This edging of ice revealed is peculiarly green by contrast with the snow.

January 16. 

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

This morning was one of the coldest. It improves the walking on the river, freezing the overflow beneath the snow. 

As I pass the Island (Egg Rock), I notice the ice-foot adhering to the rock about two feet above the surface of the ice generally. The ice therefor a few feet in width slants up to it, and, owing to this, the snow is blown off it. This edging of ice revealed is peculiarly green by contrast with the snow, methinks. So, too, where the ice, settling, has rested on a rock which has burst it and now holds it high above the surrounding level. The same phenomena, no doubt, on a much larger scale occur at the north. 

I observe that the holes which I bored in the white maples last spring were nearly grown over last summer, commonly to within a quarter or an eighth of an inch, but in one or two instances, in very thriftily growing trees, they were entirely closed. 

When I was surveying Shattuck's Merrick's pasture fields the other day, McManus, who was helping me, said that they would be worth a hundred or two hundred dollars more if it were not for the willow-rows which bound and separate them, for you could not plow parallel with them within five rods on account of the roots, you must plow at right angles with them. Yet it is not many years since they were set out, as I remember. However, there should be a great amount of root to account for their wonderful vivaciousness, making seven or eight feet in a year when trimmed.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 16, 1857

As I pass the Island (Egg Rock), I notice the ice-foot adhering to the rock about two feet above the surface of the ice. See January 1, 1857 (" I observe a shelf of ice — what arctic voyagers call the ice-belt or ice-foot (which they see on a very great scale sledging upon it) — adhering to the walls and banks at various heights, the river having fallen nearly two feet since it first froze"); February 1, 1859 ("Also an ice-belt adheres to the steep shores . . .and you see where this hard and thick ice has bent under its own weight."); February 14, 1859 ("The ice-belt which I still see along the steep bank of the Assabet is now some three weeks old.");  February 15, 1860 ("The river is rapidly falling, is more than a foot lower than it was a few days ago, so that there is an ice-belt left where the bank is steep, and on this I skate in many places.")

The wonderful vivaciousness, making seven or eight feet in a year, of Shattuck's willow row. See December 4, 1855 ("The younger osiers on Shattuck’s row do shine."); January 19, 1856 ("The willow osiers of last year’s growth on the pollards in Shattuck’s row, Merrick’s pasture, from four to seven feet long, are perhaps as bright as in the spring, the lower half yellow, the upper red, but they are a little shrivelled in the bark.")


As I pass the Island (Egg Rock). . .Egg Rock is an outcrop at the confluence of the Assabet and Sudbury rivers, where they form the Concord River. Thoreau surveyed Nawshawtuct Hill in December 1856 and January 1857, producing a map which included Egg Rock. ~ Wikipedia

January 16 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 16

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

Long-continued steady cold winter

March 12

The last four cold days have closed the river again against Merrick’s, and probably the few other small places which may have opened in the town, at the mouth of one or two brooks. I hear, from two sources, of portions of brooks, etc., being frozen over within two days, which had not frozen before this winter.

We had a colder day in the winter of ’54 and ’55 than in the last, yet the ice did not get to be so thick. It is long-continued, steady cold which produces thick ice. If the present cold should continue uninterrupted a thousand years would not the pond become solid? 

Rufus Hosmer says he has known the ground here to be frozen four feet deep. 

March 12, 2022

I never saw such solid mountains of snow in the roads. You travel along for many rods over excellent dry solid sleighing, where the road is perfectly level, not thinking but you are within a foot of the ground, then suddenly descend four or five feet and find, to your surprise, that you had been traversing the broad back of a drift. 

The crow has been a common bird in our street and about our house the past winter. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 12, 1856

The crow has been a common bird in our street. See January 7, 1856 ("The cold weather has brought the crows, and for the first time this winter I hear them cawing amid the houses"); February 1, 1856 ("The crows have been remarkably bold, coming to eat the scraps cast out behind the houses. They alight in our yard."); March 10, 1856 ("The pinched crows are feeding in the road to-day in front of the house and alighting on the elms, and blue jays also, as in the middle of the hardest winter, for such is this weather") See also January 23, 1852 ("The snow is so deep and the cold so intense that the crows are compelled to be very bold in seeking their food, and come very near the houses in the village. ");April 9, 1855 ("I see thus often crows very early in the morning near the houses, which soon after sun rise take their way across the river to the woods again. It is a regular thing with them.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow 

How unwearied Nature is, spreading her seeds.

