Pretty good sleighing.

March 9.

About three inches more of snow fell last night, which, added to about five of the old, makes eight, or more than before since last spring. Pretty good sleighing. 

The State commonly grants a tract of forest to make an academy out of, for such is the material of which our institutions are made, though only the crudest part of it is used, but the groves of the academy are straight way cut down, and that institution is built of its lumber, its coarsest and least valuable part. Down go the groves of the academy and up goes its frame, — on some bare common far away. And as for the public domains, if anybody neglected his civil duties during the last war, he is privileged to cut and slash there, — he is let loose against one hundred and sixty acres of well-behaved trees, as if the liberty he had defended was derived from liber, bark, and meant the liberty to bark the trees.

H.  D. Thoreau, Journal, March 9, 1858

About three inches more of snow fell last night, which, added to about five of the old, makes eight, or more than before since last spring. See March 2, 1858 ("Snowed last night and this morning, about seven inches deep, much more than during the winter, the first truly wintry-looking day so far as snow is concerned,"); March 1, 1858 ("We have just had a winter with absolutely no sleighing, which I do not find that any one distinctly remembers the like of.") Compare March 9, 1856 ("[S]ixteen inches of snow on a level in open fields, hard and dry, ice in Flint’s Pond two feet thick, and the aspect of the earth is that of the middle of January in a severe winter.")

Our first fall rain makes a dividing line between the summer and fall.

September 20

Sunday. Another mizzling day. 

P. M. — To beach plums behind A. Clarke’s. 

We walked in some trodden path on account of the wet grass and leaves, but the fine grass overhanging paths, weighed down with dewy rain, wet our feet nevertheless. We cannot afford to omit seeing the beaded grass and wetting our feet. 

This is our first fall rain, and makes a dividing line between the summer and fall. 

Yet there has been no drought the past summer. Vegetation is unusually fresh. Methinks the grass in some shorn meadows is even greener than in the spring. You are soon wet through by the underwood if you enter the woods, — ferns, aralia, huckleberries, etc. 

Went through the lower side of the wood west of Peter’s. 

The early decaying and variegated spotted leaves of the Aralia nudicaulis, which spread out flat and of uniform height some eighteen (?) inches above the forest floor, are very noticeable and interesting in our woods in early autumn, now and for some time. For more than a month it has been changing. 

The outlines of trees are more conspicuous and interesting such a day as this, being seen distinctly against the near misty background, – distinct and dark. 

The branches of the alternate cornel are spreading and flat, somewhat cyme-like, as its fruit. 

Beach plums are now perfectly ripe and unexpectedly good, as good as an average cultivated plum. I get a handful, dark purple with a bloom, as big as a good-sized grape and but little more oblong, about three quarters of an inch broad and a very little longer. 

I got a handkerchief full of elder-berries, though I am rather late about it, for the birds appear to have greatly thinned the cymes. 

A great many small red maples in Beck Stow's Swamp are turned quite crimson, when all the trees around are still perfectly green. It looks like a gala day there. 

A pitch pine and birch wood is rapidly springing up between the Beck Stow Wood and the soft white pine grove. It is now just high and thick enough to be noticed as a young wood-lot, if not mowed down.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 20, 1857

First fall rain. See September 20, 1853 (It rained very hard while we were aboard the steamer."); September 20, 1854 ("Windy rain-storm last night");   September 20, 1856 ("Rain in afternoon. Rain again in the night, hard."); September 20, 1860 ("Rainy in forenoon."); September 25, 1860 ("Hard, gusty rain (with thunder and lightning) in afternoon.")

The outlines of trees are more conspicuous and interesting such a day as this, being seen distinctly against the near misty background, – distinct and dark. See December 16, 1855 ("The mist makes the near trees dark and noticeable, like pictures, and makes the houses more interesting, revealing but one at a time."); August 4, 1854 ("Rain and mist contract our horizon and we notice near and small objects"); February 6, 1852 (A mistiness makes the woods look denser, darker and more primitive.); November 29, 1850 ("The trees and shrubs look larger than usual when seen through the mist...As you advance, the trees gradually come out of the mist and take form before your eyes.")  See also November 7, 1855 ("I find it good to be out this still, dark, mizzling afternoon . . .The world and my life are simplified. ")

September 20. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. September 20

Our first fall rain makes 

a dividing line between 

the summer and fall. 

