A time to see the character of the tree.

December 17

December 17, 2017

A piercing cold afternoon, wading in the snow.

R. Rice was going to Sudbury to put his bees into the cellar for fear they would freeze. He had a small hive; not enough to keep each other warm.

The pitch pine woods on the right of the Corner road.

The pitch pines hold the snow well. It lies now in balls on their plumes and in streaks on their branches, their low branches rising at a small angle and meeting each other.

A certain dim religious light comes through this roof of pine leaves and snow. It is a sombre twilight, yet in some places the sun streams in, producing the strongest contrasts of light and shade.

The winter morning is the time to see the woods and shrubs in their perfection, wearing their snowy and frosty dress. Even he who visits them half an hour after sunrise will have lost some of their most delicate and fleeting beauties. The trees wear their snowy burden but coarsely after midday, and it no longer expresses the character of the tree.

I observed that early in the morning every pine-needle was covered with a frosty sheath, but soon after sunrise it was all gone.

You walk in the pitch pine wood as under a penthouse. The stems and branches of the trees look black by contrast. You wander zigzag through the aisles of the wood, where stillness and twilight reign.

Improve every opportunity to express yourself in writing, as if it were your last.

I do not know but a pine wood is as substantial and as memorable a fact as a friend. I am more sure to come away from it cheered, than from those who come nearest to being my friends.

It is unfortunate for the chopper and the walker when the cold wind comes from the same side with the sun, for then he cannot find a warm recess in which to sit.

It is pleasant to walk now through open and stately white pine woods. Their plumes do not hold so much snow commonly, unless where their limbs rest or are weighed down on to a neighboring tree.

It is cold but still in their midst, where the snow is untracked by man, and ever and anon you see the snow-dust, shone on by the sun, falling from their tops and, as it strikes the lower limbs, producing innumerable new showers. For, as after a rain there is a second rain in the woods, so after a light snow there is a second snow in the woods, when the wind rises.

The branches of the white pine are more horizontal than those of the pitch, and the white streaks of snow on them look accordingly.

I perceive that the young black oaks and the red oaks, too, methinks, still keep their leaves as well as the white.

This piercing wind is so nearly from the west this afternoon that, to stand at once in a sheltered and a sunny place, you must seek the south-southeast side of the woods.

What slight but important distinctions between one creature and another! What little, but essential, advantages one enjoys over another! I noticed this afternoon a squirrel's nest high in the fork of a white pine. Thither he easily ascends, but many creatures strive in vain to get at him.

The lower branches of the hemlock point down, and even trail on the ground, the whole tree making a perfect canopy.

When they who have aspired to be friends cease to sympathize, it is the part of religion to keep asunder.

One of the best men I know often offends me by uttering made words — the very best words, of course, or dinner speeches, most smooth and gracious and fluent repartees, a sort of talking to Buncombe, a dash of polite conversation, a graceful bending, as if I were Master Slingsby of promising parts, from the University. O would you but be simple and downright! Would you but cease your palaver! It is the misfortune of being a gentleman and famous. The conversation of gentlemen after dinner! One of the best of men and wisest, to whom this diabolical formality will adhere. Repeating himself, shampooing himself! Passing the time of day, as if he were just introduced! No words are so tedious. Never a natural or simple word or yawn. It produces an appearance of phlegm and stupidity in me the auditor. I am suddenly the closest and most phlegmatic of mortals, and the conversation comes to naught. Such speeches as an ex-Member of Congress might make to an ex-Member of Parliament.

To explain to a friend is to suppose that you are not  intelligent of one another. If you are not, to what purpose will you explain?

My acquaintances will sometimes wonder why I will impoverish myself by living aloof from this or that company, but greater would be the impoverishment if I should associate with them.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 17, 1851

A squirrel's nest high in the fork of a white pine. Thither he easily ascends. See December 17, 1855 ("A remarkably fine, springlike morning . . . Methinks every squirrel will be out now. "); December 17, 1859 ("I see many tracks of squirrels . . . I see no nests in the trees, but numerous holes through the snow into the earth, whence they have emerged . . . they will dig down through the snow and come right upon a pine cone or a hickory-nut or an acorn, which you and I cannot do")

The pitch pines hold the snow well. It lies now in balls on their plumes and in streaks on their branches. See  January 30, 1841("The snow collects upon the plumes of the pitch pine in the form of a pineapple."); January 31, 1852 ("The value of the pitch pine in winter is that it holds the snow so finely. . . .It makes the most cheerful winter scenery beheld from the window, you know so well the nature of the coverts and the sombre light it makes"); January 19, 1855 ("The snow lay in great continuous masses  . . . On some pitch pines it lay in fruit-like balls as big as one’s head, like cocoanuts.. . . Under one pitch pine, which shut down to the ground on every side, you could not see the sky at all, but sat in a gloomy light as in a tent"); February 16, 1860 ("Snow, lodging on trees, — leaf, bough, and trunk. The pines are well laden with it. How handsome, though wintry, the side of a high pine wood, well grayed with the snow that has lodged on it, and the smaller pitch pines converted into marble or alabaster with their lowered plumes like rams' heads! The character of the wood-paths is wholly changed by the new-fallen snow..") See also December 19, 1851 (" Why should it be so pleasing to look into a thick pine wood where the sunlight streams in and gilds it?")

