November 30.
A still, warm, cloudy, rain-threatening day.
Surveying the J. Richardson lot.
The air is full of geese. I saw five flocks within an hour, about 10 A. M., containing from thirty to fifty each, and afterward two more flocks, making in all from two hundred and fifty to three hundred at least, all flying southwest over Goose and Walden Ponds. The former was apparently well named Goose Pond.
You first hear a faint honking from one or two in the northeast and think there are but few wandering there, but, looking up, see forty or fifty coming on in a more or less broken harrow, wedging their way southwest. I suspect they honk more, at any rate they are more broken and alarmed, when passing over a village, and are seen falling into their ranks again, assuming the perfect harrow form. Hearing only one or two honking, even for the seventh time, you think there are but few till you see them.
According to my calculation a thousand or fifteen hundred may have gone over Concord to-day. When they fly low and near, they look very black against the sky. [I hear that one was killed by Lee in the Corner about this time.]
Northwest of Little Goose Pond, on the edge of Mrs. Bigelow's wood-lot, are several hornbeams (Carpinus). Looking into a cleft in one of them about three feet from the ground, which I thought might be the scar of a blazing, I found some broken kernels of corn, probably placed there by a crow or jay. This was about half a mile from a corn-field.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 30, 1857
A still, warm, cloudy, rain-threatening day. The air is full of geese all flying southwest. See November 8 , 1857 ("A warm, cloudy, rain-threatening morning. About 10 A.M. a long flock of geese are going over from northeast to southwest . . . In the afternoon. . .was the third flock to-day. Now if ever, then, we may expect a change in the weather."); November 13, 1855 ("Seventy or eighty geese, in three harrows successively smaller, flying southwest—pretty well west—over the house. A completely overcast, occasionally drizzling forenoon. "); November 18, 1854 (" Sixty geese go over the Great Fields, in one waving line, broken from time to time by their crowding on each other and vainly endeavoring to form into a harrow, honking all the while."); November 20, 1853 ("Methinks the geese are wont to go south just before a storm"); December 1, 1857 ("I hear of two more flocks of geese going over to-day.”)
Thursday, November 30, 2017
Wednesday, November 29, 2017
One of those fuzzy caterpillars, black at each end and rust-colored in middle.
November 29.
Sophia called on old lady Hayden yesterday, and she told her of somebody's twin infants of whom one died for want of air. The father, therefore, was advised to take the survivor with him each morning to the barn, and hold it up to the muzzle of each of the cattle in succession as they got up, that it might catch their first morning breath, and then lay it on the hay while he foddered them. He did so, and there never was a healthier child than this, three months afterward.
P. M. — To Assabet Bath and down bank.
This and yesterday remarkably warm days. In John Hosmer's low birch sprout-land, a few rods beyond Tortoise Hollow, or Valley, I find, on raking aside the withered leaves on the ground, one of those fuzzy caterpillars, black at each end and rust-colored in middle, curled up in a ring, — the same kind that I find on the ice and snow, frozen, in winter.
I think that the river might rise so high as to wash this out of the withered grass and leaves here.
Soon after I find another in a catbird’s nest, nearly three feet from the ground, in a thorn, together [with] half a nestful of freshly nibbled acorn shells and a few hazelnut shells, the work, probably, of a mouse or a squirrel; but this caterpillar was dead and apparently partly eaten. So I am still inclined to think that most of them are washed out of the meadows by the freshets.
Several times before I have seen nests half filled with nutshells, and as the Mus leucopus adds to and after occupies old nests, am inclined to think that he does it. It may be a convenient deposit for him (or for a striped squirrel??), or else he likes it for concealment and protection against hawks, —in the midst of a thorn bush, before the leaves fall. I do not know, however, that the mouse has this habit of perching while it nibbles, as the squirrel has.
Again I am struck by the singularly wholesome colors of the withered oak leaves, especially the shrub oak, so thick and firm and unworn, without speck or fret, clear reddish-brown (sometimes paler or yellowish brown), its whitish under sides contrasting with it in a very cheerful manner. So strong and cheerful, as if it rejoiced at the advent of winter, and exclaimed, “Winter, come on!” It exhibits the fashionable colors of the winter on the two sides of its leaves. It sets the fashions, colors good for bare ground or for snow, grateful to the eyes of rabbits and partridges. This is the extent of its gaudiness, red brown and misty white, and yet it is gay. The colors of the brightest flowers are not more agreeable to my eye. Then there is the now rich, dark brown of the black oak’s large and somewhat curled leaf on sprouts, with its lighter, almost yellowish, brown under side. Then the salmonish hue of white oak leaves, with the under sides less distinctly lighter. Many, however, have quite faded already.
Going through a partly frozen meadow near the meadow [sic], scraping through the sweet-gale, I am pleasantly scented with its odoriferous fruit.
A week or so ago, as I learn, Miss Emeline Barnett told a little boy who boards with her, and who was playing with an open knife in his hand, that he must be careful not to fall down and cut himself with it, for once Mr. David Loring, when he was a little boy, fell down with a knife in his hand and cut his throat badly. It was soon reported, among the children at least, that little David Loring, the grandson of the former, had fallen down with a knife in his hand as he was going to school, and nearly cut his throat; next, that Mr. David Loring the grandfather (who lives in Framingham) had committed suicide, had cut his throat, was not dead, indeed, but was not expected to live; and in this form the story spread like wildfire over the town and county. Nobody expressed surprise. His oldest acquaintances and best friends, his legal adviser, all said, “Well, I can believe it.” He was known by many to have been speculating in Western lands, which, owing to the hard times, was a failure, and he was depressed in consequence. Sally Cummings helped spread the news. Said there was no doubt of it, but there was Fay’s wife (L.’s daughter) knew nothing of it yet, they were as merry as crickets over there. Others stated that Wetherbee, the expressman, had been over to Northboro, and learned that Mr. Loring had taken poison in Northboro. Mr. Rhodes was stated to have received a letter from Mr. Robbins of Framingham giving all the particulars. Mr. Wild, it was said, had also got a letter from his son Silas in Framingham, to whom he had written, which confirmed the report. As Wild went down-town, he met Meeks the carpenter and inquired in a significant way if he got anything new. Meeks simply answered, “Well, David Loring won’t eat another Thanksgiving dinner.” A child at school wrote to her parents at Northboro, telling the news. Mrs. Loring's sister lives there, and it chances that her husband committed suicide. They were, therefore, slow to communicate the news to her, but at length could not contain themselves longer and told it. The sister was terribly affected; wrote to her son (L.’s nephew) in Worcester, who immediately took the cars and went to Framingham and when he arrived there met his uncle just putting his family into the cars. He shook his hand very heartily indeed, looking, however, hard at his throat, but said not a word about his errand. Already doubts had arisen, people were careful how they spoke of it, the ex pressmen were mum, Adams and Wetherbee never said Loring. The Framingham expressman used the same room with Adams in Boston. A. simply asked, “Any news from Framingham this morning? Seen Loring lately?” and learned that all was well.
H. D. Thoreau , Journal, November 29, 1857
One of those fuzzy caterpillars, black at each end and rust-colored in middle, curled up in a ring, — the same kind that I find on the ice and snow, frozen, in winter. See January 5, 1858 ("I see one of those fuzzy winter caterpillars, black at the two ends and brown-red in middle, crawling on a rock by the Hunt's Bridge causeway. "); January 8, 1857 ("I picked up on the bare ice of the river, opposite the oak in Shattuck's land, on a small space blown bare of snow, a fuzzy caterpillar, black at the two ends and red-brown in the middle, rolled into a ball . . .”); January 24, 1858 ("I see two of those black and red-brown fuzzy caterpillars in a mullein leaf on this bare edge-hill, which could not have blown from any tree, I think. They apparently take refuge in such places."); March 8, 1855 ("I see of late more than before of the fuzzy caterpillars, both black and reddish-brown.”); March 5, 1854 ("See a small blackish caterpillar on the snow. Where do they come from? ")
Sophia called on old lady Hayden yesterday, and she told her of somebody's twin infants of whom one died for want of air. The father, therefore, was advised to take the survivor with him each morning to the barn, and hold it up to the muzzle of each of the cattle in succession as they got up, that it might catch their first morning breath, and then lay it on the hay while he foddered them. He did so, and there never was a healthier child than this, three months afterward.
P. M. — To Assabet Bath and down bank.
This and yesterday remarkably warm days. In John Hosmer's low birch sprout-land, a few rods beyond Tortoise Hollow, or Valley, I find, on raking aside the withered leaves on the ground, one of those fuzzy caterpillars, black at each end and rust-colored in middle, curled up in a ring, — the same kind that I find on the ice and snow, frozen, in winter.
I think that the river might rise so high as to wash this out of the withered grass and leaves here.
Soon after I find another in a catbird’s nest, nearly three feet from the ground, in a thorn, together [with] half a nestful of freshly nibbled acorn shells and a few hazelnut shells, the work, probably, of a mouse or a squirrel; but this caterpillar was dead and apparently partly eaten. So I am still inclined to think that most of them are washed out of the meadows by the freshets.
Several times before I have seen nests half filled with nutshells, and as the Mus leucopus adds to and after occupies old nests, am inclined to think that he does it. It may be a convenient deposit for him (or for a striped squirrel??), or else he likes it for concealment and protection against hawks, —in the midst of a thorn bush, before the leaves fall. I do not know, however, that the mouse has this habit of perching while it nibbles, as the squirrel has.
Again I am struck by the singularly wholesome colors of the withered oak leaves, especially the shrub oak, so thick and firm and unworn, without speck or fret, clear reddish-brown (sometimes paler or yellowish brown), its whitish under sides contrasting with it in a very cheerful manner. So strong and cheerful, as if it rejoiced at the advent of winter, and exclaimed, “Winter, come on!” It exhibits the fashionable colors of the winter on the two sides of its leaves. It sets the fashions, colors good for bare ground or for snow, grateful to the eyes of rabbits and partridges. This is the extent of its gaudiness, red brown and misty white, and yet it is gay. The colors of the brightest flowers are not more agreeable to my eye. Then there is the now rich, dark brown of the black oak’s large and somewhat curled leaf on sprouts, with its lighter, almost yellowish, brown under side. Then the salmonish hue of white oak leaves, with the under sides less distinctly lighter. Many, however, have quite faded already.
Going through a partly frozen meadow near the meadow [sic], scraping through the sweet-gale, I am pleasantly scented with its odoriferous fruit.
A week or so ago, as I learn, Miss Emeline Barnett told a little boy who boards with her, and who was playing with an open knife in his hand, that he must be careful not to fall down and cut himself with it, for once Mr. David Loring, when he was a little boy, fell down with a knife in his hand and cut his throat badly. It was soon reported, among the children at least, that little David Loring, the grandson of the former, had fallen down with a knife in his hand as he was going to school, and nearly cut his throat; next, that Mr. David Loring the grandfather (who lives in Framingham) had committed suicide, had cut his throat, was not dead, indeed, but was not expected to live; and in this form the story spread like wildfire over the town and county. Nobody expressed surprise. His oldest acquaintances and best friends, his legal adviser, all said, “Well, I can believe it.” He was known by many to have been speculating in Western lands, which, owing to the hard times, was a failure, and he was depressed in consequence. Sally Cummings helped spread the news. Said there was no doubt of it, but there was Fay’s wife (L.’s daughter) knew nothing of it yet, they were as merry as crickets over there. Others stated that Wetherbee, the expressman, had been over to Northboro, and learned that Mr. Loring had taken poison in Northboro. Mr. Rhodes was stated to have received a letter from Mr. Robbins of Framingham giving all the particulars. Mr. Wild, it was said, had also got a letter from his son Silas in Framingham, to whom he had written, which confirmed the report. As Wild went down-town, he met Meeks the carpenter and inquired in a significant way if he got anything new. Meeks simply answered, “Well, David Loring won’t eat another Thanksgiving dinner.” A child at school wrote to her parents at Northboro, telling the news. Mrs. Loring's sister lives there, and it chances that her husband committed suicide. They were, therefore, slow to communicate the news to her, but at length could not contain themselves longer and told it. The sister was terribly affected; wrote to her son (L.’s nephew) in Worcester, who immediately took the cars and went to Framingham and when he arrived there met his uncle just putting his family into the cars. He shook his hand very heartily indeed, looking, however, hard at his throat, but said not a word about his errand. Already doubts had arisen, people were careful how they spoke of it, the ex pressmen were mum, Adams and Wetherbee never said Loring. The Framingham expressman used the same room with Adams in Boston. A. simply asked, “Any news from Framingham this morning? Seen Loring lately?” and learned that all was well.
