To Wetherbee's old oak lot.

November 2

November 2. 

As several days past, it has been cloudy and misty in the morning fairer and warmer, if not Indian summer, in the afternoon; yet the mist lingers in drops on the cobwebs and grass until night.

Wetherbee's oak wood is now bare and the leaves just fairly fallen. This is probably one of those woods, like Ebby Hubbard's, which was never cut off but only cut out of. It is said that Wetherbee left them for the sake of mast for pigeons. The trees are unusually large and old. Indeed, I doubt if there is another here abouts of oaks as large.

The trees would average probably between a hundred and fifty and two hundred years. Such a wood has got to be very rare in this neighborhood. 

Such a wood, at the same time that it suggests antiquity, imparts an unusual dignity to the earth. I think it would be worth the while to introduce a school of children to such a grove, that they may get an idea of the primitive oaks before they are all gone, instead of hiring botanists to lecture to them when it is too late.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 2, 1860

Wetherbee's oak wood ...I doubt if there is another here abouts of oaks as large. See October 20, 1860 ("I examine Ebby Hubbard's old oak and pine wood. The trees may be a hundred years old."); November 5, 1860 ("Blood's oak lot. . . .This wood is a hundred to a hundred and sixty years old."); November 10, 1860 ("Inches Wood . . .as fine an oak wood as there is in New England,").

One of those woods, like Ebby Hubbard's, which was never cut off . . . See 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.")