March 2

Has snowed three or four inches —very damp snow — in the night; stops about 9 A. M. This will probably help carry off the old snow, so solid and deep. 

P. M. —Walking up the river by Prichard's, was surprised to see, on the snow over the river, a great many seeds and scales of birches, though the snow had so recently fallen, there had been but little wind, and it was already spring. There was one seed or scale to a square foot, yet the nearest birches were, about fifteen of them, along the wall thirty rods east.

As I advanced toward them, the seeds became thicker and thicker, till they quite discolored the snow half a dozen rods distant, while east of the birches there was not one. The birches appear not to have lost a quarter of their seeds yet. 

As I went home up the river, I saw some of the seeds forty rods off, and perhaps, in a more favorable direction, I might have found them much further. 

It suggested how unwearied Nature is, spreading her seeds. Even the spring does not find her unprovided with birch, aye, and alder and pine seed. A great proportion of the seed that was carried to a distance lodged in the hollow over the river, and when the river breaks up will be carried far away, to distant shores and meadows.

The opening in the river at Merrick’s is now increased to ten feet in width in some places. 

I can hardly believe that hen-hawks may be beginning to build their nests now, yet their young were a fortnight old the last of April last year.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 2, 1856

How unwearied Nature is, spreading her seeds. See November 4, 1860 ("The birch begins to shed its seed about the time our winter birds arrive from the north."); December 4, 1854("Already the bird-like birch scales dot the snow"); January 7, 1854 ("The bird-shaped scales of the white birch are blown more than twenty rods from the trees."); January 7, 1856 ("I see birch scales (bird-like) on the snow on the river more than twenty rods south of the nearest and only birch, and trace them north to it") and note to  February 27, 1856 ("I see many birch scales, freshly blown over the snow. They are falling all winter.") See also November 10, 1854 ("Nature is prepared for an infinity of springs yet.");  April 3, 1855 ("Nature does nothing suddenl"); February 15, 1859 ("So measured and deliberate is Nature always.")

The opening in the river at Merrick’s. See January 19, 1856 (“The only open place in the river between Hunt’s Bridge and the railroad bridge is a small space against Merrick’s pasture just below the Rock”); January 24, 1856 (“You may walk anywhere on the river now. Even the open space against Merrick’s, below the Rock, has been closed again . . .”); January 26, 1856 (“[The river is not open], excepting the small space against Merrick’s below the Rock (now closed), since January 7th, when it closed at the Hubbard Bath, or nearly three weeks, —a long time, methinks, for it to be frozen so solidly”); February 3, 1856 (River still tight at Merrick’s); February 22, 1856 ([T]he river is still perfectly closed (as it has been for many weeks), both against Merrick’s and in the Assabet, excepting directly under this upper stone bridge and probably at mouth of Loring’s Brook. I am surprised that the warm weather within ten days has not caused the river to open at Merrick’s, but it was too thick to be melted); February 27, 1856 ("Am surprised to see how the ice lasts on the river. It but just begins to be open for a foot or two at Merrick’s, and you see the motion of the stream. It has been tight even there (and of course everywhere else on the main stream, and on North Branch except at Loring’s Brook and under stone bridge) since January 25 . . . That is, we may say that the river has been frozen solidly for seven weeks.)"

I can hardly believe that hen-hawks may be beginning to build their nests now, yet their young were a fortnight old the last of April last year. See April 30, 1855 ("I hear from far the scream of a hawk circling over the Holden woods and swamp . . .  there is a nest there."); March 2, 1855 ("Two hawks scream. There is something truly March-like in it, like a prolonged blast or whistling of the wind through a crevice in the sky.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring:  the Hawks of March

March 2.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 2

Unwearied Nature 

spreading her seeds far away

to distant shores.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  How unwearied Nature is,

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 ©  2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-0302

Birch scales – falling all winter.

February 27

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

Am surprised to see how the ice lasts on the river. 

It but just begins to be open for a foot or two at Merrick’s, and you see the motion of the stream. It has overflowed the ice for many rods a few feet in width. It has been tight even there (and of course everywhere else on the main stream, and on North Branch except at Loring’s Brook and under stone bridge) since January 25th, and elsewhere on the main stream since January 7th, as it still is. 

That is, we may say that the river has been frozen solidly for seven weeks. 