H. D. Thoreau , Journal, November 29, 1857
One of those fuzzy caterpillars, black at each end and rust-colored in middle, curled up in a ring, — the same kind that I find on the ice and snow, frozen, in winter. See January 5, 1858 ("I see one of those fuzzy winter caterpillars, black at the two ends and brown-red in middle, crawling on a rock by the Hunt's Bridge causeway. "); January 8, 1857 ("I picked up on the bare ice of the river, opposite the oak in Shattuck's land, on a small space blown bare of snow, a fuzzy caterpillar, black at the two ends and red-brown in the middle, rolled into a ball . . .”); January 24, 1858 ("I see two of those black and red-brown fuzzy caterpillars in a mullein leaf on this bare edge-hill, which could not have blown from any tree, I think. They apparently take refuge in such places."); March 8, 1855 ("I see of late more than before of the fuzzy caterpillars, both black and reddish-brown.”); March 5, 1854 ("See a small blackish caterpillar on the snow. Where do they come from? ")
The withered oak leaves, especially the shrub oak, so thick and firm and unworn, without speck or fret, clear reddish-brown (sometimes paler or yellowish brown), its whitish under sides contrasting with it in a very cheerful manner. So strong and cheerful, as if it rejoiced at the advent of winter, and exclaimed, “Winter, come on!” See December 1. 1856 ("The shrub oak, lowly, loving the earth and spreading over it, tough, thick-leaved; leaves firm and sound in winter and rustling like leather shields; leaves fair and wholesome to the eye, clean and smooth to the touch. Tough to support the snow, not broken down by it."); October 25, 1858 ("How should we do without this variety of oak leaves, — the forms and colors?")
Tuesday, November 28, 2017
A male bird hanging dead by the neck, just touching its toes to the ground.
November 28.
P. M. — Around Ebby Hubbard's wood lot.
On the hillside above his swamp, near the Ministerial land, I found myself walking in one of those shelf-like hillside paths made by Indians, hunters, cows, or what-not, and it was beset with fresh snares for partridges, this wise: Upright twigs are stuck in the ground across the path, a foot or more in height and just close enough together to turn a partridge aside, leaving a space about four inches wide in the middle, and some twigs are stretched across above to prevent the birds hopping over. Then a sapling about an inch in diameter or less is bent over, and the end caught under one of the twigs which has a notch or projection on one side, and a free-running noose, attached to the sapling, hangs in the opening and is kept spread by being hung on some very slight nicks in the two twigs. This seems to suppose the bird to be going one way only, but perhaps if it cannot escape one way it will turn and try to go back, and so spring the trap.
I saw one that was sprung with nothing in it, another whose slip-noose was blown or fallen one side, and another with a partridge still warm in it. It was a male bird hanging dead by the neck, just touching its toes to the ground. It had a collar or ruff about its neck, of large and conspicuous black feathers with a green reflection. This black is peculiar to the male, the female's being brown. Its feet, now clinched in its agony, were the strangest-looking pale blue, with a fine fringe, of scales or the like, on each side of each toe. The small black feathers were centred with gray spots. The scapulars were darker brown, dashed with large clear pale-brown spots; the breast-feathers light with light-brown marks. The tail-feathers had each a broad black bar, except the middle one, which was more mixed or grayish there. The bands of the females are said to be more brown, as is their collar.
There were a few droppings of the bird close by the snare in two instances. Were they dropped after it was caught? Or did they determine the locality of the snare?
These birds appear to run most along the sides of wooded banks around swamps. At least these paths and snares occur there oftenest. I often scare them up from amid or near hemlocks in the woods.
The general color of the bird is that of the ground and dry leaves on it at present. The bird hanging in the snare was very inconspicuous. I had gone close by it once without noticing it. Its wings are short and stout and look as if they were a little worn by striking the ground or bushes, or perhaps in drumming. I observed a bare bright-red or scarlet spot over each eye.
Spoke to Skinner about that wildcat which he says he heard a month ago in Ebby Hubbard’s woods. He was going down to Walden in the evening, to see if geese had not settled in it (with a companion), when they heard this sound, which his companion at first thought made by a coon, but S. said no, it was a wildcat. He says he has heard them often in the Adirondack region, where he has purchased furs. He told him he would hear it again soon, and he did. Some what like the domestic cat, a low sort of growling and then a sudden quick-repeated caterwaul, or yow yow you, or yang yang yang. He says they utter this from time to time when on the track of some prey.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 28, 1857
I found myself walking in one of those shelf-like hillside paths beset with fresh snares for partridges. See November 8, 1857 ("I step over the slip-noose snares which some woodling has just set. How long since men set snares for partridges and rabbits?"); November 18,1851 ("Surveying these days the Ministerial Lot . . .I hear the hooting of an owl . . . Here hawks also circle by day, and chickadees are heard, and rabbits and partridges abound."); December 15, 1857 ("Within a day or two, I saw another partridge in the snare of November 28th, frozen stiff. To-day I see that some creature has torn and disembowelled it, removing it half a rod, leaving the head in snare, which has lifted it three or four feet in the air on account of its lightness. This last bird was either a female or young male, its ruff and bar on tail being rather dark-brown than black.")
One of those shelf-like hillside paths. See note to February 16, 2014 ("That Indian trail on the hillside about Walden is revealed with remarkable distinctness. . . by the slight snow which had lodged on it forming a clear white line unobscured by weeds and twigs.")
That wildcat which Skinner says he heard. See October 20, 1857 ("Melvin tells me that Skinner says he thinks he heard a wildcat scream in E. Hubbard's Wood, by the Close. It is worth the while to have a Skinner in the town; else we should not know that we had wildcats."); see also Natural History of Massachusetts (1842) ("The bear, wolf, lynx, wildcat, deer, beaver, and marten have disappeared "); October 4, 1856 ("In another [Harper's]article, of May, 1855, on "The Lion and his Kind," the animals are placed in this order: the domestic cat, wildcat, the ocelot or tiger-cat of Peru and Mexico, the caracal of Asia and Africa, the lynx of North America,. . . the leopard, the jaguar, the cougar, the tiger, the lion."); March 23, 1856 ("I consider that the nobler animals have been exterminated here, — the cougar, panther, lynx, wolverene, wolf, bear, moose, deer, the beaver, the turkey, etc., etc., — I cannot but feel as if I lived in a tamed, and, as it were, emasculated country.”); September 13, 1860 ("Five [lynx] I have heard of (and seen three) killed within some fifteen or eighteen miles of Concord within thirty years past.")
P. M. — Around Ebby Hubbard's wood lot.
On the hillside above his swamp, near the Ministerial land, I found myself walking in one of those shelf-like hillside paths made by Indians, hunters, cows, or what-not, and it was beset with fresh snares for partridges, this wise: Upright twigs are stuck in the ground across the path, a foot or more in height and just close enough together to turn a partridge aside, leaving a space about four inches wide in the middle, and some twigs are stretched across above to prevent the birds hopping over. Then a sapling about an inch in diameter or less is bent over, and the end caught under one of the twigs which has a notch or projection on one side, and a free-running noose, attached to the sapling, hangs in the opening and is kept spread by being hung on some very slight nicks in the two twigs. This seems to suppose the bird to be going one way only, but perhaps if it cannot escape one way it will turn and try to go back, and so spring the trap.
I saw one that was sprung with nothing in it, another whose slip-noose was blown or fallen one side, and another with a partridge still warm in it. It was a male bird hanging dead by the neck, just touching its toes to the ground. It had a collar or ruff about its neck, of large and conspicuous black feathers with a green reflection. This black is peculiar to the male, the female's being brown. Its feet, now clinched in its agony, were the strangest-looking pale blue, with a fine fringe, of scales or the like, on each side of each toe. The small black feathers were centred with gray spots. The scapulars were darker brown, dashed with large clear pale-brown spots; the breast-feathers light with light-brown marks. The tail-feathers had each a broad black bar, except the middle one, which was more mixed or grayish there. The bands of the females are said to be more brown, as is their collar.
There were a few droppings of the bird close by the snare in two instances. Were they dropped after it was caught? Or did they determine the locality of the snare?
These birds appear to run most along the sides of wooded banks around swamps. At least these paths and snares occur there oftenest. I often scare them up from amid or near hemlocks in the woods.
The general color of the bird is that of the ground and dry leaves on it at present. The bird hanging in the snare was very inconspicuous. I had gone close by it once without noticing it. Its wings are short and stout and look as if they were a little worn by striking the ground or bushes, or perhaps in drumming. I observed a bare bright-red or scarlet spot over each eye.
Spoke to Skinner about that wildcat which he says he heard a month ago in Ebby Hubbard’s woods. He was going down to Walden in the evening, to see if geese had not settled in it (with a companion), when they heard this sound, which his companion at first thought made by a coon, but S. said no, it was a wildcat. He says he has heard them often in the Adirondack region, where he has purchased furs. He told him he would hear it again soon, and he did. Some what like the domestic cat, a low sort of growling and then a sudden quick-repeated caterwaul, or yow yow you, or yang yang yang. He says they utter this from time to time when on the track of some prey.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 28, 1857
I found myself walking in one of those shelf-like hillside paths beset with fresh snares for partridges. See November 8, 1857 ("I step over the slip-noose snares which some woodling has just set. How long since men set snares for partridges and rabbits?"); November 18,1851 ("Surveying these days the Ministerial Lot . . .I hear the hooting of an owl . . . Here hawks also circle by day, and chickadees are heard, and rabbits and partridges abound."); December 15, 1857 ("Within a day or two, I saw another partridge in the snare of November 28th, frozen stiff. To-day I see that some creature has torn and disembowelled it, removing it half a rod, leaving the head in snare, which has lifted it three or four feet in the air on account of its lightness. This last bird was either a female or young male, its ruff and bar on tail being rather dark-brown than black.")
One of those shelf-like hillside paths. See note to February 16, 2014 ("That Indian trail on the hillside about Walden is revealed with remarkable distinctness. . . by the slight snow which had lodged on it forming a clear white line unobscured by weeds and twigs.")
That wildcat which Skinner says he heard. See October 20, 1857 ("Melvin tells me that Skinner says he thinks he heard a wildcat scream in E. Hubbard's Wood, by the Close. It is worth the while to have a Skinner in the town; else we should not know that we had wildcats."); see also Natural History of Massachusetts (1842) ("The bear, wolf, lynx, wildcat, deer, beaver, and marten have disappeared "); October 4, 1856 ("In another [Harper's]article, of May, 1855, on "The Lion and his Kind," the animals are placed in this order: the domestic cat, wildcat, the ocelot or tiger-cat of Peru and Mexico, the caracal of Asia and Africa, the lynx of North America,. . . the leopard, the jaguar, the cougar, the tiger, the lion."); March 23, 1856 ("I consider that the nobler animals have been exterminated here, — the cougar, panther, lynx, wolverene, wolf, bear, moose, deer, the beaver, the turkey, etc., etc., — I cannot but feel as if I lived in a tamed, and, as it were, emasculated country.”); September 13, 1860 ("Five [lynx] I have heard of (and seen three) killed within some fifteen or eighteen miles of Concord within thirty years past.")
