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| January 22, 2019 |
8.30 A. M. — Go to the riverside. It is over the meadows. Hear Melvin’s gun.
The thick white ice is seen lifted up and resting over the channel several rods from the present shore on the high bank side. As I stand there looking out to that white ice, about four rods distant (at my boat’s place), I notice countless narrow light lines, a third of an inch wide, in or on the very thin, dark, half-cemented ice (hardly so thick as pasteboard) which has formed since midnight on the surface of the risen water between the old ice and the shore.
At first I thought that these light lines were cracks in that thin ice or crystallization (it is now 34°), occasioned, perhaps, by the mere rising of the water. But observing that some of them were peculiarly meandering, returning on themselves loopwise, I looked at them more attentively, and at length I detected at the inner end of one such line a small black speck about a rod from me.
Suspecting this to be a caterpillar, I took steps to ascertain if it were, at any rate, a living creature, by discovering if it were in motion. It appeared to me to move, but it was so slowly that I could not be certain until I set up a stick on the shore or referred it to a fixed point on the ice, when I was convinced that it was a caterpillar slowly crawling toward the shore, or rather to the willows.
Following its trail back with my eye, I found that it came pretty directly from the edge of the old or thick white ice (i. e. from where the surface of the flood touched its sloping surface) toward the willows, from northeast to southwest, and had come about three rods. Looking more sharply still, I detected seven or eight such caterpillars within a couple of square rods on this crystallization, each at the end of its trail and headed toward the willows in exactly the same direction.
And there were the distinct trails of a great many more which had reached the willows or disappeared elsewhere.
These trails were particularly distinct when I squatted low and looked over the ice, reflecting more light then. They were generally pretty direct toward the shore, or toward any clump of willows if within four or five rods. I saw one which led to the willows from the old ice some six rods off.
Slowly as they crawled, this journey must have been made within a few hours, for undoubtedly this ice was formed since midnight.
Many of the lines were very meandering,
and apparently began and ended within the thin ice. There was not enough ice to support even a caterpillar within three or four feet of the shore, for the water was still rapidly rising and not now freezing, and I noticed no caterpillars on the ice within several feet, but with a long stick I obtained quite a number.
Among them were three kinds. Probably the commonest were, first, a small flat (beneath) black one with a dark shell head and body consisting of numerous rings, like dark velvet, four or five eighths of an inch long; second, a black caterpillar about same length, covered with hairy points or tufts, (remind me somewhat of that kind I see on the black willows, which is larger and partly yellow); thirdly, one all brown fuzzy and six or seven eighths of an inch long.
The last lay at the bottom, but was alive. All curled up when I rescued them.
There were also many small brown grasshoppers (not to mention spiders of various sizes and snow fleas) on the ice, but none of these left any perceptible track.
These tracks, thus distinct, were quite innumerable, — there was certainly one for each foot of shore, — many thousands ( ?) within half a dozen rods, — leading commonly from the channel ice to or toward the shore or a tree, but sometimes wandering parallel to the shore.
Yet comparatively few of the caterpillars were now to be seen. You would hardly believe that there had been caterpillars enough there to leave all these trails within so short a time.
It may be a question how did they come on the channel ice. I answer that they were evidently drowned out of the meadow-grass by the rise of the water, i. e., if there is sufficient thaw to lay the ground bare (as the musquash are, which I now hear one shooting from a boat), and that they either swam or were washed on to that channel ice by the rising water (while probably others were washed yet higher up the bank or meadow and were not obliged to make this journey ?), and so, as soon as the water froze hard enough to bear, they commenced their slow journey toward the shore, or any other dark terrestrial-looking object, like a tree, within half a dozen rods.
At first I thought they left a trail because the ice was so very thin and watery, but perhaps the very slight snow that whitened the ground a little had melted on it.
Possibly some were washed from adjacent fields and meadows into the river, for there has been a great wash, a torrent of water has rushed downward over these fields to the river. There was, perhaps, a current setting from the shore toward the middle, which floated them out. How is it when a river is rising? ‘
At any rate, within twenty-four hours this freshet has invaded the Broadways or lower streets of the caterpillar towns, and, within some six hours probably, these innumerable journeys have been performed by wrecked caterpillars over a newly formed ice-bridge, — more such adventurers in our town alone than there are human beings in the United States, — and their trails are there to be seen, every one of them.
