You cannot go out so early but you will find the track of some wild creature.

December 22. Wednesday.

Surveying the Hunt Farm this and the 20th.

C. says that Flint's Pond was frozen over yesterday.

A rambling, rocky, wild, moorish pasture, this of Hunt's, with two or three great white oaks to shade the cattle, which the farmer would not take fifty dollars apiece for, though the ship-builder wanted them.

The snow balled so badly to-day while I was working in the swamp, that I was set up full four inches.

It is pleasant, cutting a path through the bushes in a swamp, to see the color of the different woods, – the yellowish dogwood, the green prinos (?), and, on the upland, the splendid yellow barberry.

The squirrel, rabbit, fox tracks, etc., attract the attention in the new-fallen snow; and the squirrel nests, bunches of grass and leaves high in the trees, more conspicuous if not larger now, or the glimpse of a meadow (?) mouse, give occasion for a remark.

You cannot go out so early but you will find the track of some wild creature.

Returning home just after the sun had sunk below the horizon, I saw from N. Barrett's a fire made by boys on the ice near the Red Bridge, which looked like a bright reflection of a setting sun from the water under the bridge, so clear, so little lurid, in this winter evening air.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 22, 1852

It is pleasant, cutting a path through the bushes in a swamp, to see the color of the different woods See December 21, 1855 ("A few simple colors now prevail.")

The squirrel nests, bunches of grass and leaves high in the trees, more conspicuous if not larger now. See November 13, 1857 (“ I see, on a white oak on Egg Rock, where the squirrels have lately made a nest for the winter of the dry oak leaves . . . I suspect it is a gray squirrel's nest.”); January 24, 1856 (“That Wheeler swamp is a great place for squirrels. I observe many of their tracks along the riverside there. The nests are of leaves, and apparently of the gray species.”) and note to June 1, 1860 ("This makes three gray squirrels' nests that I have seen and heard of (seen two of them) this year, made thus of leaves and sticks open in the trees, and I hear of some more similar ones found in former years, so that I think this mode of nesting their young may be the rule with them here")

You cannot go out so early but you will find the track of some wild creature. See December 12, 1859 ("The snow having come, we see where is the path of the partridge, — his comings and goings from copse to copse, — and now first, as it were, we have the fox for our nightly neighbor, and countless tiny deer mice.");  December 31, 1853 ("This animal probably I should never see the least trace of, were it not for the snow, the great revealer."); January 4, 1860 ("Again see what the snow reveals.. . . that the woods are nightly thronged with little creatures which most have never seen"); January 5, 1860 ("How much the snow reveals! "); see also February 16, 1854 ("Snow is a great revealer not only of tracks made in itself, but even in the earth before it fell") Compare  January 14, 1853 ("Snow freshly fallen is one thing, to-morrow it will be another. It is now pure and trackless. Walking three or four miles in the woods, I see but one track of any kind, yet by to-morrow morning there will he countless tracks of all sizes all over the country."); February 21, 1854 ("There is scarcely a track of any animal yet to be seen. You cannot walk too early in new-fallen snow to get the sense of purity, novelty, and unexploredness")

It is a beautifully clear and bracing air, with just enough coolness, full of the memory of frosty mornings.

September 22. 

To the Three Friends' Hill over Bear Hill. 

Yesterday and to-day the stronger winds of autumn have begun to blow, and the telegraph harp has sounded loudly.

I heard it especially in the Deep Cut this afternoon, the tone varying with the tension of different parts of the wire. The sound proceeds from near the posts, where the vibration is apparently more rapid.

I put my ear to one of the posts, and it seemed to me as if every pore of the wood was filled with music, labored with the strain, as if every fibre was affected and being seasoned or timed, rearranged according to a new and more harmonious law. Every swell and change or inflection of tone pervaded and seemed to proceed from the wood, the divine tree or wood, as if its very substance was transmuted.

What a recipe for preserving wood, perchance, — to keep it from rotting, — to fill its pores with music ! How this wild tree from the forest, stripped of its bark and set up here, rejoices to transmit this music! When no music proceeds from the wire, on applying my ear I hear the hum within the entrails of the wood, — the oracular tree acquiring, accumulating, the prophetic fury.

The resounding wood! how much the ancients would have made of it! To have a harp on so great a scale, girdling the very earth, and played on by the winds of every latitude and longitude, and that harp were, as it were, the manifest blessing of heaven on a work of man'! Shall we not add a tenth Muse to the immortal Nine?

And that the invention thus divinely honored and distinguished — on which the Muse has condescended to smile is this magic medium of communication for mankind!

To read that the ancients stretched a wire round the earth, attaching it to the trees of the forest, by which they sent messages by one named Electricity, father of Lightning and Magnetism, swifter far than Mercury, the stern commands of war and news of peace, and that the winds caused this wire to vibrate so that it emitted a harp-like and æolian music in all the lands through which it passed, as if to express the satisfaction of the gods in this invention. Yet this is fact, and we have yet attributed the invention to no god.

I am astonished to see how brown and sere the groundsel or "fire-weed” on hillside by Heywood's Meadow, which has been touched by frost, already is, — as if it had died long months ago, or a fire had run through it. It is a very tender plant. 

Standing on Bear Hill in Lincoln.

                                                September 22, 2017

The black birches ( I think they are ), now yellow, on the south side of Flint's Pond, on the hillside, look like flames. The chestnut trees are brownish-yellow as well as green. 

It is a beautifully clear and bracing air, with just enough coolness, full of the memory of frosty mornings, through which all things are distinctly seen and the fields look as smooth as velvet.

The fragrance of grapes is on the breeze and the red drooping barberries sparkle amid the leaves.

From the hill on the south side of the pond, the forests have a singularly rounded and bowery look, clothing the hills quite down to the water's edge and leaving no shore; the ponds are like drops of dew amid and partly covering the leaves. So the great globe is luxuriously crowded without margin.

The Utricularia cornuta, or horned utricularia, on the sandy pond-shore, not affected by the frost.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 22, 1851

Three Friends Hill. See September 12, 1851 ("To the Three Friends' Hill beyond Flint's Pond. . . I go to Flint's Pond for the sake of the mountain view from the hill beyond, looking over Concord.")

