Thoreau writes in his journal on 13 June:
Walked to Walden last night (moon not quite full) by railroad and upland wood-path, returning by Wayland road . . . A few fireflies in the meadow. Do they shine, though invisibly, by day? Is their candle lighted by day? It is not nightfall till the whip-poorwills begin to sing.
As I entered the Deep Cut, I was affected by beholding the first faint reflection of genuine and unmixed moonlight on the eastern sand-bank while the horizon, yet red with day, was tingeing the western side.