The outlines of trees

 distinct and dark against the 

near misty background.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. Our first fall rain

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-570920

The yellow-throated vireo I hear now.

June 9.

June 9, 2017

I should like to know the birds of the woods better, what birds inhabit our woods? I hear their various notes ringing through them. What musicians compose our woodland quire? They must be forever strange and interesting to me. 

How prominent a place the vireos hold! It is probably the yellow-throated vireo I hear now, — a more interrupted red-eye with its prelia — prelioit or tully-ho, — invisible in the tops of the trees.

7 p. m. — Up Assabet.  Chimney and bank swallows are still hovering over the river, and cherry-birds fly past. The veery rings, and the tree- toad. 

The air is now full of shad-flies, and there is an incessant sound made by the fishes leaping for their evening meal, dimpling the river like large drops as far as I can see, sometimes making a loud plashing.

Meanwhile the kingfishers are on the lookout for the fishes as they rise.  I see one dive in the twilight and go off uttering his cr-r-ack, cr-r-rack. 

The mosquitoes encircle my head and torment me, and I see a great moth go fluttering over the tree-tops and the water, black against the sky, like a bat. The fishes continue to leap by moonlight. A full moon.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 9, 1854

 It is probably the yellow-throated vireo I hear now, —  . . . with its prelia — prelioit or tully-ho, — invisible in the tops of the trees. See May 27, 1854 ("I see and hear the yellow-throated vireo. It is somewhat similar (its strain) to that of the red-eye, prelia pre-li-ay, with longer intervals and occasionally a whistle like tlea tlow, or chowy chow, or tully ho on a higher key. It flits about in the tops of the trees."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Yellow-throated Vireo

The air is now full of shad-flies, and there is an incessant sound made by the fishes leaping for their evening meal. See June 9, 1856 ("Again, about seven, the ephemera came out, in numbers as many as last night, ...; and the fishes leap as before. . . "); June 8, 1856 (“my boat being by chance at the same place where it was in ’54, I noticed a great flight of ephemera”)

June 9. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 9

I should know the birds –

they must be forever strange 

and interesting

the yellow-throated

vireo invisible

in the tops of trees

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The yellow-throated vireo i hear now in he tops of trees

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2024

tinyurl.com/hdt-540609

.

*** 

P . M . – To Well Meadow .

The summer aspect of the river begins perhaps when the Utricularia vulgaris is first seen on the surface, as yesterday.

As I go along the railroad causeway, I see in the cultivated grounds, a lark flashing his white tail, and showing his handsome yellow breast, with its black crescent like an Indian locket. For a day or two I have heard the fine seringo note of the cherry - birds, and seen them flying past, the only ( ? ) birds, methinks, that I see in small flocks now, except swallows.         

 The willow down and seeds are blowing over the causeway.         

 Veronica scutellata, apparently several days.         

 A strawberry half turned on the sand of the causeway side, — the first fruit or berry of the year that I have tasted.         

 Ladies’-slippers are going to seed. I see some white oak pincushions, nearly two inches through.         

Is that galium, out apparently some days in the woods by Deep Cut, near Linnæa, triflorum or Aparine ?. Compare that at Lee ' s. 

I should like to know the birds of the woods better, what birds in habit our woods? 

I hear their various notes ringing through them.         

What musicians compose our wood land quire ? They must be forever strange and interesting to me.         

How prominent a place the vireos hold ! It is probably the yellow - throated vireo I hear now, — a more interrupted red- eye with its prelia - prelioit or tully - ho, — invisible in the tops of the trees.      

   

 I see the thick, flower - like huckleberry apples.           

Haynes (?), Goodwin ' s comrade, tells me that he used to catch mud turtles in the ponds behind Provincetown with a toad on a mackerel hook thrown into the pond and the line tied to a stump or stake on shore.         

Invariably the turtle when hooked crawled up, following the line to the stake, and was there found waiting — Goodwin baits minks with muskrats.

Find the great fringed orchis out apparently two or three days.

Two are almost fully out, two or three only budded.

