1 P. M. —To boat at Cardinal Shore, and thence to Well Meadow and back to port.
Another very pleasant and warm day. The white bellied swallows have paid us twittering visits the last three mornings. You must rush out quickly to see them, for they are at once gone again. Warm enough to do without greatcoat to-day and yesterday, though I carry it and put it on when I leave the boat.
Hear the crack of Goodwin’s piece close by, just as I reach my boat. He has killed another rat. Asks if I am bound up-stream. “Yes, to Well Meadow.” Says I can’t get above the hay-path a quarter of a mile above on account of ice; if he could, he ’d ’a’ been at Well Meadow before now. But I think I will try, and he thinks if I succeed he will try it.
By standing on oars, which sink several inches, and hauling over one cake of ice, I manage to break my way into an open canal above, where I soon see three rats swimming.
Goodwin says that he got twenty-four minks last winter, more than ever before in one season; trapped most, shot only two or three.
From opposite Bittern Cliff, I push along, with more or less difficulty, to Well Meadow Brook. There is a water passage ten feet wide, where the river has risen beyond the edge of the ice, but not more than four or five feet was clear of the bushes and trees.
By the side of Fair Haven Pond it was particularly narrow. I shove the ice on the one hand and the bushes and trees on the other all the way. Nor was the passage much wider below, as far back as where I had taken my boat. For all this distance, the river for the most part, as well as all the pond, is an unbroken field of ice. I went winding my way and scraping between the maples.
Half a dozen rods off on the ice, you would not have supposed that there was room for a boat there. In some places you could have got on to the ice from the shore without much difficulty.
But all of Well Meadow was free of ice, and I paddle up to within a rod or two of where I found the cowslips so forward on the 2d. It is difficult pushing a boat over the meadows now, for even where the bottom is not covered with slippery snow ice which affords no hold to the paddle, the meadow is frozen and icy hard, for it thaws slowly under water. This meadow is completely open, because none of the snow ice has risen up.
Sometimes you see a small piece that has been released come up suddenly, with such force as to lift it partly out of water, but, sinking again at once, it looks like a sheldrake which has dived at a distance.
There, in that slow, muddy brook near the head of Well Meadow, within a few rods of its source, where it winds amid the alders, which shelter the plants some what, while they are open enough now to admit the sun, I find two cowslips in full bloom, shedding pollen; and they may have opened two or three days ago; for I saw many conspicuous buds here on the 2d which now I do not see.
Have they not been eaten off? Do we not often lose the earliest flowers thus? A little more, or if the river had risen as high as frequently, they would have been submerged.
What an arctic voyage was this in which I find cowslips, the pond and river still frozen over for the most part as far down as Cardinal Shore!
See two marsh hawks this afternoon, circling low over the meadows along the water’s edge. This shows that frogs must be out. Goodwin and Puffer both fired at one from William Wheeler’s shore. They say they made him duck and disturbed his feathers some.
The muskrats are now very fat. They are reddish-brown beneath and dark—brown above. I see not a duck in all this voyage. Perhaps they are moving forward this bright and warm day.
Was obliged to come down as far as Nut Meadow (being on the west side), before I could clear the ice, and, setting my sail, tack across the meadow for home. the wind northwesterly.
The river is still higher than yesterday.
***
About 8.30 P. M. hear geese passing quite low over the river.
Found beneath the surface, on the sphagnum, near wrinkled shells, a little like nutmegs, perhaps bass nuts, collected after a freshet by mice! I noticed that the fibres of the alder roots in the same place were thickly [sic] with little yellow knubby fruit. Was not that clear light brown snail in that sphagnum a different species from the common one in brooks?
See a few cranberries and smell muskrats. On the Fair Haven Cliff, crowfoot and saxifrage are very backward. That dense—growing moss on the rocks shows now a level surface of pretty crimson cups.
Noticed, returning, this afternoon, a muskrat sitting on the ice near a small hole in Willow Bay, so motionless and withal round and featureless, of so uniform a color, that half a dozen rods off I should not have detected him if not accustomed to observing them. Saw the same thing yesterday. It reminds me of the truth of the Indian’s name for it, — “that sits in a round form on the ice.” You would think it was a particularly round clod of meadow rising above the ice. But while you look, it concludes its meditations or perchance its meal, and deliberately takes itself off through a hole at its feet, and you see no more of it.
I noticed five muskrats this afternoon without looking for them very carefully. Four were swimming in the usual manner, showing the vertical tail, and plunging with a half-somerset suddenly before my boat. While you are looking, these brown clods slide of the edge of the ice, and it is left bare. You would think that so large an animal, sitting right out upon the ice, would be sure to be seen or detected, but not so. A citizen might paddle within two rods and not suspect them.
Most countrymen might paddle five miles along the river now and not see one muskrat, while a sportsman a quarter of a mile before or behind would be shooting one or more every five minutes. The other, left to himself, might not be able to guess what he was firing at.
The marsh hawks flew in their usual irregular low tacking, wheeling, and circling flight, leisurely flapping and beating, now rising, now falling, in conformity with the contour of the ground. The last I think I have seen on the same beat in former years. He and his race must be well acquainted with the Musketicook and its meadows. No sooner is the snow off than he is back to his old haunts, scouring that part of the meadows that is bare, while the rest is melting. If he returns from so far to these meadows, shall the sons of Concord be leaving them at this season for slight cause?
River had risen so since yesterday I could not get under the bridge, but was obliged to find a round stick and roll my boat over the road.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 8, 1856
Warm enough to do without greatcoat to-day . . . marsh hawks circling low shows that frogs must be out. See April 5, 1854 ("These days, when a soft west or southwest wind blows and it is truly warm, and an outside coat is oppressive, — these bring out the butterflies and the frogs, and the marsh hawks which prey on the last. Just so simple is every year.”).
I find two cowslips in full bloom, shedding pollen; and they may have opened two or three days ago; for I saw many conspicuous buds here on the 2d which now I do not see. See March 26, 1857 "("The buds of the cowslip are very yellow, and the plant is not observed a rod off, it lies so low and close to the surface of the water in the meadow. It may bloom and wither there several times before villagers discover or suspect it" ). See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau , Signs of Spring: the Cowslip
Most countrymen might paddle five miles along the river now and not see one muskrat, while a sportsman a quarter of a mile before or behind would be shooting one or more every five minutes. See February 28, 1856 ("How much more game he will see who carries a gun, i. e. who goes to see it! Though you roam the woods all your days, you never will see by chance what he sees who goes on purpose to see it.”); November 4, 1858 ("The true sportsman can shoot you almost any of his game from his windows. It comes and perches at last on the barrel of his gun; but the rest of the world never see it with the feathers on.He will keep himself supplied by firing up his chimney. The geese fly exactly under his zenith, and honk when they get there. The fisherman, too, dreams of fish, till he can almost catch them in his sink-spout.”)
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