June 10, 1853

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Another great fog this morning. 

P. M. — To Mason’s pasture in Carlisle— Haying commencing in front yards. 

Cool but agreeable easterly wind. Streets now beautiful with verdure and shade of elms—under which you look, through an air clear for summer, to the woods in the horizon—  By the way, I amused myself yesterday Pm with looking from my window, through a spyglass, at the tops of the woods in the horizon—  It was pleasant to bring them so near and individualize the trees—to examine in detail the tree tops which before you had beheld only in the mass as the woods in the horizon— It was an exceedingly rich border, seen thus against—and the imperfections in a particular tree top more than two miles off were quite apparent— I could easily have seen a hawk sailing over the top of the wood, and possibly his nest in some higher tree— Thus to contemplate from my attic in the village, the hawks circling about their nests above some dense forest or swamp miles away—almost as if they were flies on my own premises. I actually distinguished a taller white pine with which I am well acquainted—with a double top rising high above the surrounding woods—between 2 & 3 miles distant—which with the naked eye, I had confounded with the nearer woods.—