On the 25th I saw a load of wood drawn by four horses up the middle of the river above Fair Haven Pond.  On that day, the 25th, they were cutting the last of Baker’s the greater part of it last winter, and this was the wood they were hauling off. 

I see many birch scales, freshly blown over the snow. They are falling all winter. 

Found, in the snow in E. Hosmer’s meadow, a gray rabbit’s hind leg, freshly left there, perhaps by a fox.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 27, 1856

The river has been frozen solidly for seven weeks. See February 12, 1856 ("Forty three days of uninterrupted cold weather.”); March 2, 1856 ("The opening in the river at Merrick’s is now increased to ten feet in width in some places."); March 12, 1856 ("The last four cold days have closed the river again against Merrick’s."); March 14, 1856 ("I still travel everywhere on the middle of the river."); March 20, 1856 ("The river has just begun to open at Hubbard’s Bend. It has been closed there since January 7th, i. e. ten weeks and a half."); March 22, 1856 ("I walk up the middle of the Assabet, and most of the way on middle of South Branch.");  April 3, 1856 ("The river is now generally and rapidly breaking up . . . It is now generally open about the town"); Compare February 17, 1857 ("The river is fairly breaking up . . . It is as open as the 3d of April last year, at least."); February 27, 1852 ("The North Branch, is open near Tarbell's and Harrington's, where I walked to-day, and, flowing with full tide bordered with ice on either side, sparkles in the clear, cool air, This restless and now swollen stream has burst its icy fetters."); See also A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau, Ice-Out

Birch scales, freshly blown over the snow . . . falling all winter.  See  December 30, 1855 (“For a few days I have noticed the snow sprinkled with alder and birch scales . . .The high wind is scattering them over the snow there.”); January 7, 1856 ("I see birch scales (bird-like) on the snow on the river more than twenty rods south of the nearest and only birch, and trace them north to it"); March 2, 1856 (" Surprised to see, on the snow over the river, a great many seeds and scales of birches, though the snow had so recently fallen, there had been but little wind, and it was already spring.. . . The birches appear not to have lost a quarter of their seeds yet . . . and when the river breaks up will be carried far away, to distant shores and meadows.") See also November 1, 1853 ("The white birch seeds begin to fall and leave the core bare.”); November 4, 1853 ("The fertile catkins of the yellow birch appear to be in the same state with those of the white, and their scales are also shaped like birds, but much larger"); November 4, 1860 ("The birch begins to shed its seed about the time our winter birds arrive from the north.");  December 4, 1854 ("Already the bird-like birch scales dot the snow.");  December 4 1856 ("I see where the pretty brown bird-like birch scales and winged seeds have been blown into the numerous hollows of the thin crusted snow. So bountiful a table is spread for the birds. For how many thousand miles this grain is scattered over the earth, under the feet of all walkers, in Boxboro and Cambridge alike! and rarely an eye distinguishes it."); December 6, 1859 ("No sooner has the snow fallen than, in the woods, it is seen to be dotted almost everywhere with the fine seeds and scales of birches and alders, — no doubt an ever-accessible food to numerous birds and perhaps mice."); December 18, 1852 ("Very cold, windy day. The crust of the slight snow covered in some woods with the scales (bird-shaped) of the birch, and their seeds."); January 7, 1853 ("Still the snow is strewn with the seeds of the birch, the small winged seeds or samarae and the larger scales or bracts shaped like a bird in flight . . .They cover the snow like coarse bran."); January 7, 1854 ("The bird-shaped scales of the white birch are blown more than twenty rods from the trees.")

February 27.  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  February 27 

See many birch scales

freshly blown over the snow –

falling all winter.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Birch scales – falling all winter

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 ©  2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-560227

Now first I see Perla on all parts of the river.

February 22.  

—To Assabet stone bridge and home on river. 

It is a pleasant and warm afternoon, and the snow is melting. Yet the river is still perfectly closed (as it has been for many weeks), both against Merrick’s and in the Assabet, excepting directly under this upper stone bridge and probably at mouth of Loring’s Brook. 

I am surprised that the warm weather within ten days has not caused the river to open at Merrick’s, but it was too thick to be melted. 

Now first, the snow melting and the ice beginning to soften, I see those slender grayish-winged insects creeping with closed wings over the snow-clad ice, — Perla (?) on all parts of the river. Have seen none before, this winter. [From a third of an inch to an inch long; of various sizes, etc. And every warm day afterward. Have in fact four wings.]

