How often vegetation is either yellow or red!

February 13

Last night said to have been a little colder than the night before, and the coldest hitherto.

P. M. – Ride to Cafferty's Swamp.

The greatest breadth of the swamp appears to be northeasterly from Adams's. There is much panicled andromeda in it, some twelve feet high, and, as I count, seventeen years old, with yellowish wood. I saw three tupelos in the swamp, each about one foot in diameter and all within two rods.

In those parts of the swamp where the bushes were not so high but that I could look over them, I observed that the swamp was variously shaded, or painted even, like a rug, with the sober colors running gradually into each other, by the colored recent shoots of various shrubs which grow densely, as the red blueberry, and the yellowish-brown panicled andromeda, and the dark-brown or blackish Prinos verticillatus, and the choke-berry, etc.

Standing on a level with those shrubs, you could see that these colors were only a foot or so deep, according to the length of the shoots. So, too, oftener would the forests appear if we oftener stood above them.

How often vegetation is either yellow or red! as the buds of the swamp-pink, the leaves of the pitcher-plant, etc., etc., and to-day I notice yellow-green recent shoots of high blueberry.

Observed a coarse, dense-headed grass in the meadow at Stow's old swamp lot. What did the birds do for horsehair here formerly?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 13, 1858

The red blueberry. See November 6, 1853 (“The remarkable roundish, plump red buds of the high blueberry.”); November 23, 1857 (“You distinguish it by its gray spreading mass; its light-gray bark, rather roughened; its thickish shoots, often crimson; and its plump, roundish red buds.”); November 20, 1857 ("the bright-crimson shoots of high blueberry . . . have a very pretty effect, a crimson vigor to stand above the snow.")

The yellowish-brown panicled andromeda. See November 23, 1857 ("The panicled andromeda is upright, light-gray, with a rather smoother bark, more slender twigs, and small, sharp red buds lying close to the twig."); December 6, 1856 ("The rich brown fruit of the panicled andromeda growing about the swamp, hard, dry, inedible, suitable to the season. The dense panicles of the berries are of a handsome form, made to endure, lasting often over two seasons, only becoming darker and gray")

How often vegetation is either yellow or red! as the buds of the swamp-pink See December 1, 1852 (“The large bright yellowish and reddish buds of the swamp-pink,"); December 11, 1855 ("The great yellow buds of the swamp-pink, the round red buds of the high blueberry, and the fine sharp red ones of the panicled andromeda"); January 25, 1858 ("The round red buds of the blueberries; the small pointed red buds, close to the twig, of the panicled andromeda; the large yellowish buds of the swamp pink.")

The leaves of the pitcher-plant. See September 28, 1851 ("These leaves are of various colors from plain green to a rich striped yellow or deep red. No plants are more richly painted and streaked than the inside of the broad lips of these."); November 11, 1858 ("In the meadows the pitcher-plants are bright-red"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Pitcher Plant

Under the Cliffs

November 19. 

P. M. – To Cliffs. 

In Stow's sprout-land west of railroad cut, I see where a mouse which has a hole under a stump has eaten out clean the insides of the little Prinos verticillatus berries. These may be the doubtful seeds of the 14th. What pretty fruit for the mice, these bright prinos berries! They run up the twigs in the night and gather this shining fruit, take out the small seeds, and eat their kernels at the entrance to their burrows. The ground is strewn with them there. 

Turning up a stone on Fair Haven Hill, I find many small dead crickets about the edges, which have endeavored to get under it and apparently have been killed by the frost; quite under it and alive, two or three small purplish-brown caterpillars; and many little ants, quite active, with their white grubs, in spacious galleries, somewhat semicylindrical, whose top often was the bottom of the stone. You would think they had been made by a worm. 

Going along close under the Cliffs, I see a dozen or more low blackberry vines dangling down a perpendicular rock at least eight feet high, and blown back and forth, with leaves every six inches, and one or two have reached the ground and taken firm root there. 

There are also many of the common cinquefoil with its leaves five inches asunder, dangling down five or six feet over the same rock.

