23 August 1858 – 29 August 1858

Cooler than ever. Some must have fires, and I close my window. P. M. — Britton’s camp via Hubbard’s Close. The rhexia in the field west of Clintonia Swamp makes a great show now, though a little past prime. I go through the swamp, wading through the luxuriant cinnamon fern, which has complete possession of the swamp floor. Its great fronds, curving this way and that, remind me [of] a tropical vegetation. They are as high as my head and about a foot wide; may stand higher than my head without being stretched out. They grow in tufts of a dozen, so close that their fronds inter- lace and form one green waving mass. There in the swamp cellar under the maples. A forest of maples rises from a forest of ferns. My clothes are covered with the pale-brown wool which I have rubbed off their stems.? See an abundance of pine-sap on the right of Pine- sap Path. It is almost all erect, some eight to nine inches high, and all effete there. Some stems are red- dish. It lifts the leaves with it like the Indian-pipe, but is not so delicate as that. The Indian-pipe is still push- ing up. Everywhere in woods and swamps [ am already re- minded of the fall. I see the spotted sarsaparilla leaves and brakes, and, in swamps, the withering and black- ened skunk-cabbage and hellebore, and, by the river, the already blackening pontederias and pipes. There is no plateau on which Nature rests at midsummer, but she instantly commences the descent to winter. I see a golden-crowned thrush, but it is silent except a chip; sitting low on a twig near the main stem of a tree, in these deep woods. High blackberries now in their prime, their great ra- cemes of shining black fruit, mixed with red and green, bent over amid the sweet-fern and sumach on sunny hill- sides, or growing more rankly with larger fruit by rich roadsides and in lower ground. The chewink note of a chewink (not common), also a cuckoo’s note. Smooth sumach berries all turned crimson. This fruit is now erect spear-heads, rising from the ample dark-green, unspotted leaves, pointing in various direc- tions. I see dense patches of the pearly everlasting, maintaining their ground in the midst of dense green sweet-fern, a striking contrast of snow-white and green. Viburnum nudum berries, apparently but a day or two. Epilobium angustijolium is abundantly shedding its downy seed, — wands of white and pink. Emerson says that he and Agassiz and Company broke some dozens of ale-bottles, one after another, with their bullets, in the Adirondack country, using them for marks! It sounds rather Cockneyish. He says that he shot a peetweet for Agassiz, and this, I think he said, was the first game he ever bagged. He carried a double-bar- relled gun, — rifle and shotgun, — which he bought for the purpose, which he says received much commenda- tion, — all parties thought it a very pretty piece. Think of Emerson shooting a peetweet (with shot) for Agassiz, and cracking an ale-bottle (after emptying it) with his rifle at six rods! ‘They cut several pounds of lead out of the tree. It is just what Mike Saunders, the merchant’s clerk, did when he was there. The writer needs the suggestion and correction that a correspondent or companion is. I sometimes remember something which I have told another as worth telling to myself, 2. e. writing in my Journal. Channing, thinking of walks and life in the country, says, ““ You don’t want to discover anything new, but to discover something old,’ 27. e. be reminded that such things still are.

Edward Hoar brings Cassia Chamecrista from Greenport, L. I., which must have been out a good while. P. M. — Sail to Ball’s (?) Hull. It is a strong but fitful northwest wind, stronger than before. Under my new sail, the boat dashes off like a horse with the bits in his teeth. Coming into the main stream below the island, a sudden flaw strikes me, and in my efforts to keep the channel I run one side under, and so am compelled to beach my boat there and bail it. They are haying still in the Great Meadows; indeed, not half the grass is cut, I think. I am flattered because my stub sail frightens a hay- makers’ horse tied under a maple while his masters are loading. His nostrils dilate; he snorts and tries to break loose. He eyes with terror this white wind steed. No wonder he is alarmed at my introducing such a competi- tor into the river meadows. Yet, large as my sail is, it being low I can scud down for miles through the very meadows in which dozens of haymakers are at work, and they may not detect me. The zizania is the greater part out of bloom; 2. e., the yellowish-anthered (?) stamens are gone; the wind has blown them away. The Bidens Beck has only begun a few days, it being rather high water. No hibiscus yet. The white maples in a winding row along the river and the meadow’s edge are rounded hoary-white masses, as if they showed only the under sides of their leaves. Those which have been changed by water are less bright than a week ago. They now from this point (Abner But- trick’s shore) are a pale lake, mingling very agreeably with the taller hoary-white ones. This little color in the hoary meadow edging is very exhilarating to behold and the most memorable phenomenon of the day. It is as when quarters of peach of this color are boiled with white apple-quarters. Is this anything like murrey color? In some other lights it is more red or scarlet. Climbing the hill at the bend, I find Gerardia Pedicu- laria, apparently several days, or how long?