Just below this bridge begins an otter track, several days old yet very distinct, which I trace half a mile down the river. 

In the snow less than an inch deep, on the ice, each foot makes a track three inches wide, apparently enlarged in melting. The clear interval, sixteen inches; the length occupied by the four feet, fourteen inches. It looks as if some one had dragged a round timber down the middle of the river a day or two since, which bounced as it went.

There is now a crack running down the middle of the river, and it is slightly elevated there, owing, probably, to the increasing temperature.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 22, 1856

I am surprised that the warm weather within ten days has not caused the river to open at Merrick’s. See January 19, 1856 (“The only open place in the river between Hunt’s Bridge and the railroad bridge is a small space against Merrick’s pasture just below the Rock”); January 24, 1856 (“You may walk anywhere on the river now. Even the open space against Merrick’s, below the Rock, has been closed again”); February 3, 1856 (River still tight at Merrick’s); February 27, 1856 (Am surprised to see how the ice lasts on the river. It but just begins to be open for a foot or two at Merrick’s"); March 2, 1856 ("The opening in the river at Merrick’s is now increased to ten feet in width in some places.") March 12, 1856 ("The last four cold days have closed the river again against Merrick’s,");See also 
A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Ice-out

I see those slender grayish-winged insects creeping with closed wings over the snow-clad ice.  See  February 18, 1854 ("I  see on ice by the riverside, front of N. Barrett's, very slender insects a third of an inch long, with grayish folded wings reaching far behind and two antennæ.");  March 17, 1858 ("As usual, I have seen for some weeks on the ice these peculiar (perla?) insects with long wings and two tails."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring, Perla-like insects appear and Northern Woodlands, Winter's Bug Season (winter stoneflies):

An otter track, several days old . . . which I trace half a mile down the river . . . looks as if some one had dragged a round timber down the middle of the river a day or two since, which bounced as it went. See February 20, 1856 ("See a broad and distinct otter-trail, made last night or yesterday. . . Commonly seven to nine or ten inches wide, and tracks of feet twenty to twenty-four apart; but sometimes there was no track of the feet for twenty-five feet."); March 6, 1856 ("On the rock this side the Leaning Hemlocks, is the track of an otter.”); See also January 30, 1854 ("How retired an otter manages to live! He grows to be four feet long without any mortal getting a glimpse of him”); April 6, 1855 ("it reminds me of an otter, which however I have never seen."); February 20, 1855 (among the quadrupeds of Concord, the otter is "very rare.”) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Otter

February 22. See  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 22

Now first I see those

slender grayish-winged insects

on the snow-clad ice.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Now first I see Perla

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 ©  2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-560222

A cold and windy Sunday.

February 3

Analyzed the crow blackbird’s nest from which I took an egg last summer, eight or ten feet up a white maple by river, opposite Island. Large, of an irregular form, appearing as if wedged in between a twig and two large contiguous trunks. From outside to outside it measures from six to eight inches; inside, four; depth, two; height, six. The foundation is a loose mass of coarse strips of grape-vine bark chiefly, some eighteen inches long by five eighths of an inch mikania stems, a few cellular river weeds, as rushes, sparganium, pipe-grass, and some soft, coarse, fibrous roots. The same coarse grape-vine bark and grass and weed stems, together with some harder, wiry stems, form the sides and rim, the bark being passed around the twig. The nest is lined with the finer grass and weed stems, etc. The solid part of the nest is of half-decayed vegetable matter and mud, full of fine fibrous roots and wound internally with grass stems, etc., and some grape bark, being an inch and a half thick at bottom. Pulled apart and lying loose, it makes a great mass of material. This, like similar nests, is now a great haunt for spiders. 

P. M. — Up North Branch. A strong northwest wind (and thermometer 11°), driving the surface snow like steam. About five inches of soft snow now on ice.

See many seeds of the hemlock on the snow still, and cones which have freshly rolled down the bank.

Track some mice to a black willow by riverside, just above spring, against the open swamp; and about three feet high, in apparently an old woodpecker’s hole, was probably the mouse-nest, a double handful, consisting, four ninths, of fine shreds of inner bark, perhaps willow or maple; three ninths, the greenish moss, apparently, of button-bush; two ninths, the gray-slate fur, apparently, of rabbits or mice. Half a dozen hog’s bristles might have been brought by some bird to its nest there. These made a very warm and soft nest. 