Undespairing caterpillars, determined to reach the shore. What risks they run who go to sleep for the winter in our river meadows!
Perhaps the insects come up from their winter retreats in the roots of the grass in such warm and sunny days as we have had, and so are the more washed away, and also become food for crows, which, as I noticed, explore the smallest bare tufts in the fields.
I notice where a musquash has lately swam under this thin ice, breaking it here and there, and his course for many rods is betrayed by a continuous row of numerous white bubbles as big as a ninepence under the ice.
J. Farmer tells me that he once saw a musquash rest three or four minutes under the ice with his nose against the ice in a bubble of air about an inch in diameter, and he thinks that they can draw air through the ice, and that one could swim across Nagog Pond under the ice.
I think that the greater part of the caterpillars reaching the few feet of open water next the shore must sink to the bottom, and perhaps they survive in the grass there. A few may crawl up the trees. One which I took off the bottom was alive. A freshet, then, even in midwinter, is a most momentous event to the insect world.
Perhaps the caterpillars, being in the water, are not frozen in, but crawl out on the ice and steer for the land from wherever they may be. Apparently those which started from the edge of the channel ice must have been drifted there either by the current or wind, because they could not have risen directly up to it from the bottom, since it slopes toward the shore for a rod under water. It is remarkable that the caterpillars know enough to steer for the shore, though four or five rods off.
I notice that, the river thus breaking up in this freshet, this body of ice over the channel cracks on each side near the line of the willows, a little outside of them, two great rents showing the edge and thickness of the ice, making many a jounce or thankee-marm for the skater when all is frozen again, while between them the ice of the channel is lifted up level, while outside these rents the ice slopes downward for a rod, the shore edge still fastened to the bottom; i. e., the fuller tide, rushing downward, lifts up the main body of the ice, cracking it on each side of the channel, the outside strips remaining attached to the bottom by their shore edges and sloping upward to the rents, so that the freshet runs through, and nearly overflows these two strips, creeping far up the bank or over the meadows on each side.
P. M. — I see many caterpillars on the ice still, and those glow-worm-like ones. I see several of the black fuzzy (with distinct tufts) caterpillars described above, on the open water next the shore, but none of them is moving; also, in the water, common small black crickets (one alive) and other bugs (commonly alive), which have been washed out of their winter quarters.
And in the fields generally, exposed on bare, hard ice, the snow being gone and more than half the earth bare, are a great many caterpillars (still two other kinds than yet described), many naked and fishworm-color, four to six inches long, and those glow-worm-like ones (some more brown). They have evidently been washed out of their retreats in the grass by the great flow of water, and left on the ice. They must afford abundant food [for] birds.
Crows which fared hard ten days ago must fare sumptuously now. This will account for their tracks which I saw the other day leading to every little bare strip [?] or exposed tuft of grass,—those warm days.
Perhaps the caterpillars, etc., crawl forth in sunny and warm days in midwinter when the earth is bare, and so supply the birds, and are ready to be washed away by a flow of water! I find thus a great variety of living insects now washed out.
Four kinds of caterpillars, and also the glow-worm-like creature so common, grasshoppers, crickets, and many bugs, not to mention the mosquito like insects which the warm weather has called forth (flying feebly just over the ice and snow a foot or two), spiders, and snow-fleas.
A sudden thaw is, then, a great relief to crows and other birds that may have been put to it for food. Their larders are now overstocked.
Can that glow-worm-like creature, so common on the ice by the riverside and in the fields now, be the female of the lightning-bug? It is about half an inch long by one eleventh of an inch wide, dusky reddish brown above, lighter beneath, with a small black flattish head and about four short antennae, six legs under the forward part of the body, which last consists of twelve ring-like segments. There is one row of minute light-colored dots down the middle of the back, and perhaps (?) others, fainter, on the side.