 A large spike of peculiarly delicate pale-purple flowers growing in the luxuriant and shady swamp is remarkable that this, one of the fairest of all our flowers, should also be one of the rarest, — for the most part not seen at all. 

I think that no other but myself in Concord annually finds it. 

That so queenly a flower should annually bloom so rarely and in such : withdrawn and secret places as to be rarely seen by man ! The village belle never sees this more delicate belle of the swamp. 

How little relation between our life and its ! Most of us never see it or hear of it. 

The seasons go by to us as if it were not. 

A beauty reared in the shade of a convent, who has never strayed beyond the convent bell.

  Only the skunk or owl or other inhabitant of the swamp beholds it. 

In the damp twilight of the swamp, where it is wet to the feet. 

 How little anxious to display its attractions ! It does not pine because man does not admire it. 

 How independent on our race ! It lifts its delicate spike amid the hellebore and ferns in the deep shade of the swamp. 

 I am inclined to think of it as a relic of the past as much as the arrowhead, or the tomahawk I found on the 7th.       

Ferns are four or five feet high there.         

7 P. M. — Up Assabet.

         
The tupelo stamens are loose and will perhaps shed pollen to- morrow or next day. 

 It is twilight, and the river is covered with that dusty lint, as was the water next the shore at Walden this afternoon.

  Chimney and bank swallows are still hovering over the river, and cherry-birds fly past.

 The veery rings, and the tree toad. 

The air is now pretty full of shad-flies, and there is an incessant sound made by the fishes leaping for such as are struggling on the surface ; it sounds like the lapsing of a swift stream, sucking amid rocks.

 The fishes make a business of thus getting their evening meal, dimpling the river like large drops as far as I can see, sometimes making a loud plashing. 

Meanwhile the kingfishers are on the lookout for the fishes as they rise, and I saw one dive in the twilight and go off utter ing his cr-r-ack, cr-r-rack. 

The mosquitoes encircle my head and torment me, and I see a great moth go fluttering over the tree-tops and the water, black against the sky, like a bat. 

The fishes continue to leap by moonlight.

 A full moon.

 Covered with disgrace, this State has sat down coolly to try for their lives the men who attempted to do its duty for it.

         And this is called justice! They who have shown that they can behave particularly well, — they alone are put under bonds “for their good behavior !” Such a judge and court are an impertinence. 

           Only they are guiltless who commit the crime of contempt of such a court.

            It behooves every man to see that his influence is on the side of justice, and let the courts make their own characters.

            What is any political organization worth, when it is in the service of the devil ? I see that the authorities — the Governor, Mayor, Commissioner, Marshal, etc.     — are either weak or unprincipled men, - i. e.         , well disposed but not equal to the occasion, — or else of dull moral perception, with the unprincipled and servile in their pay.

            All sound moral sentiment is opposed to them.

            I had thought that the Governor, was in some sense the executive officer of the State ; that it was his business to see that the laws of the State were executed ; but, when there is any special use for him, he is useless, permits the laws to go unexecuted, and is not heard from.

            But the worst I shall say of the Governor is that he was no better than the majority of his constituents - he was not equal to the occasion.

            While the whole military force of the State, if need be, is at the service of a slaveholder, to enable him to carry back a slave, not a soldier is offered to save a citizen of Massachusetts from being kidnapped.

           Is this what all these arms, all this “training,” has been for these seventy-eight years past  

What is wanted is men of principle, who recognize a higher law than the decision of the majority.

            The marines and the militia whose bodies were used lately were not men of sense nor of principle; in a high moral sense they were not men at all.

            Justice is sweet and musical to hear; but injustice is harsh and discordant.

            The judge still sits grinding at his organ, but it yields no music, and we hear only the sound of the handle. He believes that all the music resides in the handle, and the crowd toss him their coppers just the same as before.

The landscape covered with snow seen by moonlight from these Cliffs.

February 3

February 3, 2019

About 6 P.M. walk to Cliffs via railroad. Snow quite deep. The sun has set without a cloud in the sky, - a rare occurrence. 

But I missed the clouds, which make the glory of evening. The sky must have a few clouds, as the mind a few moods; nor is the evening the less serene for them.