How brown and sere the groundsel or "fire-weed” on hillside by Heywood's Meadow, which has been touched by frost, See August 23, 1856 ("On R. W. E.'s hillside by railroad, burnt over by the engine in the spring, the erechthites has shot up abundantly, very tall and straight, some six or seven feet high."); August 26, 1856 ("Also erechthites as abundant and rank in many places there as if it had been burnt over! So it does not necessarily imply fire."); August 27, 1851 ("Hawkweed groundsel (Senecio hieracifolius) (fireweed)"); August 30, 1859 ("The erechthites down has begun to fly."); September 9, 1852 ("The groundsel down is in the air."); September 20, 1851 ("On Monday of the present week water was frozen in a pail under the pump. . . .All tender herbs are flat in gardens and meadow"); September 20, 1852 ("The groundsel and hieracium down is in the air"); September 21, 1856 ("Was not the fireweed seed sown by the wind last fall, blown into the woods, where there was a lull which caused it to settle? Perhaps it is fitted to escape or resist fire. The wind which the fire creates may, perchance, lift it again out of harm's way."); October 2, 1857 ("The erechthites down (fire-weed) is conspicuous in sprout-lands of late, since its leaves were killed."); October 16, 1859 ("The flowers are at the mercy of the frosts. Places where erechthites grows, more or less bare, in sprout- lands, look quite black and white (black withered leaves and white down) and wintry")

It is a beautifully clear and bracing air, with just enough coolness, full of the memory of frosty mornings.. See

 

These bracing fine days

when frosts come to ripen the

year, the days, like fruit.

September 22, 1854

See also September 20, 1851 ("This week we have had most glorious autumnal weather, - cool and cloudless, bright days, . . . preceded by frosty mornings." ); October 10, 1857 ("The most brilliant days in the year, ushered in, perhaps, by a frosty morning, as this.") November 11, 1853 ("Bracing cold, and exhilarating sunlight on russet and frosty fields “) December 10, 1853 ("These are among the finest days in the year, on account of the wholesome bracing coolness and clearness.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The world can never be more beautiful than now.

The fragrance of grapes is on the breeze. See September 20, 1851 ("This week we have had most glorious autumnal weather, - - cool and cloudless, bright days, filled with the fragrance of ripe grapes, preceded by frosty mornings.")

It flies through the green foliage as if it would ignite the leaves.

May 20

The 18th and 19th a rather gentle and warm May storm, more rain, methinks, than we have had before this spring at one time.

Began with thunder-showers on the night of the 18th, the flashing van of the storm, followed by the long, dripping main body, with, at very long intervals, an occasional firing or skirmishing in the rear or on the flanks.

6 A. M. To Island by river.

Probably a red-wing blackbird's nest, of grass, hung between two button-bushes; whitish eggs with irregular black marks.

Sarsaparilla (Aralia nudicaulis), probably two days.

White oak, swamp white, and chestnut oak probably will open by the 22d.

The white ashes are in full flower now, and how long ? 8 A. M.-To Flint's Pond.

Cornus Canadensis just out.

Probably the C. florida should be set down to-day, since it just begins to shed pollen and its involucre is more open.

It is a fair but cool and windy day, a strong northwest wind, and the grass, to which the rain has given such a start, conspicuously waves, showing its lighter under side, and the buttercups toss in the wind.

The pitch and white pines have grown from one to five inches.

On Pine Hill.

In this clear morning light and a strong wind from the northwest, the mountains in the horizon, seen against some low, thin clouds in the background, look darker and more like earth than usual; you distinguish forest and pasture on them. This in the clear, cool atmosphere in the morning after a rain-storm, with the wind northwest. They will grow more ethereal, melting into the sky, as the day advances.

The beech is already one of the most densely clothed trees, or rather makes a great show of verdure from the size of its fully expanded light-green leaves, though some are later. The fresh shoots on low branches are five or six inches long.

It is an interesting tree to me, with its neat, close, tight-looking bark, like the dress which athletes wear, its bare instep, and roots beginning to branch like bird's feet, showing how it is planted and holds by the ground. Not merely stuck in the ground like a stick.

It gives the beholder the same pleasure that it does to see the timbers of a house above and around.

Do they blossom here? I found nuts, but apparently not sound, at Haverhill the other day,-last year's.

There are some slender, perfectly horizontal limbs which go zigzagging, as it were creeping through the air, only two or three feet above the ground, over the side-hill, as if they corresponded to concealed rills in the ground beneath.

Plenty of arums now in bloom. Probably my earliest one was in bloom, for I did not look within it.

What is that pretty, transparent moss in the brooks, which holds the rain or dewdrops so beautifully on the undersides of the leafets, through which they sparkle crystallinely? 

Fresh checkerberry shoots now.

The cedars are full of yellowish cedar apples and minute berries just formed, the effete staminiferous blossom still on. When did they begin to bloom? 

I find none of the rare hedyotis yet on Bare Hill.

The peach bloom is now gone and the apple bloom come.

Heard the seringo note, like a rattling watch-spring, from a flock passing swiftly overhead.

The wind makes such a din in the woods that the notes of birds are lost, and added to this is the sound of the waves of Flint's Pond breaking on the shore, the fresh surf. The pond is spotted with whitecaps, five or six feet long by one foot, like a thin flock of sheep running toward the southeast shore. The smallest lakes can be lashed into a sort of fury by the wind, and are quite ocean-like then. These caps are a striving to dilute the water with air.

The barberry will probably blossom to-day.

Here, by the side of the pond, a fire has recently run through the young woods on the hillside. It is surprising how clean it has swept the ground; only the very lowest and dampest rotten leaves remaining, but uvularias and smilacinas have pushed up here and there conspicuously on the black ground, a foot high.

At first you do not observe the full effect of the fire, walking amid the bare dead or dying trees, which wear a perfect winter aspect, which, as trees generally are not yet fully leaved out and you are still used to this, you do not notice, till you look up and see the still green tops everywhere above the height of fifteen feet.

Yet the trees do not bear many marks of fire commonly; they are but little blackened except where the fire has run a few feet up a birch, or paused at a dry stump, or a young evergreen has been killed and reddened by it and is now dropping a shower of red leaves.

Hemlock will blossom to-morrow.

The geranium is just out, 

May 20, 2018

and the lady’s-slipper. 

Some with old seed vessels are still seen.