Improve every opportunity to express yourself in writing, as if it were your last. See July 7, 1851 ("The writer expressing his thought must be . . .well poised upon the facts, the experience, that secures his whole attention! All the faculties in repose but the one you are using, the whole energy concentrated in that. . . . I express adequately only the thought which I love to express."); August 19, 1851 ("How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live!"); September 2, 1851 ("We cannot write well or truly but what we write with gusto. . . . Expression is the act of the whole man. . . A writer, a man writing, is the scribe of all nature; he is the corn and the grass and the atmosphere writing. It is always essential that we love to do what we are doing, do it with a heart.”); September 4-7, 1851 (“I feel that the juices of the fruits which I have eaten, the melons and apples, have ascended to my brain and are stimulating it. They give me a heady force. Now I can write.”); November 9, 1851 ("Facts to tell who I am, and where I have been or what I have thought. . . Facts which the mind perceived, thoughts which the body thought -- with these I deal."); November 12, 1851 ("Write often, write upon a thousand themes . . .");  February, 5, 1852 ("Time never passes so rapidly and unaccountably as when I am engaged in recording my thoughts"); February 10, 1852 ("Write while the heat is in you.")

After a light snow 

a second snow in the woods

when the wind rises.

Ever and anon 

 snow-dust, shone on by the sun, 

falling from pine tops 

I keep dry by following this blue guide

June 26.

Still hazy and dogdayish.

Go to the menagerie in the afternoon.

At 5 P. M., — river ten and a half inches above summer level, — cross the meadow to the Hemlocks.

The blue-eyed grass, now in its prime, occupies the drier and harder parts of the meadow, where I can walk dry-shod, but where the coarser sedge grows and it is lower and wetter there is none of it.

I keep dry by following this blue guide, and the grass is not very high about it. You cross the meadows dry-shod by following the winding lead of the blue-eyed grass, which grows only on the firmer, more elevated, and drier parts.

The hemlocks are too much grown now and are too dark a green to show the handsomest bead-work by contrast.

Under the Hemlocks, on the bare bank, apparently the Aira flexuosa, not long.

Young black willows have sprouted and put forth their two minute round leafets where the cottony seeds have lodged in a scum against the alders, etc. Leafets from one fortieth to one twenty-fifth of an inch in diameter. When separated from the continuous film of down they have a tendency to sink.

The Canada naiad (?), which I gathered yesterday, had perhaps bloomed. Thought I detected with my glass something like stamens about the little balls.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 26, 1860



Go to the menagerie in the afternoon. See June 26, 1851 ("Visited a menagerie this afternoon. I am always sur prised to see the same spots and stripes on wild beasts from Africa and Asia and also from South America, — on the Brazilian tiger and the African leopard , — and their general similarity . All these wild animals — lions, tigers, chetas, leopards, etc . — have one hue, — tawny and commonly spotted or striped, — what you may call pard - color , a color and marking which I had not as sociated with America  These are wild beasts. What constitutes the difference between a wild beast and a tame one  How much more human the one than the other  Growling, scratching, roaring, with whatever beauty and gracefulness, still untamable, this royal Bengal tiger or this leopard. They have the character and the importance of another order of men . The majestic lion, the king of beasts, he must retain his title ")

The hemlocks are too much grown now and are too dark a green to show the handsomest bead-work by contrast. See June 5, 1853 ("The fresh light green shoots of the hemlocks have now grown half an inch or an inch, spotting the trees, contrasting with the dark green of last year's foliage."); June 7, 1860  ("the bead-work of the hemlock"); June 11, 1859 ("Hemlocks are about at height of their beauty, with their fresh growth.")

The blue-eyed grass, now in its prime. See June 15, 1859 ("Blue-eyed grass at height."); June 17. 1853 ("The dense fields of blue-eyed grass now blue the meadows."); See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Blue-eyed Grass

Young black willows have sprouted and put forth their two minute round leafets where the cottony seeds have lodged in a scum against the alders. See, June 26, 1859 ("The black willow down . . . rests on the water by the sides of the stream, where caught by alders, etc., in narrow crescents ten and five feet long, at right angles with the bank, so thick and white ");  June 27, 1860 ("The black willow down is now washed up and collected against the alders and weeds."); June 29, 1857 ("The river is now whitened with the down of the black willow, and I am surprised to see a minute plant abundantly springing from its midst and greening it,. . ., — like grass growing in cotton in a tumbler.")

You keep dry-shod by 

following the winding guide

of the blue-eyed grass,

What a bountiful supply of winter food.

January 20. 

2 P. M. — 39°. Up Assabet. 

The snow and ice under the hemlocks is strewn with cones and seeds and tracked with birds and squirrels. What a bountiful supply of winter food is here provided for them! No sooner has fresh snow fallen and covered up the old crop than down comes a new supply all the more distinct on the spotless snow. 

Here comes a little flock of chickadees, attracted by me as usual, and perching close by boldly; then, descending to the snow and ice, I see them pick up the hemlock seed which lies all around them. Occasionally they take one to a twig and hammer at it there under their claws, perhaps to separate it from the wing, or even the shell. 

The snowy ice and the snow on shore have been blackened with these fallen cones several times over this winter. The snow along the sides of the river is also all dusted over with birch and alder seed, and I see where little birds have picked up the alder seed. 

