Saturday. P. M. — Down Turnpike to Smith's Hill and return by Goose Pond.
Saw a large old hollow log with the upper side [gone], which [made] me doubt if it was not a trough open at the ends, and suggested that the first trough was perhaps such a hollow log with one side split off and the ends closed.
It is cool and windy this afternoon.
Some sleet falls, but as we sit on the east side of Smith's chestnut grove, the wood, though so open and leafless, makes a perfect lee for us, apparently by breaking the force of the wind. A dense but bare grove of slender chestnut trunks a dozen rods wide is a perfect protection against this violent wind, and makes a perfectly calm lee.
I find that I can very easily make a convenient box of the birch bark, at this season at least, when the sap is running, to carry a moss or other thing in safely. I have only to make three cuts and strip off a piece from a clear space some ten inches long, and then, rolling it up wrong side outward, as it naturally curls backward as soon as taken off (the dry side shrinking, the moist swelling) and so keeps its place, I bend or fold the ends back on it, as if it were paper, and so close them, and, if I please, tie it round with a string of the same bark. This is resilient or elastic, and stands out from a plant, and also is not injured by moisture like paper. When the incision is made now, the crystalline drops of sap follow the knife down the tree. This box dries yellow or straw-colored, with large clouds of green derived from the inner bark.
The inner bark of the Betula populifolia just laid bare is green with a yellow tinge; that of the B. papyracea is buff. The undermost layer of the outer bark of the last, next to the inner bark, is straw-colored and exceedingly thin and delicate, and smoother to the lips than any artificial tissue.
Bluets numerous and fully out at the Smith hillside between trough and Saw Mill Brook Falls.
Got to-day unquestionable Salix humilis in the Britton hollow, north of his shanty, but all there that I saw (and elsewhere as yet) [are] pistillate. It is apparently now in prime, and apparently the next to bloom after the various larger and earlier ones, all which I must call as yet S. discolor. This S. humilis is small-catkined and loves a dry soil.
A correspondent of the Tribune of April 24th, 1857, who signs "Lyndeborough, N. H., April 15, 1857. J. Herrick," says that he taps his sugar maples four feet from the ground so that cattle may not disturb the buckets, and that the sap will run as freely from the topmost branch as from a root.
"Any one may learn this fact from the red squirrel, who, by the way, is a famous sugar maker, and knows when to tap a tree and where to do it. He performs his tapping in the highest perpendicular limbs or twigs, and leaves the sun and wind to do the evaporating, and in due season and pleasant weather you will see him come round and with great gusto gather his sirup into his stomach."The dense, green, rounded beds of mosses in springs and old water-troughs are very handsome now, — intensely cold green cushions.
Again we had, this afternoon at 2 o'clock, those wild, scudding wind-clouds in the north, spitting cold rain or sleet, with the curved lines of falling rain beneath. The wind is so strong that the thin drops fall on you in the sunshine when the cloud has drifted far to one side.
The air is peculiarly clear, the light intense, and when the sun shines slanting under the dark scud, the willows, etc., rising above the dark flooded meadows, are lit with a fine straw-colored light like the spirits of trees.
I see winkle fungi comparatively fresh, whose green and reddish-brown and pale-buff circles above turn to light and dark slate and white, and so finally fade all to white.
The beds of fine mosses on bare yellow mouldy soil are now in fruit and very warmly red in the sun when seen a little from one side.
No pages in my Journal are so suggestive as those which contain a rude sketch.
Suppose we were to drink only the yellow birch sap and mix its bark with our bread, would not its yellow curls sprout from our foreheads, and our breath and persons exhale its sweet aroma? What sappy vigor there would be in our limbs! What sense we should have to explore the swamps with!
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 25, 1857
I find that I can very easily make a convenient box of the birch bark . . . See April 13, 1857 ("I peeled a white birch, getting a piece of bark about ten inches long. I noticed that the birch sap was flowing. This bark at once curled back so as to present its yellow side outward. I . . . tied it round with a strip of birch bark, making a very nice and airy box for the creature, which would not be injured by moisture, far better than any paper, . . .")
Again we had, this afternoon at 2 o'clock, those wild, scudding wind-clouds in the north, spitting cold rain or sleet. See December 14, 1859( "Snow-storms might be classified. .. . there is sleet, which is half snow, half rain.")
Would not its yellow curls sprout from our foreheads. See January 4, 1853 ("This is like a fair, flaxen haired sister of the dark-complexioned black birch, with golden ringlets."); February 18, 1854 ("The curls of the yellow birch bark form more or less parallel straight lines up and down on all sides of the tree, like parted hair blown aside by the wind, or as when a vest bursts and blows open."); January 26, 1858 ("The yellow birch . . .might be described as a tree whose trunk or bole was covered with golden and silver shavings glued all over it and dangling in curls. ")
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