Hear again, what I have heard for a week or more sometimes, that rasping, springy note, a very hoarse chirp, ooh, twee twee twee, from a bluish bird as big as a bluebird, with some bright yellow about head, white beneath and lateral tail-feathers, and black cheeks (?).

This and that sort of brown-creeper-like bird of May 12 — and the chickadee-like bird (which may be the chickadee), and the ah te ter twee of deep pine woods (which also may be the chickadee), I have not identified.

Arbor-vitæ has been out some time and the butter nut some days.

Mountain-ash on the 18th.

Larch apparently ten days.

Nemopanthes several days.

The swamp blueberry abundantly out.

Saw a tanager in Sleepy Hollow. It most takes the eye of any bird. You here have the red-wing reversed,-the deepest scarlet of the red-wing spread over the whole body, not on the wing-coverts merely, while the wings are black. It flies through the green foliage as if it would ignite the leaves.

Of deciduous trees and shrubs, the latest to leaf out, as I find by observation to-day, must be the panicled andromeda, rhodora, and button-bush.

In some places, however, the first has perfectly formed leaves, the rhodora at most not half unfolded, the button-bush for the most part just bursting buds.

But I have not seen the prinos and perhaps one or two other shrubs.

I have no doubt that the button-bush may be called the latest of all.

Is that female ash by river at Lee's Hill a new kind? In bloom fully May 18th.

Even this remote forest, which stands so far away and innocent, has this terrible foe Fire to fear. Lightning may ignite a dead tree or the dry leaves, and in a few minutes a green forest be blackened and killed. This liability to accident from which no part of nature is exempt.

Plucked to-day a bunch of Viola pedata, consisting of four divisions or offshoots around a central or fifth root, all united and about one inch in diameter at the ground and four inches at top. [contained 49 Flowers, 22 Buds] And perhaps more buds would still make their appearance, and undoubtedly half a dozen more would have blown the next day. Forming a complex, close little testudo of violet scales above their leaves.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 20, 1853

Probably a red-wing blackbird's nest, of grass, hung between two button-bushes; whitish eggs with irregular black marks. See May 25, 1855 ("Red-wing’s nest with four eggs. . .curiously and neatly marked with brown-black spots and lines on the large end.”); June 1, 1857 ("A red-wing's nest, four eggs, . . the hieroglyphics on these eggs . . ..who determines the style of the marking?") See See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Red-wing in Spring

It flies through the green foliage as if it would ignite the leaves. See   May 20, 1858 ("See tanagers, male and female, in the top of a pine, one red, other yellow, from below. We have got to these high colors among birds.") See also  A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Scarlet Tanager

The lady’s-slipper just out. See May 20, 1852 ("A lady’s-slipper well budded and now white."); see also May 18, 1851 ("Lady's-slipper almost fully blossomed”).; May 19, 1860 (“At the Ministerial Swamp I see a white lady's-slipper almost out, fully grown, with red ones.”); May 30, 1858 ("Hear of lady's-slipper seen the 23d; how long?")

Willow catkins show red and yellowish pushed out half an inch or more.

February 22

I measured the thickness of the frozen ground at the deep cut on the new Bedford road, about half-way up the hill. They dig under the frozen surface and then crack it off with iron wedges, with much labor, in pieces from three to six feet square. It was eighteen inches thick and more there thicker higher up, not so thick lower down the hill. 

Saw in Sleepy Hollow a small hickory stump, about six inches in diameter and six inches high, so completely, regularly, and beautifully covered by that winkle-like fungus in concentric circles and successive layers that the core was concealed and you would have taken it for some cabbage-like plant. This was the way the wound was healed. The cut surface of the stump was completely and thickly covered. 

Our neighbor Wetherbee was J. Moore's companion when he took that great weight of pickerel this winter. He says it was fifty-six pounds in Flint's, in one day, and that four of them weighed eighteen pounds and seven ounces. 

February 22, 2020

My alder catkins in the pitcher have shed their pollen for a day or two, and the willow catkins have pushed out half an inch or more and show red and yellowish.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 22, 1854

The frozen ground at the deep cut on the new Bedford road. See January 9, 1856 ("In passing through the deep cut on the new Bedford road, I saw that a little sand, which was pretty coarse, almost gravel, had fallen from the bank, and was blown over the snow, here and there.")

That winkle-like fungus in concentric circles and successive layers. See October 10, 1858 ("The simplest and most lumpish fungus has a peculiar interest to us, compared with a mere mass of earth, because it is so obviously organic and related to ourselves, however mute . . . T]he humblest fungus betrays a life akin to my own. It is a successful poem in its kind.")

Four of them weighed eighteen pounds and seven ounces. See December 29, 1858 ("Heavy Haynes was fishing a quarter of a mile this side of Hubbard’s Bridge. He had caught a pickerel, which the man who weighed it told me (he was apparently a brother of William Wheeler’s, and I saw the fish at the house where it was) weighed four pounds and three ounces. It was twenty-six inches long."); February 29, 1856 ("Minott told me this afternoon of his catching a pickerel in the Mill Brook once . . . which weighed four pounds . . . and I willingly listen to the stories he has told me half a dozen times already.”); May 4, 1858 (" A man told him that he saw a trout weighing about a pound and a half darting at a pickerel, and every time he darted he took a bit off a fin, and at last the man walked in and caught the pickerel, and it weighed five pounds"); April 3, 1859 ("I hear that Peter Hutchinson hooked a monstrous pickerel at the Holt last winter. It was so large that he could not get his head through the hole, and so they cut another hole close by, and then a narrow channel from that to the first to pass the line through, but then, when they came to pull on the line, the pickerel gave a violent jerk and escaped. Peter thinks that he must have weighed ten pounds.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  Pickerel

My alder catkins in the pitcher have shed their pollen for a day or two.  See March 6, 1853 ("Last Sunday I plucked some alder twigs, some aspen, and some swamp willow, and put them in water in a warm room, Immediately the alder catkins were relaxed and began to lengthen and open, and by the second day to drop their pollen"); March 10, 1853 ("The alder's catkins — the earliest of them — are very plainly expanding, or, rather, the scales are loose and separated, and the whole catkin relaxed."); March 22, 1853 ("The very earliest alder is in bloom and sheds its pollen. I detect a few catkins at a distance by their distinct yellowish color. This the first native flower")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Earliest Flower

The willow catkins have pushed out half an inch or more and show red and yellowish. See February 19, 1857 ("Some willow catkins have crept a quarter of an inch from under their scales and look very red, probably on account of the warm weather.");  March 21, 1855 ("Early willow and aspen catkins are very conspicuous now . . . It would be well to observe them once a fortnight through the winter. It is the first decided growth I have noticed, and is probably a month old.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding

Willow catkins show

red and yellowish pushed out

half an inch or more.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  Willow catkins show

red and yellowish 

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 © 2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-540222

No wonder that we so rarely see these animals, though their tracks are so common..

