Threshing

October 31. 

October 31, 2020

I hear the sound of the flailing in M. Miles's barn, and gradually draw near to it from the woods, thinking many things. 
  
I find that the thresher is a Haynes of Sudbury, and he complains of the hard work and a lame back. Indeed, he cannot stand up straight. He complains also that at it is so muggy that he cannot dry the sheaves, and the grain will not fly out when struck. The floor, too, is uneven, and he pointed out one board more prominent on which he had broken two or three swingles.

It was as well to have heard this music afar off.  This sound is not so musical after I have withdrawn.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  October 31, 1860

I hear the sound of the flailing . . . and gradually draw near to it from the woods, thinking many things. See July 31, 1856 ("I hear the distant sound of a flail, and thoughts of autumn occupy my mind, and the memory of past years."); . August 18, 1856 ("It reminds me of past autumns and the lapse of time, suggests a pleasing, thoughtful melancholy."); September 14, 1859 ("Now all things suggest fruit and the harvest, . . .for some time the sound of the flail has been heard in the barns.")

To Tarbell pitch pines, etc.

October 30

Quite a sultry, cloudy afternoon, -- hot walking in woods and lowland where there is no air.

I see nowadays in the pitch pine woods countless white toadstools which have recently been devoured and broken in pieces and left on the ground and occasionally on the branches or forks of trees, no doubt by the squirrels. They appear to make a considerable part of their food at this season.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  October 30, 1860

An overcast late fall day I start out with gloves but end up without them. 

We circumnavigate our land in 3 1/2 hours. Climbing up Martel to Kendall dogs off leash then east over two or three ridges and around and down the red trail I water the dogs on the way back up and, instead of going over the ridge, we head more south toward  the logging area and the top of the ridge with the property corners

I hike up a little to get a view but it's too cloudy to see whether Camel's Hump is visible.  The dogs are in orange and red . 

Jane  heads down it seems to me east or southeast and we just keep going down a steep steep slope that levels out and we swing around along the trail and then off trail and then on trail and somewhat to my surprise we are at the Moose trail corner

We go out the Moose trail through the big house wetland and mark the signs along our southerly and Westerly border until we get near the fort and then walk home. Jane flushes a grouse.

A very satisfying walk mostly bushwhacking

I may have heard chickadee blue jay nuthatch and raven – but mostly it is the sound of the aspen in the wind and  seeing the composition of the forest change from looking at  the leaves on the ground

zphx 20161030

October 30

Very warm and sultry.


EDK, October 30, 1860

October 29

Very warm & pleasant.
Rec'd a letter from Mr. Keyes from Montpelier.


EDK, October 29, 1860

Sailing the woods

October 28.

We make a great noise going through the fallen leaves in the woods and wood-paths now, so that we cannot hear other sounds, as of birds or other people. 

It reminds me of the tumult of the waves clashing against each other or your boat. This is the dash we hear as we sail the woods.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal October 28, 1860

We make a great noise going through the fallen leaves in the woods. See October 28, 1852  ("I hear no sound but the rustling of the withered leaves, and, on the wooded hilltops, the roar of the wind.”); See also October 10, 1851 ("You make a great noise now walking in the woods."); October 22, 1857 ("As I go through the woods now, so many oak and other leaves have fallen the rustling noise somewhat disturbs my musing.”)

It is dark.  The witch hazel at the junction is bare of all leaves and bursting with quarter-size flowers I take a picture in my headlamp. The forest floor and trails are covered with wet leaves. I notice when we come under the Pines or the poplars or-heading up the last ridge where everything is red 0ak and the oak leaves are every color of brown . . . In the darkness I look at the Lichen on the Bark of the tree trunks and the moisture on the bark and the moss and lichens on the rocks The passing rocks. Intricate lichens living in this one spot on this one rock in this one forest October 28, 2016

October 28

Sunday. Attended church on Warren St. in the forenoon. Went with Mr. Spear's folks in the P.M.

EDK, October 28, 1860

Oak seedlings seek the Pines

October 27. 

October 27, 2013

I have come out this afternoon to get ten seedling oaks out of a purely oak wood, and as many out of a purely pine wood, and then compare them. I look for trees one foot or less in height, and convenient to dig up. I could not find one in the small wood-lot of oak and hickory on the Lee farm, west of hill.  I then searched in the large Woodis Park, the most oaken parts of it, wood some twenty-five or thirty years old, but I found only three.

After searching here more than half an hour I went into the new pitch and white pine lot just southwest, toward the old Lee cellar, and there were thousands of the seedling oaks only a foot high and less, quite reddening the ground now in some places, and these had perfectly good roots.  