Monday, November 27, 2017
I think that Ruskin is wrong about reflections
November 27.
Mr. Wesson says that he has seen a striped squirrel eating a white-bellied mouse on a wall — had evidently caught it; also that the little dipper is not a coot, - but he appears not to know a coot, and did not recognize the lobed feet when I drew them. Says the little dipper has a bill like a hen, and will not dive at the flash so as to escape, as he has proved.
Says that a loon can run but little way and very awkwardly, falling on its belly, and cannot rise from the ground. Makes a great noise running on the water before it rises.
Standing before Stacy's large glass windows this morning, I saw that they were gloriously ground by the frost. I never saw such beautiful feather and fir like frosting. His windows are filled with fancy articles and toys for Christmas and New-Year's presents, but this delicate and graceful outside frosting surpassed them all infinitely.
I saw countless feathers with very distinct midribs and fine pinnae. The half of a trunk seemed to rise in each case up along the sash, and these feathers branched off from it all the way, sometimes nearly horizontally. Other crystals looked like pine plumes the size of life. If glass could be ground to look like this, how glorious it would be! You can tell which shopman has the hottest fire within by the frost being melted off. I was never so struck by the gracefulness of the curves in vegetation, and wonder that Ruskin does not refer to frostwork.
P. M. – Rode to the kiln and quarry by William Farrar's, Carlisle, and to gorge behind Melvin's.
The direction of the strata at this quarry is like that of Curly-pate and the Easterbrooks quarries, east-northeast by west-southwest, though the latter are very nearly two miles southeast.
Was struck by the appearance of a small hickory near the wall, in the rocky ravine just above the trough. Its trunk was covered with loose scales unlike the hickories near it and as much as the shagbark; but probably it is a shaggy or scaly-barked variety of Carya glabra. [Carya glabra – pignut hickory]
It may be well to observe it next fall. The husk is not thick, like that of the shagbark, but quite thin, and splits into four only part way down. The shell is not white nor sharply four-angled like the other, but it is rather like a pignut.
The stratification trends there as at Curly-pate, or perhaps more north and south.
That trough placed on the side of the rocky valley to catch the trickling spring for the sake of the cattle, with a long slab cover to the trough that leads to it to fend off the feet of cattle that come to drink, is an agreeable object and in keeping with the circumstances, amid the hickories and perhaps ash trees. It reminds me of life sometimes in the pasture, — that other creatures than myself quench their thirst at this hillside.
I think that Ruskin is wrong about reflections in his “Elements of Drawing,” page 181.* He says the reflection is merely the substance “reversed” or “topsy turvy,” and adds, “Whatever you can see from the place in which you stand, of the solid objects so reversed under the water, you will see in the reflection, always in the true perspective of the solid objects so reversed.”
H. D.Thoreau, Journal, November 27, 1857
Mr. Wesson says that he has seen a striped squirrel eating a white-bellied mouse on a wall — had evidently caught it; also that the little dipper is not a coot, - but he appears not to know a coot, and did not recognize the lobed feet when I drew them. Says the little dipper has a bill like a hen, and will not dive at the flash so as to escape, as he has proved.
Says that a loon can run but little way and very awkwardly, falling on its belly, and cannot rise from the ground. Makes a great noise running on the water before it rises.
Standing before Stacy's large glass windows this morning, I saw that they were gloriously ground by the frost. I never saw such beautiful feather and fir like frosting. His windows are filled with fancy articles and toys for Christmas and New-Year's presents, but this delicate and graceful outside frosting surpassed them all infinitely.
I saw countless feathers with very distinct midribs and fine pinnae. The half of a trunk seemed to rise in each case up along the sash, and these feathers branched off from it all the way, sometimes nearly horizontally. Other crystals looked like pine plumes the size of life. If glass could be ground to look like this, how glorious it would be! You can tell which shopman has the hottest fire within by the frost being melted off. I was never so struck by the gracefulness of the curves in vegetation, and wonder that Ruskin does not refer to frostwork.
P. M. – Rode to the kiln and quarry by William Farrar's, Carlisle, and to gorge behind Melvin's.
The direction of the strata at this quarry is like that of Curly-pate and the Easterbrooks quarries, east-northeast by west-southwest, though the latter are very nearly two miles southeast.
Was struck by the appearance of a small hickory near the wall, in the rocky ravine just above the trough. Its trunk was covered with loose scales unlike the hickories near it and as much as the shagbark; but probably it is a shaggy or scaly-barked variety of Carya glabra. [Carya glabra – pignut hickory]
It may be well to observe it next fall. The husk is not thick, like that of the shagbark, but quite thin, and splits into four only part way down. The shell is not white nor sharply four-angled like the other, but it is rather like a pignut.
The stratification trends there as at Curly-pate, or perhaps more north and south.
That trough placed on the side of the rocky valley to catch the trickling spring for the sake of the cattle, with a long slab cover to the trough that leads to it to fend off the feet of cattle that come to drink, is an agreeable object and in keeping with the circumstances, amid the hickories and perhaps ash trees. It reminds me of life sometimes in the pasture, — that other creatures than myself quench their thirst at this hillside.
I think that Ruskin is wrong about reflections in his “Elements of Drawing,” page 181.* He says the reflection is merely the substance “reversed” or “topsy turvy,” and adds, “Whatever you can see from the place in which you stand, of the solid objects so reversed under the water, you will see in the reflection, always in the true perspective of the solid objects so reversed.”
H. D.Thoreau, Journal, November 27, 1857
Was struck by the appearance of a small hickory See November 25, 1851 ("Saw a tree on the turnpike full of hickory-nuts which had an agreeable appearance")
.
Ruskin is wrong about reflections . . .He says . . . 'Whatever you can see from the place in which you stand, of the solid objects so reversed under the water, you will see in the reflection.' See November 30, 1853 ("Though frequently we could not see the real bush in the twilight against the dark bank, in the water it appeared against the sky");November 2, 1857 ("The water tells me how it looks to it seen from below.”) ; October 14, 1857 (“[T]he reflection is never a true copy or repetition of its substance, but a new composition”)See also, on reading Ruskin, October 6, 1857 (“How much is written about Nature as somebody has portrayed her, how little about Nature as she is”); October 29, 1857 (“The love of Nature and fullest perception of the revelation which she is to man is not compatible with the belief in the peculiar revelation of the Bible which Ruskin entertains.”)
Note. On November 16th HDT wrote Blake:
* "If, after a little study from Nature, you get puzzled by the great differences between the aspect of the reflected image and that of the object casting it; and if you wish to know the law of reflection, it is simply this: Suppose all the objects above the water actually reversed (not in appearance, but in fact) beneath the water, and precisely the same in form and in relative position, only all topsy-turvy. Then, whatever you could see, from the place in which you stand, of the solid objects so reversed under the water, you will see in the reflection, always in the true perspective of the solid objects so reversed."
Note. On November 16th HDT wrote Blake:
"Have you ever read Ruskin's books? If not, I would recommend you to try the second and third volumes (not parts) of his “Modern Painters.” I am now reading the fourth, and have read most of his other books lately. They are singularly good and encouraging, though not without crudeness and bigotry. The themes in the vol-umes referred to are Infinity, Beauty, Imagination, Love of Nature, etc., all treated in a very living manner. I am rather surprised by them."
* "If, after a little study from Nature, you get puzzled by the great differences between the aspect of the reflected image and that of the object casting it; and if you wish to know the law of reflection, it is simply this: Suppose all the objects above the water actually reversed (not in appearance, but in fact) beneath the water, and precisely the same in form and in relative position, only all topsy-turvy. Then, whatever you could see, from the place in which you stand, of the solid objects so reversed under the water, you will see in the reflection, always in the true perspective of the solid objects so reversed."
Sunday, November 26, 2017
Got my boat up this afternoon.
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| November 26, 2017 |
Speaking of those long, dry, barren hollows in the Richardson wood-lot with Ebby Hubbard, he says that the reason why no trees have sprung up in them is because the trees were very old when they were cut, and no sprouts came up from the stumps. Otherwise the lowest ground is the best-timbered. I have referred it to frost.
Rice tells me he remembers that Nathan Barrett's father used to stutter. He went round collecting the direct taxes soon after the Revolution, — on carriages, watches, dogs, etc., etc. It was perhaps a dollar on a dog. Coming to Captain Bent's, who kept tavern in Sudbury where Israel Rice lives, he collected his tax and then said, “I want you to may-ma-ma-ma-make me a ha-ha-ha-ha-ha — to make me a ha-ha-ha — a whole mug o' flip.”
Got my boat up this afternoon. (It is Thanksgiving Day.) One end had frozen in.
I see that already some eager urchins have been able to try their skates on a short and narrow strip of ice by the riverside there.
Minott's is a small, square, one-storied and unpainted house, with a hipped roof and at least one dormer window, a third the way up the south side of a long hill which is some fifty feet high and extends east and west. A traveller of taste may go straight through the village without being detained a moment by any dwelling, either the form or surroundings being objectionable, but very few go by this house without being agreeably impressed, and many are therefore led to inquire who lives in it.
Not that its form is so incomparable, nor even its weather-stained color, but chiefly, I think, because of its snug and picturesque position on the hillside, fairly lodged there, where all children like to be, and its perfect harmony with its surroundings and position. For if, preserving this form and color, it should be transplanted to the meadow below, nobody would notice it more than a schoolhouse which was lately of the same form. It is there because somebody was independent or bold enough to carry out the happy thought of placing it high on the hillside.
It is the locality, not the architecture, that takes us captive.
There is exactly such a site, only of course less room on either side, between this house and the next westward, but few if any, even of the admiring travellers, have thought of this as a house-lot, or would be bold enough to place a cottage there. Without side fences or gravelled walks or flower plats, that simple sloping bank before it is pleasanter than any front yard, though many a visitor—and many times the master — has slipped and fallen on the steep path.
From its position and exposure, it has shelter and warmth and dryness and prospect. He overlooks the road, the meadow and brook, and houses beyond, to the distant woods.
The spring comes earlier to that dooryard than to any, and summer lingers longest there.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 26, 1857
Rice tells me he remembers that Nathan Barrett's father used to stutter. He went round collecting the direct taxes soon after the Revolution, — on carriages, watches, dogs, etc., etc. It was perhaps a dollar on a dog. Coming to Captain Bent's, who kept tavern in Sudbury where Israel Rice lives, he collected his tax and then said, “I want you to may-ma-ma-ma-make me a ha-ha-ha-ha-ha — to make me a ha-ha-ha — a whole mug o' flip.”
Got my boat up this afternoon. (It is Thanksgiving Day.) One end had frozen in.
I see that already some eager urchins have been able to try their skates on a short and narrow strip of ice by the riverside there.
Minott's is a small, square, one-storied and unpainted house, with a hipped roof and at least one dormer window, a third the way up the south side of a long hill which is some fifty feet high and extends east and west. A traveller of taste may go straight through the village without being detained a moment by any dwelling, either the form or surroundings being objectionable, but very few go by this house without being agreeably impressed, and many are therefore led to inquire who lives in it.
Not that its form is so incomparable, nor even its weather-stained color, but chiefly, I think, because of its snug and picturesque position on the hillside, fairly lodged there, where all children like to be, and its perfect harmony with its surroundings and position. For if, preserving this form and color, it should be transplanted to the meadow below, nobody would notice it more than a schoolhouse which was lately of the same form. It is there because somebody was independent or bold enough to carry out the happy thought of placing it high on the hillside.
It is the locality, not the architecture, that takes us captive.
There is exactly such a site, only of course less room on either side, between this house and the next westward, but few if any, even of the admiring travellers, have thought of this as a house-lot, or would be bold enough to place a cottage there. Without side fences or gravelled walks or flower plats, that simple sloping bank before it is pleasanter than any front yard, though many a visitor—and many times the master — has slipped and fallen on the steep path.
From its position and exposure, it has shelter and warmth and dryness and prospect. He overlooks the road, the meadow and brook, and houses beyond, to the distant woods.