At R.W.E.'s red oak I see a gray squirrel, which has been looking after acorns there, run across the river. The half-inch snow of yesterday morning shows its tracks plainly. They are much larger and more like a rabbit's than I expected.   The squirrel runs in an undulating manner, though it is a succession of low leaps of from two and a half to three feet. Each four tracks occupy a space some six or seven inches long. Each foot-track is very distinct, showing the toes and protuberances of the foot, and is from an inch and a half to an inch and three quarters long. The clear interval between the hind and fore feet is four to five inches. The fore feet are from one and a half to three inches apart in the clear; the hind, one to two inches apart. 

I see that what is probably the track of the same squirrel near by is sometimes in the horseshoe form, i. e., when its feet are all brought close together:  the open side still forward. I must have often mistaken this for a rabbit. But is not the bottom of the rabbit's foot so hairy that I should never see these distinct marks or protuberances? 

This squirrel ran up a maple till he got to where the stem was but little bigger than his body, and then, getting behind the gray-barked stem, which was almost exactly the color of its body, it clasped it with its fore feet and there hung motionless with the end of its tail blowing in the wind. As I moved, it steadily edged round so as to keep the maples always between me and it, and I only saw its tail, the sides of its body projecting, and its little paws clasping the tree. It remained otherwise perfectly still as long as I was thereabouts, or five or ten minutes. There was a leafy nest in the tree.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 20, 1860

The snow and ice under the hemlocks is strewn with cones and seeds and tracked with birds and squirrels. What a bountiful supply of winter food is here provided for them! See December 31, 1859 ("There is a great deal of hemlock scales scattered over the recent snow (at the Hemlocks), . . .and I see the tracks of small birds that have apparently picked the seeds from the snow also. Some of the seeds have blown at least fifteen rods southeast. So the hemlock seed is important to some birds in the winter.")

Here comes a little flock of chickadees, attracted by me as usual. See October 15, 1856 ("The chickadees are hopping near on the hemlock above. They resume their winter ways before the winter comes.");  October 17, 1856 ("I heard a smart tche-day-day-day close to my ear, and, looking up, see four of these birds, which had come to scrape acquaintance with me, hopping amid the alders within three and four feet of me. I had heard them further off at first, and they had followed me along the hedge.");  October 23, 1852 ("The chickadees flit along, following me inquisitively a few rods with lisping, tinkling note, — flit within a few feet of me from curiosity, head downward on the pines.");. November 9, 1850 ("The chickadees, if I stand long enough, hop nearer and nearer inquisitively, from pine bough to pine bough, till within four or five feet, occasionally lisping a note"); December 1, 1853 ("I hear their faint, silvery, lisping notes, like tinkling glass, and occasionally a sprightly day-day-day, as they inquisitively hop nearer and nearer to me. They are our most honest and innocent little bird, drawing yet nearer to us as the winter advances, and deserve best of any of the walker."); December 3, 1856 ("they will flit after and close to you, and naively peck at the nearest twig to you, as if they were minding their own business all the while without any reference to you."); December 28, 1858 ("I notice a few chickadees there in the edge of the pines, in the sun, lisping and twittering cheerfully to one another, with a reference to me, I think."); January 30, 1854 ("As we walk up the river, a little flock of chickadees flies to us from a wood-side fifteen rods off, and utters their lively day day day, and follows us along a considerable distance, flitting by our side on the button-bushes and willows. It is the most, if not the only, sociable bird we have.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter

I see where little birds have picked up the alder seed. See January 20, 1855 ("Our lesser redpoll . . . I heard its mew about the house early this morning before sunrise . . . I see the tracks of countless little birds, probably redpolls, where these have run over broad pastures and visited every weed"); See also January 19, 1855 ("At noon it is still a driving snow-storm, and a little flock of redpolls is busily picking the seeds of the pig weed in the garden. Almost all have more or less crimson; a few are very splendid, with their particularly bright crimson breasts. The white on the edge of their wing-coverts is very conspicuous. "); January 24, 1860 ("See a large flock of lesser redpolls, eating the seeds of the birch (and perhaps alder) in Dennis Swamp by railroad. They are distinct enough from the goldfinch, their note more shelly and general as they fly, and they are whiter, without the black wings, beside that some have the crimson head or head and breast. They alight on the birches, then swarm on the snow beneath, busily picking up the seed in the copse. "); January 27, 1860 ("Half a dozen redpolls busily picking the seeds out of the larch cones behind Monroe's."); January 29, 1860 ("To-day I see quite a flock of the lesser redpolls eating the seeds of the alder, picking them out of the cones just as they do the larch, often head downward; and I see, under the alders, where they have run and picked up the fallen seeds, making chain-like tracks, two parallel lines.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Lesser Redpoll

The sound of the snowflakes falling on the dry oak leaves.

December 11

At 2 p. m. begins to snow, and snows till night. Still, normal storm, large flakes, warm enough, lodging.

See one sheldrake in Walden. 

As I stand on the railroad at Walden, at R. W. E.'s crossing, the sound of the snowflakes falling on the dry oak leaves (which hold on) is exactly like a rustling produced by a steady but slight breeze. But there is no wind. It is a gentle and uninterrupted susurrus. 