February 20.

P. M. - To Flint's Pond. 

The last two or three days have been among the coldest in the winter, though not so cold as a few weeks ago. 

I notice, in the low ground covered with bushes near Flint’s Pond, many little rabbit-paths in the snow, where they have travelled in each other's tracks, or many times back and forth  six inches wide. This, too, is probably their summer habit. 

The rock by the pond is remarkable for its umbilicaria (?). 

I saw a mole (?) run along under the bank by the edge of the pond, but it was only by watching long and sharply that I glimpsed him now and then, he ran so close to the ground and under rather than over any thing, as roots and beds of leaves and twigs, and yet without making any noise. No wonder that we so rarely see these animals, though their tracks are so common. 

I have been astonished to observe before, after holding them in my hand, how quickly they will bury themselves and glide along just beneath the surface, whatever it may be composed of, - grass or leaves or twigs or earth or snow. . . . The mole goes behind and beneath, rather than before and above.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 20, 1852

The last two or three days have been among the coldest in the winter. See January 2, 1856 ("Probably the coldest morning yet, our thermometer 6° below zero at 8 A.M."); January 2, 1860 ("8 a.m. -15° below . . . the coldest thus far."); January 23, 1857 ("The coldest day that I remember recording"); February 6, 1855 ("The coldest morning this winter. Our thermometer stands at -14° at 9 A.M"); February 7, 1854 ("This morning was one of the coldest in the winter."); February 7, 1855 ("The coldest night for a long, long time."); February 7, 1855 ("Thermometer at about 7.30 A. M. gone into the bulb, -19° at least. The cold has stopped the clock.");; February 8, 1851 ("Coldest day yet; – 22 ° at least (all we can read ), at 8 A. M., and, (so far) as I can learn, not above -6 ° all day."); February 19, 1858 ("Coldest morning this winter by our thermometer, -3° at 7.30.")

Many little rabbit-paths in the snow, where they have travelled in each other's tracks, or many times back and forth six inches wide. See January 2, 1856 ("There were many white rabbits’ tracks in those woods, and many more of the gray rabbit . . . The latter run very much in the same path, which is well trodden, and you would think you were in the midst of quite a settlement of them.")

The rock by the pond is remarkable for its umbilicaria. See February 20, 1857 ("I am that rock by the pond-side.");  April 16, 1855 ("At Flint’s, sitting on the rock."). See also January 1, 1852 ("Perhaps the only thing that spoke to me on this walk was the bare, lichen-covered gray rock at the Cliff, in the moonlight, naked and almost warm as in summer.")

No wonder that we so rarely see these animals, though their tracks are so common. See February 20, 1855 ("Some, though numerous, are rarely seen, as the wild mice and moles.. . .The cat brings in a mole from time to time, and we see where they have heaved up the soil in the meadow. We see the tracks of mice on the snow in the woods, or once in a year one glances by like a flash through the grass or ice at our feet, and that is for the most part all that we see of them."); February 25, 1860 ("Those peculiar tracks which I saw some time ago, and still see, made in slosh and since frozen at the Andromeda Ponds, I think must be mole-tracks, and those “nicks” on the sides are where they shoved back the snow with their vertical flippers. This is a very peculiar track, a broad channel in slosh, and at length in ice."); March 8, 1860 ("I see there that moles have worked for several days. There are several piles on the grass, some quite fresh and some made before the last rain. One is as wide as a bushel-basket and six inches high; contains a peck at least."); April 6, 1859 (" I see where moles have rooted in a meadow and cast up those little piles of the black earth."); April 11, 1858 ("Yesterday saw moles working in a meadow, throwing up heaps") ;June 6, 1856 ("In the large circular hole or cellar at the turntable on the railroad, which they are repairing, I see a star-nosed mole endeavoring in vain to bury himself in the sandy and gravelly bottom. . . . It is blue-black with much fur, a very thick, plump animal, apparently some four inches long. . . .I carry him along to plowed ground, where he buries himself in a minute or two.")

A springlike afternoon.

January 25


P. M. — To Flint's Pond, down railroad.

January 25, 2022

There is something springlike in this afternoon. In winter, after middle, we are interested in what is springlike. The earth and sun appear to have approached some degrees.

The banks seem to lie in the embrace of the sun. The ground is partly bare. The cress is fresh and green at the bottoms of the brooks.

What is that long-leaved green plant in the brook in Hosmer's meadow on the Turnpike?

The buttercup leaves appear everywhere when the ground is bare.

There are temporary ponds in the fields made by the rain and melted snow, which hardly have time [to] freeze, they soak up so fast.

As I go up Bare Hill, there being only snow enough there to whiten the ground, the last year's stems of the blueberry (vacillans) give a pink tinge to the hillside, reminding me of red snow, though they do not semble it.

I am surprised to see Flint's Pond a quarter part open, — the middle. Walden, which froze much later, is nowhere open. But Flint's feels the wind and is shallow.

I noticed on a small pitch pine, in the axils close to the main stem, little spherical bunches of buds, an inch and more in diameter, with short, apparently abortive leaves from some. The leaves were nearly all single, as in the plants of one or two years' growth, and were finely serrate or toothed, pectinate (?).

On the lot I surveyed for Weston I found the chestnut oak (though the teeth are sharper than E.'s plate), a handsome leaf, still on the young trees. I had taken it for a chestnut before. It is hard to distinguish them by the trunk alone.

I found some barberry sprouts where the bushes had been cut down not long since, and they were covered with small withered leaves be set with stiff prickles on their edges, and you could see the thorns, as it were gradually passing into leaves, being, as one stage, the nerves of the leaf alone, — starlike and branched thorns, gradually, as. you descended the stem, getting some pulp between them. I suppose it was owing to the shortening them in.

I still pick chestnuts.

Some larger ones proved to contain double meats, divided, as it were arbitrarily, as with a knife, each part having the common division without the brown skin transverse to this.


