April 22.
April 22, 2017
Wednesday. Fair again. To Great Sudbury Meadow by boat.
The river higher than before and rising. C. and I sail rapidly before a strong northerly wind, — no need of rowing upward, only of steering, — cutting off great bends by crossing the meadows. We have to roll our boat over the road at the stone bridge, Hubbard's causeway, (to save the wind), and at Pole Brook (to save distance).
It is worth the while to hear the surging of the waves and their gurgling under the stern, and to feel the great billows toss us, with their foaming yellowish crests.
The world is not aware what an extensive navigation is now possible on our overflowed fresh meadows. It is more interesting and fuller of life than the sea bays and permanent ponds.
A dozen gulls are circling over Fair Haven Pond, some very white beneath, with very long, narrow-pointed, black- tipped wings, almost regular semicircles like the new moon. As they circle beneath a white scud in this bright air, they are almost invisible against it, they are so nearly the same color. What glorious fliers!
But few birds are seen; only a crow or two teetering along the water's edge looking for its food, with its large, clumsy head, and on unusually long legs, as if stretched, or its pants pulled up to keep it from the wet, and now flapping off with some large morsel in its bill; or robins in the same place; or perhaps the sweet song of the tree sparrows from the alders by the shore, or of a song sparrow or blackbird. The phoebe is scarcely heard. Not a duck do we see!
All the shores have the aspect of winter, covered several inches deep with snow, and we see the shadows on the snow as in winter; but it is strange to see the green grass burning up through in warmer nooks under the walls.
We pause or lay to from time to time, in some warm, smooth lee, under the southwest side of a wood or hill, as at Hubbard's Second Grove and opposite Weir Hill, pushing through saturated snow like ice on the surface of the water. There we lie awhile amid the bare alders, maples, and willows, in the sun, see the expanded sweet-gale and early willows and the budding swamp pyrus looking up drowned from beneath.
As we lie in a broad field of meadow wrack, — floating cranberry leaves and finely bruised meadow-hay, — a wild medley — countless spiders are hastening over the water. We pass a dozen boats sunk at their moorings, at least at one end, being moored too low.
Near Tall's Island, rescue a little pale or yellowish brown snake that was coiled round a willow half a dozen rods from the shore and was apparently chilled by the cold. Was it not Storer's "little brown snake?" It had a flat body.
Frank Smith lives in a shanty on the hill near by.
At the Cliff Brook I see the skunk-cabbage leaves not yet unrolled, with their points gnawed off.
Some very fresh brown fungi on an alder, tender and just formed one above another, flat side up, while those on the birch are white and flat side down. They soon dry white and hard. This melting snow makes a great crop of fungi.
Turritis stricta, nearly out (in two or three days).
Observed the peculiar dark lines on a birch (Betula populifolia) at the insertion of the branches, regular cones like volcanoes in outline, the part included grayish-brown and wrinkled, edged by broad heavy dark lines. There are as many of these very regular cones on the white ground of a large birch as there are branches. They are occasioned by the two currents of growth, that of the main trunk and that of the branch (which last commenced several inches lower near the centre of the tree), meeting and being rucked or turned up at the line of contact like a surge, exposing the edges of the inner bark there, decayed and dark, while the bark within the lines approaches the darker color of the limb. The larger were six or seven inches high by as much in width at the bottom. You observe the same manner of growth in other trees. That portion of the bark below the limb obeys the influence of the limb and endeavors to circle about it, but soon encounters the growth of the main stem. There are interesting figures on the stem of a large white birch, arranged spirally about it.
The river has risen several inches since morning, so that we push over Hubbard Bridge causeway, where we stuck in the morning.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 22, 1857
We have to roll our boat over the road at the stone bridge .See April 22, 1852 ("The water is over the road at Flint's Bridge, so that there is now only the Boston road open") and note to May 28, 1854 (“This spring the arches of the stone bridge were completely concealed by the flood, and yet at midsummer I can sail under them without lowering my mast.”)
It is worth the while to hear the surging of the waves and their gurgling under the stern, and to feel the great billows toss us . . . See April 29, 1856 (“They gurgle under my stern, in haste to fill the hollow which I have created. The waves seem to leap and roll like porpoises, with a slight surging sound when their crests break, and I feel an agreeable sense that I am swiftly gliding over and through them . . .It is pleasant, exhilarating, to feel the boat tossed up a little by them from time to time.”); April 14, 1856 ("The boat, tossed up by the rolling billows, keeps falling again on the waves with a chucking sound which is inspiriting. “); May 8, 1854 (“I feel exhilaration, mingled with a slight awe, as I drive before this strong wind over the great black-backed waves, cutting through them, and hear their surging and feel them toss me.”); April 10, 1852 ("It is pleasant, now that we are in the wind, to feel the chopping sound when the boat seems to fall upon the successive waves which it meets at right angles or in the eye of the wind.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Sailing
Rescue a little pale or yellowish brown snake that was coiled round a willow half a dozen rods from the shore. See April 2, 1857 (" I see a toad, which apparently hopped out from under a fence last evening, frozen quite hard in a sitting posture. Carried it into Boston in my pocket, but could not thaw it into life."); April 12, 1858 (“We came upon a partridge standing on the track, between the rails over which the cars had just passed. She had evidently been run down, but. . . was apparently more disturbed in mind than body. I took her up and carried her one side to a safer place.”);July 23, 1856 ("Saw . . . a small bullfrog in the act of swallowing a young but pretty sizable apparently Rana palustris, . . . I sprang to make him disgorge, but it was too late to save him. "); August 28, 1854 (“The meadow is drier than ever, and new pools are dried up. The breams, from one to two and a half inches long, lying on the sides and quirking from time to time. . . — pretty green jewels, dying in the sun. I saved a dozen or more by putting them in deeper pools.”); December 31, 1857 ("Found . . .a bull frog. . . It was evidently nearly chilled to death and could not jump, though there was then no freezing. I looked round a good while and finally found a hole to put it into,") See also April 26, 1857 ("I have the same objection to killing a snake that I have to the killing of any other animal, yet the most humane man that I know never omits to kill one."); April 29, 1858 ("Noticed a man killing, on the sidewalk by Minott's, a little brown snake")
At the Cliff Brook I see the skunk-cabbage leaves not yet unrolled, with their points gnawed off.
See April 22, 1855 ("The leaves of the skunk-cabbage, unfolding in the meadows, make more show than any green yet. ") See also April 8, 1859 ("The skunk-cabbage leaf-buds, which have just begun to unroll, also have been extensively eaten off as they were yet rolled up like cigars. These early greens of the swamp are thus kept down. Is it by the rabbit?") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Skunk Cabbage
See April 22, 1855 ("The leaves of the skunk-cabbage, unfolding in the meadows, make more show than any green yet. ") See also April 8, 1859 ("The skunk-cabbage leaf-buds, which have just begun to unroll, also have been extensively eaten off as they were yet rolled up like cigars. These early greens of the swamp are thus kept down. Is it by the rabbit?") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Skunk Cabbage
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