It was the event of our walk, and we were proud to wear this badge

September 5. 


P. M. – To Ball's Hill.

The brink of the river is still quite interesting in some respects, and to some eyes more interesting than ever.

Though the willows and button-bushes have already assumed an autumnal hue, and the pontederia is extensively crisped and blackened, the dense masses of mikania, now, it may be, paler than before, are perhaps more remarkable than ever.

I see some masses of it, overhanging the deep water and completely concealing the bush that supports them, which are as rich a sight as any flower we have, — little terraces of contiguous corymbs, like mignonette (?).

Also the dodder is more revealed, also draping the brink over the water.

The mikania is sometimes looped seven or eight feet high to a tree above the bushes, a manifest vine, with its light-colored corymbs at intervals.

See the little dippers back.

Did I not see a marsh hawk in imperfect plumage? Quite brown, with some white midway the wing and tips of wings black?

What further adds to the beauty of the bank is the hibiscus, in prime and the great bidens.

Having walked through a quantity of desmodium under Ball's Hill , by the shore there (Marilandicum or rigidum), we found our pants covered with its seeds to a remarkable and amusing degree. These green scales closely covering and greening my legs reminded me of the lemna on a ditch. It amounted to a kind of coat of mail.

It was the event of our walk, and we were proud to wear this badge, as if he were the most distinguished who had the most on his clothes.
My companion expressed a certain superstitious feeling about it, for he said he thought it would not be right to walk intentionally amid the desmodium so as to get more of the ticks on us, nor yet to pick them off, but they must be carried about till they are rubbed off accidentally.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 5, 1860

Though the willows and button-bushes have already assumed an autumnal hue, the dense masses of mikaniaare perhaps more remarkable than ever. See August 2, 1860 ("Mikania begun, and now, perhaps, the river's brink is at its height. "); August 22, 1858 ("Now that the mikania begins to prevail the button-bush has done . . . and the willows are already somewhat crisped and imbrowned"); August 29, 1858 ("The mikania is apparently in prime or a little past."); September 20, 1859 ("The button-bushes by the river are generally overrun with the mikania.")

See the little dippers back. See September 8, 1859 ("See the black head and neck of a little dipper in mid stream, a few rods before my boat. It disappears, and though I search carefully, I cannot detect it again."); September 9, 1858 ("At length the walker who sits meditating on a distant bank sees the little dipper sail out from amid the weeds and busily dive for its food along their edge: Yet ordinary eyes might range up and down the river all day and never detect its small black head above the water."); September 27, 1860 ("I see a little dipper in the middle of the river.. . .It has a dark bill and considerable white on the sides of the head or neck, with black between it, no tufts, and no observable white on back or tail.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Little Dipper

Did I not see a marsh hawk in imperfect plumage? Quite brown, with some white midway the wing and tips of wings black? See April 10, 1853 ("Saw a pretty large narrow-winged hawk with a white rump and white spots or bars on under ( ?) side of wings. Probably the female or young of a marsh hawk."); April 13, 1854 (" A small brown hawk with white on rump — I think too small for a marsh hawk — sailed low over the meadow. [May it have been a young male harrier?]");  April 23, 1855 ("I have seen also for some weeks occasionally a brown hawk with white rump, flying low, which I have thought the frog hawk in a different stage of plumage; but can it be at this season? and is it not the marsh hawk? Yet it is not so heavy nearly as the hen-hawk -- probably female hen-harrier [i. e. marsh hawk]"); October 18, 1855 ("A large brown marsh hawk comes beating the bush along the river, and ere long a slate-colored one (male), with black tips, is seen circling against a distant wood-side."); May 14, 1857 ("See a pair of marsh hawks, the smaller and lighter-colored male, with black tips to wings, and the large brown female, sailing low") See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  the Marsh Hawk (Northern Harrier)

Having walked through a quantity of desmodium under Ball's Hill we found our pants covered with its seeds to a remarkable and amusing degree. See August 19, 1856 ("Some of these desmodiums, the paniculatum, Marilandicum, nudiflorum, rigidum, and Dillenii, are so fine and inobvious that a careless observer would look through their thin flowery panicles without observing any flower at all.");  August 26, 1856 ("These desmodiums are so fine and inobvious that it is difficult to detect them. I go through a grove in vain, but when I get away, find my coat covered with their pods. They found me, though I did not them.”); September 29, 1856 ("How surely the desmodium, growing on some rough cliff-side, or the bidens, on the edge of a pool, prophesy the coming of the traveller, brute or human, that will transport their seeds on his coat!"); October 2, 1852 ("I also find the desmodium sooner thus. . . than if I used my eyes alone.")

What further adds to the beauty of the bank is the great bidens. September 13, 1852 ("The great bidens in the sun in brooks affects me as the rose of the fall, the most flavid product of the water and the sun. They are low suns in the brook. The golden glow of autumn concentrated, more golden than the sun. . . . If I come by at this season, a golden blaze will salute me here from a thousand suns.")

The never-failing wood thrush inviting the day once more to enter his pine woods.