The spring comes earlier to that dooryard than to any, and summer lingers longest there.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 26, 1857
Got my boat up this afternoon. See December 5, 1853 ("Got my boat in. The river frozen over thinly in most places and whitened with snow ...”); December 2, 1854 (“Got up my boat and housed it, ice having formed about it.”); November 30, 1855 (“Got in my boat. River remained iced over all day. ”); December 2, 1856 (“Got in my boat . . . It made me sweat to wheel it home through the snow”); November 26, 1858 (“Got in boat on account of Reynolds’s new fence going up (earlier than usual).”); December 10, 1859 (“Get in my boat, in the snow. The bottom is coated with a glaze.”); November 29, 1860 (“Get up my boat, 7 a. m. Thin ice of the night is floating down the river.”) See also December 5, 1856:
"I love to have the river
closed up for a season
and a pause put to my boating,
to be obliged to get my boat in.
I shall launch it again in the spring
with so much more pleasure.
I love best to have each thing
in its season only,
and enjoy doing without it
at all other times. "
Saturday, November 25, 2017
November Eatheart
P. M. — To Hubbard’s Close and thence through woods to Goose Pond and Pine Hill.
A clear, cold, windy afternoon. The cat crackles with electricity when you stroke her, and the fur rises up to your touch.
This is November of the hardest kind, — bare frozen ground covered with pale-brown or straw-colored herbage, a strong, cold, cutting northwest wind which makes me seek to cover my ears, a perfectly clear and cloudless sky.
The cattle in the fields have a cold, shrunken, shaggy look, their hair standing out every way, as if with electricity, like the cat's.
Ditches and pools are fast skimming over, and a few slate-colored snowbirds, with thick, shuffling twitter, and fine-chipping tree sparrows flit from bush to bush in the other wise deserted pastures. This month taxes a walker's resources more than any.
For my part, I should sooner think of going into quarters in November than in the winter. If you do feel any fire at this season out of doors, you may depend upon it, it is your own.
It is but a short time, these afternoons, before the night cometh, in which no man can walk. If you delay to start till three o'clock, there will be hardly time left for a long and rich adventure, — to get fairly out of town.
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| November 25, 2017 |
November Eatheart, — is that the name of it?
Not only the fingers cease to do their office, but there is often a benumbing of the faculties generally. You can hardly screw up your courage to take a walk when all is thus tightly locked or frozen up and so little is to be seen in field or wood.
I am inclined to take to the swamps or woods as the warmest place, and the former are still the openest. Nature has herself become like the few fruits which she still affords, a very thick-shelled nut with a shrunken meat within. If I find anything to excite or warm my thoughts abroad, it is an agreeable disappointment, for I am obliged to go abroad willfully and against my inclinations at first.
The prospect looks so barren, so many springs are frozen up, not a flower perchance and but few birds left, not a companion abroad in all these fields for me, I am slow to go forth. I seem to anticipate a fruitless walk. I think to myself hesitatingly, Shall I go there, or there, or there? and cannot make up my mind to any route, all seem so unpromising, mere surface walking and fronting the cold wind, so that I have to force myself to it often and at random.
But then I am often unexpectedly compensated, and the thinnest yellow light of November is more warming and exhilarating than any wine they tell of; and then the mite which November contributes becomes equal in value to the bounty of July. I may meet with some thing which interests me, and immediately it is as warm as in July, as if it were the south instead of the north west wind that blowed.
I do not know if I am singular when I say that I believe there is no man with whom I can associate who will not, comparatively speaking, spoil my afternoon. That society or encounter may at last yield a fruit which I am not aware of, but I cannot help suspecting that I should have spent those hours more profitably alone.
Pools under the north sides of hills are frozen pretty thick. That cold one of Stow's is nearly an inch and a half thick. It is already dusty, though the ice is but a day or two old. That of Jarvis's, opposite Breed's, is also skimmed over thinly, but Goose Pond very little way as yet. The main crystals of this new ice remind me where massed together sometimes of spiny cactus leaves. Meeting each other, they inclose figures of a more or less triangular form rather than squarish. Sometimes many are closely parallel, half an inch apart, and in favorable lights you see a resemblance to large feathers. Sometimes those large spiny crystals ray from a centre, star-like, somewhat like the folds of a garment taken up by a point. The plaited ice. Also you may say the waved ice, — still speaking of the first thin ice of the season.
I notice a thimble-berry vine forming an arch four feet high, which has firmly rooted itself at the small end.
The roar of the wind in the trees over my head sounds as cold as the wind feels.
I come to what seems an old ditch a dozen feet long, in Hubbard's Close. It is skinned over, but I see where a spring wells up from its bottom under the ice. When I come to it, small black-looking fishes (?), four or five inches long, apparently trout, dart about it with incredible velocity, trying to escape or to bury themselves in the mud. It is some time before all have succeeded in burying themselves to their minds, but when I shake the bog they start again.
Ascending the hill on the east of the Close, I find, in the pine wood on its top, some fragments of a frozen white fungus or toadstool, which apparently a squirrel has eaten, for he has also dropped some at the base of a pine. These look almost exactly like asbestos, so white and stringy to the eye.
Methinks there has been more pine-sap than usual the past summer. I never saw a quarter part so much. It stands there withered in dense brown masses, six or eight inches high, partly covered with dead leaves. The tobacco-pipes are a darker brown.
You see here and there, under pitch pines, bits of gray bark which have fallen, reminding you very strongly of the scaly armor, perhaps, of fossil fishes or other creatures. I see, under a large white pine, three quarts at least of scales in a heap, where a squirrel has sat on the instep of the tree and stripped the cones. Further in Ebby Hubbard’s wood, I see a great two-storied mass of black spunk which has fallen.
I shiver about awhile on Pine Hill, waiting for the sun to set. Methinks the air is dusky soon after four these days. The landscape looks darker than at any season, — like arctic scenery. There is the sun a quarter of an hour high, shining on it through a perfectly clear sky, but to my eye it is singularly dark or dusky. And now the sun has disappeared, there is hardly less light for half a minute. I should not know when it was down, but by looking for it as I stand at this height.
Returning, I see a fox run across the road in the twilight from Potter’s into Richardson’s woods. He is on a canter, but I see the whitish tip of his tail. I feel a certain respect for him, because, though so large, he still maintains himself free and wild in our midst, and is so original so far as any resemblance to our race is concerned. Perhaps I like him better than his tame cousin the dog for it.
It is surprising how much, from the habit of regarding writing as an accomplishment, is wasted on form. A very little information or wit is mixed up with a great deal of conventionalism in the style of expressing it, as with a sort of preponderating paste or vehicle. Some life is not simply expressed, but a long-winded speech is made, with an occasional attempt to put a little life into it.
H. D. Thoreau Journal, November 25, 1857
November Eatheart. See November 27, 1853 (“Now a man will eat his heart, if ever, now while the earth is bare, barren and cheerless, and we have the coldness of winter without the variety of ice and snow”) . See also This is glorious November weather.
Not only the fingers cease to do their office, but there is often a benumbing of the faculties generally. You can hardly screw up your courage to take a walk when all is thus tightly locked or frozen up and so little is to be seen in field or wood.
I am inclined to take to the swamps or woods as the warmest place, and the former are still the openest. Nature has herself become like the few fruits which she still affords, a very thick-shelled nut with a shrunken meat within. If I find anything to excite or warm my thoughts abroad, it is an agreeable disappointment, for I am obliged to go abroad willfully and against my inclinations at first.
The prospect looks so barren, so many springs are frozen up, not a flower perchance and but few birds left, not a companion abroad in all these fields for me, I am slow to go forth. I seem to anticipate a fruitless walk. I think to myself hesitatingly, Shall I go there, or there, or there? and cannot make up my mind to any route, all seem so unpromising, mere surface walking and fronting the cold wind, so that I have to force myself to it often and at random.
But then I am often unexpectedly compensated, and the thinnest yellow light of November is more warming and exhilarating than any wine they tell of; and then the mite which November contributes becomes equal in value to the bounty of July. I may meet with some thing which interests me, and immediately it is as warm as in July, as if it were the south instead of the north west wind that blowed.
I do not know if I am singular when I say that I believe there is no man with whom I can associate who will not, comparatively speaking, spoil my afternoon. That society or encounter may at last yield a fruit which I am not aware of, but I cannot help suspecting that I should have spent those hours more profitably alone.
Pools under the north sides of hills are frozen pretty thick. That cold one of Stow's is nearly an inch and a half thick. It is already dusty, though the ice is but a day or two old. That of Jarvis's, opposite Breed's, is also skimmed over thinly, but Goose Pond very little way as yet. The main crystals of this new ice remind me where massed together sometimes of spiny cactus leaves. Meeting each other, they inclose figures of a more or less triangular form rather than squarish. Sometimes many are closely parallel, half an inch apart, and in favorable lights you see a resemblance to large feathers. Sometimes those large spiny crystals ray from a centre, star-like, somewhat like the folds of a garment taken up by a point. The plaited ice. Also you may say the waved ice, — still speaking of the first thin ice of the season.
I notice a thimble-berry vine forming an arch four feet high, which has firmly rooted itself at the small end.
The roar of the wind in the trees over my head sounds as cold as the wind feels.
I come to what seems an old ditch a dozen feet long, in Hubbard's Close. It is skinned over, but I see where a spring wells up from its bottom under the ice. When I come to it, small black-looking fishes (?), four or five inches long, apparently trout, dart about it with incredible velocity, trying to escape or to bury themselves in the mud. It is some time before all have succeeded in burying themselves to their minds, but when I shake the bog they start again.
Ascending the hill on the east of the Close, I find, in the pine wood on its top, some fragments of a frozen white fungus or toadstool, which apparently a squirrel has eaten, for he has also dropped some at the base of a pine. These look almost exactly like asbestos, so white and stringy to the eye.
Methinks there has been more pine-sap than usual the past summer. I never saw a quarter part so much. It stands there withered in dense brown masses, six or eight inches high, partly covered with dead leaves. The tobacco-pipes are a darker brown.
You see here and there, under pitch pines, bits of gray bark which have fallen, reminding you very strongly of the scaly armor, perhaps, of fossil fishes or other creatures. I see, under a large white pine, three quarts at least of scales in a heap, where a squirrel has sat on the instep of the tree and stripped the cones. Further in Ebby Hubbard’s wood, I see a great two-storied mass of black spunk which has fallen.
I shiver about awhile on Pine Hill, waiting for the sun to set. Methinks the air is dusky soon after four these days. The landscape looks darker than at any season, — like arctic scenery. There is the sun a quarter of an hour high, shining on it through a perfectly clear sky, but to my eye it is singularly dark or dusky. And now the sun has disappeared, there is hardly less light for half a minute. I should not know when it was down, but by looking for it as I stand at this height.
Returning, I see a fox run across the road in the twilight from Potter’s into Richardson’s woods. He is on a canter, but I see the whitish tip of his tail. I feel a certain respect for him, because, though so large, he still maintains himself free and wild in our midst, and is so original so far as any resemblance to our race is concerned. Perhaps I like him better than his tame cousin the dog for it.
It is surprising how much, from the habit of regarding writing as an accomplishment, is wasted on form. A very little information or wit is mixed up with a great deal of conventionalism in the style of expressing it, as with a sort of preponderating paste or vehicle. Some life is not simply expressed, but a long-winded speech is made, with an occasional attempt to put a little life into it.
H. D. Thoreau Journal, November 25, 1857
November Eatheart. See November 27, 1853 (“Now a man will eat his heart, if ever, now while the earth is bare, barren and cheerless, and we have the coldness of winter without the variety of ice and snow”) . See also This is glorious November weather.
I believe there is no man with whom I can associate who will not, comparatively speaking, spoil my afternoon. See August 31, 1856 (“Some are so inconsiderate as to ask to walk or sail with me regularly every day”); September 16, 1859 ("Ask me for a certain number of dollars if you will, but do not ask me for my afternoons.")
