Thoreau writes in his journal:
Set out at 3 P. M. for Nine-Acre Corner Bridge via Hubbard’s Bridge and Conantum, returning via Dashing Brook, rear of Baker’s, and railroad at 6.30 P.M. . . . I see a farmer cradling his rye, John Potter . . . The color of the cows on Fair Haven Hill, how fair a contrast to the hillside! . . . Now, at 4 P.M., I hear the pewee in the woods, and the cuckoo reminds me of some silence among the birds I had not noticed . . . It is pleasant to walk through these elevated fields, terraced upon the side of the hill so that the eye of the walker looks off into the blue cauldron of the air at his own level. Here the haymakers have just gone to tea,—at 5 o’clock, the farmer’s hour, before the afternoon is ended, while he still thinks much work may still be done before night . . . At the Corner Bridge the white lilies are budded . . . Came through the pine plains behind James Baker’s, where late was open pasture, now open pitch pine woods, only here and there the grass has given place to a carpet of pine-needles . . . I pass by Walden’s scalloped shore.
