in Thoreau’s Journal:

….It is very pleasant to measure the progress of the seasons by this [the blossoming of vervain] & similar clocks— So you get not the absolute time but the true time of the season. 

But I can measure the progress of the seasons only by observing a particular plant, for I notice that they are by no means equally advanced. 

in Thoreau’s Journal:

This day, too, has that autumnal character. I am struck by the clearness and stillness of the air, the brightness of the landscape, or, as it were, the reflection of light from the washed earth, the darkness and heaviness of the shade, as I look now up the river at the white maples and bushes, and the smoothness of the stream. If they are between you and the sun, the trees are more black than green. It must be owing to the clearness of the air since the rains, together with the multiplication of the leaves, whose effect has not been perceived during the mists of the dog-days.

But I cannot account for this peculiar smoothness of the dimpled stream – unless the air is stiller than before – nor for the peculiar brightness of the sun’s reflection from its surface. I stand on the south bank, opposite the black willows, looking up the full stream, which, with a smooth, almost oily and sheeny surface, comes welling and dimpling onward, peculiarly smooth and bright now at 4 P. M., while the numerous trees seen up the stream – white maples, oaks, etc. – and the bushes look absolutely black in the clear, bright light.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

As toward the evening of the day the lakes and streams are smooth, so in the fall, the evening of the year, the waters are smoothed more perfectly than at any other season. The day is an epitome of the year.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I sailed on the North River last night with my flute, and my music was a tinkling stream which meandered with the river, and fell from note to note as a brook from rock to rock. I did not hear the strains after they had issued from the flute, but before they were breathed into it, for the original strain precedes the sound by as much as the echo follows after, and the rest is the perquisite of the rocks and trees and beasts.

Unpremeditated music is the true gauge which measures the current of our thoughts, the very undertow of our life’s stream.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Ah, the very brooks seem fuller of reflections than they were! Ah, such provoking sibylline sentences they are! The shallowest is all at once unfathomable. How can that depth be fathomed where a man may see himself reflected? The rill I stopped to drink at I drink in more than I expected. I satisfy and still provoke the thirst of thirsts.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

These are locust days. I hear them on the elms in the street—but cannot tell where they are—loud is their song—drowning many others—but men appear not to distinguish it—though it pervade their ears as the dust their eyes.

The river was exceedingly fair this afternoon—and there are few handsomer reaches than that by the leaning oak—the deep place, where the willows make a perfect shore…

I must look for the Rudbeckia which Bradford says he found yesterday behind Joe Clarks.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Elder berry ripe.  The river was lowest early in July. Some time past I have noticed meadow-grass floating on the river, reminding me that they were getting the hay up the stream. Some naked viburnum berries are quite dark purple amid the red, while other bunches are wholly green yet. The red choke-berry is small and green still. I plainly distinguish it, also, by its woolly under side. In E. Hubbard’s swamp I gather some large and juicy and agreeable rum cherries. The birds make much account of them. They are much finer than the small ones on large trees; quite a good fruit. Some cranberries turned red on one cheek along the edges of the meadows.

Now a sudden gust of wind blows from the northwest, cooled by a storm there, blowing the dust from roads far over the fields. The whole air, indeed, is suddenly filled with dust, and the outlines of the clouds are concealed. But it proves only the wind of the fall, which apparently passes north of us. That clear ring like an alder locust (is it a cricket ?) for some time past is a sound which belongs to the season,   —autumnal.  Here is a second crop of clover almost as red as the first. The swamp blackberry begins. Saw a blue heron on the meadow. Aster amplexicaulis of Bigelow, apparently; probably for a day or two. An orchis by the brook under the Cliffs with only three white flowers, only smaller than the fringed white; spurs half an inch long. May it be another species?

in Thoreau’s Journal:

How long we may have gazed on a particular scenery and think that we have seen and known it,

when, at length, some bird or quadruped comes and takes possession of it before our eyes, and imparts to it a wholly new character.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I have been in the swamp by Charles Miles’s this afternoon, and found it so bosky and sylvan that Art would never have freedom or courage to imitate it. It can never match the luxury and superfluity of Nature….

Surely no stinted hand has been at work here for these centuries to produce these particular tints this summer. 

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Some fiat has gone forth & stilled the ripples of the lake—each sound & sight has acquired ineffable beauty.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The trillium fruit––(varnished & stained cherry wood) now ripe.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

How fatally the season is advanced toward the fall!  I am not surprised now to see the small rough sunflower –– There is much yellow beside now in the fields. How beautiful now the early golden rods––  S. stricta rising above the wiry grass of the Great Fields in front of Peters where I sit (which is not worth cutting) not solid yellow like the sunflower––but little pyramidal or sheaf like golden clouds or mists supported by almost invisible leafy columns––which wave in the wind––like this elms which run up very tall & slender without a branch & fall over like a sheaf on every side.

They give a very indefinite but rich mellow & golden aspect to the fields–– They are the agreeable for the indistinctness of their outline these pillars of fire, clouds which glow only on one side.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

This is a day of sunny water. As I walk along the bank of the river I look down a rod & see distinctly 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 & stand along some river or brook—like myself.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

….Still autumnal–breezy with a cool vein in the wind––so that passing from the cool & breezy into the sunny & 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 pin-weed field. It is just cool enough––in my thin clothes–– There is a light on the earth & 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––& I pass with pleasure over sheltered & sunny portions of the sand where the summers heat is undiminished––& I realize what a friend I am losing….This off side of summer glistens like a burnished shield. The waters now are some degrees cooler––winds show the undersides of the leaves––  The cool nocturnal creak of the crickets is heard in the mid-afternoon–– Tansy is ap. now in its prime & the early golden-rods have acquired a brighter yellow––

in Thoreau’s Journal:

We pass haymakers in every meadow who may think we are idlers. But Nature takes care that every nook and crevice is explored by someone. While they look after the open meadows we farm the tract between the river banks and behold the shores from that side.

We too are harvesting an annual crop with our eyes, and think you Nature is not glad to display her beauty to us?

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The question is not what you look at, but what you see.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

This is such fresh and flowing weather, as if the waves of the morning had subsided over the day.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

As I wade through the middle of the meadows in sedge up to my middle and look afar over the waving and rustling bent tops of the sedge (all are bent northeast by the southwest wind) toward the distant mainland, I feel a little as if caught by a rising tide on flats far from the shore. I am, as it were, cast away in the midst of the sea. It is a level sea of waving and rustling sedge about me. The grassy sea. You feel somewhat as you would if you were standing in water at an equal distance from the shore. To-day I can walk dry over the greater part of the meadows, but not over the lower parts, where pipes, etc., grow; yet many think it has not been so dry for ten years!