Get some kind of vireo’s nest from a maple far up the stream, a dozen feet high, pensile; within, almost wholly rather coarse grape-vine shreds; without, the same and bark, covered with the delicate white spider-nests (?), birch-bark shreds, and brown cocoon silk. 

Returning, see near the Island a shrike glide by, cold and blustering as it was, with a remarkably even and steady sail or gliding motion like a hawk, eight or ten feet above the ground, and alight in a tree, from which at the same instant a small bird, perhaps a. creeper or nuthatch, flitted timidly away. The shrike was apparently in pursuit. 

We go wading through snows now up the bleak river, in the face of the cutting northwest wind and driving snow-steam, turning now this ear, then that, to the wind, and our gloved hands in our bosoms or pockets. Our tracks are obliterated before we come back. 

How different this from sailing or paddling up the stream here in July, or poling amid the rocks! Yet still, in one square rod, where they have got out ice and a thin transparent-ice has formed, I can see the pebbly bottom the same as in summer. 

It is a cold and windy Sunday. 

The wind whistles round the northwest corner of the house and penetrates every crevice and consumes the wood in the stoves, — soon blows it all away. An armful goes but little way. Such a day makes a great hole in the wood-pile. It whisks round the corner of the house, in at a crevice, and flirts off with all the heat before we have begun to feel it. 

Some of the low drifts but a few inches deep, made by the surface snow blowing, over the river especially, are of a fine, pure snow, so densely packed that our feet make hardly any impression on them. 

River still tight at Merrick’s. 

There comes a deep snow in midwinter, covering up the ordinary food of many birds and quadrupeds, but anon a high wind scatters the seeds of pines and hemlocks and birch and alder, etc., far and wide over the surface of the snow for them. 

You may now observe plainly the habit of the rabbits to run in paths about the swamps. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 3, 1856

See many seeds of the hemlock on the snow still, and cones which have freshly rolled down the bank. See January 14, 1857 ("Up Assabet on ice. . . . Hemlock seeds are scattered over the snow."); January 20, 1860 ("The snow and ice under the hemlocks is strewn with cones and seeds and tracked with birds and squirrels."); January 24, 1856 (" A great many hemlock cones have fallen on the snow and rolled down the hill."); January 31, 1856 ("More hemlock cones also have fallen and rolled down the bank. ').

There comes a deep snow in midwinter, covering up the ordinary food of many birds and quadrupeds, but anon a high wind scatters the seeds of pines and hemlocks and birch and alder, etc., far and wide over the surface of the snow for them.  See January 20,1860 ("What a bountiful supply of winter food is here provided for them! No sooner has fresh snow fallen and covered up the old crop than down comes a new supply all the more distinct on the spotless snow. The snowy ice and the snow on shore have been blackened with these fallen cones several times over this winter.")

I can see the pebbly bottom the same as in summer. See July 5, 1852 ("We are favored in having two rivers, flowing into one, whose banks afford different kinds of scenery, the streams being of different characters; one a dark, muddy, dead stream, full of animal and vegetable life, with broad meadows and black dwarf willows and weeds, the other comparatively pebbly and swift, with more abrupt banks and narrower meadows. To the latter I go to see the ripple, and the varied bottom with its stones and sands and shadows; to the former for the influence of its dark water resting on invisible mud, and for its reflections . . . We have become accustomed to the summer. It has acquired a certain eternity");  November 23, 1850 (“I lay down on the ice and look through at the bottom.”) See also Walden (“The first ice is especially interesting and perfect, being hard, dark, and transparent, and affords the best opportunity that ever offers for examining the bottom where it is shallow; for you can lie at your length on ice only an inch thick, like a skater insect on the surface of the water, and study the bottom at your leisure, only two or three inches distant, like a picture behind a glass.”); December 19, 1856 ("The ice is now from two and a half to three inches thick, a transparent green ice, through which I see the bottom "); Walden, Where I lived and what I lived for ("While I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars")

You may now observe plainly the habit of the rabbits to run in paths about the swamps. See January 1, 1856 ("I see the tracks apparently of a white rabbit, afterward many tracks of gray rabbits . . . Many have run in one course."); January 9, 1856 ("The rabbits have run in paths about the swamp."); January 10, 1856 ("A few rabbits have run in a path amid the blueberries and alders about the edge of the swamp.); see also November 24, 1860 ("Though a slight touch . . . The rabbits in the swamps enjoy it, as well as you.”); December 22, 1850 ("I see more tracks in the swamps than elsewhere.”); December 22, 1853 ("Last night's sprinkling of snow does not now whiten the ground, except that here in the swamp it whitens the ice and already I see the tracks of rabbits on it."); December 22, 1858 ("I see where a rabbit has hopped across [Walden] in the slosh last night, making a track larger than a man’s ordinarily is."); February 17, 1854 ("The track of the white rabbit is gigantic compared with that of the gray one.")