I see many acorn and other nut shells which in past years have been tucked into clefts in the rocks.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 19, 1857

These may be the doubtful seeds of the 14th. See November 14, 1857 (“I have but little doubt that these seeds were placed there by a Mus leucopus, our most common wood mouse. ”) See also
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse

I find many small dead crickets. See November 22, 1851 ("He turned over a stone, and I saw under it many crickets and ants still lively,"); see also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cricket in November (Listening for the Last Cricket)

Many little ants, quite active, with their white grubs, in spacious galleries. ee November 15, 1857 (“My walk is the more lonely when I perceive that there are no ants now upon their hillocks in field or wood. These are deserted mounds. They have commenced their winter's sleep.”); November 22, 1851 (", He turned over a stone, and I saw under it many crickets and ants still lively, which had gone into winter quarters there apparently. There were many little galleries leading under the stone, indenting the hardened earth like veins")

The common cinquefoil dangling down over the rock. See May 1, 1854 (“At Lee's Cliff find the early cinquefoil”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Cinquefoil in Autumn

The mountains, after this our warmest day as yet, have a peculiar soft mantle of blue haze.

April 16. 

P. M. — To Flint’s Pond. 

A perfectly clear and very warm day, a little warmer than the 31st of March or any yet, and I have not got far before, for the first time, I regret that I wore my greatcoat. 

Noticed the first wasp, and many cicindelae on a sandy place. Have probably seen the latter before in the air, but this warmth brings them out in numbers.

The gray of Hubbard’s oaks looks drier and more like summer, and it is now drier walking, the frost in most places wholly out. I got so near a grass-bird as to see the narrow circle of white round the eye. 

The spots on the Emys guttata, in a still, warm leafy-paved ditch which dries up, are exceedingly bright now. Does it last? 

At Callitriche Pool (I see no flowers on it), I see what looks like minnows an inch long, with a remarkably forked tail—fin; probably larvae of dragon-flies. The eyed head conspicuous, and something like a large dorsal fin. They dart about in this warm pool and rest at different angles with the horizon. 

The water ranunculus was very forward here. This pool dries up in summer. The very pools, the receptacles of all kinds of rubbish, now, soon after the ice has melted, so transparent and of glassy smoothness and full of animal and vegetable life, are interesting and beautiful objects. 

Stow’s cold pond-hole is still full of ice though partly submerged, —the only pool in this state that I see. 

The orange-copper vanessa, middle-sized, is out, and a great many of the large buff-edged are fluttering over the leaves in wood-paths this warm afternoon. 

I am obliged to carry my great coat on my arm. 

A striped snake rustles down a dry open hillside where the withered grass is long. 

I cannot dig to the nest of the deer mouse in Britton’s Hollow, because of the frost about six inches beneath the surface. (Yet, though I have seen no plowing in fields, the surveyors plowed in the road on the 14th.) As far as I dug, their galleries appeared at first to be lined with a sort of membrane, which I found was the bark or skin of roots of the right size, their galleries taking the place of the decayed wood. An oak stump. 

At Flint’s, sitting on the rock, we see a great many ducks, mostly sheldrakes, on the pond, which will hardly abide us within half a mile. With the glass I see by their reddish heads that all of one party ——the main body—are females. 

You see little more than their heads at a distance and not much white but on their throats, perchance. When they fly, they look black and white, but not so large nor with that brilliant contrast of black and white which the male exhibits. In another direction is a male by himself, conspicuous, perhaps several. 

Anon alights near us a flock of golden-eyes — surely, with their great black (looking) heads and a white patch on the side; short much clear black, contrasting with much clear white. Their heads and bills look ludicrously short and parrot-like after the others. 

Our presence and a boat party on the pond at last drives nearly all the ducks into the deep easterly cove. We steal down on them carefully through the woods, at last crawling on our bellies, with great patience, till at last we find ourselves within seven or eight rods —as I measure afterward —of the great body of them, and watch them for twenty or thirty minutes with the glass through a screen of cat-briar, alders, etc. 

There are twelve female sheldrakes close together, and, nearest us, within two rods of the shore, where it is very shallow, two or more constantly moving about within about the diameter of a rod and keeping watch while the rest are trying to sleep, — to catch a nap with their heads in their backs; but from time to time one will wake up enough to plume himself. 

It seems as if they must have been broken of their sleep and were trying to make it up, having an arduous journey before them, for we had seen them all disturbed and on the wing within half an hour. 

They are headed various ways. Now and then they seem to see or hear or smell us, and utter a low note of alarm, something like the note of a tree-toad, but very faint, or perhaps a little more wiry and like that of pigeons, but the sleepers hardly lift their heads for it. How fit that this note of alarm should be made to resemble the croaking of a frog and so not betray them to the gunners! 

They appear to sink about midway in the water, and their heads are all a rich reddish brown, their throats white. Now and then one of the watchmen lifts his head and turns his bill directly upward, showing his white throat. 