There is only a tinge of red along the horizon. 

The moon is nearly full tonight, and the moment is passed when the light in the east (i. e. of the moon) balances the light in the west.

Venus is now like a little moon in the west, and the lights in the village twinkle like stars. It is perfectly still and not very cold. 

The shadows of the trees on the snow are more minutely distinct than at any other season, finely reticulated, each limb and twig represented, as cannot be in summer. 

The heavens appear less thickly starred than in summer, —  rather a few bright stars, brought nearer by this splendid twinkling in the cold sky.  

(Is not the sky unusually blue to-night? dark blue? Is it not always bluer when the ground is covered with snow in the winter than in summer? )

I hear my old acquaintance, the owl, from the Causeway. 

As I stand over Deep Cut the cars do not make much noise, or else I am used to it. And now whizzes the boiling, sizzling kettle by me, in which the passengers make me think of potatoes, which a fork would show to be done by this time. The steam is denser for the cold, and more white; like the purest downy clouds in the summer sky, its volumes roll up between me and the moon, and far behind, when the cars are a mile off, it still goes shading the fields with its wreaths, - the breath of the panting traveller. 

I now cross from the railroad to the road. This snow, the last of which fell day before yesterday, is two feet deep, pure and powdery. From a myriad little crystal mirrors the moon is reflected, which is the untarnished sparkle of its surface. 

Here, in the midst of a clearing, where the choppers have been leaving the woods in pieces to-day, I hear the hooting of an owl, whose haunts the chopper is laying waste. The ground is all pure white powdery snow, which his sled, etc., has stirred up. I can see every track distinctly where the teamster drove his oxen to the choppers' piles and loaded his sled, and even the tracks of his dog in the moonlight, and plainly to write this. 

The moonlight now is very splendid in the untouched pine woods above the Cliffs, alternate patches of shade and light. The light has almost the brightness of sunlight. 

The stems of the trees are more obvious than by day, being simple black against the moonlight and the snow. I can tell where there is wood and where open land for many miles in the horizon by the darkness of the former and whiteness of the latter. 

The landscape covered with snow two feet thick, seen by moonlight from these Cliffs, gleaming in the moon and of spotless white. Who can believe that this is the habitable globe? The scenery is wholly arctic. It looks as if the snow and ice of the arctic world, travelling like a glacier, had crept down southward and overwhelmed and buried New England. See if a man can think his summer thoughts now.

But the evening star is preparing to set, and I will return. Floundering through snow, sometimes up to my middle, my owl sounds hoo hoo hoo, ho-O.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 3, 1852

 The sky must have a few clouds, as the mind a few moods. See July 23, 1851 ("The mind is subject to moods, as the shadows of clouds pass over the earth."); December 27, 1851 ("The man is blessed who every day is permitted to behold anything so pure and serene as the western sky at sunset . . . The sky is always ready to answer to our moods."); January 17, 1852. (" As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind. Some see only clouds there; some behold there serenity, purity, beauty ineffable."); January 26, 1852 (" Would you see your mind, look at the sky. Would you know your own moods, be weather-wise.");  see also June 6, 1857  ("Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind."); February 18, 1860 ("Sometimes, when I go forth at 2 P. M., there is scarcely a cloud in the sky, but soon one will appear in the west and steadily advance and expand itself, and so change the whole character of the afternoon and of my thoughts.") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau  Moods and Seasons of the Mind.

The moon is nearly full tonight, See February 4, 1852 ("Coming home through the village by this full moonlight, it seems one of the most glorious nights I ever beheld."); March 7, 1852 ("At 9 o'clock P.M to the woods by the full moon."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February Moonlight

The moment is passed when the light in the east (i. e. of the moon) balances the light in the west. See August 5, 1851 (“he light from the western sky is stronger still than that of the moon, and when I hold up my hand, the west side is lighted while the side toward the moon is comparatively dark.”)