I have now examined many dense pine woods, both pitch and white, and several oak woods, and I do not hesitate to say that oak seedlings under one foot high are very much more abundant under the pines than under the oaks. They prevail and are countless under the pines, while they are hard to find under the oaks.

As I am coming out of the white pine wood not far north of railroad I see a jay, screaming at me, fly to a white oak eight or ten rods from the wood in the pasture and directly alight on the ground, pick up an acorn, and fly back into the woods with it. This was one, perhaps the most effectual, way in which pine woods are stocked with the numerous little oaks.

By looking to see what oaks grow in the open land near by or along the edge where the wood is extensively pine, I can tell surely what kinds of oaks I shall find under the pines.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  October 27, 1860 

I have now examined many dense pine woods, both pitch and white, and several oak woods, and I do not hesitate to say that oak seedlings under one foot high are very much more abundant under the pines than under the oaks.See June 3, 1856 (“As I have said before, it seems to me that the squirrels, etc., disperse the acorns, etc., amid the pines, . . . If the pine wood had been surrounded by white oak, probably that would have come up after the pine.”) and The succession of forest trees (“If a pine wood is surrounded by a white-oak one chiefly, white-oaks may be expected to succeed when the pines are cut.”)

October 27

James Emery Dr.
to 10 Gall rum @ .51          5.10
to Keg & carting                1.15
                                       6.25
Due on old bill                    1.25
                                        7.50
Rec'd from James Bliss
                   5.00

EDK, October 27, 1860

October 26

Rec'd from James Emery five dollars on bill of 10 inst.

EDK, October 26, 1860

Near Flint's Pond.

October 26. 

October 26, 2023

This is the season of the fall when the leaves are whirled through the air like flocks of birds, the season of birch spangles, when you see afar a few clear-yellow leaves left on the tops of the birches.

I am overtaken by a sudden thunder-shower.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 26, 1860

This is the season of the fall when the leaves are whirled through the air like flocks of birds.  See November 11, 1859 ("October 24th, riding home from Acton, I saw the withered leaves blown from an oak by the roadside dashing off, gyrating, and surging upward into the air, so exactly like a flock of birds sporting with one another that, for a minute at least, I could not be sure they were not birds.")

Birch spangles. See October 26, 1857 (“Yellowish leaves still adhere to the very tops of the birches.”); See also May 17, 1852 ("The birch leaves are so small that you see the landscape through the tree, and they are like silvery and green spangles in the sun, fluttering about the tree."); May 17, 1854 ("the wooded shore is all lit up with the tender, bright green of birches fluttering in the wind and shining in the light, "); October 22, 1855 ("I see at a distance the scattered birch-tops, like yellow flames amid the pines,"); October 22, 1858 ("The birches are now but thinly clad and that at top, its flame shaped top more like flames than ever now. . . little cones or crescents of golden spangles."); October 28, 1854 (“Birches, which began to change and fall so early, are still in many places yellow.”); October 29, 1858 ("The birch has now generally dropped its golden spangles.")

See also full entry for Oct  26, 1860:  P. M. – To Baker ' s old chestnut lot near Flint ' s Pond . .  .

tinyurl.com/HDT601026

Seed of the goldenrod

October 24

Countless downy thistle-like seeds of the goldenrods, so fine that we do not notice them in the air, cover our clothes like dust. 

No wonder they spread over all fields and far in to the woods. 

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

Countless downy thistle-like seeds of the goldenrods.  See October 23, 1853 ("Everywhere in the fields I see the white, hoary (ashy-colored) sceptres of the gray goldenrod . . .Compact puffed masses of seeds ready to take wing. They will send out their ventures from hour to hour the winter through . . . It is the season of fuzzy seeds,"); December 31, 1859 ("There appears to be not much (compared with the fall) seed left on the common or gray goldenrod, its down being mostly gone, and the seed is attached to that.") See also May 29, 1854 ("Dandelions and mouse-ear down . . . are interesting as methinks the first of the class of downy seeds which are more common in the fall.")

October 24

Trade very good.


EDK, October 24, 1860

October 23

Very mudy & wet.
Paid bowling Alley .24


EDK, October 23, 1860

Primitive forest

October 23.

More or less rain to-day and yesterday.

Anthony Wright tells me that he cut a pitch pine on Damon's land between the Peter Haynes road and his old farm, about '41, in which he counted two hundred and seventeen rings, which was therefore older than Concord, and one of the primitive forest.