Many are out in boats, steering outside the ice of the river over the newly flooded meadows, shooting musquash. Cocks crow as in spring. The energy and excitement of the musquash-hunter even, not despairing of life, but keeping the same rank and savage hold on it that his predecessors have for so many generations, while so many are sick and despairing, even this is inspiriting to me.
Even these deeds of death are interesting as evidences of life, for life will still prevail in spite of all accidents. I have a certain faith that even musquash are immortal and not born to be killed by Melvin’s double-B (?) shot.
Methinks the breadth of waves, whether in water or snow or sand or vapor (in the mackerel sky), is determined generally by the force of the wind or other current striking the water, etc. It depends on how much water, etc., the wind has power to displace.
The musquash-hunter (last night), with his increased supply of powder and shot and boat turned up somewhere on the bank, now that the river is rapidly rising, dreaming of his exploits to-day in shooting musquash, of the great pile of dead rats that will weigh down his boat before night, when he will return wet and weary and weather-beaten to his but with an appetite for his supper and for much sluggish (punky) social intercourse with his fellows, — even he, dark, dull, and battered flint as he is, is an inspired man to his extent now, perhaps the most inspired by this freshet of any, and the Musketaquid Meadows cannot spare him.
There are poets of all kinds and degrees, little known to each other. The Lake School is not the only or the principal one. They love various things. Some love beauty, and some love rum. Some go to Rome, and some go a-fishing, and are sent to the house of correction once a month. They keep up their fires by means unknown to me. I know not their comings and goings.
How can I tell what violets they watch for? I know them wild and ready to risk all when their muse invites. The most sluggish will be up early enough then, and face any amount of wet and cold. I meet these gods of the river and woods with sparkling faces (like Apollo’s) late from the house of correction, it may be carrying whatever mystic and forbidden bottles or other vessels concealed, while the dull regular priests are steering their parish rafts in a prose mood.
What care I to see galleries full of representatives of heathen gods, when I can see natural living ones by an infinitely superior artist, without perspective tube? If you read the Rig Veda, oldest of books, as it were, describing a very primitive people and condition of things, you hear in their prayers of a still older, more primitive and aboriginal race in their midst and round about, warring on them and seizing their flocks and herds, infesting their pastures. Thus is it in another sense in all communities, and hence the prisons and police.
I hear these guns going to-day, and I must confess they are to me a springlike and exhilarating sound, like the cock-crowing, though each one may report the death of a musquash. This, methinks, or the like of this, with whatever mixture of dross, is the real morning or evening hymn that goes up from these vales to-day, and which the stars echo. This is the best sort of glorifying of God and enjoying him that at all prevails here to-day, without any clarified butter or sacred ladles.
As a mother loves to see her child imbibe nourishment and expand, so God loves to see his children thrive on the nutriment he has furnished them. In the musquash-hunters I see the Almouchicois still pushing swiftly over the dark stream in their canoes. These aboriginal men cannot be repressed, but under some guise or other they survive and reappear continually.
Just as simply as the crow picks up the worms which all over the fields have been washed out by the thaw, these men pick up the musquash that have been washed out the banks. And to serve such ends men plow and sail, and powder and shot are made, and the grocer exists to retail them, though he may think himself much more the deacon of some church.
From year to year the snow has its regular retreat and lurking-places when a thaw comes (laying bare the earth), under the southeastward banks. I see it now resting there in broad white lines and deep drifts (from my window), as I have seen it for many years, — as it lay when the Indian was the only man here to see it.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 22, 1859
All curled up when I rescued them. 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.”); 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.”); December 29, 1858 (“I saw, on the ice off Pole Brook, a small caterpillar curled up as usual (over the middle of the river) but wholly a light yellow-brown. ”)
This will account for their tracks which I saw the other day. See January 19, 1859 (“By the swamp between the Hollow and Peter’s I see the tracks of a crow or crows, ”); January 18, 1859 (“In the expanse this side Mantatuket Rock I see the tracks of a crow or crows in and about the button-bushes and willows.”)
Melvin’s double-B shot. See January 21, 1859 ("Saw Melvin buying an extra quantity of shot in anticipation of the freshet and musquash-shooting to morrow.")
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