The heavens appear less thickly starred than in summer, — rather a few bright stars, brought nearer by this splendid twinkling in the cold sky. See December 31, 1851 (“I have not enough valued and attended to the pure clarity and brilliancy of the winter skies . . . in which the stars shine and twinkle so brightly in this latitude.”);  January 1, 1852 ("Methinks there is a certain poverty about the winter night's sky. The stars of higher magnitude are more bright and dazzling, and therefore appear more near and numerable, while those that appear indistinct and infinitely remote in the summer, imparting the impression of unfathomability to the sky") Compare December 27, 1851 ("There is no winter necessarily in the sky. . .The heavens present, perhaps, pretty much the same aspect summer and winter.")

Is not the sky unusually blue to-night? See note to February 4, 1852 ("Coming home through the village by this full moonlight, . . . the sky is the most glorious blue I ever beheld, even a light blue on some sides, as if I actually saw into day . . . Has not this blueness of the sky the same cause with the blue- ness in the holes in the snow , and in some distant shadows on the snow? — if , indeed , it is true that the sky is bluer in winter when the ground is covered with snow.); February 5, 1852 ("The sky last night was a deeper, more cerulean blue than the far lighter and whiter sky of to-day."); January 21, 1853 (''The blueness of the sky at night — the color it wears by day — is an everlasting surprise to me . . .At midnight I see into the universal day. Walking at that hour, unless it is cloudy, still the blue sky o'erarches me."); May 11, 1853 ("Blue is the color of the day, and the sky is blue by night as well as by day, because it knows no night."); September 9, 1851 (" Even by night the sky is blue and not black, for we see through the veil of night into the distant atmosphere of day"); See also  Night and Moonlight (first published in the Atlantic Monthly, November 1863) ("Nevertheless, even by night the sky is blue and not black, for we see through the shadow of the earth into the distant atmosphere of day, where the sunbeams are reveling.")

From a myriad little crystal mirrors the moon is reflected, which is the untarnished sparkle of its surface. Compare  June 13, 1851 ("I see the moon's inverted pyramid of light shimmering on its surface.. . . which, in fact, is made up of a myriad little mirrors reflecting the disk of the moon with equal brightness to an eye rightly placed.") See also  January 12, 1860 ("The sun is now out very bright and going from the sun, I see a myriad sparkling points scattered over the snow surface -- little mirror-like facets -- which on examination I find each to be one of those star wheels fallen in the proper position, reflecting an intensely bright little sun."); February 8, 1856  ("At this hour the crust sparkles with a myriad brilliant points or mirrors, one to every six inches, at least. "); May 24, ,1860 ("How perfectly new and fresh the world is seen to be, when we behold a myriad sparkles of brilliant white sunlight on a rippled stream!")

Venus is now like a little moon in the west . . .But the evening star is preparing to set, See December 23, 1851 ("I find that the evening star is shining brightly, and, beneath all, the west horizon is glowing red . . . and I detect, just above the horizon, the narrowest imaginable white sickle of the new moon"); December 27, 1851 ("Venus - I suppose it is - is now the evening star, and very bright she is immediately after sunset in the early twilight"); April 3, 1852 ("Venus is very bright now in the west, and Orion is there, too, now"); May 8, 1852 ("Venus is the evening star and the only star yet visible"); June 15, 1852 ("The evening star, multiplied by undulating water, is like bright sparks of fire continually ascending. "); June 25, 1852 ("Moon half full . . .the evening star and one other bright one near the moon. It is a cool but pretty still night."); June 28, 1852 ("Now it is starlight; perhaps that dark cloud in the west has concealed the evening star before.")

The shadows of the trees on the snow are more minutely distinct than at any other season, finely reticulated. See January 21, 1853 ("A fine, still, warm moonlight evening . . . Myriad shadows checker the white ground and enhance the brightness of the enlightened portions. See the shadows of these young oaks which have lost half their leaves, more beautiful than themselves, like the shadow of a chandelier"); See also July 16, 1850 ("In a moonlight night, the shadows of rocks and trees and bushes and hills are more conspicuous than the objects themselves."); July 12, 1851 ("The moon shines over the pitch pines, which send long shadows down the hill. ); August 8, 1851 ("The woods and the separate trees cast longer shadows than by day, for the moon goes lower in her course at this season."); August 23, 1852 (It is pleasant walking in these forest paths, with heavy darkness on one side and a silvery moonlight on the oak leaves on the other, and again, when the trees meet overhead, to tread the checkered floor of finely divided light and shade. ")