He tells me of a noted large and so-called primitive wood, Inches Wood, between the Harvard turnpike and Stow, sometimes called Stow Woods.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  October 23, 1860

He tells me of a noted large and so-called primitive wood, Inches Wood. See ;November 9, 1860 ("Inches’ Woods in Boxboro. This wood is some one and three quarters miles from West Acton, .. . . in the east part of Boxboro, on both sides of the Harvard turnpike.");  November 10, 1860 ("I have lived so long in this neighborhood and but just heard of this noble forest, - probably as fine an oak wood as there is in New England, only eight miles west of me.Seeing this, I can realize how this country appeared when it was discovered - a full-grown oak forest stretching uninterrupted for miles, consisting of sturdy trees from one to three and even four feet in diameter, whose interlacing branches form a complete and uninterrupted canopy")

Landscape histories

October 22.

I notice that the first shrubs and trees to spring up in the sand on railroad cuts in the woods are sweet-fern, birches, willows, and aspens, and pines, white and pitch; but all but the last two chiefly disappear in the thick wood that follows.  The former are the pioneers.

You may conveniently tell the age of a pine, especially white pine, by cutting off the lowest branch that is still growing and counting its rings. Then estimate or count the rings of a pine growing near in an opening, of the same height as to that branch, and add the two sums together.

Count the rings of a white pine stump in Hubbard's oak wood by railroad. Ninety-four years. So this is probably second growth.

I see how meadows were primitively kept in the state of meadow by the aid of water, - and even fire and wind.

Swamps are, of course, least changed with us,- are nearest to their primitive state of any woodland.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  October 22, 1860

October 22

Very unpleasant.

EDK, October 22, 1860

Oct 21

Sunday

Very rainy all day.
Dr. to Washing             .62
    1 Pair Stockings        .62

EDK, October 21, 1860

October 20

Rec'd from James Bliss                        10.00
Paid for Hat                                          3.00
Paid for coat & Pants                         23.00
Paid for Board Expense                         3.15
                                                         29.15

EDK, October 20, 1860

The graves of trees

October 20. 

I examine Ebby Hubbard's old oak and pine wood. The trees may be a hundred years old.

The very oldest evidences of a tree are a hollow three or four feet across, - the grave of an oak that was cut or died eighty or a hundred years ago there. 

It is with the graves of trees as with those of men, - at first an upright stump (for a monument), in course of time a mere mound, and finally, when the corpse has decayed and shrunk, a depression in the soil.

The only other ancient traces of trees are perhaps the semi conical mounds which had been heaved up by trees which fell in some hurricane.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  October 20, 1860

The trees may be a hundred years old. See January 22, 1852 ("I love to look at Ebby Hubbard's oaks and pines on the hillside from Brister's Hill. Am thankful that there is one old miser who will not sell nor cut his woods.”);  December 3, 1855 ("I see one or two more large oaks in E. Hubbard’s wood lying high on stumps, waiting for snow to be removed. I miss them as surely and with the same feeling that I do the old inhabitants out of the village street.”); November 2, 1860 ("Ebby Hubbard's [wood]was never cut off but only cut out of.")

Indian-summer-like and gossamer.

October 19.

I examine that oak lot of Rice's next to the pine strip of the 16th. The oaks (at the southern end) are about a dozen years old. As I expected, I find the stumps of the pines which stood there before quite fresh and distinct, not much decayed, and I find by their rings that they were about forty years old when cut, while the pines that sprang from them are now about twenty-five or thirty.

But further, and unexpectedly, I find the stumps in great numbers, now much decayed, of an oak wood that stood there more than sixty years ago. They are mostly shells, the sap-wood rotted off and the inside turned to mould. Thus I distinguished four successions of trees.

I can easily find in countless numbers in our forests, frequently in the third succession, the stumps of the oaks that were cut near the end of the last century. Perhaps I can recover thus generally the oak
woods of the beginning of the last century.  

I have an advantage over the geologist, for I can not only detect the order of events but also the time during which they elapsed, by counting the rings on the stumps. 

Thus I unroll the rotten papyrus on which the history of the Concord forest is written.

It is easier far to recover the history of the trees which stood here a century or more ago than it is to recover the history of the men who walked beneath them. How much do we know - how little more can we know - of these two centuries of Concord life?
 
H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  October 19, 1860

White oak failure

October 19.

That white oak in Hubbard Grove which on the 7th was full of those glossy black acorns is still hanging full, to my surprise. Suspecting the cause, I proceed to cut them open, and find that they are all decayed or decaying. The squirrels are wiser than to gather these.

First, then, I was surprised at the abundance of the crop this year. Secondly, by the time I had got accustomed to that fact I am surprised at the vast proportion that were killed, apparently by frost.

