We go listening for early birds with bread and cheese for our dinners.

March 20.  

A rather cool and breezy morning, which was followed by milder day.

March 20, 2022

We go listening

for early birds with bread and

cheese for our dinners.

(Yesterday I forgot to say I painted my boat. Spanish brown and raw oil were the ingredients. I found the painter had sold me the brown in hard lumps as big as peas, which I could not reduce with a stick; so I passed the whole when mixed through an old coffee-mill, which made a very good paint-mill, catching it in an old coffee- pot , whose holes I puttied up, there being a lack of vessels ; and then I broke up the coffee-mill and nailed a part over the bows to protect them , the boat is made so flat. I had first filled the seams with some grafting- wax I had, melted.) 

How handsome the curves which the edge of the ice makes, answering somewhat to those of the shore, but more regular, sweeping entirely round the pond  as if defined by a vast, bold sweep! 

It is evident that the English do not enjoy that contrast between winter and summer that we do, that there is too much greenness and spring in the winter.  There is no such wonderful resurrection of the year. Birds kindred with our first spring ones remain with them all winter, and flowers answering to our earliest spring ones put forth there in January. In one sense they have no winter but such as our spring. Our April is their March; our March, their February; our February, January, and December are not theirs at all under any name or sign. 

Those alder catkins on the west side of Walden tremble and undulate in the wind, they are so relaxed and ready to bloom, the most forward blossom-buds. 

Here and there around the pond, within a rod of the water, is the fisherman's stone fireplace, with its charred brands, where he cheered and warmed himself and ate his lunch. 

The peculiarity of to-day is that now first you perceive that dry, warm, summer-presaging scent from dry oak and other leaves, on the sides of hills and ledges. You smell the summer from afar. The warm [ sic ] makes a man young again. There is also some dryness, almost dustiness, in the roads. 

The mountains are white with snow, and sure as the wind is northwest it is wintry; but now it is more westerly. The edges of the mountains now melt into the sky. It is affecting to be put into communication with such distant objects by the power of vision, -actually to look into rich lands of promise. 

In this spring breeze, how full of life the silvery pines, probably the under sides of their leaves. 

Goose Pond is wholly open. 

Unexpectedly dry and crispy the grass is getting in warm places.

 At Flint's Pond, gathered a handful or two of chestnuts on a sloping bank under the leaves, every one sound and sweet, but mostly sprouting. There were none black as at C. Smith's, proving that in such places as this, somewhat warm and dry, they are all preserved the winter through. Now, then, new groves of chestnuts (and of oaks?) are being born. 

Under these wet leaves I find myriads of the snow-fleas, like powder. 

Some brooks are full of little wiggling creatures somewhat like caddis-worms, stemming the stream, — food for the early fishes. 

The canoe birch sprouts are red or salmon- colored like those of the common, but soon they cast off their salmon - colored jackets and come forth with a white but naked look, all dangling with ragged reddish curls. 

What is that little bird that makes so much use of these curls in its nest, lined with coarse grass? 

The snow still covers the ground on the north side of hills, which are hard and slippery with frost. 

I am surprised to find Flint's Pond not more than half broken up. Probably it was detained by the late short but severe cold, while Walden, being deeper, was not. Standing on the icy side, the pond appears nearly all frozen; the breadth of open water is far removed and diminished to a streak; I say it is beginning to break up. Standing on the water side (which in Flint's is the middle portion ), it appears to be but bordered with ice, and I say there is ice still left in the pond.

Saw a bluish-winged beetle or two. 

In a stubble-field east of Mt. Tabor, started up a pack ( though for numbers, about twenty, it may have been a bevy ) of quail, which went off to some young pitch pines, with a whir like a shot, the plump  round birds. 

The redpolls are still numerous.

On the warm, dry cliff, looking south over Beaver Pond, I was surprised to see a large butterfly, black with buff-edged wings, so tender a creature to be out so early, and, when alighted, opening and shutting its wings. What does it do these frosty nights? Its chrysalis must have hung in some sunny nook of the rocks. Born to be food for some early bird.