It has been cool and especially windy from the northwest since the 19th, inclusive, but is stiller now. The note of a warbling vireo sounds very rare. P. M. — To Lupine Hill and beyond. I see a mouse on the dry hillside this side of Clam- shell. It is evidently the short-tailed meadow mouse, or Arvicola hirsuta. Generally above, it is very dark brown, almost blackish, being browner forward. It is also dark beneath. Tail but little more than one inch long. Its legs must be very short, for I can hardly glimpse them. Its nose is not sharp. It endeavors to escape down the hill to the meadow, and at first glides along in a sort of path (?), methinks. It glides close to the ground under the stubble and tries to conceal itself. I gather from Nut Meadow Brook, not far below the road, a potamogeton (perhaps P. Claytoni (heterophyl- lus of Gray), which Russell said was the one by road at Jenny Dugan’s). It is still out. Has handsome broad, grassy immersed leaves and somewhat elliptic floating ones.

P. M. — To Great Meadows. The Solidago arguta is apparently in its prime. Hips of moss rose not long scarlet. The Juncus effusus, a long [time] withered (the upper part). The liatris is about (or nearly) in prime. Aster levis, how long? Two interesting tall purplish grasses appear to be the prevailing ones now in dry and sterile neglected fields and hillsides, — Andropogon jfurcatus, forked beard grass, and apparently Andropogon scopa- rius,” purple wood grass, though the last appears to have three awns like an Aristida. The first is a very tall and slender-culmed grass, with four or five purple finger-like spikes, raying upward from the top. It is very abundant on the hillside behind Peter’s. The other is also quite slender, two to three or four feet high, growing in tufts | and somewhat curving, also commonly purple and with pretty purple stigmas | | like the last, and it has purple anthers.* { When out of bloom, its appressed spikes are re- curving and have a whitish hairy or fuzzy look.

P. M. — To Walden. Dog-day weather again to-day, of which we had had none since the 18th, — 72. e. clouds without rain. Wild carrot on railroad, apparently in prime. Hveracvwm Canadense, apparently in prime, and perhaps HZ. sca- brum. Lactuca, apparently much past prime, or nearly done. The Nabalus albus has been out some ten days, but NV. Frasert at Walden road will not open, apparently, for some days yet. I see round-leaved cornel fruit on Heywood Peak, now half China-blue and half white, each berry. Rhus Toxi- codendron there is half of it turned scarlet and yellow, as if we had had a severe drought, when it has been remarkably wet. It seems, then, that in such situations some plants will always assume this prematurely with- ered autumnal aspect. Orchis lacera, probably done some time. Robins fly in flocks. Apparently Juncus tenuis, some time out of bloom, by depot wood-piles, 7. e. between south wood-shed and good apple tree; some fifteen inches high. More at my boat’s shore.

Soaking rain last night, straight down. When the wind stirs after the rain, leaves that were pre- maturely ripe or withered begin to strew the ground on the leeward side. Especially the scarlet leaves of the cultivated cherry are seen to have fallen. Their change, then, is not owing to drought, but commonly a portion of them ripens thus early, reminding us of October and November. When, as I go to the post-office this morning, I see these bright leaves strewing the moist ground on one side of the tree and blown several rods from it into a neighboring yard, I am reminded that I have crossed the summit ridge of the year and have begun to descend the other slope. The prospect is now toward winter. These are among the first-fruits of the leafy harvest. The sharp whistling note of a downy woodpecker, which sounds rare; perhaps not heard since spring.

I hear this morning one eat i potter from a golden robin. They are now rarely seen. The ghost-horse (Spectrum) is seen nowadays, — sev- eral of them. All these high colors in the stems and leaves and other portions of plants answer to some ma- turity in us. I presume if I am the wiser for having lived this season through, such plants will emblazon the truth of my experience over the face of nature, and I shall be aware of a beauty and sweetness there. Has not the mind, too, its harvest ? Do not some scarlet leaves of thought come scatteringly down, though it may be prematurely, some which, perchance, the summer’s drought has ripened,and the rain loosened? Are there no purple reflections from the culms of thought in my mind? I remember when boiled green corn was sold piping hot on a muster-field in this town, and my father says that he remembers when it used to be carried about the streets of Boston in large baskets on the bare heads of negro women, and gentlemen would stop, buy an ear, and eat it in the street. Ah! what a voice was that hawk’s or eagle’s of the 22d! Think of hearing, as you walk the earth, as usual in leaden shoes, a fine, shrill scream from time to time, which you would vainly endeavor to refer to its true source if you had not watched the bird in its upward flight. It comes from yonder black spot on the bosom of a cloud. I should not have suspected that sound to have issued from the bosom of a cloud if I had not seen the bird. What motive can an eagle have for screaming among the clouds, unobserved by terrestrial creatures ?. We walk invested by sound, — the cricket in the grass and the eagle in the clouds. And so it circled over, and I strained my eyes to follow it, though my ears heard it without effort. Almost the very sands confess the ripening influence of the August sun, and, methinks, with the slender grasses Wwaving over them, reflect a purple tinge. The em- purpled sands. Such is the consequence of all this sun- shine absorbed into the pores of plants and of the earth. All sap or blood is wine-colored. The very bare sands, methinks, yield a purple reflection. At last we have not only the purple sea, but the purple land.'