In Wood Thrush Path at Flint's Pond

September 24

P. M. - To Flint's Pond via Smith's chestnut grove. See a dead shrew in road on Turnpike Hill. (Had hard rain the night of the 20th.) Vide back, 18th . 

It is remarkable how persistently Nature endeavors to keep the earth clothed with wood of some kind – how much vitality there is in the stumps and roots of some trees, though small and young. 

For example, examined the little hickories on the bare slope of Smith's Hill. I have observed them endeavoring to cover that slope for a dozen years past, and have wondered how the seed came there, planted on a bare pasture hillside, but I now see that the nuts were probably planted just before the pine wood (the stumps of which remain) was cut down, and, having sprung up about that time, have since been repeatedly cut down to keep the pasture clear, till now they are quite feeble or dying, though many are six feet high. 

When a part of the hill has been plowed and cultivated I examine the roots which have been turned out, and find that they are two inches thick at the ground though only one to three feet high above. I judge that it is fifteen years since the pine wood was cut, and if the hickories had not been cut down and cattle been kept out, there would have been a dense hickory wood there now fifteen to twenty feet high at least. 

You see on an otherwise perfectly bare hillside or pasture where pines were cut, say fifteen years before, remote from any hickories, countless little hickories a foot high or little more springing up every few feet, and you wonder how they came there, but the fact that they preserve their vitality, though cut down so often and so long, accounts for them . 

This shows how heedlessly wood-lots are managed at present, and suggests that when one is cut ( if not before ) a provident husbandman will carefully examine the ground and ascertain what kind of wood is about to take the place of the old and how abundantly, in order that he may act understandingly and determine if it is best to clear the land or not. I have seen many a field perfectly barren for fifteen or twenty years, which, if properly managed, or only let alone, would naturally have yielded a crop of birch trees within that time. 

In Wood Thrush Path at Flint's Pond, a great many of the geiropodium fungus now shed their dust. When closed it is a roundish or conical orange-colored fungus three quarters of an inch in diameter, covered with a mucilaginous matter.

It is pink-red inside and the thick outer skin of many have already curled back (it splits into segments and curls parallel to the axis of the plant) to reveal the pinkish fawn-colored puffball capped with a red dimple or crown.

This is a hollow bag. When you touch it, it spurts forth a yellowish-white powder three or four inches through its orifice.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 24, 1860

How persistently

Nature endeavors to keep

the earth clothed with wood.