It is a remarkable fact, and looks like a glaring imperfection in Nature, that the labor of the oaks for the year should be lost to this extent. The softening or freezing of cranberries, the rotting of potatoes, etc., etc., seem trifling in comparison. The pigeons, jays, squirrels, and woodlands are thus impoverished.

It is hard to say what great purpose is served by this seeming waste.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  October 19,1860

Oct 19

Received from James Emery by hand of W. Keyes twelve dollars on account. Also a letter from Mr. Keyes.

EDK, October 19, 1860

A world, planted

October 18.

We say of some plants that they grow in wet places and of others that they grow in desert places. The truth is that their seeds are scattered almost everywhere, but here only do they succeed. 


The development theory implies a greater vital force in nature,  equivalent to a sort of constant new creation.  We find ourselves in a world that is already planted, but is also still being planted as at first.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  October 18, 1860

Oct 18

Today is a holiday in Boston. Review of the Militia on the Common before the Prince of Wales.


EDK, October 18, 1860

[While the Prince of Wales was in Boston, Ralph Farnham, an old soldier, a hundred and four years old, who had fought at Bunker Hill and who was present when General Burgoyne surrendered at Saratoga, was brought in to pay his respects to the distinguished visitor. Mr. Farnham said he had heard so much in praise of the Prince that he feared the people of his country were all turning Royalists. This remark was received with much merriment.]

Third growth

October 17

October 17.

The noblest trees and those which it took the longest to produce, and which are the longest-lived, as chestnuts, hickories and oaks, are the first to become extinct under our present system and the hardest to reproduce.  Their place is taken by pines and birches, of feebler growth than the primitive pines and birches, for want of a change of soil.

There is many a tract now bearing a poor and decaying crop of birches, or perhaps of oaks, dying when a quarter grown and covered with fungi and excrescences, where two hundred years ago grew oaks or chestnuts of the largest size.

Hereabouts a pine wood, or even a birch wood, is no sooner established than the squirrels and birds begin to plant acorns in it. First the pines, then the oaks; and coniferous trees, geologists tell us, are older, as they are lower in the order of development, — were created before oaks. 

I observe to-day a great many pitch pine plumes cut off by squirrels and strewn under the trees, as I did yesterday.

A month ago I saw the smoke of many burnings in the horizon (even now see one occasionally), and now in my walks I occasionally come to a field of winter-rye already greening the ground in the woods where such a fire was then kindled. 

If any one presumes that, after all, there cannot be so many nuts planted as we see oaks spring up at once when the pines are cut, he must consider that according to the above calculation (two pages back) there are some ten years for the animals to plant the oak wood in; so that, if the tract is ten rods square or contains one hundred square rods, it would only be necessary that they should plant ten acorns in a year which should not be disturbed, in order that there might be one oak to every square rod at the end of ten years. This, or anything like this, does not imply any very great activity among the squirrels. A striped squirrel could carry enough in his cheeks at one trip. 

While the man that killed my lynx (and many others) thinks it came out of a menagerie, and the naturalists call it the Canada lynx, and at the White Mountains they call it the Siberian lynx, — in each case forgetting, or ignoring, that it belongs here, — I call it the Concord lynx.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 17, 1860





The man that killed my lynx (and many others) thinks it came out of a menagerie. See February 15, 1858 ("Saw, at a menagerie, a Canada lynx, said to have been taken at the White Mountains."); September 13, 1860 ("Five [lynx] I have heard of (and seen three) killed within some fifteen or eighteen miles of Concord within thirty years past.")

Cross-purposes

October 16. 

October 16, 2015

The history of a wood-lot is often, if not commonly, here, a history of cross-purposes, - of steady and consistent endeavor on the part of Nature, of interference and blundering with a glimmering of intelligence at the eleventh hour on the part of the proprietor.

I have come up here this afternoon to see  the dense white pine lot beyond the pond, that was cut off last winter, to know how the little oaks look in it. To my surprise and chagrin, I find that the fellow who calls himself its owner has burned it all over and sowed winter-rye here.

So he trifles with nature. I am chagrined for him. That he should call himself an agriculturalist! He needs to have a guardian placed over him. A forest-warden should be appointed by the town. Overseers of poor husbandmen.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 16, 1860

He needs to have a guardian placed over him. A forest-warden should be appointed by the town. Overseers of poor husbandmen.See September 28, 1857 ("They have cut down two or three of the very rare celtis trees, not found anywhere else in town. The Lord deliver us from these vandalic proprietors!").

Oct 17

Great reception of the Prince of Wales in Boston.

Grand torchlight procession in the Bell & Everett party.

EDK, October 17, 1860

To White Pond and neighborhood.

October 16. 

Our wood-lots have a history, and we may often recover it for a hundred years back.

