28 August 1854 – 3 September 1854

Much cooler this morning, making us think of fire. This is gradually clearing the atmosphere, and, as it is about as dry as ever, I think that haze was not smoke; quite as dry as yesterday. P. M. — By Great Meadows and Bedford meadows to Carlisle Bridge; back by Carlisle and Concord side across lots to schoolhouse.

A cool morning with much fog, — more than yesterday. Have not had much during the warmer part of the drought, methinks. Cattle are driven down from up-country. Hear the drovers’ whoa whoa whoa or whay whay whay. Where I walked yesterday it appeared as if the whole surface of the meadow had been at one time hfted up, but prevented by shores or bushes or ice from floating off, then broken up by wind and waves, and had finally melted and sunk irregularly, near where it rose. I repeatedly stepped into the long crack-like intervals between the cakes. When our meadows are flooded in the spring and our river is changed to a sea, then the gulls, the sea birds, come up here to complete the scene. Or are ‘they merely on their way eastward ? Were not those large, and often pointed, rocks oc- casionally seen on the meadows brought there by the floating meadow, and so dropped broad end down? P. M. — To Derby Bridge neighborhood and front of Tarbell’s. It is a great pleasure to walk in this clearer atmos- phere, though cooler. How great a change, and how sudden, from that sultry and remarkably hazy atmos- ‘phere to this clear, cool autumnal one, in which all things shine, and distance is restored to us! The wind blew quite hard in the midst of that haze, but did not’ disperse it. Only this cooler weather with a steady east wind has done it. It is so cool that we are in- clined to stand round the kitchen fire a little while these mornings, though we sit and sleep with open windows still. I think that the cool air from the sea has condensed the haze, not blown it off. The grass is so dry and withered that it caught fire from the locomotive four or five days ago near the widow Hos- mer’s, and the fire ran over forty or fifty rods, threaten- ing the house, — grass which should have afforded some pasturage. The cymes of elder-berries, black with fruit, are now conspicuous.

Another great fog this morning, which lasts till 8.30. After so much dry and warm weather, cool weather has suddenly come, and this has pro- duced these two larger fogs than for a long time. Is it always so? Hear a warbling vireo faintly in the elms. P. M.— To Conantum via Clamshell Hill and meadows.

Warmer this morning and considerably hazy again. Wormwood pollen yellows my clothes commonly. Ferris in his “ Utah,” crossing the plains in ’52, says that, on Independence Rock near the Sweetwater, “at a rough guess, there must be 35,000 to 40,000” names of travellers.? . P. M. — To Lincoln. Surveying for William Peirce. He says that several large chestnuts appear to be dying near him on account of the drought. Saw a meadow said to be still on fire after three weeks; fire had burned holes one and a half feet deep; was burning along slowly at a considerable depth. P. brought me home in his wagon. Was not quite at his ease and in his element; 7. e., talked with some reserve, though well behaved, unless I approached the subject of horses. Then he spoke with a will and with authority, betraying somewhat of the jockey. He said that this dry weather was “trying to wagons; it loosened the tves,’” — if that was the word.? He did not use blinders nor a check-rein. Said a horse’s neck must ache at night which has been reined up all day. He said that the outlet of F{lint’s] Pond had not been dry before for four years, and then only two or three days; now it was a month. Notwithstanding this unprecedented drought our river, the main stream, has not been very low. It may have been kept up by the reservoirs. Walden is un- affected by the drought, and is still very high. But for the most part silent are the watercourses, when I walk in rocky swamps where a tinkling is commonly heard. At nine this evening I distinctly and strongly smell smoke, I think of burning meadows, in the air in the village. There must be more smoke in this haze than I have supposed. ‘Is not the haze a sort of smoke, the sun parching and burning the earth?

A misty morning followed by a still, cloudy, misty day, through which has fallen a very little rain this forenoon already. Now I notice a few faint chip- ping sparrows, busily picking the seeds of weeds in the garden. Are they the Savannah sparrows? They show no white in tail. Yet I see no yellow on brows. Small feathers on back, centred with black and edged with pale brown (?); inner vanes of wing-quills bay; crown without chestnut; brown dash from angle of mouth backward. Do not the sparrows now commonly begin to feed on seeds of weeds in gardens? P. M. — Along river to E. Hosmer’s. A very little mizzling. The Aster Tradescanti is perhaps beginning * to whiten the shores on moist banks. I see a fine (reddish) topped grass in low lands, whitened like a thin veil with what it has caught of this dewy rain. It wets my feet much. The Cornus sericea berries are now in prime, of dif- ferent shades of blue, lighter or darker, and bluish white. They are so abundant as to be a great oma- ment to our causeways and riverside. ‘The white- berried, too, is now in prime, but drops off. The V2- burnum dentatum berries are smaller and duller. The Viburnum Lentago are just fairly begun to have purple cheeks. Even this rain or mizzling brings down many leaves of elms and willows, etc., —the first, fo notice, since the fall of the birches which began so long ago. Saw two wild ducks go over. Another said they were large gray ducks; also that Simon Brown’s boy had got a young wild duck which came home from the river with the tame ones.