There are some black or dusky ducks in company with them at first, apparently about as large as they, but more alarmed. Their throats look straw colored, somewhat like a bittern’s, and I see their shovel bills. These soon sail further off. 

At last we arise and rush to the shore within three rods of them, and they rise up with a din, — twenty-six mergansers (I think all females), ten black ducks, —and five golden-eyes from a little further off, also another still more distant flock of one of these kinds.

The black ducks alone utter a sound, their usual hoarse quack. They all fly in loose array, but the three kinds in separate flocks. We are surprised to find ourselves looking on a company of birds devoted to slumber after the alarm and activity we just witnessed. 

Returning, at Goose Pond, which many water bugs (gyrinus) were now dimpling, we scare up two black ducks. The shore is strewn with much fresh eel-grass and the fine, now short eriocaulon with its white roots, apparently all pulled up by them an drifted in.

The spearer’s light to-night, and, after dark, the sound of geese honking all together very low over the houses and apparently about to settle on the Lee meadow. 

Have not noticed fox-colored sparrows since April 13th. 

I am startled sometimes these mornings to hear the sound of doves alighting on the roof just over my head; they come down so hard upon it, as if one had thrown a heavy stick on to it, and I wonder it does not injure their organizations. Their legs must be cushioned in their sockets to save them from the shock? 

When we reach Britton’s clearing on our return this afternoon, at sunset, the mountains, after this our warmest day as yet, have a peculiar soft mantle of blue haze, pale blue as a blue heron, ushering in the long series of summer sunsets, and we are glad that we stayed out so late and feel no need to go home now in a hurry.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 16, 1855

[A] little warmer than the 31st of March or any yet, and I have not got far before, for the first time, I regret that I wore my greatcoat. See March 31, 1855 (“I am uncomfortably warm, gradually unbutton both my coats, and wish that I had left the outside one at home.”)

At Flint’s, sitting on the rock, we see a great many ducks, mostly sheldrakes, on the pond. See April 16, 1859 ("Sheldrakes yet on Walden."); See also  April 22, 1855 ("Goosanders, . . .can get out of sight about as well by diving as by flying. At a distance you see only the male, alternately diving and sailing, when the female may be all the while by his side") Also. Henry Thoreau, A Book of the Seasons, The Sheldrake (Merganser, Goosander)

A striped snake rustles down a dry open hillside where the withered grass is long. See April 16, 1861("Horace Mann says that he killed a bullfrog which had swallowed and contained a common striped snake.") See also April 2, 1858 (" No doubt on almost every such warm bank now you will find a snake lying out"); April 9, 1856 ("saw a striped snake, which probably I had scared into the water from the warm railroad bank”); April 20, 1854 ("A striped snake on a warm, sunny bank.");  May 19, 1856 (‘"a small striped snake in the act of swallowing a Rana palustris. . .”); November 1, 1856 (“A striped snake basks in the sun amid dry leaves.”). Also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Striped Snake

We are glad that we stayed out so late and feel no need to go home now in a hurry. See June 14, 1853 ("Home is farther away than ever. Here is home; the beauty of the world impresses you"); May 23, 1853 (" A certain lateness in the sound, pleasing to hear . . . releases me from the obligation to return in any particular season. I have passed the Rubicon of staying out. I have said to myself, that way is not homeward; I will wander further from what I have called my home — to the home which is forever inviting me. In such an hour the freedom of the woods is offered me,"); June 13, 1854 ("When I have stayed out thus late many miles from home, and have heard a cricket beginning to chirp louder near me in the grass I have felt that I was not far from home after all, -- began to be weaned from my village home.")

Butterflies flutter

over the leaves in wood-paths

this warm afternoon.

A striped snake rustles

down a dry open hillside

in the withered grass.

Pale blue mountain haze

ushers in summer sunsets –

Our warmest day yet

Glad we stayed out late --

we feel no need now to go

home in a hurry.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A peculiar soft mantle of blue haze.

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-18550416

Floating meadows explained,pine needles examined

March 11.

P. M. — To Annursnack. Clear and rather pleasant; the ground again bare; wind northerly. 

I am surprised to see how rapidly that ice that covered the meadows on the 1st of March has disappeared under the influence of the sun alone. The greater part of what then lay on the meadows a foot thick has melted—two thirds at least. 

On Abel Hosmer’s pasture, just southeast of the stone bridge, I see where the sod was lifted up over a great space in the flood of the 17th of February. I see one piece of crust, twelve feet by six, turned completely topsy turvy with its ice beneath it. This has prevented the ice from melting, and on examining it I find that the ice did not settle down on to the grass after the water went down and then freeze to it, for the blades of grass penetrate one inch into the ice, showing that, the water being shallow, the whole froze, and the grass was frozen in, and thus, when the water rose again, was lifted up. 