Friday, November 24, 2017
I called them “a moccasin-print.”
November 24.
P. M. — To Andromeda Ponds.
Cold Thanksgiving weather again, the pools freezing.
The first or northernmost Andromeda Pond, considering the main portion north of the isthmus, is surrounded, except at the isthmus, by dry hills, twenty-five to forty feet high perhaps, covered with young oaks. Its interior, or far the greater part of the whole, is filled with a uniformly dense and level bed of brown andromeda, in which I detect nothing else from the hills except some white cotton-grass waving over it.
Between the andromeda and the hills, there is a border, from one to two rods wide, of coarse and now yellowish sedge all the way round, except, of course, at the isthmus, and part of the way, just within the edge of the andromeda, mixed with it, a second inner border of gray bushes, chiefly, I suppose, blueberry, etc., with a few small birches, maples, pines, etc. As I remember, it lies somewhat thus: —
The southerly continuation of this and the other two ponds are much more wet, — have open water and less andromeda, much more sedge in proportion. Why does the sedge grow thus around the andromeda in a regular ring next the hill? I think it is because it is more wet there. It would be open water there all the way round if it were not for the sedge, but I could walk through the andromeda if I could get to it. Why should it be more wet there? I do not know, unless the springs are at the base of the hills. The sedge can evidently bear more water than the andromeda, and the andromeda than the blueberry bushes, etc. Perhaps the sedge prepares the ground for the andromeda some times, furnishing a base and support for it. I see the latter, as it were, making its way out thinly into the sedge here and there. Perhaps the sedge once covered the whole or greater part.
The sphagnum, apparently, having some slight solid core to grow around, like an andromeda or blueberry stem, builds itself up a foot or more and may make a soil for noble plants thus. On the dry hillside next the water, there is another belt, i.e. of lambkill, pretty dense, running apparently quite round the pond a rod or more in width. Probably it occurs very far off, or high, thinly, but here it is a thick growth and has relation to the swamp.
According to this, then, you have clear open water, but shallow; then, in course of time, a shallow lake with much sedge standing in it; then, after a while, a dense andromeda bed with blueberry bushes and perhaps a wet border of sedge (as here at present); and finally, a maple swamp. Spruce and larch appear to flourish very well at the same time with the andromeda.
Looking toward the sun, the andromeda in front of me is a very warm red brown and on either side of me, a pale silvery brown; looking from the sun, a uniform pale brown.
Perhaps the Andromeda Polifolia and Kalmia glauca prefer stagnant water.
These andromeda swamps charmed me more than twenty years ago, — I knew not why, — and I called them “a moccasin-print.”
The Fringilla hyemalis appear to be flitting about in a more lively manner on account of the cold. They go off with a twitter from the low weeds and bushes. Nowadays birds are so rare I am wont to mistake them at first for a leaf or mote blown off from the trees or bushes.
Some poets have said that writing poetry was for youths only, but not so. In that fervid and excitable season we only get the impulse which is to carry us onward in our future career. Ideals are then exhibited to us distinctly which all our lives after we may aim at but not attain. The mere vision is little compared with the steady corresponding‘ endeavor thitherward. It would be vain for us to be looking ever into promised lands toward which in the meanwhile we were not steadily and earnestly travelling, whether the way led over a mountain-top or through a dusky valley. In youth, when we are most elastic and there is a spring to us, we merely receive an impulse in the proper direction. To suppose that this is equivalent to having travelled the road, or obeyed the impulse faithfully throughout a lifetime, is absurd. We are shown fair scenes in order that we may be tempted to inhabit them, and not simply tell what we have seen.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 24, 1857
It would be open water there all the way round if it were not for the sedge, but I could walk through the andromeda if I could get to it. See January 24, 1855 (“But I observe that the andromeda does not quite fill the pond, but there is an open wet place, with coarse grass, swamp loosestrife, and some button-bush, about a rod wide, surrounding the whole.”)
Looking toward the sun, the andromeda in front of me is a very warm red brown and on either side of me, a pale silvery brown; looking from the sun, a uniform pale brown. See November 24, 1852 ("At this time last year the andromeda in the Ministerial Swamp was red . Now it has not turned from brown."): See also April 19 1852 ("That phenomenon of the andromeda seen against the sun cheers me exceedingly. . . . These little leaves are the stained windows in the cathedral of my world..”); January 24, 1855 ("Those Andromeda Ponds are very attractive spots to me. They are filled with a dense bed of the small andromeda, a dull red mass as commonly seen, brighter or translucent red looking toward the sun, grayish looking from it...); January 10,1855 ("As I go toward the sun now at 4 P. M., the translucent leaves are lit up by it and appear of a soft red, more or less brown, like cathedral windows, but when I look back from the sun, the whole bed appears merely gray and brown or less reddish.”). See also note to May 5, 1855 (“I can neither get the red cathedral-window light looking toward the now westering sun in a most favorable position, nor the gray colors in the other direction, but it is all a grayish green.”); November 17, 1859 (“How fair and memorable this prospect when you stand opposite to the sun, these November afternoons, and look over the red andromeda swamp”) Also The Andromeda Phenomenon
The Fringilla hyemalis . . .go off with a twitter from the low weeds and bushes.See November 4, 1855 ("See some large flocks of F. hyemalis, which fly with a clear but faint chinking chirp, and from time to time you hear quite a strain, half warbled, from them. They rise in a body from the ground and fly to the trees as you approach.”)
Some poets have said that writing poetry was for youths only, but not so. . . .In youth, when we are most elastic and there is a spring to us, we merely receive an impulse in the proper direction. . . .See January 17, 1852 ("It appears to me that at a very early age the mind of man, perhaps at the same time with his body, ceases to be elastic. His intellectual power becomes some thing defined and limited. He does not think expansively, as he would stretch himself in his growing days. What was flexible sap hardens into heart-wood, and there is no further change. I. . . It is the transition from poetry to prose. The young man can run and leap; he has not learned exactly how far, he knows no limits. The grown man does not exceed his daily labor. He has no strength to waste.”)
P. M. — To Andromeda Ponds.
Cold Thanksgiving weather again, the pools freezing.
The first or northernmost Andromeda Pond, considering the main portion north of the isthmus, is surrounded, except at the isthmus, by dry hills, twenty-five to forty feet high perhaps, covered with young oaks. Its interior, or far the greater part of the whole, is filled with a uniformly dense and level bed of brown andromeda, in which I detect nothing else from the hills except some white cotton-grass waving over it.
Between the andromeda and the hills, there is a border, from one to two rods wide, of coarse and now yellowish sedge all the way round, except, of course, at the isthmus, and part of the way, just within the edge of the andromeda, mixed with it, a second inner border of gray bushes, chiefly, I suppose, blueberry, etc., with a few small birches, maples, pines, etc. As I remember, it lies somewhat thus: —
The southerly continuation of this and the other two ponds are much more wet, — have open water and less andromeda, much more sedge in proportion. Why does the sedge grow thus around the andromeda in a regular ring next the hill? I think it is because it is more wet there. It would be open water there all the way round if it were not for the sedge, but I could walk through the andromeda if I could get to it. Why should it be more wet there? I do not know, unless the springs are at the base of the hills. The sedge can evidently bear more water than the andromeda, and the andromeda than the blueberry bushes, etc. Perhaps the sedge prepares the ground for the andromeda some times, furnishing a base and support for it. I see the latter, as it were, making its way out thinly into the sedge here and there. Perhaps the sedge once covered the whole or greater part.
The sphagnum, apparently, having some slight solid core to grow around, like an andromeda or blueberry stem, builds itself up a foot or more and may make a soil for noble plants thus. On the dry hillside next the water, there is another belt, i.e. of lambkill, pretty dense, running apparently quite round the pond a rod or more in width. Probably it occurs very far off, or high, thinly, but here it is a thick growth and has relation to the swamp.
According to this, then, you have clear open water, but shallow; then, in course of time, a shallow lake with much sedge standing in it; then, after a while, a dense andromeda bed with blueberry bushes and perhaps a wet border of sedge (as here at present); and finally, a maple swamp. Spruce and larch appear to flourish very well at the same time with the andromeda.
Looking toward the sun, the andromeda in front of me is a very warm red brown and on either side of me, a pale silvery brown; looking from the sun, a uniform pale brown.
Perhaps the Andromeda Polifolia and Kalmia glauca prefer stagnant water.
These andromeda swamps charmed me more than twenty years ago, — I knew not why, — and I called them “a moccasin-print.”
The Fringilla hyemalis appear to be flitting about in a more lively manner on account of the cold. They go off with a twitter from the low weeds and bushes. Nowadays birds are so rare I am wont to mistake them at first for a leaf or mote blown off from the trees or bushes.
Some poets have said that writing poetry was for youths only, but not so. In that fervid and excitable season we only get the impulse which is to carry us onward in our future career. Ideals are then exhibited to us distinctly which all our lives after we may aim at but not attain. The mere vision is little compared with the steady corresponding‘ endeavor thitherward. It would be vain for us to be looking ever into promised lands toward which in the meanwhile we were not steadily and earnestly travelling, whether the way led over a mountain-top or through a dusky valley. In youth, when we are most elastic and there is a spring to us, we merely receive an impulse in the proper direction. To suppose that this is equivalent to having travelled the road, or obeyed the impulse faithfully throughout a lifetime, is absurd. We are shown fair scenes in order that we may be tempted to inhabit them, and not simply tell what we have seen.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 24, 1857
It would be open water there all the way round if it were not for the sedge, but I could walk through the andromeda if I could get to it. See January 24, 1855 (“But I observe that the andromeda does not quite fill the pond, but there is an open wet place, with coarse grass, swamp loosestrife, and some button-bush, about a rod wide, surrounding the whole.”)
Looking toward the sun, the andromeda in front of me is a very warm red brown and on either side of me, a pale silvery brown; looking from the sun, a uniform pale brown. See November 24, 1852 ("At this time last year the andromeda in the Ministerial Swamp was red . Now it has not turned from brown."): See also April 19 1852 ("That phenomenon of the andromeda seen against the sun cheers me exceedingly. . . . These little leaves are the stained windows in the cathedral of my world..”); January 24, 1855 ("Those Andromeda Ponds are very attractive spots to me. They are filled with a dense bed of the small andromeda, a dull red mass as commonly seen, brighter or translucent red looking toward the sun, grayish looking from it...); January 10,1855 ("As I go toward the sun now at 4 P. M., the translucent leaves are lit up by it and appear of a soft red, more or less brown, like cathedral windows, but when I look back from the sun, the whole bed appears merely gray and brown or less reddish.”). See also note to May 5, 1855 (“I can neither get the red cathedral-window light looking toward the now westering sun in a most favorable position, nor the gray colors in the other direction, but it is all a grayish green.”); November 17, 1859 (“How fair and memorable this prospect when you stand opposite to the sun, these November afternoons, and look over the red andromeda swamp”) Also The Andromeda Phenomenon
The Fringilla hyemalis . . .go off with a twitter from the low weeds and bushes.See November 4, 1855 ("See some large flocks of F. hyemalis, which fly with a clear but faint chinking chirp, and from time to time you hear quite a strain, half warbled, from them. They rise in a body from the ground and fly to the trees as you approach.”)
Some poets have said that writing poetry was for youths only, but not so. . . .In youth, when we are most elastic and there is a spring to us, we merely receive an impulse in the proper direction. . . .See January 17, 1852 ("It appears to me that at a very early age the mind of man, perhaps at the same time with his body, ceases to be elastic. His intellectual power becomes some thing defined and limited. He does not think expansively, as he would stretch himself in his growing days. What was flexible sap hardens into heart-wood, and there is no further change. I. . . It is the transition from poetry to prose. The young man can run and leap; he has not learned exactly how far, he knows no limits. The grown man does not exceed his daily labor. He has no strength to waste.”)