The pickerel of Walden! when I see them lying on the ice, or in the well which the fisherman cuts in the ice, I am always surprised by their rare beauty, as if they were a fabulous fish, they are so foreign to the streets, or even the woods; handsome as flowers and gems, golden and emerald, — a transcendent and dazzling beauty which separates [them] by a wide interval from the cadaverous cod and haddock, at least a day old, which we see.

They are as foreign as Arabia to our Concord life, as if the two ends of the earth had come together. These are not green like the pines, or gray like the stones, or blue like the sky; but they have, if possible, to my eye, yet rarer colors, like precious stones.

It is surprising that these fishes are caught here. They are something tropical. That in this deep and capacious spring, far beneath the rattling teams and chaises and tinkling sleighs that travel the Walden road, this great gold and emerald fish swims!

They are true topazes, inasmuch as you can only conjecture what place they came from. The pearls of Walden, some animalized Walden water. I never chanced to see this kind of fish in any market.

With a few convulsive quirks they give up their diluted ghosts.

I have noticed that leaves are green and violets bloom later where a bank has been burnt over in the fall, as if the fire warmed it. I saw to-day, where a creeping juniper had been burnt, radical leaves of johnswort, thistle, clover, dandelion, etc., as well as sorrel and veronica.

Young white oaks retain their leaves, and large ones on their lower parts.

• Swamp white oak (?)
• Very young rock chestnut oaks 
• The little chinquapin (?) 
• The bear oak 
• The scarlet oak (?) 
• The red 
• The black (?), young trees 
• The witch-hazel, more or less 
• Carpinus Americana 
• Ostrya Virginica, somewhat 
• Sweet-fern, more or less 
• Andromeda 
• Andromeda, panicled (?)
• Kalmia latifolia 
• Kalmia angustifolia 
• Cranberry 

The above are such as I think of which wear their leaves conspicuously now.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 25, 1853

There is something springlike in this afternoon. See January 25, 1852 ("It is glorious to be abroad this afternoon . . . The warmth of the sun reminds me of summer.") ); January 25, 1855 ("It is a rare day for winter, clear and bright, yet warm . . . You dispense with gloves. "); January 25, 1858 ("A warm, moist day. Thermometer at 6.30 P.M. at 49°.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: the Warmth of the Sun;'; Compare January 25, 1854 ("A very cold day. Saw a man in Worcester this morning who took a pride in never wearing gloves or mittens But this morning he had to give up. The 22d, 23d, 24th, and 25th of this month have been the coldest spell of weather this winter. Clear and cold and windy. "); January 25, 1856 ("The hardest day to bear that we have had, for, beside being 5° at noon and at 4 P. M., there is a strong northwest wind. It is worse than when the thermometer was at zero all day. "); January 25, 1857 ("Still another very cold morning. Smith's thermometer over ours at -29°, ours in bulb; but about seven, ours was at -8° and Smith's at -24; ours therefore at first about -23°.")

The buttercup leaves appear everywhere when the ground is bare. See November 8, 1858 ("The now more noticeable green radical leaves of the buttercup in the russet pastures remind me of the early spring to come, of which they will offer the first evidence."); January 9, 1853 ("On the face of the Cliff the crowfoot buds lie unexpanded just beneath the surface. I dig one up with a stick, and, pulling it to pieces, I find deep in the centre of the plant, just beneath the ground, surrounded by all the tender leaves that are to precede it, the blossom-bud, about half is big as the head of a pin, perfectly white. There it patiently sits, or slumbers, how full of faith, informed of a spring which the world has never seen.”)

 I noticed on a small pitch pine, in the axils close to the main stem, little spherical bunches of buds. See January 23, 1852 ("I see where . . . in some cases the mice have nibbled the buds of the pitch pines, where the plumes have been bent down by the snow"); March 8, 1859 ("I see, under the pitch pines on the southwest slope of the hill, the reddish bud-scales scattered on the snow . . . and, examining, I find that in a great many cases the buds have been eaten by some creature and the scales scattered about. . .I am inclined to think that these were eaten by the red squirrel; or was it the crossbill? for this is said to visit us in the winter. Have I ever seen a squirrel eat the pine buds?")

The pickerel of Walden! See January 29, 1853("Pickerel of at least three different forms and colors were lying on the ice of Walden this afternoon . . .all the fishes which in habit this pond, are as much handsomer than ordinary, as the water is purer than that of other ponds.") See  also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Pickerel and Walden ("Ah, the pickerel of Walden! . . . ")

I saw to-day, where a creeping juniper had been burnt, radical leaves of johnswort, thistle, clover, dandelion, etc., as well as sorrel and veronica. See December 23, 1855 ("At Lee’s Cliff I notice these radical(?) leaves quite fresh: saxifrage, sorrel, polypody, mullein, columbine, veronica, thyme-leaved sandwort, spleenwort, strawberry, buttercup, radical johnswort, mouse-ear, radical pinweeds, cinquefoils, checkerberry, Wintergreen, thistles, catnip, Turritis strictae specially fresh and bright."); January 23, 1855 ("The radical leaves of the shepherd’s-purse, seen in green circles on the water-washed plowed grounds, remind me of the internal heat and life of the globe, anon to burst forth anew"); February 23, 1860 ("I walk over the moist Nawshawtuct hillside and see the green radical leaves of the buttercup, shepherd's purse (circular), sorrel, chickweed, cerastium, etc., revealed."); February 27, 1860 ("Among the radical leaves most common, and therefore early-noticed, are the veronica and the thistle")

January 25. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 25

Springlike afternoon –

earth and sun appear to have

approached some degrees.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A springlike afternoon.

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 © 2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-530125

Short winter days lengthened by light reflected from the snow.

December 17

Flint's Pond apparently froze completely over last night. It is about two inches thick.  Walden is only slightly skimmed over a rod from the shore.

I noticed where it had been frozen for some time near the shore of Flint's Pond and the ice was thicker and whiter, there were handsome spider-shaped dark places, where the under ice had melted, and the water had worn it running through, a handsome figure on the icy carpet.