The scenery is wholly arctic. See  November 25, 1857 ("The landscape looks darker than at any season, — like arctic scenery."); December 7, 1856 ("I look over my shoulder upon an arctic scene."); December 24, 1853 ("From the hill beyond I get an arctic view northwest."): February 2, 1860 ("A very wild and arctic scene. Indeed, no part of our scenery is ever more arctic than the river and its meadows now. . .It was a very arctic scene this cold day, "); February 21, 1855 (“There can be no more arctic scene than these mountains in the edge of the horizon completely crusted over with snow, with the sun shining on them.”); February 24, 1855 ("The whole of the broad meadows is a rough, irregular checker-board of great cakes a rod square or more —arctic enough to look at.”); February 28, 1855 ("Our meadows present a very wild and arctic scene.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February is Mid-Winter

                                                    The landscape covered with snow –
                                                      is this the habitable globe?
                                                           The scenery is arctic.
                                                           A glacier crept southward.
                                                      Who can think his summer thoughts now?

My owl sounds hoo hoo hoo, ho-O. See February 2, 1855 ("In the meanwhile we hear the distant note of a hooting owl."); January 7, 1854 ("I went to these woods partly to hear an owl, but did not; but, now that I have left them nearly a mile behind, I hear one distinctly, hoorer hoo. Strange that we should hear this sound so often, loud and far, — a voice which we call the owl, — and yet so rarely see the bird. Oftenest at twilight. It has a singular prominence as a sound; is louder than the voice of a dear friend. Yet we see the friend perhaps daily and the owl but few times in our lives. It is a sound which the wood or horizon makes.") See also A Book of the Seasons,by Henry Thoreau, The Voice of the Barred Owl

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

 As the mind has moods

the sky must have a few clouds

but I missed the clouds.

  Only a tinge of

red along the horizon –

sun set without cloud

The landscape covered

with snow two feet thick seen by

moonlight from these Cliffs.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The landscape covered with snow

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-520203

Ebby Hubbard's oaks

January 22.

One mother-o'-pearl tint is common to the winter sky half an hour before sundown.

I love to look at Ebby Hubbard's oaks and pines on the hillside from Brister's Hill. 

Am thankful that there is one old miser who will not sell nor cut his woods.


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

One mother-o'-pearl tint is common to the winter sky half an hour before sundown. See note to January 22, 1854 ("Once or twice of late I have seen the mother-o'-pearl tints and rainbow flocks in the western sky. The usual time is when the air is clear and pretty cool, about an hour before sundown. Yesterday I saw a very permanent specimen, like a long knife-handle of mother-of-pearl, very pale with an interior blue with the rosaceous tinges. Methinks the summer sky never exhibits this so finely.")

*****

Having occasion to get up and light a lamp in the middle of a sultry night, — perhaps it was to exterminate the mosquito race, — I observed a stream of large black ants passing up and down one of the bare corner posts, those descending having their large white larvae in their mouths, the others making haste up for another load. I supposed that they had found the heat so great just under the roof as to compel them to remove their offspring to a cooler place by night. They had evidently taken and communicated the resolution to improve the coolness of the night to remove their young to a cooler and safer locality. One stream running up, another down, with great industry.

But why I changed ? why I left the woods ? I do not think that I can tell. I have often wished myself back. I do not know any better how I ever came to go there. Perhaps it is none of my business, even if it is yours. Perhaps I wanted a change. There was a little stagnation, it may be. About 2 o'clock in the afternoon the world's axle creaked as if it needed greasing, as if the oxen labored with the wain and could hardly get their load over the ridge of the day. Perhaps if I lived there much longer, I might live there forever. One would think twice before he accepted heaven on such terms. A ticket to Heaven must include tickets to Limbo, Purgatory, and Hell. Your ticket to the boxes admits you to the pit also. And if you take a cabin passage, you can smoke, at least forward of the engine, — you have the liberty of the whole boat. But no, I do not wish for a ticket to the boxes, nor to take a cabin passage. I will rather go before the mast and on the deck of the world. I have no desire to go "abaft the engine." * * *

I must say that I do not know what made me leave the pond. I left it as unaccountably as I went to it. To speak sincerely, I went there because I had got ready to go; I left it for the same reason. 