Cutting a maple for a bridge over Lily Brook, I was rejoiced to see the sap falling in large, clear drops from the wound. 

H. D Thoreau, Journal, March 20, 1853

March 20, 1853 How handsome the curves which the edge of the ice makes, See Walden is melting apace

I painted my boat . . . I had first filled the seams with some grafting- wax. See March 16, 1854 ("See and hear honey-bees about my boat in the yard, attracted probably by the beeswax in the grafting-wax which was put on it a year ago.) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Boat in. Boat out.

Those alder catkins on the west side of Walden tremble and undulate in the wind, they are so relaxed and ready to bloom, the most forward blossom-buds. See  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, Signs of the Spring:: Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding

The edges of the mountains now melt into the sky. It is affecting to be put into communication with such distant objects by the power of vision. See February 21, 1855 ("We now notice the snow on the mountains, because on the remote rim of the horizon its whiteness contrasts with the russet and darker hues of our bare fields"); March 11, 1854 ("The distant mountains are all white with snow while our landscape is nearly bare."); May 17, 1858 ("I doubt if in the landscape there can be anything finer than a distant mountain-range. They are a constant elevating influence.");  October 22, 1857 ("But what a perfect crescent of mountains we have in our northwest horizon! Do we ever give thanks for it?")See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Mountains in the Horizon

Now first you perceive that dry, warm, summer-presaging scent from dry oak and other leaves, on the sides of hills and ledges. You smell the summer from afar. See February 18, 1857 (“I was surprised to find how sweet the whole ground smelled when I lay flat and applied my nose to it”); March 4, 1854 ("I begin to sniff the air and smell the ground."); March 18,1853 ("To-day first I smelled the earth.”) April 2, 1856 ("I am tempted to stretch myself on the bare ground above the Cliff, to feel its warmth in my back, and smell the earth and the dry leaves . I see and hear flies and bees about. A large buff-edged butterfly flutters by along the edge of the Cliff, — Vanessa antiopa.”); April 27, 1860 ("There is a certain summeriness in the air now, especially under a warm cliff like this, where you smell the very dry leaves, and hear the pine warbler and the hum of insects")

In this spring breeze, how full of life the silvery pines, probably the under sides of their leaves. See February 10, 1860 ("I see that Wheildon's pines are rocking and showing their silvery under sides as last spring, — their first awakening, as it were. "); March 21, 1859 (“That fine silvery light reflected from its needles (perhaps their undersides) incessantly in motion.”); April 29, 1852 ("The pines have an appearance they have not worn before, yet not easy to describe"); May 1, 1855 ("Why have the white pines at a distance that silvery look around their edges or thin parts? Is it owing to the wind showing the under sides of the needles? Methinks you do not see it in the winter.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: First silvery sheen from needles of the white pine waving in the wind

Goose Pond is wholly open. Compare March 21, 1855("Crossed Goose Pond on ice."); March 24, 1854 ("Goose Pond half open. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ice-Out

Under these wet leaves I find myriads of the snow-fleas, like powder. See January 30, 1860 ("The snow-flea seems to be a creature whose summer and prime of life is a thaw in the winter. It seems not merely to enjoy this interval like other animals, but then chiefly to exist. It is the creature of the thaw."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snow-flea

The canoe birch sprouts are red or salmon-colored . . . but soon they . . . come forth with a white but naked look, all dangling with ragged reddish curls. See April 7, 1856 ("The tops of young white birches now have a red-pink color."); January 9, 1860 ("I am interested by a clump of young canoe birches on the hillside shore of the pond. There is an interesting variety in the colors of their bark, passing from bronze at the earth, through ruddy and copper colors to white higher up, with shreds of different color from that beneath peeling off. . . .It is as if the tree unbuttoned a thin waistcoat and suffered it to blow aside, revealing its bosom or inner garment, which is a more ruddy brown, or sometimes greenish or coppery; and thus one cuticle peels off after another till it is a ruddy white, as if you saw to a red ground through a white wash; . . .It may be, then, half a dozen years old before it assumes the white toga which is its distinctive dress. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Birches in Season