Thursday, November 23, 2017
A walk through Gowing’s Swamp.
November 23.
Monday. P. M. — To Gowing's Swamp.
Garfield, who was working in what was Moore's Swamp, tells me that he sometimes digs up frogs in the winter, when ditching in springy places, one at a time. He is very much troubled by the short-tailed meadow mouse in that meadow. They live under the stumps, and gnaw his potatoes in the fall. He thought that his little dog, a terrier, had killed a bushel of them the past year.
At the back of Gowing's hillside, just west of his swamp, in the midst of shrub oaks and other dry up land trees, the ground slopes regularly on all sides to a deep round hollow, perhaps fifteen feet lower than the lowest side and thirty feet in diameter at the bottom. The bottom is rather wet and covered with sphagnum, and many stiff and dead-looking button-bushes stand in it, while all around a dense high hedge of high blueberry curves over it. So sudden a change there will be in the vegetation with a change of soil. Many such a dimple with its peculiar vegetations have I seen in a dry wood-lot. The Vaccinium corymbosum and panicled andromeda in a dense hedge, in a circular or oval or other curved form, surrounding and slanting over it so as almost to conceal it; and in the same manner the blueberry, etc., will grow around and overhang the largest ponds.
Walked through Gowing's Swamp from west to east. You may say it is divided into three parts, – first, the thin woody; second, the coarse bushy or gray; and third, the fine bushy or brown.
First: The trees are larch, white birch, red maple, spruce, white pine, etc.
Second: The coarse bushy part, or blueberry thicket, consists of high blueberry, panicled andromeda, Amelanchier Canadensis var. oblongifolia, swamp-pink, choke-berry, Viburnum nudum, rhodora, (and probably prinos, holly, etc., etc., not distinguishable easily now), but chiefly the first two. Much of the blueberry being dead gives it a very gray as well as scraggy as pect. It is a very bad thicket to break through, yet there are commonly thinner places, or often opens, by which you may wind your way about the denser clumps. Small specimens of the trees are mingled with these and also some water andromeda and lamb-kill.
Third: There are the smooth brown and wetter spaces where the water andromeda chiefly prevails, together with purplish lamb-kill about the sides of them, and hairy huckleberry; but in the midst and wettest part the narrow revolute and glaucous (beneath) leaves of the Andromeda Polifolia and Kalmia glauca are seen, and in the sphagnum the Vaccinium Oxycoccus. In one of the latter portions occurs that open pool.
Sphagnum is found everywhere in the swamp.
First, there is the dark wooded part; second, the scraggy gray blueberry thicket; third, the rich brown water andromeda spaces.
The high blueberry delights singularly in these localities. You distinguish it by its gray spreading mass; its light-gray bark, rather roughened; its thickish shoots, often crimson; and its plump, roundish red buds. Think of its wreaths and canopies of cool blue fruit in August, thick as the stars in the Milky Way! The panicled andromeda is upright, light-gray, with a rather smoother bark, more slender twigs, and small, sharp red buds lying close to the twig. The blueberry is particularly hard to break through, it is so spreading and scraggy, but a hare can double swiftly enough beneath it. The ground of sphagnum is now thickly strewn with the leaves of these shrubs.
The water andromeda makes a still more uniformly dense thicket, which must be nearly impervious to some animals; but as man lifts his head high above it, finds but little difficulty in making his way through it, though it sometimes comes up to his middle, and if his eye scans its surface it makes an impression of smoothness and denseness, – its rich brown, whole some surface, even as grass or moss.
Ascending the high land on the south, I looked down over the large open space with its navel pool in the centre. This green stagnant pool, rayed with the tracks or trails of musquash and making but a feeble watery impression, reminded me of portions of the map of the moon.
This swamp appears not to have had any natural outlet, though an artificial one has been dug. The same is perhaps the case with the C. Miles Swamp. And is it so with Beck Stow's These three are the only places where I have found the Andromeda Polifolia. The Kalmia glauca in Gowing's, C. Miles's, and Holden's swamps. The latter has no outlet of any kind.
I am interested in those plants, like panicled andromeda, shrub oak, etc., for which no use that I know has been discovered. The panicled andromeda, instead of the date tree, might be my coat-of arms.
Fresh slender shoots of the Viburnum nudum make very good withes, I find.
Austin Bacon told me that the worst swamp he ever found was not in Vermont or up country where he had surveyed, but in Newton (?), where he surveyed for a road once. The water was about two feet deep, and you jumped from tussock to tussock; these generally tipped over with you into the water.
There is a strong and warm southwest wind, which brings the frost out of the ground, — more than I thought was in it, — making the surface wet.
Walking along the top of Gowing's hill wood-lot, I see from time to time large ant-hills amid the young oaks. Often their tops have been disturbed and flattened, by some creature apparently. Some may be deserted. The sedge-grass has sprung up long and thick about the sides of these mounds, though there may be none amid the oaks around. The working of the ants keeps clear a little space amid the bushes.
In the evening heavy rain and some thunder and lightning, and rain in the night.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 23, 1857
I looked down over the large open space with its navel pool in the centre. See May 31, 1857 (“That central meadow and pool in Gowing's Swamp is its very navel,”); August 23, 1854 ("There is in the middle an open pool, twenty or thirty feet in diameter,. . .an abrupt edge next the water, this on a dense bed of quaking sphagnum, in which I sink eighteen inches in water, upheld by its matted roots, where I fear to break through. On this the spatulate sundew abounds.”).
Water andromeda chiefly prevails, together with purplish lamb-kill about the sides of them, and hairy huckleberry; but in the midst and wettest part the narrow revolute and glaucous (beneath) leaves of the Andromeda Polifolia and Kalmia glauca are seen, and in the sphagnum the Vaccinium Oxycoccus. See February 17, 1854 (“In these swamps, then, you have three kinds of andromeda. The main swamp is crowded with high blueberry, panicled andromeda, prinos, swamp-pink, etc., etc., and then in the middle or deepest part will be an open space not yet quite given up to water, where the Andromeda calyculata and a few A. Polifolia reign almost alone.”); August 23, 1854 (“Next comes, half a dozen rods wide, a dense bed of Andromeda calyculata, — the A. Polifolia mingled with it, — the rusty cotton- grass, cranberries, — the common and also V. Oxycoccus, — pitcher-plants, sedges, and a few young spruce and larch here and there,”); August 30, 1856 ("Consider how remote and novel that swamp. Beneath it is a quaking bed of sphagnum, and in it grow Andromeda Polifolia, Kalmia glauca, menyanthes (or buck -bean), Gaylussacia dumosa, Vaccinium Oxycoccus, — plants which scarcely a citizen of Concord ever sees.”) See also Gowing's; Swamp historical survey and botanical inventory (2010) (Rare or unusual plants remaining today at Gowing’s Swamp include:
V. Oxycoccus. See August 23, 1854 (“I find a new cranberry on the sphagnum amid the A. calyculata, — V. Oxycoccus . . .It has small, now purplish-dotted fruit, flat on the sphagnum, some turned scarlet partly, on terminal peduncles, with slender, thread-like stems and small leaves strongly revolute on the edges.”)
Kalmia glauca var. rosmarinifolia. See January 9, 1855 (“Make a splendid discovery this afternoon. Walking through Holden’s white spruce swamp, I see peeping above the snow-crust some slender delicate evergreen shoots very much like the Andromeda Polifolia, amid sphagnum, lambkill, Andromeda calyculata, blueberry bushes, etc., though there is very little to be seen above the snow. It is, I have little doubt, the Kalmia glauca var. rosmarinifolia.”)
 |
| Gowing’s Swamp August 23, 1854 |
Monday. P. M. — To Gowing's Swamp.
Garfield, who was working in what was Moore's Swamp, tells me that he sometimes digs up frogs in the winter, when ditching in springy places, one at a time. He is very much troubled by the short-tailed meadow mouse in that meadow. They live under the stumps, and gnaw his potatoes in the fall. He thought that his little dog, a terrier, had killed a bushel of them the past year.
At the back of Gowing's hillside, just west of his swamp, in the midst of shrub oaks and other dry up land trees, the ground slopes regularly on all sides to a deep round hollow, perhaps fifteen feet lower than the lowest side and thirty feet in diameter at the bottom. The bottom is rather wet and covered with sphagnum, and many stiff and dead-looking button-bushes stand in it, while all around a dense high hedge of high blueberry curves over it. So sudden a change there will be in the vegetation with a change of soil. Many such a dimple with its peculiar vegetations have I seen in a dry wood-lot. The Vaccinium corymbosum and panicled andromeda in a dense hedge, in a circular or oval or other curved form, surrounding and slanting over it so as almost to conceal it; and in the same manner the blueberry, etc., will grow around and overhang the largest ponds.
Walked through Gowing's Swamp from west to east. You may say it is divided into three parts, – first, the thin woody; second, the coarse bushy or gray; and third, the fine bushy or brown.
First: The trees are larch, white birch, red maple, spruce, white pine, etc.
Second: The coarse bushy part, or blueberry thicket, consists of high blueberry, panicled andromeda, Amelanchier Canadensis var. oblongifolia, swamp-pink, choke-berry, Viburnum nudum, rhodora, (and probably prinos, holly, etc., etc., not distinguishable easily now), but chiefly the first two. Much of the blueberry being dead gives it a very gray as well as scraggy as pect. It is a very bad thicket to break through, yet there are commonly thinner places, or often opens, by which you may wind your way about the denser clumps. Small specimens of the trees are mingled with these and also some water andromeda and lamb-kill.
Third: There are the smooth brown and wetter spaces where the water andromeda chiefly prevails, together with purplish lamb-kill about the sides of them, and hairy huckleberry; but in the midst and wettest part the narrow revolute and glaucous (beneath) leaves of the Andromeda Polifolia and Kalmia glauca are seen, and in the sphagnum the Vaccinium Oxycoccus. In one of the latter portions occurs that open pool.
Sphagnum is found everywhere in the swamp.
First, there is the dark wooded part; second, the scraggy gray blueberry thicket; third, the rich brown water andromeda spaces.
The high blueberry delights singularly in these localities. You distinguish it by its gray spreading mass; its light-gray bark, rather roughened; its thickish shoots, often crimson; and its plump, roundish red buds. Think of its wreaths and canopies of cool blue fruit in August, thick as the stars in the Milky Way! The panicled andromeda is upright, light-gray, with a rather smoother bark, more slender twigs, and small, sharp red buds lying close to the twig. The blueberry is particularly hard to break through, it is so spreading and scraggy, but a hare can double swiftly enough beneath it. The ground of sphagnum is now thickly strewn with the leaves of these shrubs.
The water andromeda makes a still more uniformly dense thicket, which must be nearly impervious to some animals; but as man lifts his head high above it, finds but little difficulty in making his way through it, though it sometimes comes up to his middle, and if his eye scans its surface it makes an impression of smoothness and denseness, – its rich brown, whole some surface, even as grass or moss.
Ascending the high land on the south, I looked down over the large open space with its navel pool in the centre. This green stagnant pool, rayed with the tracks or trails of musquash and making but a feeble watery impression, reminded me of portions of the map of the moon.
This swamp appears not to have had any natural outlet, though an artificial one has been dug. The same is perhaps the case with the C. Miles Swamp. And is it so with Beck Stow's These three are the only places where I have found the Andromeda Polifolia. The Kalmia glauca in Gowing's, C. Miles's, and Holden's swamps. The latter has no outlet of any kind.
I am interested in those plants, like panicled andromeda, shrub oak, etc., for which no use that I know has been discovered. The panicled andromeda, instead of the date tree, might be my coat-of arms.
Fresh slender shoots of the Viburnum nudum make very good withes, I find.
Austin Bacon told me that the worst swamp he ever found was not in Vermont or up country where he had surveyed, but in Newton (?), where he surveyed for a road once. The water was about two feet deep, and you jumped from tussock to tussock; these generally tipped over with you into the water.