How much botany is indebted to the Arabians! A great part of our common names of plants would appear to be Arabic.

Was it not fit that I should live on rice mainly, who loved so well to read the philosophy of India ? The pleasures of the intellect are permanent, the pleasures of the heart are transitory. 

My friend invites me to read my papers to him. Gladly would I read, if he would hear. He must not hear coarsely but finely, suffering not the least to pass through the sieve of hearing. To associate with one for years with joy who never met you thought with thought! An overflowing sympathy while yet there is no intellectual communion. Could we not meet on higher ground with the same heartiness? It is dull work reading to one who does not apprehend you. How can it go on ? I will still abide by the truth in my converse and intercourse with my friends, whether I am so brought nearer to or removed further from them. I shall not be the less your friend for answering you truly though coldly. Even the estrangement of friends is a fact to be serenely contemplated, as in the course of nature. It is of no use to lie either by word or action. Is not the everlasting truth agreeable to you ? * * *

One mother-o'-pearl tint is common to the winter sky half an hour before sundown.

I love to look at Ebby Hubbard's oaks and pines on the hillside from Brister's Hill. Am thankful that there is one old miser who will not sell nor cut his woods, though it is said that they are wasting. It is an ill wind that blows nobody any good.

It is a sharp, cutting cold day, stiffening the face. Thermometers have lately sunk to 20°.

When a man asks me a question, I look him in the face. If I do not see any inquiry there, I cannot answer it. A man asked me about the coldness of this winter compared with others last night. I looked at him. His face expressed no more curiosity or relationship to me than a custard pudding. I made him a random answer. I put him off till he was in earnest. He wanted to make conversation. 

The surface of the snow in the fields is that of pretty large waves on a sea over which a summer breeze is sweeping. 

That in the preaching or mission of the Jesuits in Canada which converted the Indians was their sincerity. They could not be suspected of sinister motives. The savages were not poor observers and reasoners. The priests were, therefore, sure of success, for they had paid the price of it. 

We resist no true invitations; they are irresistible. When my friend asks me to stay, and I do not, unless I have another engagement it is because I do not find myself invited. It is not in his will to invite me. We should deal with the real mood of our friends. 

I visited my friend constantly for many years, and he postponed our friendship to trivial engagements, so that I saw him not at all. When in after years he had leisure to meet me, I did not find myself invited to go to him.

What made me leave the pond. See Walden (Conclusion)  ("I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one.. . . I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.")

Preserving the woods.

January 22.

I see, one mile to two miles distant on all sides from my window, the woods, which still encircle our New England towns. They still bound almost every view. They have been driven off only so far. Where still wild creatures haunt.

How long will these last?

Is this a universal and permanent feature? Have the oldest countries retained it? Is it not an important question whether these are decreasing or not? Look out what window I will, my eyes rest in the distance on a forest!

Is this fact of no significance? Is this circumstance of no value? Why such pains in old countries to plant gardens and parks? A certain sample of wild nature, a certain primitiveness.

The towns thus bordered, with a fringed and tasselled border, each has its preserves. Methinks the town should have more supervision and control over its parks than it has. It concerns us all whether these proprietors choose to cut down all the woods this winter or not.

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

I see, one mile to two miles distant on all sides from my window, the woods, which still encircle our New England towns. See December 20, 1851 ("I can stand in a clearing in the woods and look a mile or more, over the shrub oaks, to the distant pine copses and horizon of uncut woods, without a house or road or cultivated field in sight."); Walking ("To preserve wild animals implies generally the creation of a forest for them to dwell in. So it is with man. A town is saved by the woods and swamps that surround it.”)


What is it that I see from one mile to two miles distant in the horizon on all sides from my window, but the woods, which still, almost without exception, encircle our New England towns. They still bound almost every view. They have been driven off only so far. Where still wild creatures haunt. How long will these last ? Is this a universal and permanent feature ? Have the oldest countries retained it ? Is it not an interesting and important question whether these are decreasing or not ? Look out what window I will, my eyes rest in the distance on a forest ! Is this fact of no significance ? Is this circumstance of no value ? Why such pains in old countries to plant gardens and parks ? A certain sample of wild nature, a certain primitiveness. One man proposed a book in which visitors should write their names; said he would be at the expense of it!!! Did he consider what the expense of it would be? As if it were of any use, when a man failed to make any memorable impression on you, for him to leave his name. But it may be that he writes a good hand, who had not left any fame. No ! I kept a book to put their fames in. I was at the expense of it.

