in Thoreau’s Journal:

Would it not be well to describe some of those rough—all day walks across lots….

—-Picking our way over quaking meadows & swamps —& occasionally slipping into the muddy batter mid-leg deep—-jumping or fording ditches & brooks—forcing our way through dense blueberry swamps—-where there is water beneath & bushes above—then brushing through extensive birch forests all covered with green lice—which cover our clothes & face—then under larger wood relieved, more open beneath—-steering for some more conspicuous trunk Now along a rocky hill side where the sweet fern grows for a mile—then over a recent cutting—finding our uncertain footing on the cracking tops & trimmings of trees left by the choppers— Now taking a step or 2 of smooth walking across a high way— Now through a dense pine wood descending—into a rank dry swamp where the cinnamon fern rises above your head—with isles of poison dog wood— Now up a scraggy hill—covered with shrub oak—stooping & winding ones way—for half a mile—tearing ones clothes in many places & putting out ones eyes—& find at last that it has no bare brow but another slope of the same character— Now through a corn field diagonally with the rows—now coming upon the hidden melon patch seeing the back-side of familiar hills & not knowing them. The nearest house to home which you do not know—seeming further off—than the farthest which you do know— In the spring defiled with the froth on various bushes, &c &c &c— Now reaching on higher land some open—pigeon place—a breathing place for us.

Photo: August 27, 2010 at Whiteface Intervale, Sandwich, New Hampshire

in Thoreau’s Journal:

June. July. August. The tortoise eggs are hatching beneath the surface in the sandy fields. You tell of active labors, of works of art and wars this past summer; meanwhile tortoise eggs underlie this turmoil. What events have transpired on the lit and airy surface three inches above them! …. Think what is a summer to them! How many worthy men have died and had their funeral services preached since I saw the mother turtle bury her eggs here. They contained an undeveloped liquid then, they are now turtles. June, July, August the livelong summer what are they with their heats and fevers but sufficient to hatch a turtle in. Be not in haste; mind your private affairs. Consider the turtle. A whole summer June, July, August is not too good nor too much to hatch a turtle in. Perhaps you have worried yourself, despaired of the world, meditated the end of life and all things seem rushing to destruction, but nature has steadily and serenely advanced with a turtle’s pace…French empires rise or fall but the turtle is only developed so fast… So is the turtle developed, fitted to endure, for he outlives twenty French dynasties. One turtle knows several Napoleans. They have seen no berries, had no cares, yet the great world existed for them, as much for you.

Photo: August 26, 2011 on a forest service road, WMNF, Sandwich, NH

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Yesterday was a hot day, but oh, this dull, cloudy, breezy, thoughtful weather in which the creak of the cricket sounds louder, preparatory to a cheerful storm!

How grateful to our feelings is the approach of autumn! We have had no serious storm since spring. What a salad to my spirits is this cooler, darker day!

August 25, 2011 at Kusumpe Pond, Sandwich, NH

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Elder berries are ripe.

Photo: August 24, 2018, along Great Rock Road, Sandwich, New Hampshire

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The Solidago nemoralis [gray goldenrod] now yellows the dry fields with its recurved standard a little more than a foot high, marching to the Holy Land, a countless host of crusaders. That field in the woods near Well Meadow, where I once thought of squatting, is full of them.

Photo: August 23, 2020 at Chicks Corner, Sandwich, NH

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The elder bushes are weighed down with fruit partially turned, and are still in bloom at the extremities of their twigs….Perhaps fruits are colored like the trillium berry & the scarlet thorn to attract birds to them…..The panicled cornel berries now white.

Photo: August 22, 2004 on the Sandwich Notch Road, Sandwich, NH

in Thoreau’s Journal:

There is some advantage, intellectually and spiritually, in taking wide views with the bodily eye and not pursing an occupation which holds the body prone. There is some advantage, perhaps, in attending to the general features of the landscape over studying the particular plants and animals which inhabit it. A man may walk abroad and no more see the sky than if he walked under a shed. The poet is more in the air than the naturalist, though they may walk side by side. Granted that you are out-of-doors; but what if the outer door is open, if the inner door is shut! You must walk perfectly free, not prying nor inquisitive, not bent upon seeing things. Throw away a whole day for a single expansion, a single inspiration of air.