The redpolls are still numerous. See March 23, 1853 ("The birds which are merely migrating or tarrying here for a season are especially gregarious now, — the redpoll, Fringilla hyemalis, fox-colored sparrow, etc.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Lesser Redpoll

A large butterfly, black with buff-edged wings, so tender a creature to be out so early. See  March 21, 1853 ("Saw two more of those large black and buff butterflies. The same degree of heat brings them out everywhere.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Buff-edged Butterfly

Rejoiced to see the sap. See  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Red Maple Sap Flows

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, We go listening for early birds

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-530329

Open waters; the Rise and Fall of Goose Pond (Ripple Lake)

 

December 27.  Monday.

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.

Ground bare.

River open.

I took my new boat out.

Countless birches, white pines, etc., have been killed within a year or two about Goose Pond by the high water. The dead birches have broken in two in the middle and fallen over. In some coves where the water is shallow, their wrecks make quite a dense thicket.

Found chestnuts quite plenty to-day.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 27, 1852

See A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, First Ice

Not a particle of ice in Walden to-day. . . .A black and white duck on it, Flint's and Fair Haven being frozen up.  See  December 11, 1854 ("C. says he found Fair Haven frozen over last Friday, i. e. the 8th. I find Flint’s frozen to-day."); December 27, 1856 ("Walden is still open in one place of considerable extent, just off the east cape of long southern bay."); December 27, 1857 ("Walden is almost entirely skimmed over. It will probably be completely frozen over to-night.") See also December 17, 1859 ("Two or three acres of Walden, off the bar, not yet frozen. Saw in [it] a good-sized black duck, which did not dive while I looked."); December 18, 1858 ("The pond is merely frozen a little about the edges. I see various little fishes lurking under this thin, transparent ice, close up to the edge or shore, especially where the shore is flat and water shoal."); . December 19, 1856 ("Walden froze completely over last night. This is very sudden, for on the evening of the 15th there was not a particle of ice in it. In just three days, then, it has been completely frozen over, and the ice is now from two and a half to three inches thick,"); December 20, 1858("Walden is frozen over, except two small spots, less than half an acre in all, in middle");December 21, 1854("Walden is frozen over, apparently about two inches thick. It must have frozen, the whole of it, since the snow of the 18th,-— probably the night of the 18th."); December 21, 1855 ("Walden is skimmed over, all but an acre, in my cove.");December 21, 1856("The pond [Walden] is open again in the middle, owing to the rain of yesterday."); December 22, 1853("A slight whitening of snow last evening, the second whitening of the winter, just enough to spoil the skating, now ten days old, on the ponds. Walden skimmed over in the widest part, but some acres still open; will probably freeze entirely to-night if this weather holds."); December 23, 1845 ("The pond froze over last night entirely for the first time, yet so as not to be safe to walk upon."); December 23, 1850("Walden is frozen, one third of it, though I thought it was all frozen as I stood on the shore on one side only."); December 24, 1853("Walden almost entirely open again."); December 24, 1856("Am surprised to find Walden still open in the middle.); December 24, 1858 ("Those two places in middle of Walden not frozen over yet, though it was quite cold last night!"); December 24, 1859("There is, in all, an acre or two in Walden not yet frozen, though half of it has been frozen more than a week "); December 25, 1858("Walden at length skimmed over last night, i. e. the two holes that remained open."); December 26, 1850("Walden not yet more than half frozen over."); December 26, 1853 ("Walden still open. Saw in it a small diver, . . .This being the only pond hereabouts that is open"); December 28, 1856 ("Walden completely frozen over again last night."); December 29, 1855 ("Am surprised to find eight or ten acres of Walden still open,. . .It must be owing to the wind partly.") ;December 30, 1853 ("The pond not yet frozen entirely over; about six acres open, the wind blew so hard last night. "); December 30, 1855 ("There was yesterday eight or ten acres of open water at the west end of Walden, where is depth and breadth combined"); December 31, 1850 ("Walden pond has frozen over since I was there last.”); December 31, 1853 ("Walden froze completely over last night.")

