’s field (pasture), § Pond? [This, written in pencil, evidently at a later date, seems to indicate that at the time he inserted it he had forgotten just where the trees were.] some dwarf acalypha some time out. The erechthites down begins to fly. Some of these plants are six feet high. I see where the pasture thistles have apparently been picked to pieces (for their seeds? by the gold- finch ?), and the seedless down strews the ground. Huckleberries begin to be wormy, but are still sound on Bare Hill. Now the mountains are concealed by the dog-day haze, and the view is of dark ridges of for- est, one behind the other, separated by misty valleys. Squirrels have begun to eat hazelnuts, and I see their dry husks on the ground turned reddish-brown. The change, decay, and fall of the brakes in woods, etc., is perhaps more autumnal than any sight. They make more show than the aralia. Some are quite brown and shrivelled, others yellow, others yellow and brown, others yellow, brown, and green, making a very rich and parti-colored or checkered work, as of plaited straw, — bead or straw work or ivory; others are stil] green with brown spots. In respect to these and many other plants of this size and habit, it is already fall. They stand yellow and yellowing all through the woods, — none perhaps so conspicuous as the brake. At Thrush Alley, was surprised to behold how many birch leaves had turned yellow,— every other one, — while clear, fresh, leather-colored ones strewed the ground with a pretty thick bed under each tree. So far as the birches go it is a perfect autumnal scene there.