This light snow, which has been falling for an hour, resting on the horizontal spray of the hemlocks, produces the effect of so many crosses, or checker or lattice work.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 11, 1859

Still, normal storm, large flakes, warm enough, lodging. December 14, 1859 ("Snow-storms might be classified. . . .That of the 11th was a still storm, of large flakes falling gently in the quiet air, like so many white feathers descending in different directions when seen against a wood-side, — the regular snow-storm such as is painted. A myriad falling flakes weaving a coarse garment by which the eye is amused. The snow was a little moist and the weather rather mild."); December 20, 1859 ("December. 11th was a lodging snow, it being mild and still, like to-day (only it was not so moist). Was succeeded next day noon by a strong and cold northwest wind.")

A gentle and uninterrupted susurrus. See April 18, 1855 ("I hear a susurrus in the shrub oak leaves"); November 1, 1857 ("When I enter the woods I notice the drier crispier rustle of withered leaves on the oak trees, – a sharper susurrus.")

Notes from late October

November 11. 

I observed, October 23d, wood turtles copulating in the Assabet, and a flock of goldfinches on the top of a hemlock, — as if after its seeds? 

Also, October 24th, riding home from Acton, I saw the withered leaves blown from an oak by the roadside dashing off, gyrating, and surging upward into the air, so exactly like a flock of birds sporting with one another that, for a minute at least, I could not be sure they were not birds; and it suggested how far the motions of birds, like those of these leaves, might be determined by currents of air, i. e., how far the bird learns to conform to such currents. 

The flat variety of Lycopodium dendroideum shed pollen on the 25th of October. That 's a lycopodium path on north side of Colburn Hill.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 11, 1859

I observed, October 23d, wood turtles copulating in the Assabet.  See September 15, 1855 ("An Emys insculpta which I mistook for dead, under water near shore; head and legs and tail hanging down straight. Turned it over, and to my surprise found it coupled with another. It was at first difficult to separate them with a paddle"); October 21, 1857 (" I saw wood tortoises coupled up the Assabet, the back of the upper above water. It held the lower with its claws about the head, and they were not to be parted. ") See also September 16, 1854 ("I see a wood tortoise in the woods. Why is it there now?"); November 9, 1855 ("See a painted tortoise and a wood tortoise in different places out on the bank still!”); November 14, 1855 ("A clear, bright, warm afternoon. A painted tortoise swimming under water and a wood tortoise out on the bank.”) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Wood Turtle (Emys insculpta)

A flock of goldfinches on the top of a hemlock, — as if after its seeds?  See November 15, 1859 (“About the 23d of October I saw a large flock of goldfinches (judging from their motions and notes) on the tops of the hemlocks up the Assabet, apparently feeding on their seeds, then falling. They were collected in great numbers on the very tops of these trees and flitting from one to another. Rice has since described to me the same phenomenon ”); See alao January 5, 1860 ("I see where a flock of goldfinches in the morning had settled on a hemlock's top, by the snow strewn with scales, literally blackened or darkened with them for a rod.")

The withered leaves blown from an oak by the roadside dashing off, gyrating, and surging upward into the air, so exactly like a flock of birds. See October 26, 1860 ("This is the season of the fall when the leaves are whirled through the air like flocks of birds.")

You must be outdoors long, early and late, and travel far and earnestly, in order to perceive the phenomena of the day.

September 13.

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

The Bidens chrysanthemoides, now apparently in its prime by the river, now almost dazzles you with its great sunny disk. I feast my eyes on it annually. It grows but sparingly near the village, but those few never fail to make their appearance at last. The yellow lily's is a cool yellow in comparison, but in this is seen the concentrated heat of autumn. 

Now, while other fruits are ripe or ripening, I see the great peduncle of the peltandra, eighteen or twenty- four inches long, curving downward, with its globular mass of green fruit, often two inches in diameter, at the end, looking like slung shot. This mass of viscid seeds or nuts must be the food of many creatures. 

Also the pontederia spike is now generally turned downward beneath the water and increased in size, though some have flowers still at their tips. So, too, probably (for I do not see them) the yellow and white lilies are ripening their seeds in the water and mud beneath the surface. 

The bloom and freshness of the river was gone as soon as the pickerel-weed began to be imbrowned, in the latter part of August. It is fall and harvest there now. 

I remember my earliest going a-graping. (It was a wonder that we ever hit upon the ripe season.) There was more fun in finding and eying the big purple clusters high on the trees and climbing to them than in eating them. We used to take care not to chew the skins long lest they should make our mouths sore. 

Some haws of the scarlet thorn are really a splendid fruit to look at now and far from inedible. They are not only large, but their beauty is enhanced by the persistent calyx relieving the clear scarlet of the fruit. 

There are various degrees of living out-of-doors. You must be outdoors long, early and late, and travel far and earnestly, in order to perceive the phenomena of the day. Even then much will escape you. Few live so far outdoors as to hear the first geese go over. 

I see some shrub oak acorns turned dark on the bushes and showing their meridian lines, but generally acorns of all kinds are green yet. The great red oak acorns have not fallen. It is a wonder how pigeons can swallow acorns whole, but they do. 

Many hemlock leaves which had prematurely ripened and withered in the dry weather have fallen in the late winds and washed up along the side of the river, — already red there.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 13, 1859

The Bidens chrysanthemoides, now apparently in its prime by the river, now almost dazzles you with its great sunny disk. See September 13, 1852 ("The great bidens in the sun in brooks affects me as the rose of the fall. They are low suns in the brook. The golden glow of autumn concentrated, more golden than the sun. How surely this yellow comes out along the brooks in autumn. It yellows along the brook.").  See also note to September 14, 1858 ("Bidens chrysanthemoides in river")

I remember my earliest going a-graping. See September 13, 1856 ("Gather quite a parcel of grapes, quite ripe.. . . the best are more admirable for fragrance than for flavor. Depositing them in the bows of the boat, they fill all the air with their fragrance, as we row along against the wind, as if we were rowing through an endless vineyard in its maturity.")