 I took my new boat out.  See December 2, 1852 ("I do not remember when I have taken a sail or a row on the river in December before."); December 2, 1854 ("Got up my boat and housed it, ice having formed about it."); December 2, 1856 ("Got in my boat,"); December 5, 1853 ("Got my boat in. The river frozen over thinly in most places"); December 10, 1859 ("Get in my boat, in the snow. The bottom is coated with a glaze."); December 28, 1852 ("Brought my boat from Walden in rain. No snow on ground.") See also December 5, 1856 (" I love to have the river closed up for a season and a pause put to my boating . . . I love best to have each thing in its season only, and enjoy doing without it at all other times.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Boat in. Boat out.

River open. See December 13, 1852 ("River and ponds all open. Goose Pond skimmed over"); December 16, 1850 ("Walden is open still. The river is probably open again."); December 17, 1856 ("The river . . . is frozen over again, and I go along the edge of the meadow under Clamshell and back by Hubbard's Bridge."); December 19, 1854 ("Last night was so cold that the river closed up almost everywhere, and made good skating where there had been no ice to catch the snow of the night before.");  December 20, 1854("The river appears to be frozen everywhere. Where was water last night is a firm bridge of ice this morning. .  . At sundown or before, it begins to belch. It is so cold that only in one place did I see a drop of water flowing out on the ice"); December 20, 1855("It [skating] is pretty good on the meadows, which are somewhat overflown, and the sides of the river, but the greater part of it is open. . . . How placid, like silver or like steel in different lights, the surface of the still, living water between these borders of ice, reflecting the weeds and trees, and now the warm colors of the sunset sky!"); December 21, 1855("I here take to the riverside. The broader places are frozen over, but I do not trust them yet. Fair Haven is entirely frozen over, probably some days"); December 25, 1853("Skated to Fair Haven and above.")

Goose Pond high water. See December 5, 1852 ("This great rise of [Walden] 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"); December 13, 1852 (“I judge from his 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”); 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.")

Found chestnuts quite plenty to-day. See December 31, 1852 ("I was this afternoon gathering chestnuts at Saw Mill Brook. I have within a few weeks spent some hours thus, scraping away the leaves with my hands and feet over some square rods, and have at least learned how chestnuts are planted and new forests raised.") See also November 28, 1856 ("To chestnut wood by Turnpike, to see if I could find my comb, probably lost out of my pocket when I climbed and shook a chestnut tree more than a month ago. Unexpectedly find many chestnuts in the burs which have fallen some time ago. Many are spoiled, but the rest,. . . are softer and sweeter than a month ago, very agreeable to my palate"); December 12, 1856 (“At the wall between Saw Mill Brook Falls and Red Choke-berry Path, . . see where they [squirrels] have dug the burs out of the snow, and then sat on a rock or the wall and gnawed them in pieces. I, too, dig many burs out of the snow with my foot”); 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."); January 25, 1853 ("I still pick chestnuts.")

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.")

The chestnuts on Pine Hill in blossom.

July 19.


P. M.--R. W. E.'s cliff.


Phytolacca decandra, poke, in blossom.

The Cerasus pumila ripe.

The chestnuts on Pine Hill being in blossom reveals the rounded tops of the trees; separates them, and makes a richer and more varied scene.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 19, 1852

The Cerasus pumila ripe. See July 28, 1856 ("Sand cherry ripe. The fruit droops in umble-like clusters, two to four peduncles together, on each side the axil of a branchlet or a leaf.") See also May 22, 1855 ("Cerasus pumila in full bloom.")

The chestnuts on Pine Hill being in blossom. See July 14, 1860 ("Perceive now the light-colored tops of chestnuts in bloom.") See also October 19, 1855 ("To Pine Hill for chestnuts."); October 20, 1852 (“Picking chestnuts on Pine Hill."); October 22, 1852 ("Looking over the forest on Pine Hill, I can hardly tell which trees are lit up by the sunshine and which are the yellow chestnut-tops."); 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."); October 24, 1857 ("I hear the dull thump of heavy stones against the trees from far through the rustling wood, where boys are ranging for nuts. ")

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

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.