December 17, 2020

I noticed when the snow first came that the days were very sensibly lengthened by the light being reflected from the snow. Any work which required light could be pursued about half an hour longer. So that we may well pray that the ground may not be laid bare by a thaw in these short winter days.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 17, 1850

Flint's Pond apparently froze completely over last night. It is about two inches thick. Walden is only slightly skimmed over a rod from the shore. See  December 17, 1859 ("Two or three acres of Walden, off the bar, not yet frozen. Saw in [it] a good-sized black duck"); See also December 9, 1856 ("There is scarcely a particle of ice in Walden. . .[Yet] yesterday I met Goodwin bringing a fine lot of pickerel from Flint's, which was frozen at least four inches thick. This is, no doubt, owing solely to the greater depth of Walden."); December 11, 1858 ("Walden is about one-third skimmed over."); December 24, 1853 ("Walden almost entirely open again. Skated across Flint's Pond. "); December 27, 1852 (" Not a particle of ice in Walden to-day. Paddled across it. . . .. A black and white duck on it, Flint's and Fair Haven being frozen up."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Annual ice-in at Walden

Handsome spider-shaped dark places, where the under ice had melted, and the water had worn it running through. See December 7, 1856 ("There are many of those singular spider-shaped dark places amid the white ice, where the surface water has run through some days ago.")

The days were very sensibly lengthened by the light being reflected from the snow. See December 28, 1856 ("Since the snow of the 23d, the days seem considerably lengthened, owing to the increased light after sundown."); see also December 9, 1856 ("The worker who would accomplish much these short days must shear a dusky slice off both ends of the night”); December 11, 1854 (“The day is short; it seems to be composed of two twilights merely.”); December 15, 1856 (The short boreal twilight.")

These short winter days

sensibly lengthened by light

reflected from snow.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Short winter days lengthened

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 © 2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-501217

The great rise and fall of the pond.

December 5. 

P. M. — Rowed over Walden! 

A dark, but warm, misty day, completely overcast. 

This great rise of the pond after an interval of many years, and the water standing at this great height for a year or more, kills the shrubs and trees about its edge, — pitch pines, birches, alders, aspens, etc., — and, falling again, leaves an unobstructed shore. 

The rise and fall of the pond serves this use at least. 

This fluctuation, though it makes it difficult to walk round it when the water is highest, by killing the trees makes it so much the easier and more agreeable when the water is low. 

By this fluctuation, this rise of its waters after long intervals, it asserts its title to a shore, and the trees can not hold it by right of possession. 

But unlike those waters which are subject to a daily tide, its shore is cleanest when the water is lowest. 

I have been surprised to observe how surely the water standing for a few months about such trees would kill them. 

On the side of the pond next my house a row of pitch pines fifteen feet high was killed and tipped over as if by a lever, and thus a stop put to their encroachments; and their size may indicate how many years had elapsed since the last rise.

I have been surprised to see what a rampart has been formed about many ponds, — in one place at Walden, but especially at Flint's Pond, where it occurs between the pond and a swamp, as if it were the remains of an Indian swamp fort, — apparently by the action of the waves and the ice, several feet in height and containing large stones and trees. 

These lips of the lake, on which no beard grows. It licks its chaps from time to time.

I saw some dimples on the surface, and, thinking it was going to rain hard immediately, the air being full of mist, I made haste to take my place at the oars to row homeward. Already the rain seemed rapidly increasing, though I felt none on my cheek, and I anticipated a thorough soaking; but suddenly the dimples ceased, for they were produced by the perch which the noise of my oars had scared into the depths. I saw their schools dimly disappearing.

I have said that Walden has no visible inlet nor outlet, but it is on the one hand distantly and indirectly related to Flint's Pond, which is more elevated, by a chain of small ponds coming from that quarter, and on the other hand directly and manifestly related to Concord River, which is lower, by a similar chain of ponds, through which in some other geological period it may have flowed thither, and by a little digging, which God forbid, could probably be made to flow thither again. 

If, by living thus "reserved and austere" like a hermit in the woods so long, it has acquired such wonderful depth and purity, who would not regret that the impure waters of Flint's Pond should be mingled with it, or itself should go waste its sweetness in the ocean wave? 

H. D Thoreau, Journal, December 5, 1852

The rise and fall of the pond. See Walden ("The pond rises and falls, but whether regularly or not, and within what period, nobody knows, though, as usual, many pretend to know. It is commonly higher in the winter and lower in the summer, though not corresponding to the general wet and dryness. I can remember when it was a foot or two lower, and also when it was at least five feet higher, than when I lived by it. . . . This makes a difference of level, at the outside, of six or seven feet; . . . It is remarkable that this fluctuation, whether periodical or not, appears thus to require many years for its accomplishment. I have observed one rise and a part of two falls, and I expect that a dozen or fifteen years hence the water will again be as low as I have ever known it. Flint's Pond, a mile eastward, allowing for the disturbance occasioned by its inlets and outlets, and the smaller intermediate ponds also, sympathize with Walden, and recently attained their greatest height at the same time with the latter. The same is true, as far as my observation goes, of White Pond."). See also December 8, 1852 ("The recent water-line at Walden is quite distinct, though like the limit of a shadow, on the alders about eighteen inches above the present level."); December 13, 1852 ("I judge from [Mr. Weston's] account of the rise and fall of Flint's Pond that, allowing for the disturbance occasioned by its inlets and outlet, it sympathizes with Walden."); November 26, 1858 (“Walden is very low, compared with itself for some years. . . ., and what is remarkable, I find that not only Goose Pond also has fallen correspondingly within a month, but even the smaller pond-holes only four or five rods over, such as Little Goose Pond, shallow as they are. I begin to suspect, therefore, that this rise and fall extending through a long series of years is not peculiar to the Walden system of ponds, but is true of ponds generally, and perhaps of rivers”); April 3, 1859 ("The pond [White Pond] is quite high (like Walden, which, as I noticed the 30th ult., had risen about two feet since January, and perhaps within a shorter period), and the white sand beach is covered.") Compare August 19, 1854 ("Flint's Pond has fallen very much since I was here. The shore is so exposed that you can walk round, which I have not known possible for several years, and the outlet is dry. But Walden is not affected by the drought.") And see R. Primack,racing Water Levels at Walden Pond. (2016); Walden Pond - Water Level Changes (2018)

These lips of the lake See Walden ("On the side of the pond next my house, a row of pitch pines fifteen feet high has been killed and tipped over as if by a lever, and thus a stop put to their encroachments; and their size indicates how many years have elapsed since the last rise to this height. By this fluctuation the pond asserts its title to a shore, and thus the shore is shorn, and the trees cannot hold it by right of possession. These are the lips of the lake on which no beard grows.By this fluctuation the pond asserts its title to a shore, and thus the shore is shorn, and the trees cannot hold it by right of possession. These are the lips of the lake on which no beard-grows. It licks its chaps from time to time.")