 The milkman is now filling his ice-house.

The towns thus bordered, with a fringed and tasselled border, each has its preserves. Methinks the town should have more supervision and control over its parks than it has. It concerns us all whether these proprietors choose to cut down all the woods this winter or not.

Cutting down our woods. Paths diverge.

January 21. 

This winter they are cutting down our woods more  seriously than ever,--Fair Haven hill, Walden, Linnaea, Borealis Wood, etc., etc. 

History used to be the history of successive kings or their reigns, the Williams, Henrys, Johns, Richards, etc., etc., all of them great in somebody's estimation. But we have altered that considerably. Hereafter it is to be to a greater extent the history of peoples. 
. . .

I never realized so distinctly as this moment that I am peacefully parting company with the best friend I ever had, by each pursuing his proper path. I perceive that it is possible that we may have a better understanding now than when we were more at one.  Not expecting such essential agreement as before. Simply our paths diverge. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 21, 1852

This winter they are cutting down our woods more seriously than ever. See January 22, 1852 ("It concerns us all whether these proprietors choose to cut down all the woods this winter or not"); March 11, 1852 (The woods I walked in in my youth are cut off. Is it not time that I ceased to sing?").

Thank God, they cannot cut down the clouds! See January 3, 1861 ("Thank God, men cannot as yet fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth !")

Yellow butterflies still

November 14.

November 14, 2020

River two feet four inches above summer level (and at height) on account of rain of 10th and 11th and 12th.

The red maple on south edge of Trillium Wood is six feet three inches in circumference at three feet.

Yellow butterflies still.

Almost all holes in and about stumps have nutshells or nuts in them.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 14, 1860

River two feet four inches above summer level. See November 14, 1854 ("The river is slightly over the meadows . . . The first wreck line . . . is observable."); November 14, 1855 ("The rain has raised the river an additional foot or more, and it is creeping over the meadows. The old weedy margin is covered and a new grassy one acquired.") See also November 13, 1854 ("On Friday, 10th, it was still at summer level")

Yellow butterflies still. See November 1, 1860 ("The butterflies are out again, - probably some new broods. I see the common yellow and two Vanessa Antiopa, and yellow-winged grasshoppers with blackish edges")

Inches Wood

November 10

How little there is on an ordinary map! How little, I mean, that concerns the walker and the lover of nature.

Between those lines indicating roads is a plain blank space in the form of a square or triangle or polygon or segment of a circle, and there is naught to distinguish this from an other area of similar size and form. Yet the one,may be covered, in fact, with a primitive oak wood, like that of Boxboro, waving and creaking in the wind, such as may make the reputation of a county, while the other is a stretching plain with scarcely a tree on it.

The waving woods, the dells and glades and green banks and smiling fields, the huge boulders, etc., etc., are not on the map, nor to be inferred from the map.

How little we insist on truly grand and beautiful natural features! How many have ever heard of the Boxboro oak woods? How many have ever explored them?

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. Such were the oak woods which the Indian threaded hereabouts.

Such a wood must have a peculiar fauna to some extent. Many trunks old and hollow, in which wild beasts den. Hawks nesting in the dense tops, and deer glancing between the trunks. Warblers must pass through it in the spring, which we do not see here.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 10, 1860

How little we insist on truly grand and beautiful natural features! How many have ever heard of the Boxboro oak woods? How many have ever explored them? See October 23, 1860 ("Anthony Wright . . . tells me of a noted large and so-called primitive wood, Inches Wood, between the Harvard turnpike and Stow, sometimes called Stow Woods.") ;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."); January 3, 1861 ("Far the handsomest thing I saw in Boxboro was its noble oak wood. I doubt if there is a finer one in Massachusetts. Let her keep it a century longer, and men will make pilgrimages to it from all parts of the country.")

How little a map

concerns the walker and the 

lover of nature.