All these willows blossom; how social the different species of swallow.

Man is not completely one with Nature.
May 11, 2016

May 11. 

Rains still. 

I noticed the other day that the stump of the large oak at Clamshell Hill, cut down fifteen years ago or more, was quite rotten, while the trunk which lay by its side, having never been removed, was comparatively sound. 

The Roman writers Columella and Palladius warn not to build in a low valley or by a marsh, and the same here to-day. In the West the prudent settler avoids the banks of rivers, choosing high and open land. It suggests that man is not completely at one with Nature, or that she is not yet fitted to be his abode. Adam soon found that he must give a marsh a wide berth, — that he must not put his bower in or near a swamp in the new country, —else he would get the fever and ague or an intermittent fever. 

Either nature may be changed or man. Some animals, as frogs and musquash, are fitted to live in the marsh. Only a portion of the earth is habitable by man. Is the earth improving or deteriorating in this respect? Does it require to be improved by the hands of man, or is man to live more naturally and so more safely? 

P. M. — To Cedar Swamp up Assabet. 

There is at length a prospect of fair weather. It will clear up at evening this fourth day of the rain. The river is nearly as high as it has been this spring. 

The Salix alba by my boat is out and beaten by the rain; perhaps three or four days in some places, but not on the 6th. 

It does not rain now, though completely overcast, but looks as if it would clear up before night. 

There are many swallows circling low over the river behind Monroe’s, — bank swallows, barn, republican, chimney, and white-bellied. These are all circling together a foot or two over the water, passing within ten or twelve feet of me in my boat. It is remarkable how social the different species of swallow are one with another. They recognize their affinity more than usual. 

On the prospect of fair weather after so long a storm, through the Wheeler Indian field meadow, I see a veery hopping silent under the alders. 

The black and white creeper also is descending the oaks, etc., and uttering from time to time his seeser seeser seeser. What a rich, strong striped blue-black (?) and white bird, much like the myrtle-bird at a little distance, when the yellow of the latter is not seen. 

At a distance I hear the first yellow-bird. 

The Salix sericea at Island rock is out, also the S. cordata off Prichard’s, both apparently with S. alba. But I have not yet compared them (for date) quite accurately enough. I think I can pretty well distinguish the sericea by the grayness of the female catkins, twig and all, but am not sure I have seen the staminate. Neither am I sure that I see the staminate S. cordata. 

Those at Prichard’s are apparently all female. There are many staminate ones now in full bloom in the Wheeler meadow, I suspect like that of the railroad causeway, male and female side by side, five rods north of S. alba; also male, west side below ring-post (vide May 10th), or they may be staminate plants of S. cordata, or some perhaps of S. sericea. 

Vide how many different kinds of leaves and mark them six weeks hence. Vide if those just off the north end of Holden Wood (Conantum) are all S. cordata, for there are many staminate ones like the last-named; also vide that one on the north side of the road and root fence beyond brook on Corner road (perhaps like the railroad one), male and female now a little past prime. 

All these willows blossom when the early willows, which bloom before leafing, are going to seed. 

Large White maples are leafing. 

I see, near the top of the bank at the further end of the first hemlocks, dirty-white fungi in nests, each about three quarters of an inch diameter, without any thick rind which peels off. Each one is burst a little at top, and is full of dust of a yellowish rotten-stone color, which is perfectly dry and comes forth like a puff of smoke on being pinched, now after four days of rain, before the fair weather has come, and though each one is nearly half full of water. This dust certainly has but little affinity for moisture and might be of use in some cases. 

I leave my boat in Hosmer’s pokelogan and walk up the bank. 

A bluebird’s nest and five eggs in a hollow apple tree three feet from ground near the old bank swallow pit, made with much stubble and dried grass. Can see the bird sitting from without. 

There are a great many large flat black cockroach(?)- like beetles floating and paddling on the flood on the meadows, which have perhaps fallen in in the night (if not washed out of the grass); also a few of the thick dull reddish-brown ones.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 11, 1856

Man is not completely at one with Nature . . .. Either nature may be changed or man. . . .  See August 23, 1853 ("For all Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. She exists for no other end. . . . "Nature" is but another name for health, . . .."); July 14, 1854 ("Health is a sound relation to nature."); May 28, 1854 ("To be serene and successful we must be at one with the universe"); December 11, 1855 ("I am struck by the perfect confidence and success of nature"); March 23, 1856 ("The eternity which I detect in Nature I predicate of myself also"); December 5, 1856 ("I have never got over my surprise that I should have been born into the most estimable place in all the world, and in the very nick of time, too.").

At a distance I hear the first yellow-bird. . . . All these willows blossom. . .  See May 10, 1853 ("At this season the traveller passes through a golden gate on causeways where these willows are planted, as if he were approaching the entrance to Fairyland; and there will surely be found the yellowbird, and already from a distance is heard his note, a tche tche tche tcha tchar tcha, — ah, willow, willow."); May 10, 1858 (" For some days the Salix alba have shown their yellow wreaths here and there, suggesting the coming of the yellowbird, and now they are alive with them.");May 11, 1854 ("The willows on the Turnpike now resound with the hum of bees, and I hear the yellowbird and Maryland yellow-throat amid them. These yellow birds are concealed by the yellow of the willows."); May 12, 1853(" The yellowbird has another note, tchut tchut tchar te tchit e war. ").

See also A Book of the Seasons: the Summer Yellowbird; Willows on the Causeway;