A-chestnutting with four ladies.

January 10. 

Went a-chestnutting this afternoon to Smith's wood-lot near the Turnpike. 

Carried four ladies. I raked. We got six and a half quarts, the ground being bare and the leaves not frozen. 

The fourth remarkably mild day. 

I found thirty-five chestnuts in a little pile under the end of a stick under the leaves, near — within a foot of — what I should call a gallery of a meadow mouse. These galleries were quite common as I raked. 

There was no nest nor apparent cavity about this store. Aunt M. found another with sixteen in it.

Many chestnuts are still in the burs on the ground. 

Aunt found a twig which had apparently fallen prematurely, with eight small burs, all within the compass of its five or six inches, and all but one full of nuts. 

The galleries above named were evidently permanent and not made by one trip.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 10, 1853


Went a-chestnutting this afternoon carried four ladies.See August 12, 1853 ("To Conantum by boat, berrying, with three ladies.): August 4, 1856 ("Carried party a-berrying to Conantum in boat."); September 25, 1858 ("Go a-graping up Assabet with some young ladies.").

Aunt found a twig with eight small burs, and all but one full of nuts. See October 18, 1856  ("Within this thick prickly bur the nuts are about as safe until they are quite mature, as a porcupine behind its spines."); October 24, 1857 ("To Smith's chestnut grove. . . . I get a couple of quarts of chestnuts by patiently brushing the thick beds of leaves aside with my hand in successive concentric circles till I reach the trunk; . . .It is best to reduce it to a system. Of course you will shake the tree first, if there are any on it. The nuts lie commonly two or three together, as they fell. . . .As I go stooping and brushing the leaves aside by the hour, I am not thinking of chestnuts merely, but I find myself humming a thought of more significance."); December 27, 1852 ("Found chestnuts quite plenty to-day."); December 31, 1852("I was this afternoon gathering chestnuts at Saw Mill Brook. I have within a few weeks spent some hours thus, scraping away the leaves with my hands and feet over some square rods, and have at least learned how chestnuts are planted and new forests raised."); January 25, 1853 ("I still pick chestnuts.")

January 10. 

See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 10

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

A single tree-top showed finely.

January 5. 

To Kibbe Place Swamp. 

I see where probably a red squirrel had scratched along over the snow, and in one place a very perfect and delicate print of his feet. His five toes in separate sharp triangles distinctly raying off, or often only four visible. 

In one place I find a beaten track from a hole in the ground to a walnut a rod distant up which they have gone for nuts, which still hang on it. 

The whole print of the foot, etc., is about an inch and three quarters long, a part of the leg being impressed. Two of the tracks, when they are running, apparently, the two foremost, are wider apart; and perhaps with one pair they often make five marks, with the other four. 

Where there is a deep furrow in a chestnut tree between two swelling muscles, in two instances the squirrels, knowing it to be hollow, have gnawed a hole, enlarging the crack between two cheeks, and so made themselves a retreat. In one instance they have commenced to gnaw between the cheeks, though no cavity appears, but I have no doubt the tree is hollow. 

A large yellow birch — or black — has the main stem very short and branches very long, nearly from one centre. 

There was a fine rosy sky in the west after sunset; and later an amber-colored horizon, in which a single tree-top showed finely.

January 5, 1860

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 5, 1853

I see where probably a red squirrel had scratched along over the snow. In one place I find a beaten track from a hole in the ground to a walnut See December 14, 1855 ("It imparts life to the landscape to see merely the squirrels’ track in the snow at the base of the walnut tree."); January 3, 1856 ("I see where a squirrel, gray or red, dug through the snow last night in search of acorns. I know it was last night, for it was while the last snow was falling, and the tracks are partly filled by it. "). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red Squirrel

The squirrels, knowing it to be hollow, have gnawed a hole, enlarging the crack between two cheeks, and so made themselves a retreat. See  January 22, 1856 ("If you wish to know whether a tree is hollow, or has a hole in it, ask the squirrels.")