Photo: August 21, 2019 at Chicks Corner, Sandwich, New Hampshire

August 20, 1858 in Thoreau’s Journal:

P. M. – To Poplar Hill & the Great Fields.

It is still cool weather with a NW wind—  There is more shadow in the landscape than a week ago—methinks—& the creak of the cricket sounds cool & steady.  The grass & foliage—and landscape generally are of a more thought inspiring color—  —suggest what some perchance would call a pleasing melancholy—  In some meadows, as I look southwesterly the aftermath looks a bright yellowish-green—in patches— Both willows & poplars have leaves of a light-color at least beneath—contrasting with most other trees—This weather is a preface to autumn.

Photo: August 20, 2012 at Chicks Corner, Sandwich, New Hampshire

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Photo: August 19, 2023 at Chicks Corner, Sandwich, NH

For some days past I have noticed a “red” maple or two about the pond, though we have had no frost. The grass is very wet with dew this morning.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Elizabeth Hoar shows me the following plants which she brought from the Wht Mts the 16th ult. Chiogenes hispidula creeping snow-berry also called Gaultheria & also vaccinium hispidula–in fruit. –– with a partridge berry scent & taste.

Photo: August 18, 2013 on Mt. Israel, Sandwich, New Hampshire

August 17, 1851 in Thoreau’s Journal:

My heart leaps into my mouth at the sound of the wind in the woods. I, whose life was but yesterday so desultory and shallow, suddenly recover my spirits, my spirituality, through my hearing. For joy I could embrace the earth…

Photo: August 17, 2016 at Dinsmore Pond, Sandwich, NH

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I am surprised to find that whereof late years there have been so many cardinal-flowers, there are now very few. So much does a plant fluctuate from season to season.

Photo: August 16, 2017 on Montgomery Brook, Sandwich, NH

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The button bush is now nearly altogether out of bloom––so that it is too late to see the rivers brink in its perfection–– It must be seen between the blooming of the mikania & the going out of bloom of the button bush––Before you feel this sense of lateness in the year––before the meadows are shorn––and the grass of hills & pastures is thus withered & russet––

Photo: August 15, 2019 at Chicks Corner, Sandwich, NH

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I notice now that saw-like grass seed where the mowers have done. The swamp blackberries are quite small and rather acid. Though yesterday was quite a hot day, I find by bathing that the river grows steadily cooler, as yet for a fortnight, though we have had no rain here.

Photo: August 14, 2017 at Chicks Corner, Sandwich, NH

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I remember only with a pang the past spring and summer thus far. I have not been an early riser. Society 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 rise 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.

Photo: August 13, 2019 at Chicks Corner, Sandwich, New Hampshire

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Hear the wood thrush still.

I go across lots like a hunting dog. With what tireless energy and abandonment they dash through the brush and up the sides of hills ! I meet two white foxhounds, led by an old red one. How full of it they are! How their tails work ! They are not tied to paths; they burst forth from the thickest shrub oak lot, and immediately dive into another as the fox did.

There are more varieties of blackberries between the low and the high than I take notice of. Vide that kind in the Well Meadow Field.

The fine (early sedge?) grass in the frosty hollows about Walden (where no bushes have sprung up) looks like an unkempt head.

Vernonia, how long?

Photo: August 10, 2019 at Chicks Corner, Sandwich, NH

in Thoreau’s Journal:

…history fluctuates as the face of the landscape from morning to evening. What is of moment in it is its hue and color. Time hides no treasures; we want not its then, but its now.

Photo: August 9, 2015 on the Sandwich Notch Road, White Mountain National Forest, Sandwich, New Hampshire

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The air is warmer than the rocks now. It is perfectly warm & I am tempted to stay out all night & observe each phenomenon of the night until day dawns. But if I should do so, I should not wonder if the town were raised to hunt me up. Sitting on the door step of Conant–house–at 9 o clock I hear a pear drop–how few of all the apples that fall do we hear fall.

I could lie out here on this pinnacle rock all night without cold–I hear a horse sneeze? from time to time in his pasture–He sees me & knows me to be a man–though I do not see him.

To lie here on your back with nothing between your eye & the stars–nothing but space–they your nearest neighbors on that side–be they strange or be they tame–be they other worlds or merely ornaments to this–Who could ever go to sleep under these circumstances.

I hear the 9 o’clock bell ringing in Bedford–an unexpectedly musical sound that of a bell in the horizon always is–Pleasantly sounds the voice of one village to another. It is sweet as it is rare. Since I sat here a bright star has gone behind the stem of a tree–proving that my machine is moving–I hear a solitary whippoorwill–& a bull frog on the river fewer sounds than in spring.

Photo: August 8, 2019 at Chicks Corner, Sandwich, NH