Railroad geology

November 3

November 3. 

A violent easterly storm in the night clears up at noon.

I notice that the surface of the railroad causeway, composed of gravel, is singularly marked, as if stratified like some slate rocks, on their edges, so that I can tell within a small fraction of a degree from what quarter the rain came. These lines, as it were of stratification, are perfectly parallel, and straight as a ruler, diagonally across the flat surface of the causeway for its whole length. 

Behind each little pebble, as a protecting boulder, an eighth or a tenth of an inch in diameter, extends northwest a ridge of sand an inch or more, which it has protected from being washed away, while the heavy drops driven almost horizontally have washed out a furrow on each side, and on all sides are these ridges, half an inch apart and perfectly parallel.

All this is perfectly distinct to an observant eye, and yet could easily pass unnoticed by most.*

H. D. Thoreau,  Journal, November 3, 1861

*[This is the final entry; Thoreau dies May 6, 1862.]

The surface of the railroad causeway. . .is singularly marked, as if stratified . . . so that I can tell . . . from what quarter the rain came. See December 31 1850 ("In the cut by the Pond the . . . the stratum deposited by the side of the road in the winter can permanently be distinguished from the summer one . . ..")

Unnoticed by most. See March 27, 1853 ("so minute that only an observer of nature, or one who looked for them, would notice it."); August 19, 1856 (“a careless observer would look through their thin flowery panicles without observing any flower at all.”)