October 12, 2022
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| October 12, 2015 |
Up Assabet.
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.
I see a painted tortoise still out on shore. Three of his back scales are partly turned up and show fresh black ones ready beneath. And now I see that the six main anterior scales have already been shed. They are fresh black and bare of moss. Is not this the only way they get rid of the moss, etc., which adhere to them?
Carry home a couple of rails which I fished out of the bottom of the river and left on the bank to dry about three weeks ago.
One is a chestnut which I have noticed for some years on the bottom of the Assabet, just above the spring on the east side, in a deep hole. It looks as if it has been there a hundred years. It was so heavy that C. and I had as much as we could do to lift it, covered with mud, on to the high bank. It is scarcely lighter to-day, and I amuse myself with asking several to lift one half of it after I have sawed it in two. They fail at first, not being prepared to find it so heavy, though they easily can lift it afterward.
The other is a round oak stick, and, though it looks almost as old as the first, is quite sound even to the bark, and evidently quite recent comparatively, though full as heavy.
Some farmers load their wood with gunpowder to punish thieves. There's no danger that mine will be loaded.
Pieces of both of these sink at once in a pail of water. [On the 18th they float, after drying in my chamber.]
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 12, 1855
I see a painted tortoise still out on shore. Three of his back scales are partly turned up and show fresh black ones ready beneath. See September 15, 1855 ("See many painted tortoise scales being shed, half erect on their backs."); September 22, 1855 (" Many tortoise-scales about the river now. "); November 1, 1855.("I see no painted tortoises out, and I think it is about a fortnight since I saw any."); November 7, 1855("I see a painted tortoise swimming under water, and to my surprise another . . . It is long since I have seen one of any species except the insculpta. They must have begun to keep below and go into winter quarters about three weeks ago.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Painted Turtle (Emys picta)
Carry home a couple of rails which I left on the bank to dry about three weeks ago. See September 24, 1855 ("Brought home quite a boat-load of fuel . . . It would be a triumph to get all my winter’s wood thus . . . I derive a separate and peculiar pleasure from every stick that I find."); September 26, 1855 ("Go up Assabet for fuel. One old piece of oak timber looks as if it had been a brace in a bridge. I get up oak rails here and there, almost as heavy as lead, and leave them to dry somewhat on the bank."); September 27, 1855 ("Collecting fuel again this afternoon, up the Assabet."); October 20, 1855 ("I like best the bread which I have baked, the garment which I have made, the shelter which I have constructed, the fuel which I have gathered."); See also October 21, 1857 ("I become a connoisseur in wood at last, take only the best."); October 22, 1853 ("One-eyed John Goodwin, the fisherman, was loading into a hand-cart and conveying home the piles of driftwood which of late he had collected with his boat. It was a beautiful evening, and a clear amber sunset lit up all the eastern shores; and that man's employment, so simple and direct, — . . . thus to obtain his winter's wood, — charmed me unspeakably.")
October 12. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, October 12
Leaves fallen last night
now lie thick on the water –
concealing the shore.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Leaves fallen last night
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality.”
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2024
https://tinyurl.com/hdt-551012
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