Some haws of the scarlet thorn are really a splendid fruit to look at now and far from inedible. See September 25, 1856 ("The haws of the common thorn are now very good eating and handsome.")

You must be outdoors long, early and late. See December 20, 1851 ("Go out before sunrise or stay out till sunset "); November 4, 1852 ("I keep out-of-doors for the sake of the mineral, vegetable, and animal in me."); June 5, 1854 ("I have come to this hill to see the sun go down, to recover sanity and put myself again in relation with Nature.”); December 29, 1856 (“We must go out and re-ally ourselves to Nature every day. . . .. Staying in the house breeds a sort of insanity always.”)

Few live so far outdoors as to hear the first geese go over.  See August 21, 1851 ("A man may walk abroad and no more see the sky than if he walked under a shed. "); February 28, 1856 ("Though you roam the woods all your days, you never will see by chance what he sees who goes on purpose to see it.”); November 4, 1858 ("The true sportsman can shoot you almost any of his game from his windows. It comes and perches at last on the barrel of his gun; but the rest of the world never see it with the feathers on .");April 8, 1856 ("Most countrymen might paddle five miles along the river now and not see one muskrat, while a sportsman a quarter of a mile before or behind would be shooting one or more every five minutes.");  February 12, 1860 ("Surrounded by our thoughts or imaginary objects, living in our ideas, not one in a million ever sees the objects which are actually around him."); Walking (“I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. … But sometimes it happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head and I am not where my body is. I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?” ) See also September 23, 1858 ("When we had put out our bayberry fire, we heard a squawk, and, looking up, saw five geese fly low in the twilight over our heads. We then set out to find our way to Gloucester over the hills, and saw the comet very bright in the northwest. ") and A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Geese in Autumn

The great red oak acorns have not fallen. See September 12, 1854 (“The red oak began to fall first.”)

It is a wonder how pigeons can swallow acorns whole, but they do. See September 21, 1859 ("Rice says that white oak acorns pounded up, shells and all, make the best bait for them.")

Many hemlock leaves which had prematurely ripened have fallen in the late winds and washed up along the side of the river, — already red there. See October 8, 1857 (“Hemlock leaves are copiously falling. They cover the hillside like some wild grain. ”); October 16, 1857 (“Hemlock leaves are falling now faster than ever, and the trees are more parti-colored. The falling leaves look pale-yellow on the trees, but become reddish on the ground.”); October 28, 1858 ("The hemlock is in the midst of its fall, and the leaves strew the ground like grain."): November 11, 1855 (“At the Hemlocks I see a narrow reddish line of hemlock leaves . .. mathematically level. This chronicles the hemlock fall, which I had not noticed, we have so few trees, and also the river’s rise”)

The fog-frosts and the fog continue.

January 14. 

The fog-frosts and the fog continue, though considerable of the frostwork has fallen. This forenoon I walk up the Assabet to see it. 

The hemlocks are perhaps a richer sight than any tree, — such Christmas trees, thus sugared, as were never seen. On  side you see more or less greenness, but when you stand due north they are unexpectedly white and rich, so beautifully still, and when you look under them you see some great rock, or rocks, all hoary with the same, and a finer frost on the very fine dead hemlock twigs there and on hanging roots and twigs, quite like the cobwebs in a grist-mill covered with meal,-- and it implies a stillness like that; or it is like the lightest down glued on. 

The birch, from its outline and its numerous twigs, is also one of the prettiest trees in this dress. 

The fog turns to a fine rain at noon, and in the evening and night it produces a glaze, which this morning, —

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 14, 1859

The water in the pitcher-plant leaves is frozen.

February 11. 

At 8 P. M. it is 11° and windy. 

I think it is the coldest day of this winter. The river channel is now suddenly and generally frozen over for the first time. 

P. M. — To Hill. 

The water in the pitcher-plant leaves is frozen, but I see none burst. They are very tightly filled and smooth, apparently stretched. 

The leaves of the round-leaved pyrola, so exposed this winter, look not only dark but as if frozen. I am not sure that they are stiffened however. 

I see that the hemlock leaves also have this frozen or frozen thawed, cadaverous look, dark and slightly imbrowned, especially the most exposed twigs, while some sheltered ones are still a bright green. The same is the case even with the white pines and, as far as I observe, other evergreens. 

There is a change in their leaves with cold weather, corresponding to the reddening and darkening of checkerberry and pyrola leaves. They change, though they do not fall, and are to some extent affected, even as those trees which, like the oaks, retain a part of their leaves during the winter in a withered state; i. e., they have begun to wither or be killed. 

I have often before noticed that the pines, when cold weather came, were of a darker and duller green, somewhat like a frozen apple. In the hemlock, at least, there is a positive tendency to redness. The evergreens, then, though they do not fall the first year, lose their original summer greenness; they are changed and partially killed by the cold, like pyrola and checkerberry and lambkill, and even, in a degree, like oak leaves. Perhaps the pitch pine is the least affected. 

