The grassy sea.

August 3. 

6 A. M. — River fallen one inch since 2.30 P. M. yesterday; i.e., it is now a quarter of an inch above summer level. 

AUGUST 3, 2019

Juncus Greenei grows in river meadow opposite Dodd’s; long done. I saw (the 31st ult.) that the river was narrowed to a third its width by a large mass of button-bushes sunk in the middle of it_above the Sudbury causeway. 

The low water reveals a mass of meadow sunk under the railroad bridge. Both this and Lee’s Bridge are thus obstructed this year.  

I should say the origin of these holes was that the river, being shallow and therefore crowded, runs swiftly and digs into the bank and so makes a deep hole and a bend. The three large lakes may perhaps be considered as three deep holes made by a larger river or ocean current in former ages. The almost constant occurrence of a bay, or stagnant expansion, on the convex side at the bends is remarkable. It seems to be a place where the river has formerly flowed, but which, by wearing into the opposite bank, it has left. 

There are about twenty-one weedy places (i. e., where the weeds extend quite across), all together about two miles in length. These weedy places, you may say (not withstanding the frequent winding of the river), generally occur at bends (the Island shoal, perhaps, and Barrett’s Bar, and above Middlesex Turnpike Bridge are exceptions).  The most remarkable bend between Framingham and the Dam is the Ox-Bow in Framingham. 

Since our river is so easily affected by wind, the fact that its general course is northeast and that the prevailing winds in summer are southwest is very favorable to its rapid drainage at that season. If by fall you mean a swifter place occasioned by the bottom below for a considerable distance being lower than the bottom above for a considerable distance, I do not know of any such between Pelham Pond and the Falls. 

These swifter places are produced by a contraction of the stream,— chiefly by the elevation of the bottom at that point, — also by the narrowing of the stream. 

The depths are very slight compared with the lengths. The average depth of this twenty-five miles is about one seventeen thousandth the length; so that if this portion of the river were laid down on a map four feet long the  depth would be about equal to the thickness of ordinary letter paper, of which it takes three hundred and fifty to an inch. Double the thickness of the letter paper, and it will contain the deep holes which are so unfathomed and mysterious, not to say bottomless, to the swimmers and fishermen. 

Methinks the button-bushes about Fair Haven indicate a muddy but not deep pond.

The deepest reach of this twenty-five miles is from E. Davis Hill to Skelton Bend. 

Methinks I saw some of the fresh-water sponge in the river in Framingham. 

Undoubtedly, in the most stagnant parts of the river, when the wind blows hard up-stream, a chip will be drifted faster up-stream than ever it floats downward there in a calm. 

P. M. — I see two or three birds which I take to be rose-breasted grosbeaks of this year. They are speckled brown and white (with considerable white) birds, and no rose on breast that I see. I hear them singing a little in a grosbeak-like strain, but a more partial warble. Heard one July 28th on an oak high up Assabet, and to-day on an apple tree near Brister’s. 

Warren Miles tells me that in mowing lately he cut in two a checkered “adder,” — by his account it was the chicken snake, — and there was in its stomach a green snake, dead and partly digested, and he was surprised to find that they ate them. 

Water-bugs are collected in dense swarms about my boat, at its stagnant harbor. They gyrate in a very leisurely manner under my face, occasionally touching one another by their edges a moment. When I move or disturb the water, they at once begin to gyrate rapidly. After the evening has set in, I perceive that these water bugs, which all day were collected in dense swarms in the stagnant water amid the weeds at the sides, are dispersed over the river (quite across it here) and gyrating rapidly in the twilight.

The haymakers are quite busy on the Great Meadows, it being drier than usual. It being remote from public view, some of them work in their shirts or half naked. 

As I wade through the middle of the meadows in sedge up to my middle and look afar over the waving and rustling bent tops of the sedge (all are bent northeast by the southwest wind) toward the distant mainland, I feel a little as if caught by a rising tide on flats far from the shore. I am, as it were, cast away in the midst of the sea. It is a level sea of waving and rustling sedge about me. The grassy sea. 

You feel somewhat as you would if you were standing in water at an equal distance from the shore. To-day I can walk dry over the greater part of the meadows, but not over the lower parts, where pipes, etc., grow; yet many think it has not been so dry for ten years!

Goodwin is there after snipes. I scare up one in the wettest part. High blackberries begin to be ripe.

A novel phenomenon of dry weather and a low stage of water is the sight of dense green beds of Eleocharis acicularis, still in bloom, which grows at the bottom of muddy pools, but now, they being dry, looks like a dense fine bed of green moss, denser than grass. I recline on such a bed, perfectly dry and clean, amid the flags and pontederia, where lately was water and mud. It covers the mud with a short dense green mat of culms fine as a hair, quite agreeable to rest on and a rather novel sight.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 3, 1859

It is a level sea of waving and rustling sedge about me. The grassy sea. See July 4, 1860 ("We are wading and navigating at present in a sort of sea of grass, which yields and undulates under the wind like water")

High blackberries begin to be ripe. See August 3, 1856 ("High blackberries beginning; a few ripe."); August 4, 1856 ("Here and there the high blackberry, just beginning, towers over all.")