There is a strong and warm southwest wind, which brings the frost out of the ground, — more than I thought was in it, — making the surface wet.
Walking along the top of Gowing's hill wood-lot, I see from time to time large ant-hills amid the young oaks. Often their tops have been disturbed and flattened, by some creature apparently. Some may be deserted. The sedge-grass has sprung up long and thick about the sides of these mounds, though there may be none amid the oaks around. The working of the ants keeps clear a little space amid the bushes.
In the evening heavy rain and some thunder and lightning, and rain in the night.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 23, 1857
I looked down over the large open space with its navel pool in the centre. See May 31, 1857 (“That central meadow and pool in Gowing's Swamp is its very navel,”); August 23, 1854 ("There is in the middle an open pool, twenty or thirty feet in diameter,. . .an abrupt edge next the water, this on a dense bed of quaking sphagnum, in which I sink eighteen inches in water, upheld by its matted roots, where I fear to break through. On this the spatulate sundew abounds.”).
Water andromeda chiefly prevails, together with purplish lamb-kill about the sides of them, and hairy huckleberry; but in the midst and wettest part the narrow revolute and glaucous (beneath) leaves of the Andromeda Polifolia and Kalmia glauca are seen, and in the sphagnum the Vaccinium Oxycoccus. See February 17, 1854 (“In these swamps, then, you have three kinds of andromeda. The main swamp is crowded with high blueberry, panicled andromeda, prinos, swamp-pink, etc., etc., and then in the middle or deepest part will be an open space not yet quite given up to water, where the Andromeda calyculata and a few A. Polifolia reign almost alone.”); August 23, 1854 (“Next comes, half a dozen rods wide, a dense bed of Andromeda calyculata, — the A. Polifolia mingled with it, — the rusty cotton- grass, cranberries, — the common and also V. Oxycoccus, — pitcher-plants, sedges, and a few young spruce and larch here and there,”); August 30, 1856 ("Consider how remote and novel that swamp. Beneath it is a quaking bed of sphagnum, and in it grow Andromeda Polifolia, Kalmia glauca, menyanthes (or buck -bean), Gaylussacia dumosa, Vaccinium Oxycoccus, — plants which scarcely a citizen of Concord ever sees.”) See also Gowing's; Swamp historical survey and botanical inventory (2010) (Rare or unusual plants remaining today at Gowing’s Swamp include:
- Black spruce (Picea marianna)
- Bog rosemary (Andromeda polifolia)
- Bog or pale laurel (Kalmia polifolia)
- Purple pitcher-plant (Sarracenia purpurea)
- Round-leaved sundew (Drosera rotundifolia)
- Small-flowered cranberry (Vaccinium oxycoccus)
- Tawny cotton sedge (Eriophorum virginicum)
- 53 lichen species, including 3 not found elsewhere in the local area (Cladoniaincrassata, Parmeliopsis subambigua, and Pseudevernia consocians)
- Mountain holly (Nemopanthus mucronatus))
V. Oxycoccus. See August 23, 1854 (“I find a new cranberry on the sphagnum amid the A. calyculata, — V. Oxycoccus . . .It has small, now purplish-dotted fruit, flat on the sphagnum, some turned scarlet partly, on terminal peduncles, with slender, thread-like stems and small leaves strongly revolute on the edges.”)
Kalmia glauca var. rosmarinifolia. See January 9, 1855 (“Make a splendid discovery this afternoon. Walking through Holden’s white spruce swamp, I see peeping above the snow-crust some slender delicate evergreen shoots very much like the Andromeda Polifolia, amid sphagnum, lambkill, Andromeda calyculata, blueberry bushes, etc., though there is very little to be seen above the snow. It is, I have little doubt, the Kalmia glauca var. rosmarinifolia.”)
Tuesday, November 21, 2017
All at once, I saw that it was a woodcock, perfectly still, with its head drawn in, standing on its great pink feet.
November 21.
P. M. – Up Assabet.
Paddling along, a little above the Hemlocks, I hear, I think, a boy whistling upon the bank above me, but immediately perceive that it is the whistle of the locomotive a mile off in that direction. I perceived that it was distant, and therefore the locomotive, the moment that the key was changed from a very high to a low one. Was it because distant sounds are commonly on a low key?
Just above the grape-hung birches, my attention was drawn to a singular-looking dry leaf or parcel of leaves on the shore about a rod off. Then I thought it might be the dry and yellowed skeleton of a bird with all its ribs; then the shell of a turtle, or possibly some large dry oak leaves peculiarly curved and cut; and then, all at once, I saw that it was a woodcock, perfectly still, with its head drawn in, standing on its great pink feet.
I had, apparently, noticed only the yellowish-brown portions of the plumage, referring the dark-brown to the shore behind it. May it not be that the yellowish-brown markings of the bird correspond somewhat to its skeleton? At any rate with my eye steadily on it from a point within a rod, I did not for a considerable time suspect it to be a living creature.
I was paddling along slowly, on the lookout for what was to be seen, when my attention was caught by a strange-looking leaf or bunch of leaves on the shore, close to the water’s edge, a rod distant. I thought to myself, I may as well investigate that, and so pushed slowly toward it, my eyes resting on it all the while. It then looked like a small shipwrecked hulk and, strange to say, like the bare skeleton of a fowl that has been picked and turned yellowish, resting on its breast-bone, the color of a withered black or red oak leaf. Again I thought it must be such a leaf or cluster of leaves peculiarly curved and cut or torn on the upper edges.
The chubby bird dashed away zigzag, carrying its long tongue-case carefully before it, over the witch hazel bushes.
Examining the shore after it had flown with a whistling flight, I saw that there was a clear space of mud between the water and the edge of ice-crystals about two inches wide, melted so far by the lapse of the water, and all along the edge of the ice, for a rod or two at least, there was a hole where it had thrust its bill down, probing, every half-inch, frequently closer. Some animal life must be collected at that depth just in that narrow space, savory morsels for this bird.
This is its walk, – the portion of the shore, the narrow strip, still kept open and unfrozen between the water's edge and the ice. The sportsman might discover its neighborhood by these probings.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 21, 1857
I hear, I think, a boy whistling upon the bank above me, but immediately perceive that it is the whistle of the locomotive a mile off in that direction. See December 31, 1853 ("I hear very distinctly from the railroad causeway the whistle of the locomotive on the Lowell road. . "); August 15, 1854 ("The locomotive whistle, far southwest, sounds like a bell.”); March 22, 1856 ("I thought I heard the hum of a bee, but perhaps it was a railroad whistle on the Lowell Railroad")
P. M. – Up Assabet.
Paddling along, a little above the Hemlocks, I hear, I think, a boy whistling upon the bank above me, but immediately perceive that it is the whistle of the locomotive a mile off in that direction. I perceived that it was distant, and therefore the locomotive, the moment that the key was changed from a very high to a low one. Was it because distant sounds are commonly on a low key?
Just above the grape-hung birches, my attention was drawn to a singular-looking dry leaf or parcel of leaves on the shore about a rod off. Then I thought it might be the dry and yellowed skeleton of a bird with all its ribs; then the shell of a turtle, or possibly some large dry oak leaves peculiarly curved and cut; and then, all at once, I saw that it was a woodcock, perfectly still, with its head drawn in, standing on its great pink feet.
I had, apparently, noticed only the yellowish-brown portions of the plumage, referring the dark-brown to the shore behind it. May it not be that the yellowish-brown markings of the bird correspond somewhat to its skeleton? At any rate with my eye steadily on it from a point within a rod, I did not for a considerable time suspect it to be a living creature.
I was paddling along slowly, on the lookout for what was to be seen, when my attention was caught by a strange-looking leaf or bunch of leaves on the shore, close to the water’s edge, a rod distant. I thought to myself, I may as well investigate that, and so pushed slowly toward it, my eyes resting on it all the while. It then looked like a small shipwrecked hulk and, strange to say, like the bare skeleton of a fowl that has been picked and turned yellowish, resting on its breast-bone, the color of a withered black or red oak leaf. Again I thought it must be such a leaf or cluster of leaves peculiarly curved and cut or torn on the upper edges.
The chubby bird dashed away zigzag, carrying its long tongue-case carefully before it, over the witch hazel bushes.
Examining the shore after it had flown with a whistling flight, I saw that there was a clear space of mud between the water and the edge of ice-crystals about two inches wide, melted so far by the lapse of the water, and all along the edge of the ice, for a rod or two at least, there was a hole where it had thrust its bill down, probing, every half-inch, frequently closer. Some animal life must be collected at that depth just in that narrow space, savory morsels for this bird.
This is its walk, – the portion of the shore, the narrow strip, still kept open and unfrozen between the water's edge and the ice. The sportsman might discover its neighborhood by these probings.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 21, 1857
I hear, I think, a boy whistling upon the bank above me, but immediately perceive that it is the whistle of the locomotive a mile off in that direction. See December 31, 1853 ("I hear very distinctly from the railroad causeway the whistle of the locomotive on the Lowell road. . "); August 15, 1854 ("The locomotive whistle, far southwest, sounds like a bell.”); March 22, 1856 ("I thought I heard the hum of a bee, but perhaps it was a railroad whistle on the Lowell Railroad")
Monday, November 20, 2017
The poet has made the best roots in his native soil of any man, and is the hardest to transplant.
November 20.
High wind in the night, shaking the house, apparently from the northwest.
About 9.30 A. M., though there is very little cloud, I see a few flakes of snow, two or three only, like flocks of gossamer, straggling in a slanting direction to the ground, unnoticed by most, in a rather raw air.
At ten there is a little more. The children in the next yard have seen it and are excited. They are searching to see if any rests on the ground.
In books, that which is most generally interesting is what comes home to the most cherished private experience of the greatest number. It is not the book of him who has travelled the farthest over the surface of the globe, but of him who has lived the deepest and been the most at home. If an equal emotion is excited by a familiar homely phenomenon as by the Pyramids, there is no advantage in seeing the Pyramids. It is on the whole better, as it is simpler, to use the common language. We require that the reporter be very permanently planted before the facts which he observes, not a mere passer-by; hence the facts cannot be too homely.
A man is worth most to himself and to others, whether as an observer, or poet, or neighbor, or friend, where he is most himself, most contented and at home.
There his life is the most intense and he loses the fewest moments. Familiar and surrounding objects are the best symbols and illustrations of his life. If a man who has had deep experiences should endeavor to describe them in a book of travels, it would be to use the language of a wandering tribe instead of a universal language.
The poet has made the best roots in his native soil of any man, and is the hardest to transplant.
The man who is often thinking that it is better to be somewhere else than where he is excommunicates himself. If a man is rich and strong anywhere, it must be on his native soil. Here I have been these forty years learning the language of these fields that I may the better express myself. If I should travel to the prairies, I should much less understand them, and my past life would serve me but ill to describe them. Many a weed here stands for more of life to me than the big trees of California would if I should go there. We only need travel enough to give our intellects an airing.
In spite of Malthus and the rest, there will be plenty of room in this world, if every man will mind his own business. I have not heard of any planet running against another yet.
P. M. — To Ministerial Swamp.
Some bank swallows’ nests are exposed by the caving of the bank at Clamshell. The very smallest hole is about two and a half inches wide horizontally, by barely one high. All are much wider than high (vertically). One nest, with an egg in it still, is completely exposed. The cavity at the end is shaped like a thick hoe-cake or lens, about six inches wide and two plus thick, vertically. The nest is a regular but shallow one made simply of stubble, about five inches in diameter, and three quarters of an inch deep.
I see many pollywogs in cold pools now.
I enter the Ministerial Swamp at the road below Tarbell’s. The water andromeda leaves are brown now, except where protected by trees. In some places where many of the bright-crimson shoots of high blueberry are seen together, they have a very pretty effect, a crimson vigor to stand above the snow.
