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  A comfortable breezy June morning. No dust to-day. To explore a segment of country between the Stow hills and the railroad in Acton, west to Boxboro. A fine, clear day, a journey day . . .

  It was a very good day on the whole, for it was cool in the morning, and there were just clouds enough to shade the earth in the hottest part of the day, and at evening it was comfortably cool again . . .

  I see large patches of blue-eyed grass in the meadow across the river from my window. The pine woods at Thrush Alley emit that hot dry scent, reminding me even of days when I used to go a-blackberrying. The air is full of the hum of invisible insects, and I hear a locust. Perhaps this sound indicates the time to put on a thin coat. But the wood thrush sings as usual far in the wood . . .

  Returned by Smith’s Hill and the Saw Mill Brook. Got quite a parcel of strawberries on the hill. The hellebore leaves by the brook are already half turned yellow. Plucked one blue early blueberry. The strain of the bobolink now begins to sound a little rare. It never again fills the air as the first week after its arrival. At this season we apprehend no long storm, only showers with or without thunder.

  A thunder-shower in the north. Will it strike us? How impressive this artillery of the heavens! It rises higher and higher. At length the thunder seems to roll quite across the sky and all round the horizon, even where there are no clouds, and I row homeward in haste. How by magic the skirts of the cloud are gathered about us, and it shoots forward over our head, and the rain comes at a time and place -,which baffles all our calculations! Just before it the swamp white oak in Merrick’s pasture was a very beautiful sight, with its rich shade of green, its top as it were incrusted with light. Suddenly comes the gust, and the big drops slanting from the north, and the birds fly as if rudderless, and the trees bow and are wrenched. It comes against the windows like hail and is blown over the roofs like steam or smoke. It runs down the large elm at Holbrook’s and shatters the house near by. It soon shines in silver puddles in the streets . . .

  Mr. Bull found in his garden this morning a snapping turtle about twenty rods from the brook, which had there just made a round hole . . . (Journal, 7:428-429).

  H. D. Thoreau and his sister S. arrived home this noon from a visit to Worcester. Passed a part of the afternoon on the river with H. D. T. in his little boat,—discussed [William Ellery] Channing part of the time. Took tea and spent the evening at Mr. T’s. (Item) H. D. T. says buy “Margaret.”

  P.M.—To Bateman’s Pond . . . (Journal, 10:500-501).

  A flying squirrel’s nest and young on Emerson’s hatchet path, south of Walden, on hilltop, in a covered hollow in a small old stump at base of a young oak, covered with fallen leaves and a portion of the stump; nest apparently of dry grass. Saw three young run out after the mother and up a slender oak . . .

  Let an oak be hewed and put into the frame of a house, where it is sheltered, and it will last several centuries. Even as a sill it may last one hundred and fifty years. But simply cut it down and let it lie, though in an open pasture, and it will probably be thoroughly rotten in twenty-five years . . .

  2 P.M.—To Flint’s Pond . . .

  I follow a distinct fox-path amid the grass and bushes for some thirty rods beyond Britton’s Hollow . . .

  At Fort Ridgely at eve (Thoreau’s Minnesota Journey, 21).

  At about 7 o’clock in the evening we arrived at Fort Ridgely, having been within 8 miles of it by land a little after noon but on account of the crooks it took us a good while to get there.