First snow on Wachusett Mountain

October 19.

October 19, 2014

To Westminster by cars; thence on foot to Wachusett Mountain, four miles to Foster’s, and two miles thence to mountain-top by road. 

The country above Littleton (plowed ground) more or less sugared with snow, the first I have seen. We find a little on the mountain-top. 

The prevailing tree on this mountain, top and all, is apparently the red oak, which toward and on the top is very low and spreading. On the sides, beside red oak, are rock maple, yellow birch, lever-wood, beech, chestnut, shagbark, hemlock, striped maple, witch-hazel, etc., etc. 

With a glass you can see vessels in Boston Harbor from the summit, just north of the Waltham hills.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 19, 1854

The country above Littleton. See December 16, 1857 ("Plowed grounds show white first.”)

With a glass you can see vessels in Boston Harbor from the summit See October 19, 1856 ("I return by the west side of Lee's Cliff hill, and sit on a rounded rock there, covered with fresh-fallen pine-needles, amid the woods, whence I see Wachusett.")