A bluebird day before yesterday in Stow.

Many of those dirty-white millers or ephemera in the air.

As I sit at the base of Annursnack the earth appears almost completely bare, but from the top I see considerable white ice here and there. What is left is only the whitened and rotting ice, which, being confined to the lowest hollows and meadows, is only observed from a height. 

At this season, — before grass springs to conceal them, — I notice those pretty little roundish shells on the tops of hills; one to-day on Annursnack. 

I see pitch pine needles looking as if whitewashed, thickly covered on each of the two slopes of the needle with narrow, white, oyster-shell-like latebra or chrysalids of an insect.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 11, 1855

Many of those dirty-white millers or ephemera in the air. See March 3, 1855 (“I see a dirty-white miller fluttering about over the winter-rye patch next to Hubbard’s Grove. ”)

Another Indian-summer day.

October 24.

Rode to Stow via powder-mills with W.E.C., returning via the fir tree house, Vose's Hill, and Corner.  

I saw in Stow some trees fuller of apples still than I remember to have ever seen. Small yellow apples hanging over the road. The branches were gracefully drooping with the weight of the fruit. 

The road through the woods this side the powder-mills was very gorgeous with the sun shining endwise through it, and the red tints of the deciduous trees, now somewhat imbrowned, mingled with the liquid green of the pines.  

At the fall on the river at Parker's paper-mill, there is a bright sparkle on the water long before we get to it. 

The larches in the swamps are now conspicuously yellow and ready for their fall. They can now be distinguished at a distance. 

I see, far over the river, boys gathering walnuts. 

There is an agreeable prospect from near the post-office in the northwest of Sudbury. The southeast ( ) horizon is very distant, — but what perhaps makes it more agreeable, it is a low distance, — extending to the Weston elm in the horizon. 

You are more impressed with the extent of earth overlooked than if the view were bounded by mountains.

H. D. Thoreau,  Journal, October 24, 1852

The red tints of the deciduous trees mingled with the liquid green of the pines. See October 9, 1857 ("From Lupine Hill, not only the maples, etc., have acquired brighter tints at this season, but the pines, by contrast, appear to have acquired a new and more liquid green,”)

The larches in the swamps are now conspicuously yellow and ready for their fall. They can now be distinguished at a distance. See November 1, 1858 ("Now you easily detect where larches grow, viz. in the swamp north of Sleepy Hollow. They are far more distinct than at any other season. They are very regular soft yellow pyramids, as I see them from the Poplar Hill. . . .These trees now cannot easily be mistaken for any other, because they are the only conspicuously yellow trees now left in the woods, except a very few aspens of both kinds, not one in a square mile, and these are of a very different hue as well as form, the birches, etc.,; having fallen. . . .  But in the summer it is not easy to distinguish them either by their color or form at a distance.”);  November 9, 1858 ("The trees on the hill just north of Alcott’s land, which I saw yesterday so distinctly from Ponkawtasset, and thought were either larches or aspens, prove to be larches. On a hill like this it seems they are later to change and brighter now than those in the Abel Heywood swamp, which are brownish-yellow. The first-named larches were quite as distinct amid the pines seen a mile off as near at hand.”)

There is an agreeable prospect . . . extending to the Weston elm in the horizon. See November 7, 1851 ("Thence across lots by the Weston elm, to the bounds of Lincoln at the railroad.")

Small yellow apples

hanging over the road, branches

gracefully drooping.

Oct. 24. Another Indian-summer day. P. M. — Rode to Stow via powder-mills with W. E. C, returning via the fir tree house, Vose's Hill, and Corner. The road through the woods this side the powder- mills was very gorgeous with the sun shining endwise through it, and the red tints of the deciduous trees, now somewhat imbrowned, mingled with the liquid green of the pines. The andromeda is already browned, has a grayish-brown speckled look. I see, far over the river, boys gathering walnuts. At the fall on the river at Parker's paper-mill, there is a bright sparkle on the water long before we get to it. I saw in Stow some trees fuller of apples still than I remember to have ever seen. Small yellow apples hanging over the road. The branches were gracefully drooping with the weight of the fruit like a barberry bush, so that the whole tree acquired a new character. The topmost branches, instead of standing erect, spread and drooped in all directions. The larches in the swamps are now conspicuously yellow and ready for their fall. They can now be distinguished at a distance. There is an agreeable pros pect from near the post-office in the northwest of Sudbury. The southeast ( ?) horizon is very distant, — but what perhaps makes it more agreeable, it is a low distance, — extending to the Weston elm in the horizon. You are more impressed with the extent of earth overlooked than if the view were bounded by mountains.
 

