I passed through that chestnut wood in the hollow southeast of Curly-pate.

November 6. 

Very warm but rather cloudy weather, after rain in the night. 

Wind southwest. Thermometer on north of the house 70° at 12 M. Indian summer. The cocks crow in the soft air. They are very sensitive to atmospheric changes. 

P. M. — To Curly-pate via old Carlisle road. 

Stedman Buttrick tells me that Dr. Ripley used to have his pork packed with the best pieces at the top of the barrel, and when some parishioner wondered at it, that he should thus eat these first, he answered that when packed thus the topmost were the best all the way through. 

He said that his grandfather lived in the Jarvis house, and that the other old house whose upper story projected over the lower like the Hunt house, and which I saw in the picture of Concord Fight, stood close to his own house, and he pulled it down when he was sixteen. 

I passed through that chestnut wood in the hollow southeast of Curly-pate. Turning over the wet chestnut leaves in the hollows, looking for nuts, I found a red backed salamander, between three and four inches long, bluish-gray beneath (Salamandra erythronota). It jerked itself about in a lively manner, trying to hide itself under the leaves, and would quickly slip out of my fingers. Its motions appeared to partake of those of a snake and a frog, — between a squirm and a hop. It was not particularly swift, yet, from the character of the motion and its glossiness, it was glancing. 

A dozen rods further I turned another, very similar but without a red back, but rather slightly clay-colored. I did not observe any transverse bands; else it might be the S. fasciata. 

When I came out on to the old Carlisle road in the dusk on my return, I saw Brooks Clark coming homeward, with his axe in his hand and both hands behind his back, being bent almost double. He said he was over eighty. Some years ago he bought some land up that way, and, the birches having sprung up there, he called it his birch pasture. There was enough birch wood there to carry him through the winter, and he was now cutting it. 

He remembered when they began to burn lime there, and bought the right to get out stone of Easterbrooks more than sixty years ago. It was Peter Barrett that began it. The lime sold for $5.00 a cask (larger casks than now). But the stone was difficult to get out.

He remembers seeing the mowers at work in the meadow where Stedman Buttrick's handsome pine and maple wood is, seventy years ago, and where there was a large old chestnut by the roadside there, which being cut, two sprouts came up which have become the largest chestnut trees by the wall now. 

As for the yellow birch cellar-hole, Ephraim Brown told him that old Henry Flint (an ancestor of Clark's wife) dug it, and erected the frame of a house there, but never finished it, selling out, going to live by the river. It was never finished. 

Clark's father told him that he remembered when there were no fences between his house and Lawrence's; it was all open. This road was the new one; the bridle-road the old one. 

Minott is a very pleasing figure in nature. He improves every scenery, — he and his comrades, Harry Hooper, John Wyman, Oliver Williams, etc. If he gets into a pond hole he disturbs it no more than a water-spirit for me.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 6, 1857

The yellow birch cellar-hole. See May 18, 1857 ("There is a very grand and picturesque old yellow birch in the old cellar northwest the yellow birch swamp."); September 2, 1857 ("The third, or largest, yellow birch, at the cellar was. . . ten feet nine inches in circumference.. . .The roots inclose some cellar stones. ")

I found a red backed salamander, between three and four inches long, bluish-gray beneath (Salamandra erythronota). See June 17, 1856 ("Went to Rev. Horace James’s reptiles (Orthodox). . . .Showed me . . . alive in bottle, with moss and water, the violet-colored salamander (S. venenosa) with yellow spots (five or six inches long), probably same I found in stump at Walden; and, in spirits, smaller, the S. erythronota, with a conspicuous red back.")

Brooks Clark remembers seeing the mowers at work in the meadow where Stedman Buttrick's handsome pine and maple wood is, seventy years ago . . .See October 20, 1857 ("That very dense and handsome maple and pine grove opposite the pond-hole on this old Carlisle road is Ebby Hubbard's. [Sted Buttrick's, according to Melvin.] Melvin says there are those alive who remember mowing there.")