An otter trail

February 20

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

See a broad and distinct otter-trail, made last night or yesterday. 

It came out to the river through the low woods north of Pinxter Swamp, making a very conspicuous trail, from seven to nine or ten inches wide and three or four deep with sometimes singularly upright sides, as if a square timber had been drawn along but commonly rounded. 

It made zigzags; passed under limbs which were only five inches above the snow, not over them; had apparently slid down all banks and declivities, making a uniform broad hollow trail there without any mark of its feet. 

On reaching the river, it had come along under the bank, from time to time looking into the crevices where it might get under the ice there, sometimes ascending the bank and sliding back. 

On level ground its trail had this appearance: 

Commonly seven to nine or ten inches wide, and tracks of feet twenty to twenty-four apart; but sometimes there was no track of the feet for twenty-five feet, frequently for six; in the last case swelled in the outline, as above.   

Having come down as far as opposite the great white on the hill, it returned on its track and entered a hole under the ice at Assabet Spring, from which it has not issued.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 20, 1856  

See a broad and distinct otter-trail. See February 22, 1856 ("Just below this bridge begins an otter track, several days old yet very distinct, which I trace half a mile down the river . . . It looks as if some one had dragged a round timber down the middle of the river a day or two since, which bounced as it went.");  March 6, 1856 ("On the rock this side the Leaning Hemlocks, is the track of an otter.”); See also January 30, 1854 ("How retired an otter manages to live! He grows to be four feet long without any mortal getting a glimpse of him”); April 6, 1855 ("it reminds me of an otter, which however I have never seen."); February 20, 1855 (Among the quadrupeds of Concord, the otter is "very rare.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Otter

A broad and distinct

hollow otter trail, without 

any mark of feet.

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, An otter trail

 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 © 2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-560220