February 3. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 3

Thin transparent ice –

I see the pebbly bottom 

same as in summer. 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A cold and windy Sunday.

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 ©  2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-560203

The colors of a summer duck

November 9.

7 A. M. — Grass white and stiff with frost. 

9 A. M. — With Blake up Assabet. 

A clear and beautiful day after frost. 

Looking over the meadow westward from Merrick’s Pasture Shore, I see the alders beyond Dodd’s, now quite bare and gray (maple-like) in the morning sun (the frost melted off, though I found a little ice on my boat-seat), —that true November sight, — ready to wear frost leaves and to transmit (so open) the tinkle of tree sparrows. 

How wild and refreshing to see these old black willows of the river-brink, unchanged from the first, which man has never cut for fuel or for timber! Only the muskrat, tortoises, blackbirds, bitterns, and swallows use them. 

Two blackbirds fly over pretty near, with a chuck, —either red-wings or grackles, but I see no red. See a painted tortoise and a wood tortoise in different places out on the bank still! 

See in the pool at the Hemlocks what I at first thought was a brighter leaf moved by the zephyr on the surface of the smooth dark water, but it was a splendid male summer duck, which allowed us to approach within seven or eight rods, sailing up close to the shore, and then rose and flew up the curving stream. 

We soon overhauled it again, and got a fair and long view of it. It was a splendid bird, a perfect floating gem, and Blake, who had never seen the like, was greatly surprised, not knowing that so splendid a bird was found in this part of the world. There it was, constantly moving back and forth by invisible means and wheeling on the smooth surface, showing now its breast, now its side, now its rear. 

It had a large, rich, flowing, green burnished crest, —a most ample head-dress, —two crescents of dazzling white on the side of the head and the black neck, a pinkish(?)-red bill (with black tip) and similar irides, and a long white mark under and at wing point on sides; the side, as if the form of wing at this distance, light bronze or greenish brown; but, above all, its breast, when it turns into the right light, all aglow with splendid purple (?) or ruby (?) reflections, like the throat of the hummingbird. It might not appear so close at hand. 

This was the most surprising to me. What an ornament to a river to see that glowing gem floating in contact with its waters! As if the hummingbird should recline its ruby throat and its breast on the water. Like dipping a glowing coal in water! It so affected me. 

It became excited, fluttered or flapped its wings with a slight whistling noise, and arose and flew two or three rods and alighted. It sailed close up to the edge of a rock, by which it lay pretty still, and finally sailed fast up one side of the river by the willows, etc., off the duck swamp beyond the spring, now and then turning and sailing back a foot or two, while we paddled up the opposite side a rod in the rear, for twenty or thirty rods. 

At length we went by it, and it flew back low a few rods to where we roused it. It never offered to dive. We came equally near it again on our return. Unless you are thus near, and have a glass, the splendor and beauty of its colors will not be discovered. 

That duck was all jewels combined, showing different lustres as it turned on the unrippled element in various lights, now brilliant glossy green, now dusky violet, now a rich bronze, now the reflections that sleep in the ruby’s grain. 

Found a good stone jug, small size, floating stopple up. I drew the stopple and smelled, as I expected, molasses and water, or something stronger (black-strap?), which it had contained. Probably some meadow-haymakers’ jug left in the grass, which the recent rise of the river has floated off. It will do to put with the white pitcher I found and keep flowers in. Thus I get my furniture. 

Yesterday I got a perfectly sound oak timber, eight inches square and twenty feet long, which had lodged on some rocks. It had probably been the sill of a building. As it was too heavy to lift aboard, I towed it. As I shall want some shelves to put my Oriental books on, I shall begin to save boards now.