Cut a club of celtis wood. It is hard but, I think, brittle. The celastrus (waxwork) is a soft, spongy, and flexible wood, though of very slow growth. You can easily sink your knife into it. I count twenty-five rings in the heart-wood of one which is not quite an inch in diameter. In the sap there is no evidence of rings at all.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 11, 1858

11° and windy. I think it is the coldest day of this winter. Compare January 23, 1857 ("I may safely say that -5° has been the highest temperature to-day.”) January 9, 1856 ("Probably it has been below zero for the greater part of the day."); February 6, 1855 ("They say it did not rise above -6° to-day.”); February 11, 1855 (“Smith’s thermometer early this morning at -22°; ours at 8 A. M. -10°.”)

The water in the pitcher-plant leaves is frozen.  See November 16, 1852 ("At Holden's Spruce Swamp. The water is frozen in the pitcher-plant leaf.")

The river channel is now suddenly and generally frozen over for the first time. Compare January 20, 1857 ("The river has been frozen everywhere except at the very few swiftest places since about December 18th, and everywhere since about January 1st.”)

What green, herbaceous, graminivorous ideas he must have! I wish that my thoughts were as seasonable as his!

September 6. 

Sunday. P. M. – To Assabet, west bank. 

Turned off south at Derby's Bridge and walked through a long field, half meadow, half upland. Soapwort gentian, out not long, and dwarf cornel again. 

There is a handsome crescent-shaped meadow on this side, opposite Harrington's. A good-sized black oak in the pasture by the road half-way between the school house and Brown’s. 

Walked under Brown’s hemlocks by the railroad. How commonly hemlocks grow on the north slope of a hill near its base, with only bare reddened ground beneath! This bareness probably is not due to any peculiar quality in the hemlocks, for I observe that it is the same under pitch and white pines when equally thick. I suspect that it is owing more to the shade than to the fallen leaves. 

I see one of those peculiarly green locusts with long and slender legs on a grass stem, which are often concealed by their color. What green, herbaceous, graminivorous ideas he must have! I wish that my thoughts were as seasonable as his! 

Some haws begin to be ripe. 

We go along under the hill and woods north of railroad, west of Lords land, about to the west of the swamp and to the Indian ditch. I see in the swamp black choke berries twelve feet high at least and in fruit. 

C. says that they use high blueberry wood for tholepins on the Plymouth ponds. 

I observe to-day, away at the south end of our dry garden, a moist and handsome Rana halecina. It is the only frog that I ever see in such localities. He is quite a traveller. 

A very cool day.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 6, 1857

Soapwort gentian, out not long. See September 8, 1852 ("Gentiana saponaria out."); September 19, 1851 ("The soapwort gentian now.");  September 19, 1852 ("The soapwort gentian cheers and surprises, -- solid bulbs of blue from the shade, the stale grown purplish. It abounds along the river, after so much has been mown"); September 22, 1852 ("The soapwort gentian the flower of the river-banks now.") September 25, 1857 ("You notice now the dark-blue dome of the soapwort gentian in cool and shady places under the bank.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Soapwort Gentian (Gentiana saponaria)

I see one of those peculiarly green locusts . . . which are often concealed by their color. See August 21, 1853 ("Saw one of those light-green locusts about three quarters of an inch long on a currant leaf in the garden . . . The wings are transparent, with marks somewhat like a letter."); August 23, 1856 ("A green locust an inch and three quarters long"); August 27, 1860 ("See one of the shrilling green alder locusts on the under side of a grape leaf. Its body is about three quarters of an inch or less in length; antennae and all, two inches. Its wings a . . . transparent, with lines crossing them.")

Rana halecina (Lithobates pipiens) – Northern Leopard Frog.  See August 22, 1854 ("There are now hopping all over this meadow small Rana palustris, and also some more beautifully spotted halecina or shad frogs."); June 17, 1856 ("Went to Rev. Horace James’s reptiles (Orthodox) . . . He distinguished the Rana halecina in the alcohol by more squarish (?) spots."); April 3, 1858 ("They were the R. halecina. I could see very plainly the two very prominent yellow lines along the sides of the head and the large dark ocellated marks, even under water, on the thighs, etc. . . .Their note is a hard dry tut tut tut tut, not at all ringing like the toad’s . . . and from time to time one makes that faint somewhat bullfrog-like er er er. Both these sounds, then, are made by one frog, and what I have formerly thought an early bullfrog note was this. This, I think, is the first frog sound I have heard from the river meadows or anywhere . . .")

May Training

alternate-leaf dogwood
May 27, 2017

May 27. 

P. M. — To Hill. 

I hear the sound of fife and drum the other side of the village, and am reminded that it is May Training. Some thirty young men are marching in the streets in two straight sections, with each a very heavy and warm cap for the season on his head and a bright red stripe down the legs of his pantaloons, and at their head march two with white stripes down their pants, one beating a drum, the other blowing a fife. 

I see them all standing in a row by the side of the street in front of their captain's residence, with a dozen or more ragged boys looking on, but presently they all remove to the opposite side, as it were with one consent, not being satisfied with their former position, which probably had its disadvantages. 

Thus they march and strut the better part of the day, going into the tavern two or three times, to abandon themselves to unconstrained positions out of sight, and at night they may be seen going home singly with swelling breasts. 