Looking from a hilltop, I distinguish exclusive and regular communities of pine, a dozen or more rods wide, within a distant old woods of mixed pine and oak. I observe that pines, white birches, red maples, alders, etc., often grow in more or less regular rounded or oval or conical patches, while oaks, chestnuts, hickories, etc., simply form woods of greater or less extent, whether by themselves or mixed, and do not naturally spring up in an oval form. This is a consequence of the different manner in which trees which have winged seeds and those which have not are planted, - the former being blown together in one direction by the wind, the latter being dispersed irregularly by animals.

Looking round, I observe at a distance an oak wood-lot some twenty years old, with a dense narrow edging of pitch pines about a rod and a half wide and twenty-five or thirty years old along its whole southern side, which is straight and thirty or forty rods long, and, next to it, an open field or pasture. It presents a very singular appearance, because the oak wood is broad and has no pines within it, while the narrow edging is perfectly straight and dense, and pure pine. It is the more remarkable at this season because the oak is all red and yellow and the pine all green.

I understand it and read its history easily before I get to it. ...

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 16, 1860

Oct 16

Great Torchlight demonstration in Boston.


EDK, October 16, 1860

Oct 15

Wrote to Laura & Father.


EDK, October 15, 1860

Early fall =? cold winter.

October 14.

Consider how many leaves there are to fall each year and how much they must add to the soil. We have had a remarkably fertile year.

This year, on account of the very severe frosts, the trees change and fall early, or fall before fairly changing.  

The willows have the bleached look of November.

Let us see now if we have a cold winter.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 14, 1860

The willows have the bleached look of November. See October 15, 1856 (“Banks begin to wear almost a Novemberish aspect. The black willow almost completely bare”); October 17, 1858 ("The Salix lucida lower leaves are all fallen (the rest are yellow). So, too, it is the lower leaves of the willows generally which have fallen first"); October 18, 1853 ("I find my boat all covered — the bottom and seats — with the yellow leaves of the golden willow under which it is moored, and if I empty it, it is full again to-morrow."); October 22, 1857 (“The black willows along the river are about as bare as in November.”); October 24, 1853 ("Black willows bare.")

Oct 14

Sunday.  At home in the forenoon.
Called on Ed Fay in the PM. Cold in the A.M but rain in the P.M.

EDK, October 14, 1860

White oak and potatoes

October 13. 

So far as I have observed, if pines or oaks bear abundantly one year they bear little or nothing the next year.  This year, so far as I observe, there are scarcely any white pine cones (were there any ?) or hemlock or larch, and a great abundance of white oak acorns in all parts of the town.

This is a white oak year, not a pine year. I should think that there might be a bushel or two of acorns on and under some single trees.

It is also an apple and a potato year.

I rejoice when the white oaks bear an abundant crop. I speak of it to many whom I meet, but I find few to sympathize with me. They seem to care much more for potatoes. 

The Indians say that many acorns are a sign of a cold winter. It is a cold fall at any rate.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 13, 1860

It is also an apple and a potato year. See  October 3, 1860 ("Gathered to-day my apples at the Texas house. . . .between ten and eleven barrels."); see also October 13, 1852 ("It is a sufficiently clear and warm, rather Indian-summer day, and they are gathering the apples in the orchard."); October 21, 1857 ("Those who have put it off thus long make haste now to collect what apples were left out and dig their potatoes before the ground shall freeze hard.") October 16, 1856 ("The ground was so stiff on the 15th, in the morning, that some could not dig potatoes. Bent is now making haste to gather his apples."); October 20, 1857 ("Apples are gathered; only the ladders here and there, left leaning against the trees.")

At Holden Swamp

October 13. 

Now, as soon as the frost strips the maples, and their leaves strew the swamp floor and conceal the pools, the note of the chickadee sounds cheerfully winteryish.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 13, 1860

Leaves strew the swamp floor and conceal the pools. See October 12, 1855 (“The leaves fallen last night now lie thick on the water next the shore, concealing it, —fleets of dry boats, blown with a rustling sound”)

The note of the chickadee sounds cheerfully winteryish. See October 13, 1852 ("It is a clear, warm, rather Indian-summer day. . . we welcome and appreciate it all. The chickadees take heart, too, and sing above these warm rocks.")  See also  October 10, 1851 ("The chickadee, sounding all alone, now that birds are getting scarce,reminds me of the winter, in which it almost alone is heard.”); October 11, 1859 ("The note of the chickadee, heard now in cooler weather and above many fallen leaves, has a new significance.");  October 15, 1856 (“The chickadees . . .resume their winter ways before the winter comes.”)