A fine rosy sky in the west after sunset; and later an amber-colored horizon, in which a single tree-top showed finely. See  December 12, 1859 ("The night comes on early these days, and I soon see the pine tree tops distinctly outlined against the dun (or amber) but cold western sky.").

Night comes on early.

Pine tree tops outlined against

the cold western sky,

December 12, 1859

December 20, 1851 ("The sun goes down apace behind glowing pines, and golden clouds like mountains skirt the horizon."); ; December 25, 1858 ("How full of soft, pure light the western sky now, after sunset! I love to see the outlines of the pines against it. . . . In a pensive mood I enjoy the complexion of the winter sky at this hour.");

Western sky full of

soft pure light after sunset,

the outlines of pines.

December 25, 1858

January 9, 1859 ("It is worth the while to stand here at this hour and look into the soft western sky, over the pines whose outlines are so rich and distinct against the clear sky"); January 17, 1852 (“In proportion as I have celestial thoughts, is the necessity for me to be out and behold the western sky sunset these winter day"); January 24, 1852 (" A single elm by Hayden's stands in relief against the amber and golden, deepening into dusky but soon to be red horizon.")

Another fine winter day.

December 22.

Another fine winter day. 

December 22, 2019

P. M. — To Flint's Pond. 

C. is inclined to walk in the road, it being better walking there, and says: "You don't wish to see any thing but the sky to-day and breathe this air. You could walk in the city to-day, just as well as in the country. You only wish to be out." This was because I inclined to walk in the woods or by the river.

As we passed under the elm beyond George Heywood's, I looked up and saw a fiery hangbird's nest dangling over the road. What a reminiscence of summer, a fiery hangbird's nest dangling from an elm over the road when perhaps the thermometer is down to -20 (?), and the traveller goes beating his arms beneath it! It is hard to recall the strain of that bird then.

We pause and gaze into the Mill Brook on the Turnpike bridge. C. says that in Persia they call the ripple- marks on sandy bottoms "chains" or "chain-work." 

I see a good deal of cress there, on the bottom, for a rod or two, the only green thing to be seen. No more slimy than it usually is beneath the water in summer. Is not this the plant which most, or most conspicuously, preserves its greenness in the winter? Is it not now most completely in its summer state of any plant? So far as the water and the mud and the cress go, it is a summer scene. It is green as ever, and waving in the stream as in summer.

How nicely is Nature adjusted! The least disturbance of her equilibrium is betrayed and corrects itself.

As I looked down on the surface of the brook, I was surprised to see a leaf floating, as I thought, up the stream, but I was mistaken. The motion of a particle of dust on the surface of any brook far inland shows which way the earth declines toward the sea, which way lies the constantly descending route, and the only one.

I see in the chestnut woods near Flint's Pond where squirrels have collected the small chestnut burs left the trunks on the snow. These are, I think, all small and imperfect burs, which do not so much as open in the fall and are rejected then, but, hanging on the tree, they have this use at least, as the squirrels' winter food.

Three men are fishing on Flint's Pond, where the ice is seven or eight inches thick.

I look back to the wharf rock shore and see that rush (cladium I have called it), the warmest object in the landscape, — a narrow line of warm yellow rushes — for they reflect the western light, — along the edge of the somewhat snowy pond and next the snow-clad and wooded shore. This rush, which is comparatively inconspicuous in the summer, becomes thus in the winter afternoons a conspicuous and interesting object, lit up by the westering sun.

The fisherman stands erect and still on the ice, awaiting our approach, as usual forward to say that he has had no luck. He has been here since early morning, and for some reason or other the fishes won't bite. You won't catch him here again in a hurry. They all tell the same story. The amount of it is he has had "fisherman's luck," and if you walk that way you may find him at his old post to-morrow. It is hard, to be sure, — four little fishes to be divided between three men, and two and a half miles to walk; and you have only got a more ravenous appetite for the supper which you have not earned. However, the pond floor is not a bad place to spend a winter day. 

