in Thoreau’s Journal:

I should like to ask the assessors what is the value of that blue mountain range in the northwest horizon to Concord, and see if they would laugh or seriously set about calculating it. How poor, comparatively, should we be without it ! It would be descending to the scale of the merchant to say it is worth its weight in gold. The privilege of beholding it, as an ornament, a suggestion, a provocation, a heaven on earth. If I were one of the 5 fathers of the town I would not sell this right which we now enjoy for all the merely material wealth and prosperity conceivable. If need were, we would rather all go down together.

July 27, 2019 on Eagle Cliff, Sandwich, New Hampshire

in Thoreau’s Journal:

By my intimacy with nature I find myself withdrawn from man. My interest in the sun and the moon, in the morning and the evening, compels me to solitude.

Photo: July 26, 2016 on the Guinea Pond Trail, White Mountain National Forest, Sandwich, New Hampshire

in Thoreau’s Journal:

This morning is all the more glorious for a white fog, which, though not universal, is still very extensive over all lowlands, some fifty feet high or more, though there was none at ten last night. There are white cobwebs on the grass. The battalions of the fog are continually on the move.

Photo: July 25, 2019 at Chicks Corner, Sandwich, NH

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The mind is subject to moods, as the shadows of the clouds that pass over the earth. Pay not too much heed to them. Let not the traveller stop for them. They consist with the fairest weather. By the mood of my mind, I suddenly felt dissuaded from continuing my walk, but I observed at the same instant that the shadow of a cloud was passing over [the] spot on which I stood, though it was of small extent, which, if it had no connection with my mood, at any rate suggested how transient and little to be regarded that mood was. I kept on, and in a moment the sun shone on my walk within and without.

Photo: July 23, 2015: Looking west from Mt. Israel, Sandwich, New Hampshire

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Yesterday having been a rainy day, the air is now remarkably clear and cool and you rarely see the horizon so distinct. The surface of the earth, especially looking westward, —grass grounds, pastures, and meadows, — is remarkably beautiful. I stand in Heywood’s pasture… leaning over the wall, look westward. All things — grass, etc. — are peculiarly fresh this season on account of the copious rains.

Photo: July 22, 2017 at Chicks Corner, Sandwich, NH

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The deliberate pace of a thinker never made a road the worse for travelling on.

There I have freedom in my thought, and in my soul am free.

Photo: July 21, 2019 on Smithville Road, Sandwich, New Hampshire

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The gentle susurrus from the leaves of the trees on shore is very enlivening, as if Nature were freshening, awakening to some enterprise. There is but little wind, but its sound, incessantly stirring the leaves at a little distance along the shore, heard not seen, is very inspiriting. It is like an everlasting dawn or awakening of nature to some great purpose.

Photo: July 20, 2017 at Dinsmore Pond, Sandwich, New Hampshire

in Thoreau’s Journal:

My greatest skill has been to want but little….

Photo: July 19, 2019 at Chicks Corner, Sandwich, NH

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Methinks the asters and goldenrods begin, like the early ripening leaves, with midsummer heats. Now look out for these children of the sun, when already the fall of some of the very earliest spring flowers has commenced.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I go to observe the lilies….The pontederia is in its prime alive with butterflies yellow & others––I see its tall blue spikes reflected beneath the edge of the pads on each side––pointing down to a heaven beneath as well as above–

Photo: July 17, 2013 at Chicks Corner, Sandwich, NH

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The milkweeds, or silkweeds, are rich flowers, now in blossom. The Asclepias syriaca, or common milkweed; its buds fly open at a touch. But handsomer much is Asclepias pulchra, or water silkweed. The thin green bark of this last, and indeed of the other, is so strong that a man cannot break a small strip of it by pulling. It contains a mass of fine silken fibres, arranged side by side like the strings of a fiddle-bow, and may be bent short without weakening it.

Photo: July 16, 2016 at Chicks Corner, Sandwich, NH

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Again I am attracted by the Clam shell reach of the river running E & W—as seen from Hubbard’s fields—now beginning to be smoothed as in the fall— First next the meadows is the broad dark green rank of pickerel weeds &c &c (Polygonum &c) then the light reflecting edging of pads—& then the smooth still cloud reflecting water.  My thoughts are driven inward—even as clouds and trees are reflected in the still smooth water— There is an inwardness even in the mosquitoes hum—while I am picking blueberries in the dank wood.

Photo: July 15, 2018 at Chicks Corner, Sandwich, NH

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Awake to a day of gentle rain––very much needed—none to speak of for nearly a month methinks. The cooler & stiller day has a valuable effect on my spirits….It holds up from time & then a fine misty rain falls. It lies on the fine reddish tops of some grasses thick & whitish like morning cobwebs. The stillness is very soothing. This is a summer rain. The earth is being bedewed. There is no storm or violence to it.  Health is a sound relation to nature.

July 14, 2019 at Chicks Corner, Sandwich, NH

in Thoreau’s Journal:

One who walks the woods and hills daily, expecting to see the first berry that turns, will be surprised at last to find them ripe and thick before he is aware of it, ripened, he cannot tell how long before, in some more favorable situation. It is impossible to say what day—almost what week––the huckleberries begin to be ripe, unless you are acquainted with, and daily visit, every huckleberry bush in the town, at least every place where they grow.

Photo: July 13, 2019 near Beede Falls, Sandwich, NH

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Red lilies in prime, single upright fiery flowers, their throats how splendidly and variously spotted, hardly two of quite the same hue and not two spotted alike––leopard-spotted––averaging a foot or more in height amid the huckleberry and lamb kill, etc, in the moist, meadowy pasture.

Photo: July 12, 2016 along Millbridge Road, Sandwich, NH

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The large orange lily with sword-shaped leaves, strayed from cultivation, by the roadside beyond the stone bridge.

Photo: July 11, 2020 at Chicks Corner, Sandwich, New Hampshire

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The berries of the Vaccinium vacillans are very abundant and large this year on Fair Haven, where I am now. Indeed these and huckleberries and blackberries are very abundant in this part of the town.

Photo: July 10, 2008 along the Beebe River, Sandwich, NH

Nature does her best to feed man. The traveller need not go out of the road to get as many as he wants; every bush and vine teems with palatable fruit. Man for once stands in such relation to Nature as the animals that pluck and eat as they go. The fields and hills are a table constantly spread.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

“The flower opens, and lo! another year.” [ancient Chinese saying]

There is something sublime in the fact that some of the oldest written sentences should thus celebrate the coming in of spring. How many times have the flowers opened and a new year begun! Hardly a more cheering sentence could have come down to us. How old is spring, a phenomenon still so fresh! Do we perceive any decay in Nature? How much evidence is contained in this short and simple sentence respecting the former inhabitants of this globe! It is a sentence to be inscribed on vessels of porcelain, suggesting that so many years had gone before, in observation as fit then as now.

Photo: July 9, 2015 on the forest service road to Lower Hall Pond, Sandwich, New Hampshire

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The loudest sound that burdens here the breeze

Is the wood’s whisper; ’t is, when we choose to list,

Audible sound, and when we list not,

It is calm profound. Tongues were provided

But to vex the ear with superficial thoughts.

When deeper thoughts upswell, the jarring discord

Of harsh speech is hushed, and senses seem

As little as may be to share the ecstasy.

Photo: July 8, 2018 on Millbridge Rd, Sandwich, NH