The second still, misty, mizzling and rainy day. We all lie abed late. Now many more sparrows in the yard, larger than chip-birds and showing ashy under sides as they fly. A part the same as yesterday’s. Are they Savannahs, or bay-wings, or both? I see but the slightest touch of white in the tail of any. Those clear ashy beneath are cinereous about the shoulders above. A tree sparrow too? though I do not see the spot.’ Opened one of my snapping turtle’s eggs. The young alive, but not very lively, with shell dark grayish- black; yolk as big as a hazelnut; tail curled round and is considerably longer than the shell, and slender; three ridges on back, one at edges of plates on each } Heard a faint warble from one the next afternoon at about 6 P. M. on apple trees. side of dorsal, which is very prominent. There is only the trace of a dorsal ridge in the old. Eye open.* P. M. — By boat to Purple Utricularia Shore. Still and cloudy, all shut in, but no rain. The flags are turned yellow along the river, quite an autumnal scene, with commonly a strip of green left in their centres. The sparganium not changed. The ponte- derias, half of them, are brown and crisp. Of pads, only the white lily are conspicuous. ‘The button-bushes are generally yellowing, 2. e., are of an autumnal yel- lowish green. The black willows are decidedly crisped and yellowish. The interrupted fern begins to yellow. The autumnal dandelion is conspicuous on the shore. How handsome ripe grapes with the bloom on them! This rubbed off, they show purple or black. I find some quite sweet which have ripened on a rock. They are a noble fruit to the eye. The waxwork 1s fairly yellow on all hands. Now is the time to gather it. Ivy leaves on some plants are yellow, scarlet, and dull- red, besides green.

Sunday. Fair weather and a clear atmos- phere after two days of mizzling, cloudy, and rainy weather and some smart showers at daylight and in the night. The street is washed hard and white. P. M. — With Minot Pratt into Carlisle. Woodbine berries purple. Even at this season I see some fleets of yellow butterflies in the damp road after the rain, as earlier. Pratt showed me a tobacco flower, long and tubular, slightly like a datura. In his yard appears a new variety of sweet-briar which he took out of the woods behind his house; larger bush and leaves, leaves less glandular and sticky be- neath, the principal serrations deeper and much sharper, and the whole leaf perhaps less rounded. Saw some winged ants silvering a circular space in the pasture grass about five inches in diameter, a few very large ones among them. Very thick and incessantly mov- ing, one upon another, some without wings, all running about in great excitement. It seemed the object of the winged ones to climb to the top of the grass blades, one over another, and then take to wing, which they did. In the meadow southwest of Hubbard’s Hill saw Ingenious. Playing with words, — getting the laugh, — not always simple, strong, and broad. Using current phrases and maxims, when I should speak for myself. Not always earnest. “In short,” “in fact,” “alas!” ete. Want of conciseness. Walden published, Wednesday, Aug. 9th, ’54. Sent Fields 12 copies of the Week, Oct. 18th, ’54. white Polygala sanguinea, not described. Lambkill again in Hunt Pasture. Close to the left-hand side of bridle-road, about a hundred rods south of the oak, a bayberry bush without fruit, probably a male one. It made me realize that this was only a more distant and elevated sea-beach and that we were within reach of marine influences. My thoughts suffered a sea-turn. North of the oak (four or five rods), on the left of the bridle-road in the pasture next to Mason’s, tried to find the white hardhack still out, but it was too late. Found the mountain laurel out again, one flower, close sessile on end of this year’s shoot. ‘There were numerous blossom-buds expanding, and they may possibly open this fall. Running over the laurel an amphicarpza in bloom, some pods nearly an inch long, out probably a week, or ten days at most. Epilobium molle, linear, still in flower in the spruce swamp, near my path. A white hardhack out of bloom by a pile of stones (on which I put another) in Robbins’s field, and a little south of it a clump of red huckleber- ries.