When I first saw them as I was ascending the Hill, they were going along the road to the Battle-Ground far away under the hill, a fifer and a drummer to keep each other company and spell one another. Ever and anon the drum sounded more hollowly loud and distinct, as if they had just emerged from a subterranean passage, though it was only from behind some barn, and following close behind I could see two platoons of awful black beavers, rising just above the wall, where the warriors were stirring up the dust of Winter Street, passing Ex-Captain Abel Heywood's house, probably with trailed arms. 

There might have been some jockey in their way, spending his elegant leisure teaching his horse to stand fire, or trying to run down an orphan boy. 

I also hear, borne down the river from time to time, regular reports of small arms from Sudbury or Wayland, where they are probably firing by platoons. 

May 27, 2017

Celtis occidentalis, perhaps yesterday. How the staminate flowers drop off, even before opening! 

I perceived that rare meadow fragrance on the 25th. Is it not the sweet-scented vernal grass? [Think not, but perceive that in any case.] I see what I have called such, now very common. 

The earliest thorn on hill, a day or more. 

Hemlock, apparently a day or two. 

Some butternut catkins; the leaves have been touched by frost. 

This is blossom week, beginning last Sunday (the 24th). 

At evening, the first bat.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 27, 1857

I perceived that rare meadow fragrance on the 25th. See May 27, 1856 ("Often perceived the meadow fragrance. . . .”);May 27, 1855 ("The meadow fragrance to-day.”)

Some butternut catkins . . .See May 24, 1855 (“Butternut pollen, apparently a day or two”).

This is blossom week. See May 27 1852 ("The road is white with the apple blossoms fallen off, as with snowflakes.”) and note to May 25, 1852 (It is blossom week with the apples.”).

At evening, the first bat. See May 9, 1853 (“The first bat goes suddenly zigzag overhead through the dusky air; comes out of the dusk and disappears into it.”)

There is so much more life than is suspected in the most solitary and dreariest scene.

January 14. 

P. M. — Up Assabet on ice. 

I go slumping four or five inches in the snow on the river, and often into water above the ice, breaking through a slight crust under the snow, which has formed in the night. 

Each cold day this concealed overflow, mixing with the snow beneath, is converted into ice, and so raises it, makes the surface snow shallower, and improves the walking; but unless it is quite cold, this snow and water is apt to get a slight crust only, through which you sink. 

I notice, on the black willows and also on the alders and white maples overhanging the stream, numerous dirty-white cocoons, about an inch long, attached by their sides to the base of the recent twigs and disguised by dry leaves curled about them, — a sort of fruit which these trees bear now. The leaves are not attached to the twigs, but artfully arranged about and fastened to the cocoons. Almost every little cluster of leaves contains a cocoon, apparently of one species. 

So that often when you would think that the trees were retaining their leaves, it is not the trees but the caterpillars that have retained them. I do not see a cluster of leaves on a maple, unless on a dead twig, but it conceals a cocoon. Yet I cannot find one alive; they are all crumbled within. 

The black willows retain very few of their narrow curled leaves here and there, like the terminal leafet of a fern (the alders and maples scarcely any ever), yet these few are just enough to withdraw attention from those which surround the cocoons. 

What kind of understanding was there between the mind that determined that these leaves should hang on during the winter, and that of the worm that fastened a few of these leaves to its cocoon in order to disguise it? 

I thus walk along the edge of the trees and bushes which overhang the stream, gathering the cocoons, which probably were thought to be doubly secure here. These cocoons, of course, were attached before the leaves had fallen. Almost every one is already empty, or contains only the relics of a nymph. It has been attacked and devoured by some foe. 

These numerous cocoons attached to the twigs over hanging the stream in the still and biting winter day suggest a certain fertility in the river borders, — impart a kind of life to them, — and so are company to me. There is so much more life than is suspected in the most solitary and dreariest scene. They are as much as the lisping of a chickadee. 

Hemlock seeds are scattered over the snow. 

The birch (white) catkins appear to lose their seeds first at the base, though that may be the uppermost. They are blown or shaken off, leaving a bare threadlike core.

Mr. Wild tells me that while he lived on Nantucket he never observed the thermometer lower than 2° above zero.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 14, 1857

What kind of understanding was there between the mind that determined that these leaves should hang on during the winter, and that of the worm that fastened a few of these leaves to its cocoon in order to disguise it? See December 17, 1853 ("While surveying for Daniel Weston in Lincoln to-day, see a great many — maybe a hundred — silvery-brown cocoons, wrinkled and flatfish, on young alders in a meadow, three or four inches long, fastened to the main stem and branches at same time, with dry alder and fragments of fern leaves attached to and partially concealing them; of some great moth.”); December 24, 1853 ("The largest are four inches long by two and a half, bag-shaped and wrinkled and partly concealed by dry leaves, — alder, ferns, etc., — attached as if sprinkled over them. This evidence of cunning in so humble a creature is affecting, for I am not ready to refer it to an intelligence which the creature does not share, as much as we do the prerogatives of reason. This radiation of the brain. The bare silvery cocoons would otherwise be too obvious. The worm has evidently said to itself: "Man or some other creature may come by and see my casket. I will disguise it, will hang a screen before it." Brake and sweet-fern and alder leaves are not only loosely sprinkled over it and dangling from it, but often, as it were, pasted close upon and almost incorporated into it.”); ; February 19, 1854 ("Though the particular twigs on which you find some cocoons may never or very rarely retain any leaves, . . . there are enough leaves left on other shrubs and trees to warrant their adopting this disguise. Yet it is startling to think that the inference has in this case been drawn by some mind that, as most other plants retain some leaves, the walker will suspect these also to. Each and all such disguises and other resources remind us that not some poor worm's instinct merely, as we call it, but the mind of the universe rather, which we share, has been intended upon each particular object. All the wit in the world was brought to bear on each case to secure its end. It was long ago, in a full senate of all intellects, determined how cocoons had best be suspended”)

The chickadees resume their winter ways before the winter comes.