The highest law gives a thing to him who can use it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 9, 1855

As I shall want some shelves to put my Oriental books on, I shall begin to save boards now. See November 16, 1855 ("A part of to-day and yesterday I have been making shelves for my Oriental books, which I hear to-day are now on the Atlantic in the Canada.")

A hundred crows in a great rambling flock.

Fresh election-cake with peppered surface

October 29.

Carried my owl to the hill again. Had to shake him out of the box, for he did not go of his own accord. There he stood on the grass, at first bewildered, with his horns pricked up and looking toward me. In this strong light the pupils of his eyes suddenly. contracted and the iris expanded till they were two great brazen orbs with a centre spot merely. His attitude expressed astonishment more than anything. I was obliged to toss him up a little that he might feel his wings, and then he flapped away low and heavily to a hickory on the hillside twenty rods off. ...

I see many aphides very thick and long-tailed on the alders. 

Soapwort gentian and pasture thistle still. 

There are many fresh election-cake toadstools amid the pitch pines there, and also very regular higher hemispherical ones with a regularly warted or peppered surface.

As I pass Merrick’s pasture, I see and count about a hundred crows advancing in a great rambling flock from the southeast and crossing the river on high, and cawing.

When the leaves fall, the whole earth is a cemetery pleasant to walk in. I love to wander and muse over them in their graves, returning to dust again. Here are no lying nor vain epitaphs. The scent of their decay is pleasant to me. 

I buy no lot in the cemetery which my townsmen have just consecrated with a poem and an auction, paying so much for a choice. Here is room enough for me.

The swamp white oak has a fine, firm, leathery leaf with a silver under side, half of them now turned up. Oaks are now fairly brown; very few still red. 

Returning, I scare up a blue heron from the bathing rock this side the Island. It is whitened by its droppings, in great splotches a foot or more wide. He has evidently frequented it to watch for fish there.

Also a flock of blackbirds fly eastward over my head from the top of an oak, either red-wings or grackles.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 29, 1855

My owl. See October 28, 1855 ("Sealing squietly up behind the hemlock, though from the windward, I look carefully around it, and, to my surprise, see the owl still sitting there. So I spring round quickly, with my arm outstretched, and catch it in my hand."). See also A Book of the Seasons, , by Henry Thoreau, the Screech Owl


Soapwort gentian and pasture thistle still. See October 11, 1856 ("A pasture thistle with many fresh flowers and bees on it. ")' See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Soapwort Gentian; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Thistles

I see and count about a hundred crows advancing in a great rambling flock from the southeast and crossing the river on high, and cawing.  See October 29, 1857 ("A flock of about eighty crows flies ramblingly over toward the sowing, cawing and loitering and making a great ado, apparently about nothing."); November 1, 1853 ("As I return, I notice crows flying southwesterly in a very long straggling flock, of which I see probably neither end.")

The cemetery which my townsmen have just consecrated. See note to October 30, 1855 ("Going to the new cemetery,")

Election cake toadstools. See October 20, 1856 ("Amid the young pitch pines . . . a great many brownish-yellow (and some pink) election-cake fungi . . .”); July 29, 1853 (“ . . .small, umbrella-shaped (with sharp cones), shining and glossy yellow fungi, like an election cake  . .”). See also Concord: A Sense of Place, October 20, 2015, Election-cake Fungus Mystery.

Election Cake dates back to Colonial America and the young Republic.  Bakers made this “muster" cake to feed militia members in the Colonial era during military training days. After the American Revolution, it evolved into an Election Cake, one prepared for town hall meetings and community celebrations to encourage eligible voter attendance.  ~ owl bakery

I love to wander and muse over them in their graves, returning to dust again. See  October 16, 1857 ("How beautifully they die, making cheerfully their annual contribution to the soil! They fall to rise again; as if they knew that it was not one annual deposit alone that made this rich mould in which pine trees grow. They live in the soil whose fertility and bulk they increase, and in the forests that spring from it. "); October 20, 1853 ("Merrily they go scampering over the earth, selecting their graves, whispering all through the woods about it. They that waved so loftily, how contentedly they return to dust again and afford nourishment to new generations of their kind, as well as to flutter on high! So they troop to their graves, light and frisky. They are about to add a leaf's breadth to the depth of the soil. We are all the richer for their decay.").

I love to wander

over the leaves in their graves

returning to dust.

When the leaves fall

I love to wander and muse 

here is room for me.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A hundred crows in a great rambling flock.

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

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