Where the larches stand thick with their dark boles and stems, the ground is thickly strewn with their fine and peculiarly dark brown leaves, chaff-like, i. e. darker than those of other pines, perhaps like black walnut or cherry shavings. As where other evergreens stand thick, little or nothing grows beneath.
I see where squirrels (apparently) have eaten and stripped the spruce cones.
I distinguished where the earth was cast out in cutting ditches through this swamp long ago, and this earth is covered and concealed with a thick growth of cup and cockscomb lichens.
In this light-lying earth, in one place, I see where some creature some time ago has pawed out much comb of some kind of bee (probably for the honey?), making a hole as big as my head, and this torn comb lies about.
Returning through Harrington's land, I see, me thinks, two gentlemen plowing a field, as if to try an agricultural experiment, — for, it being cold and windy, both plowman and driver have their coats on, — but when I get closer, I hear the driver speak in a peculiarly sharp and petulant manner to the plow man as they are turning the land furrow, and I know at once that they belong to those two races which are so slow to amalgamate. Thus my little idyl is disturbed.
I see a partridge on the ground under a white oak by Tarbell's black birches, looking just like a snag.This is the second time I have seen them in such a place. Are they not after acorns?
In the large Tommy Wheeler field, Ranunculus bulbosus in full bloom!
I hear again the soft rippling of the Assabet under those black birches, which Tappan once remarked on. It is not so steep a fall as to be hoarse.
The hardy tree sparrow has taken the place of the chipping and song sparrow, so much like the former that most do not know it is another. His faint lisping chip will keep our spirits up till another spring.
I observed this afternoon how some bullocks had a little sportiveness forced upon them. They were running down a steep declivity to water, when, feeling themselves unusually impelled by gravity downward, they took the hint even as boys do, flourished round gratuitously, tossing their hind quarters into the air and shaking their heads at each other, but what increases the ludicrousness of it to me is the fact that such capers are never accompanied by a smile. Who does not believe that their step is less elastic, their movement more awkward, for their long domesticity?
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 20, 1857
High wind in the night, shaking the house. . . See October 17, 1857 ("Very high wind in the night, shaking the house. I feel it taking hold under the eaves, which project at the end of the house, each time with a jerk.") October 24, 1853 ("Just after dark, high southerly winds arise. . . blowing the rain against the windows and roof and shaking the house."); November 25, 1860 (“The house was shaken by wind last night, and there was a general deficiency of bedclothes.”); February 10, 1860 ("A very strong and a cold northwest wind to-day, shaking the house,. . . — consumes wood and yet we are cold, and drives the smoke down the chimney"); February 29, 1852 (“High winds last night and this morning. The house shakes, and the beds and tables rock.”); March 18, 1854 (“Never felt it shake the house so much. . .”); June 2, 1855 (“The wind shakes the house night and day.”)
About 9.30 A. M., I see a few flakes of snow. At ten there is a little more. The children in the next yard are searching to see if any rests on the ground. See November 8, 1853 (“Our first snow,. . . The children greet it with a shout when they come out at recess.”)
We only need travel enough to give our intellects an airing. See September 7, 1851 ("The discoveries which we make abroad are special and particular; those which we make at home are general and significant. The further off, the nearer the surface. The nearer home, the deeper."); May 6, 1854 ("It matters not where or how far you travel, — the farther commonly the worse, — but how much alive you are."); March 11, 1856 ("Only that travelling is good which reveals to me the value of home and enables me to enjoy it better");September 21, 1856 ("I have within a week found in Concord two of the new plants I found up-country. Such is the advantage of going abroad, — to enable to detect your own plants. I detected them first abroad, because there I was looking for the strange.")
I see a partridge on the ground under a white oak by Tarbell's black birches, looking just like a snag.See January 31, 1855 ("As I skate near the shore under Lee’s Cliff, I see what I take to be some scrags or knotty stubs of a dead limb lying on the bank beneath a white oak, close by me. Yet while I look directly at them I can not but admire their close resemblance to partridges. . . .")
I hear again the soft rippling of the Assabet under those black birches . . . It is not so steep a fall as to be hoarse. April 11, 1856 ("The current of the Assabet is so much swifter, and its channel so much steeper than that of the main stream, that, while a stranger frequently cannot tell which way the latter flows by his eye, you can perceive the declination of the channel of the former within a very short distance, even between one side of a tree and another. You perceive the waters heaped on the upper side of rocks and trees, and even twigs that trail in the stream.")
Bullocks had a little sportiveness forced upon them. . flourished round gratuitously, tossing their hind quarters into the air and shaking their heads at each other. See November 21, 1850 ("I saw a herd of a dozen cows and young steers and oxen on Conantum this afternoon, running about and frisking in unwieldy sport . . . shook their heads, raised their tails, and rushed up and down the hill.")
 |
| November 20, 1857 |
High wind in the night, shaking the house, apparently from the northwest.
About 9.30 A. M., though there is very little cloud, I see a few flakes of snow, two or three only, like flocks of gossamer, straggling in a slanting direction to the ground, unnoticed by most, in a rather raw air.
At ten there is a little more. The children in the next yard have seen it and are excited. They are searching to see if any rests on the ground.
In books, that which is most generally interesting is what comes home to the most cherished private experience of the greatest number. It is not the book of him who has travelled the farthest over the surface of the globe, but of him who has lived the deepest and been the most at home. If an equal emotion is excited by a familiar homely phenomenon as by the Pyramids, there is no advantage in seeing the Pyramids. It is on the whole better, as it is simpler, to use the common language. We require that the reporter be very permanently planted before the facts which he observes, not a mere passer-by; hence the facts cannot be too homely.
A man is worth most to himself and to others, whether as an observer, or poet, or neighbor, or friend, where he is most himself, most contented and at home.
There his life is the most intense and he loses the fewest moments. Familiar and surrounding objects are the best symbols and illustrations of his life. If a man who has had deep experiences should endeavor to describe them in a book of travels, it would be to use the language of a wandering tribe instead of a universal language.
The poet has made the best roots in his native soil of any man, and is the hardest to transplant.
The man who is often thinking that it is better to be somewhere else than where he is excommunicates himself. If a man is rich and strong anywhere, it must be on his native soil. Here I have been these forty years learning the language of these fields that I may the better express myself. If I should travel to the prairies, I should much less understand them, and my past life would serve me but ill to describe them. Many a weed here stands for more of life to me than the big trees of California would if I should go there. We only need travel enough to give our intellects an airing.
In spite of Malthus and the rest, there will be plenty of room in this world, if every man will mind his own business. I have not heard of any planet running against another yet.
P. M. — To Ministerial Swamp.
Some bank swallows’ nests are exposed by the caving of the bank at Clamshell. The very smallest hole is about two and a half inches wide horizontally, by barely one high. All are much wider than high (vertically). One nest, with an egg in it still, is completely exposed. The cavity at the end is shaped like a thick hoe-cake or lens, about six inches wide and two plus thick, vertically. The nest is a regular but shallow one made simply of stubble, about five inches in diameter, and three quarters of an inch deep.
I see many pollywogs in cold pools now.
I enter the Ministerial Swamp at the road below Tarbell’s. The water andromeda leaves are brown now, except where protected by trees. In some places where many of the bright-crimson shoots of high blueberry are seen together, they have a very pretty effect, a crimson vigor to stand above the snow.
Where the larches stand thick with their dark boles and stems, the ground is thickly strewn with their fine and peculiarly dark brown leaves, chaff-like, i. e. darker than those of other pines, perhaps like black walnut or cherry shavings. As where other evergreens stand thick, little or nothing grows beneath.
I see where squirrels (apparently) have eaten and stripped the spruce cones.
I distinguished where the earth was cast out in cutting ditches through this swamp long ago, and this earth is covered and concealed with a thick growth of cup and cockscomb lichens.
In this light-lying earth, in one place, I see where some creature some time ago has pawed out much comb of some kind of bee (probably for the honey?), making a hole as big as my head, and this torn comb lies about.
Returning through Harrington's land, I see, me thinks, two gentlemen plowing a field, as if to try an agricultural experiment, — for, it being cold and windy, both plowman and driver have their coats on, — but when I get closer, I hear the driver speak in a peculiarly sharp and petulant manner to the plow man as they are turning the land furrow, and I know at once that they belong to those two races which are so slow to amalgamate. Thus my little idyl is disturbed.
I see a partridge on the ground under a white oak by Tarbell's black birches, looking just like a snag.This is the second time I have seen them in such a place. Are they not after acorns?
In the large Tommy Wheeler field, Ranunculus bulbosus in full bloom!
I hear again the soft rippling of the Assabet under those black birches, which Tappan once remarked on. It is not so steep a fall as to be hoarse.
The hardy tree sparrow has taken the place of the chipping and song sparrow, so much like the former that most do not know it is another. His faint lisping chip will keep our spirits up till another spring.
I observed this afternoon how some bullocks had a little sportiveness forced upon them. They were running down a steep declivity to water, when, feeling themselves unusually impelled by gravity downward, they took the hint even as boys do, flourished round gratuitously, tossing their hind quarters into the air and shaking their heads at each other, but what increases the ludicrousness of it to me is the fact that such capers are never accompanied by a smile. Who does not believe that their step is less elastic, their movement more awkward, for their long domesticity?
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 20, 1857
High wind in the night, shaking the house. . . See October 17, 1857 ("Very high wind in the night, shaking the house. I feel it taking hold under the eaves, which project at the end of the house, each time with a jerk.") October 24, 1853 ("Just after dark, high southerly winds arise. . . blowing the rain against the windows and roof and shaking the house."); November 25, 1860 (“The house was shaken by wind last night, and there was a general deficiency of bedclothes.”); February 10, 1860 ("A very strong and a cold northwest wind to-day, shaking the house,. . . — consumes wood and yet we are cold, and drives the smoke down the chimney"); February 29, 1852 (“High winds last night and this morning. The house shakes, and the beds and tables rock.”); March 18, 1854 (“Never felt it shake the house so much. . .”); June 2, 1855 (“The wind shakes the house night and day.”)
About 9.30 A. M., I see a few flakes of snow. At ten there is a little more. The children in the next yard are searching to see if any rests on the ground. See November 8, 1853 (“Our first snow,. . . The children greet it with a shout when they come out at recess.”)
We only need travel enough to give our intellects an airing. See September 7, 1851 ("The discoveries which we make abroad are special and particular; those which we make at home are general and significant. The further off, the nearer the surface. The nearer home, the deeper."); May 6, 1854 ("It matters not where or how far you travel, — the farther commonly the worse, — but how much alive you are."); March 11, 1856 ("Only that travelling is good which reveals to me the value of home and enables me to enjoy it better");September 21, 1856 ("I have within a week found in Concord two of the new plants I found up-country. Such is the advantage of going abroad, — to enable to detect your own plants. I detected them first abroad, because there I was looking for the strange.")
I see a partridge on the ground under a white oak by Tarbell's black birches, looking just like a snag.See January 31, 1855 ("As I skate near the shore under Lee’s Cliff, I see what I take to be some scrags or knotty stubs of a dead limb lying on the bank beneath a white oak, close by me. Yet while I look directly at them I can not but admire their close resemblance to partridges. . . .")
I hear again the soft rippling of the Assabet under those black birches . . . It is not so steep a fall as to be hoarse. April 11, 1856 ("The current of the Assabet is so much swifter, and its channel so much steeper than that of the main stream, that, while a stranger frequently cannot tell which way the latter flows by his eye, you can perceive the declination of the channel of the former within a very short distance, even between one side of a tree and another. You perceive the waters heaped on the upper side of rocks and trees, and even twigs that trail in the stream.")
Bullocks had a little sportiveness forced upon them. . flourished round gratuitously, tossing their hind quarters into the air and shaking their heads at each other. See November 21, 1850 ("I saw a herd of a dozen cows and young steers and oxen on Conantum this afternoon, running about and frisking in unwieldy sport . . . shook their heads, raised their tails, and rushed up and down the hill.")
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November 20
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 © 2009-2022
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