October 15

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

A smart frost, which even injured plants in house. Ground stiffened in morning; ice seen. 

River lower than for some months. Banks begin to wear almost a Novemberish aspect.

The black willow almost completely bare; many quite so. It loses its leaves about same time with the maples. 

The large ferns are now rapidly losing their leaves except the terminal tuft. Other species about the edges of swamps were turned suddenly dark cinnamon-color by the frost of yesterday. 

The water is very calm and full of reflections. Large fleets of maple and other leaves are floating on its surface as I go up the Assabet, leaves which apparently came down in a shower with yesterday morning's frost. Every motion of the turtles is betrayed by their rustling now.

Mikania is all whitish woolly now. Yet many tortoises are still out in the sun. 

An abundance of checkerberries by the hemlock at V. Muhlenbergii Brook. A remarkable year for berries. Even this, too, is abundant like the rest. They are tender and more palatable than ever now. I find a little pile of them, maybe fifteen or twenty, on the moss with each a little indentation or two on it, made apparently by some bird or beast. 

The chickadees are hopping near on the hemlock above. They resume their winter ways before the winter comes. 

A great part of the hemlock seeds fallen.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 15, 1856

A smart frost . . .  Ground stiffened in morning; ice seen.  See October 15, 1853 ("Last night the first smart frost that I have witnessed. Ice formed under the pump, and the ground was white long after sunrise."); October 15, 1853 ("And now . . . how the leaves come down in showers after this touch of the frost!"); See also  October 16, 1856 ("Ground all white with frost."); October 17, 1851 ("A severe frost this morning, which puts us one remove further from summer"); October 17, 1859 ("A smart frost this morning. Ground stiffened. Hear of ice in a tub.")

Large fleets of maple and other leaves.  . . came down in a shower with yesterday morning's frost. See October 15, 1853 (“[H]ow the leaves come down in showers after this touch of the frost!.”);   October 15, 1857 (“There has been a great fall of leaves in the night on account of this moist and rainy weather”) See also October 13, 1860 ("Now, as soon as the frost strips the maples, and their leaves strew the swamp floor and conceal the pools"); October 22,1854 (“Pretty hard frosts these nights. Many leaves fell last night, and the Assabet is covered with their fleets.”)

Many tortoises are still out in the sun.  See note to October 14, 1855 ("Still see the Emys insculpta coupled."); October 18, 1859 ("I see half a dozen yellow-spot turtles moving about. Probably they are preparing to go into winter quarters."); October 22, 1854 (''I see a snapping turtle, not yet in winter quarters. ");  November 1, 1855. ("I see no painted tortoises out, and I think it is about a fortnight since I saw any."); November 7, 1855 ("It is long since I have seen one of any species except the insculpta. They must have begun to keep below and go into winter quarters about three weeks ago.")

An abundance of checkerberries.  See October 8, 1856 (“Find many checker-berries on Smith's hill beyond the chestnut grove, which appear to be just ripe. ") Note: “checkerberry" is another name for American wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens).See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: Checkerberry.

The chickadees . . . resume their winter ways before the winter comes. See October 15, 1859 ("The chickadees sing as if at home. They are not travelling singers hired by any Barnum. Theirs is an honest, homely, heartfelt melody."). See also October 11, 1851 ("The chickadee, sounding all alone, now that birds are getting scarce, reminds me of the winter, in which it almost alone is heard.”); October 13, 1860 ("Now, as soon as the frost strips the maples, and their leaves strew the swamp floor and conceal the pools, the note of the chickadee sounds cheerfully winterish.”); October 17, 1856 ("I heard a smart tche-day-day-day close to my ear, and, looking up, see four of these birds, which had come to scrape acquaintance with me, hopping amid the alders within three and four feet of me. I had heard them further off at first, and they had followed me along the hedge. They day-day 'd and lisp their faint notes alternately, and then, as if to make me think they had some other errand than to peer at me, they peck the dead twigs with their bills — the little top-heavy, black-crowned, volatile fellows.")

 

The chickadee

Hops near to me.

November 8, 1857

November 9, 1850 ("The chickadees, if I stand long enough, hop nearer and nearer inquisitively, from pine bough to pine bough, till within four or five feet, occasionally lisping a note.”); December 1, 1853 (“[T]he little chickadees . . . inquisitively hop nearer and nearer to me. They are our most honest and innocent little bird, drawing yet nearer to us as the winter advances, and deserve best of any of the walker.”) and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter

A great part of the hemlock seeds fallen. See October 13, 1859 ("The hemlock seed is now in the midst of its fall, some of it, with the leaves, floating on the river."); October 31, 1853 ("The hemlock seeds are apparently ready to drop from their cones.”); November 1, 1853 ("Showers of their fresh winged seeds come wafted down")

October 15. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, October 15

Chickadees hop near –

they resume their winter ways 

before winter comes.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Chickadees resume their winter ways

 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

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