I saw some dimples on the surface. See November 9, 1858 ("As I stood upon Heywood’s Peak, I observed in the very middle of the pond, which was smooth and reflected the sky there, what at first I took to be a sheet of very thin, dark ice two yards wide drifting there,. . .But, suspecting what it was, I looked through my glass and could plainly see the dimples made by a school of little fishes continually coming to the surface there together.")

I have said that Walden has no visible inlet nor outlet. See August 24, 1860 ("As it has no outlet, Walden is a well, rather. It is not a superficial pond, not in the mere skin of the earth. It goes deeper. It reaches down to where the temperature of the earth is unchanging.")

A similar chain of ponds, through which in some other geological period it may have flowed. see April 19 1852 ("Crossed by the chain of ponds to Walden. The first, looking back, appears elevated high above Fair Haven between the hills above the swamp, and the next higher yet. Each is distinct, a wild and interesting pond with its musquash house.")

I sail the unexplored sea of Concord

November 23.

George Minott tells me that sixty years ago wood was only two or three dollars a cord here – and some of that hickory.

Remembers when Peter Wheeler, sixty or more years ago, cut off all at once over a hundred acres of wood stretching from Flint's Pond to Goose Pond, — since cut again in part by Britton, and owned now partly by the Stows.

Most of us are still related to our native fields as the navigator to undiscovered islands in the sea. 

We can any autumn discover a new fruit there which will surprise us by its beauty or sweetness. So long as I saw one or two kinds of berries in my walks whose names I did not know, the proportion of the unknown seemed indefinitely if not infinitely great. Famous fruits imported from the tropics and sold in our markets — as oranges, lemons, pineapples, and bananas do not concern me so much as many an unnoticed wild berry whose beauty annually lends a new charm to some wild walk, or which I have found to be palatable to an outdoor taste. 

The tropical fruits are for those who dwell within the tropics; their fairest and sweetest parts cannot be exported nor imported. Brought here, they chiefly concern those whose walks are through the market-place. It is not the orange of Cuba, but the checkerberry of the neighboring pasture, that most delights the eye and the palate of the New England child.

What if the Concord Social Club, instead of eating oranges from Havana, should spend an hour in admiring the beauty of some wild berry from their own fields which they never attended to before?

It is not the foreignness or size or nutritive qualities of a fruit that determine its absolute value.

It is not those far-fetched fruits which the speculator imports that concerns us chiefly, but rather those which you have fetched yourself in your basket from some far hill or swamp, journeying all the long afternoon in the hold of a basket, consigned to your friends at home, the first of the season. We cultivate imported shrubs in our front yards for the beauty of their berries, when yet more beautiful berries grow unregarded by us in the surrounding fields. As some beautiful or palatable fruit is perhaps the noblest gift of nature to man, so is a fruit with which a man has in some measure identified himself by cultivating or collecting it one of the most suitable presents to a friend.

It was some compensation for Commodore Porter, who may have introduced some cannon-balls and bombshells into ports where they were not wanted, to have introduced the Valparaiso squash into the United States. I think that this eclipses his military glory.

As I sail the unexplored sea of Concord, many a dell and swamp and wooded hill is my Ceram and Amboyna.

At first, perchance, there would be an abundant crop of rank garden weeds and grasses in the cultivated land, — and rankest of all in the cellar-holes, — and of pin weed, hardhack, sumach, blackberry, thimble-berry, raspberry, etc., in the fields and pastures. Elm, ash, maples, etc., would grow vigorously along old garden limits and main streets.

Garden weeds and grasses would soon disappear. Huckleberry and blueberry bushes, lambkill, hazel, sweet-fern, barberry, elder, also shad-bush, choke-berry, andromeda, and thorns, etc., would rapidly prevail in the deserted pastures. At the same time the wild cherries, birch, poplar, willows, checkerberry would reëstablish themselves.

Finally the pines, hemlock, spruce, larch, shrub oak, oaks, chestnut, beech, and walnuts would occupy the site of Concord once more.

The apple and perhaps all exotic trees and shrubs and a great part of the indigenous ones named above would have disappeared, and the laurel and yew would to some extent be an underwood here, and perchance the red man once more thread his way through the mossy, swamp-like, primitive wood.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 23, 1860 

Minott tells me that sixty years ago wood was only two or three dollars a cord here. See  February 18, 1857 ("Mr. Prichard says that when he first came to Concord wood was $2.50 per cord. Father says that good wood was $3.00 per cord"); See also April 1, 1852 ("Woodchoppers in this neighborhood get but fifty cents a cord");  June 16, 1857 ("[on Cape Cod] Wood was worth six dollars per cord.")

Over a hundred acres of wood stretching from Flint's Pond to Goose Pond, — since cut again in part by Britton, and owned now partly by the Stows. See October 16, 1860 (" I have come up here this afternoon to see the dense white pine lot beyond the pond, . . .To my surprise and chagrin, I find that the fellow who calls himself its owner has burned it all over and sowed winter-rye here.. . .He needs to have a guardian placed over him. A forest-warden should be appointed by the town. Overseers of poor husbandmen."); October 26, 1860 ("It was a mistake for Britton to treat that Fox Hollow lot as he did. I remember a large old pine and chestnut wood there some twenty years ago . He came and cut it off and burned it over, and ever since it has been good for nothing. I mean that acre at the bottom of the hollow") See also ("March 6, 1855 ("There is hardly a wood lot of any consequence left but the chopper’s axe has been heard in it this season.") See also September 28, 1857 ("They have cut down two or three of the very rare celtis trees, not found anywhere else in town. The Lord deliver us from these vandalic proprietors!").