Wintergreen and blueberries.

July 3.The Chimaphila umbellata, wintergreen, must have been in blossom some time. The back side of its petals, "cream colored tinged with purple," which is turned toward the beholder, while the face is toward the earth, is the handsomest. It is a very pretty little chandelier of a flower, fit to adorn the forest floor.

The pickers have quite thinned the crop of early blueberries where Stow cut off winter before last. When the woods on some hillside are cut off, the Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum springs up, or grows more luxuriantly, being exposed to light and air, and by the second year its stems are weighed to the ground with clusters of blueberries covered with bloom, and much larger than they commonly grow, also with a livelier taste than usual, as if remembering some primitive mountain-side given up to them anciently. 

I am surprised to see how suddenly, when the sun and air and rain are let in, these bushes, which, in the shade of the forest, scarcely yielded the walker a berry, will suddenly be weighed down with fruit. Such places supply the villagers with the earliest berries for two or three years, or until the rising wood overgrows them and they withdraw into the bosom of Nature again. They flourish during the few years between one forest's fall and another's rise.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, July 3, 1852 

Chimaphila umbellata, a/k/a pipsissewa is not American wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbent)--which HDT calls “checkerberry.". See  November 16, 1858 (“Methinks the wintergreen, pipsissewa, is our handsomest evergreen, so liquid glossy green and dispersed almost all over the woods.”)

In Stow's clearing.

May 5.

Every part of the world is beautiful to-day; the bright, shimmering water; the fresh, light-green grass springing up on the hills, tender, firm, moss-like before it waves; the fine light smokes, sometimes blue against the woods; the tracts where the woods have been cut the past winter; and the beautiful blue of the horizon and its mountains.  Now all buds may swell, methinks; now the summer may begin for all creatures.  

As I can throw my voice into my head and sing very loud and clear there, so I can throw my thought into a higher chamber, and think louder and clearer above the earth than men will understand.  

I succeed best when I recur to my experience not too late, but within a day or two; when there is some distance, but enough of freshness.

May 5, 2022

A fine scarlet sunset. As I sit by my window and see the clouds reflected in the meadow, I think it is important to have water, because it multiplies the heavens.

Evening. — To the Lee place rock. Moon not up.

There goes a shooting star down towards the horizon, like a rocket, appearing to describe a curve. The water sleeps with stars in its bosom. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  May 5, 1852 

Every part of the world is beautiful today. . . See May 18, 1852 ("The world can never be more beautiful than now"); August 19, 1853 ("It is a glorious and ever-memorable day"); September 18, 1860 ("If you are not happy to-day you will hardly be so to-morrow").

I succeed best when I recur to my experience . . . when there is some distance, but enough of freshness. . . .  See April 20, 1854 ("I find some advantage in describing the experience of a day on the day following. At this distance it is more ideal, like the landscape seen with the head inverted, or reflections in water"); January 10, 1854 ("What you can recall of a walk on the second day will differ from what you remember on the first day, ... as any view changes to one who is journeying amid mountains when he has increased the distance"); March 27, 1857 ("The men and things of to-day are wont to lie fairer and truer in to-morrow’s memory.").

Water multiplies

the heavens – the water sleeps

with stars in its bosom.

Primitive forest

October 23

More or less rain to-day and yesterday.

Anthony Wright tells me that he cut a pitch pine on Damon's land between the Peter Haynes road and his old farm, about '41, in which he counted two hundred and seventeen rings, which was therefore older than Concord, and one of the primitive forest.

He tells me of a noted large and so-called primitive wood, Inches Wood, between the Harvard turnpike and Stow, sometimes called Stow Woods.

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

He tells me of a noted large and so-called primitive wood, Inches Wood. See ;November 9, 1860 ("Inches’ Woods in Boxboro. This wood is some one and three quarters miles from West Acton, .. . . in the east part of Boxboro, on both sides of the Harvard turnpike.");  November 10, 1860 ("I have lived so long in this neighborhood and but just heard of this noble forest, - probably as fine an oak wood as there is in New England, only eight miles west of me.Seeing this, I can realize how this country appeared when it was discovered - a full-grown oak forest stretching uninterrupted for miles, consisting of sturdy trees from one to three and even four feet in diameter, whose interlacing branches form a complete and uninterrupted canopy")