On what I will call Sassafras Island, in this pond, I notice the largest and handsomest high blueberry at the ground into four stems, all very large and the largest three inches in diameter (one way) at three feet high, and at the ground, where they seem to form one trunk (at least grown together), nine inches in diameter. These stems rise upward, spreading a little in their usual somewhat zigzag manner, and are very handsomely clothed with large gray and yellow lichens with intervals of the (smoothish? and) finely divided bark. The bark is quite reddish near the ground. The top, which is spreading and somewhat flattish or corymbose, consists of a great many fine twigs, which give it a thick and dark appearance against the sky compared with the more open portion beneath. It was perfectly sound and vigorous.

In a (apparently kingbird's?) nest on this island I saw three cherry-stones, as if it had carried home this fruit to its young. It was, outside, of gnaphalium and saddled on a low limb. Could it have been a cherry-bird? 

The cladium (?) retains its seeds over the ice, little conical, sharp-pointed, flat-based, dark-brown, shining seeds. 

I notice some seeds left on a large dock, but see none of parsnips or other umbelliferous plants.

The furrows in the snow on the hillsides look somewhat like this: —

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 22, 1859

Another fine winter day. See ; December 21, 1859 ("A fine winter day"); . December 23, 1859 ("The third fine, clear, bright, and rather mild winter day") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The world can never be more beautiful than now.; May 18, 1852 (The world can never be more beautiful than now.); December 10, 1856 ("A warm, clear, glorious winter day."); December 10, 1853 ("These are among the finest days in the year.”); December, 20, 1854 ("It has been a glorious winter day") December 21, 1854 ("We are tempted to call these the finest days of the year.")

I was surprised to see a leaf floating, as I thought, up the stream, but I was mistaken. See April 11, 1856 ("The current of the Assabet is so much swifter, and its channel so much steeper than that of the main stream, that, while a stranger frequently cannot tell which way the latter flows by his eye, you can perceive the declination of the channel of the former within a very short distance, even between one side of a tree and another")

I see in the chestnut woods near Flint's Pond where squirrels have collected the small chestnut burs left the trunks on the snow. See December 22, 1850 ("Here is a stump on which a squirrel has sat and stripped the pine cones of a neighboring tree . . . He has long been a close observer of Nature; opens her caskets.")

However, the pond floor is not a bad place to spend a winter day. See January 12, 1855 ("On Flint’s Pond I find Nat Rice fishing. He has not caught one. I asked him what he thought the best time to fish. He said, “When the wind first comes south after a cold spell, on a bright morning.”"); December 28, 1856 (". . .  if not catching many fish, still getting what they went for, though they may not be aware of it, i. e. a wilder experience than the town affords."); June 26, 1853 ("Many of my fellow-citizens might go fishing a thousand times, perchance, before the sediment of fishing would sink to the bottom and leave their purpose pure, -- before they began to angle for the pond itself.”); January 1, 1856 ("Here are two fishermen, and one has preceded them. They have not had a bite, and know not why. It has been a clear winter day.")

On what I will call Sassafras Island, in this pond, I notice the largest and handsomest high blueberry.  See September 12, 1851 ("I go to Flint's Pond also to see a rippling lake and a reedy island in its midst, — Reed Island. "); April 1, 1852 ("I see that there is about an acre of open water, perhaps, over Bush Island in the middle of the pond, and there are some water-fowl there.); December 24, 1859 ("I measure the blueberry bushes on Flint's Pond Island. . . .This island appears to be a mere stony ridge three or four feet high, with a very low wet shore on each side, ") See also February 8, 1858 ("I walked about Goose Pond, looking for the large blueberry bushes.")

A narrow line of warm yellow rushes — for they reflect the western light, — along the edge of the somewhat snowy pond and next the snow-clad and wooded shore. The cladium retains its seeds over the ice, little conical, sharp-pointed, flat-based, dark-brown, shining seeds. See August 31, 1858 ("The Flint’s Pond rush appears to be Cladium mariscoides, twig rush.")

However, the pond 

floor is not a bad place to 

spend a winter day.