We can any autumn discover a new fruit there which will surprise us by its beauty or sweetness. See September 3, 1853 ("Now is the season for those comparatively rare but beautiful wild berries which are not food for man.. . .Berries which are as beautiful as flowers, but far less known.");  October 24, 1858 ("Round about and within our towns there is annually another show of fruits, on an infinitely grander scale, fruits which address our taste for beauty alone. "); March 28, 1859 ("Each day's feast in Nature's year is a surprise to us and adapted to our appetite and spirits. She has arranged such an order of feasts as never tires."); October 7, 1857 ("When I turn round half-way up Fair Haven Hill, by the orchard wall, and look northwest, I am surprised for the thousandth time at the beauty of the landscape.”); November 24, 1860 ("These wild fruits, whether eaten or not, are a dessert for the imagination. The south may keep her pineapples , and we will be content with our strawberries."); November 26, 1860 ("Better for us is the wild strawberry than the pineapple, the wild apple than the orange, the hazelnut or pignut than the cocoanut or almond, and not on account of their flavor merely, but the part they play in our education.")

To Baker’s old chestnut lot near Flint’s Pond

October 26. 

P. M. – To Baker’s old chestnut lot near Flint’s Pond.

As I go through what was formerly the dense pitch pine lot on Thrush Alley (G. Hubbard’s), I observe that the present growth is scrub oak, birch, oaks of various kinds, white pines, pitch pines, willows, and poplars. Apparently, the birch, oaks, and pitch pines are the oldest of the trees.

From the number of small white pines in the neighboring pitch pine wood, I should have expected to find larger and also more white pines here. It will finally become a mixed wood of oak and white and pitch pine.

There is much cladonia in the lot. 

Observed yesterday that the row of white pines set along the fence on the west side of Sleepy Hollow had grown very fast, apparently from about the time they were set out, or the last three years. Several had made grow the fastest at just this age, or after they get to be about five feet high? 

I see to-day sprouts from chestnut stumps which are two and a half feet in diameter (i. e. the stumps). One of these large stumps is cut quite low and hollowing, so as to hold water as well as leaves, and the leaves prevent the water from drying up. It is evident that in such a case the stump rots sooner than if high and roof like. 

I remember that there were a great many hickories with R. W. E.’s pitch pines when I lived there, but now there are but few comparatively, and they appear to have died down several times and come up again from the root. I suppose it is mainly on account of frosts, though perhaps the fires have done part of it.

Are not hickories most commonly found on hills? There are a few hickories in the open land which I once cultivated there, and these may have been planted there by birds or squirrels. It must be more than thirty-five years since there was wood there. 

I find little white pines under the pitch pines (of E.), near the pond end, and few or no little pitch pines, but between here and the road about as many of one as of the other, but the old pines are much less dense that way, or not dense at all. 

This is the season of the fall when the leaves are whirled through the air like flocks of birds, the season of birch spangles, when you see afar a few clear-yellow leaves left on the tops of the birches. 

It was a mistake for Britton to treat that Fox Hollow lot as he did. I remember a large old pine and chestnut wood there some twenty years ago . He came and cut it off and burned it over, and ever since it has been good for nothing. I mean that acre at the bottom of the hollow.

It is now one of those frosty hollows so common in Walden Woods, where little grows, sheep’s fescue grass, sweet-fern, hazelnut bushes, and oak scrubs whose dead tops are two or three feet high, while the still living shoots are not more than half as high at their base. They have lingered so long and died down annually.

At length I see a few birches and pines creeping into it, which at this rate in the course of a dozen years more will suggest a forest there.

Was this wise? 

Examined the stumps in the Baker chestnut lot which was cut when I surveyed it in the spring of’52.  They were when cut commonly from fifty to sixty years old (some older, some younger).

The sprouts from them are from three to six inches thick, and may average-the largest — four inches, and eighteen feet high. The wood is perhaps near half oak sprouts, and these are one and a half to four inches thick, or average two and a half, and not so high as the chestnut.

Some of the largest chestnut stumps have sent up no sprout, yet others equally large and very much more decayed have sent up sprouts. Can this be owing to the different time when they were cut? The cutting was after April.

The largest sprouts I chanced to notice were from a small stump in low ground. Some hemlock stumps there had a hundred rings.

Was overtaken by a sudden thunder-shower.

Cut a chestnut sprout two years old. It grew about five and a half feet the first year and three and a half the next, and was an inch in diameter. The tops of these sprouts, the last few inches, had died in the winter, so that a side bud continued them, and this made a slight curve in the sprout, thus: There was on a cross-section, of course, but one ring of pores within the wood, just outside the large pith, the diameter of the first year’s growth being just half an inch, radius a fourth of an inch.

The thickness of the second year’s growth was the same, or one fourth, but it was distinctly marked to the naked eye with about seven concentric lighter lines, which, I suppose, marked so many successive growths or waves of growth, or seasons in its year.

These were not visible through a microscope of considerable power, but best to the naked eye.

Probably you could tell a seedling chestnut from a vigorous sprout, however old or large, provided the heart were perfectly sound to the pith, by the much more rapid growth of the last the first half-dozen years of its existence. 

There are scarcely any chestnuts this year near Britton’s, but I find as many as usual east of Flint’s Pond. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 26, 1860

It was a mistake for Britton to treat that Fox Hollow lot as he did. He came and cut it off and burned it over, and ever since it has been good for nothing. See  October 16, 1860 (" I have come up here this afternoon to see the dense white pine lot beyond the pond, . . .To my surprise and chagrin, I find that the fellow who calls himself its owner has burned it all over and sowed winter-rye here.. . .He needs to have a guardian placed over him. A forest-warden should be appointed by the town. Overseers of poor husbandmen.")

Probably you could tell a seedling chestnut from a vigorous sprout, however old or large, by the much more rapid growth of the last the first half-dozen years of its existence. See November 6, 1857 ("seventy years ago . . .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.")

There are scarcely any chestnuts this year near Britton’s, but I find as many as usual east of Flint’s Pond. See August 14, 1856 ("All the Flint's Pond wood-paths are strewn with these gay-spotted chestnut leaves") October 18, 1856 ("A-chestnutting down Turnpike and across to Britton's, thinking that the rain now added to the frosts would relax the burs which were open and let the nuts drop . . ."); October 22, 1857("Chestnut trees are almost bare. Now is just the time for chestnuts."); October 23, 1855 ("Now is the time for chestnuts. A stone cast against the trees shakes them down in showers upon one’s head and shoulders."); December 22, 1859 ("I see in the chestnut woods near Flint's Pond where squirrels have collected the small chestnut burs left         the trunks on the snow.")

October 26. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, October 26 and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The seasons and all their changes are in me.