August 17.

Twenty minutes before 5 a. m. — To Cliffs and Walden.

Dawn.

No breathing of chip-birds nor singing of robins as in spring, but still the cock crows lustily.

The creak of the crickets sounds louder.

As I go along the back road, hear two or three song sparrows.

This morning's red, there being a misty cloud there, is equal to an evening red.

The woods are very still. I hear only a faint peep or twitter from one bird, then the never-failing wood thrush, it being about sunrise, and after, on the Cliff, the phoebe note of a chickadee, a night-warbler, a creeper (?), and a pewee (?), and, later still, the huckleberry-bird and red-eye, but all few and faint.

Cannot distinguish the steam of the engine toward Waltham from one of the morning fogs over hollows in woods.

Lespedeza violacea var. (apparently) angustifolia (?), sessiliflora of Bigelow. Also another L. violacea, or at least violet, perhaps different from what I saw some time since.

Gerardia pedicularia, bushy gerardia, almost ready.

The white cornel berries are dropping off before they are fairly white.

Is not the hibiscus a very bright pink or even flesh- color? It is so delicate and peculiar. I do not think of any flower just like it. It reminds me of some of the wild geraniums most. It is a singular, large, delicate, high-colored flower with a tree-like leaf.

Gaylussada frondosa, blue-tangle, dangle-berry, ripe perhaps a week.

Weston of Lincoln thought there were more grapes, both cultivated and wild, than usual this year, because the rose-bugs had not done so much harm. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal August 17, 1852

The never-failing wood thrush about sunrise. See  August 10, 1856 ("Hear the wood thrush still."); August  12, 1851 ("I hear a wood thrush even now, long before sunrise. . .The wood thrush, that beautiful singer, inviting the day once more to enter his pine woods.") Compare August 12, 1854 ("Have not heard a wood thrush since last week of July. "); August 14, 1853 ("I hear no wood thrushes for a week.")

Lespedeza violacea.  See August 19, 1856 ("I spent my afternoon among the desmodiums and lespedezas, sociably. . . .  All the lespedezas are apparently more open and delicate in the woods, and of a darker green, especially the violet ones. When not too much crowded, their leaves are very pretty and perfect.") and  note to August 14, 1856 ("A short elliptic-leaved Lespedeza violacea, loose and open in Veery Nest Path, at Flint's Pond. In press.")

Bushy gerardia, almost ready. See August 12, 1856 ("Gerardia pedicularia, how long?"); August 23, 1856 ("On the west side of Emerson's Cliff, I notice many Gerardia pedicularia out. A bee is hovering about one bush");August 24, 1858 ("Climbing the hill at the bend, I find Gerardia Pedicularia, apparently several days, or how long?")

Water milkweed flying.

October 4

P. M. — Down river. 

Wind from northeast. Some water milkweed flying. Its pods small, slender, straight, and pointed perfectly upright; seeds large with much wing. 

The hibiscus gone to seed, and pods opened showing the seed, opposite Ostrya Island (Burr's Island) or Rock below Battle-Ground. 

Helianthus tuberosus, apparently several days, in Reynolds's yard (the butcher's). 

October 4, 2017

In an article on the alligator in Harper's Magazine for December, 1854, it is said that mosquitoes "surround its head in clouds; and we have heard the negroes assert that the reptile opened its mouth until its interior was fully lined, and suddenly closing it up, would swallow the accumulated marauders, and then set its huge jaws as a trap for more." This reminds me of the swarms of mosquitoes about frogs and, I think, turtles. 

In another article, of May, 1855, on "The Lion and his Kind," the animals are placed in this order: the domestic cat, wildcat, the ocelot or tiger-cat of Peru and Mexico, the caracal of Asia and Africa, the lynx of North America, the chetah of India and Africa, the ounce of India (perhaps a rough variety of the leopard), the leopard, the jaguar, the cougar, the tiger, the lion. 

"The Cougar is the American lion — at least it bears a closer resemblance to that noble brute than any other of the feline family, for it is destitute of the stripes of the tiger, the spots of the leopard, and the rosettes of the jaguar; but when full-grown possesses a tawny-red color, almost uniform over the whole body, and hence the inference that it is like the lion." 

"Cougar is a corruption of the Mexican name." Ranges between Paraguay and the Great Lakes of North America. "In form it is less attractive than the generality of its species, there being an apparent want of symmetry; for it is observable that its back is hollow, its legs short and thick, and its tail does not gracefully taper; yet nature has invested the cougar with other qualities as a compensation, the most remarkable of which is an apparent power to render itself quite invisible; for so cunningly tinged is its fur, that it perfectly mingles with the bark of trees — in fact, with all subdued tints — and stretched upon a limb, or even extended upon the floor of its dimly lighted cage, you must prepare your eye by consider able mental resolution to be assured of its positive presence." Its flesh is eaten by some. 

Mrs. Jane Swisshelm kept one which grew to be nine feet long, and, according to her, in this writer's words, "If in exceeding good-humor he would purr; but if he wished to intimidate, he would raise his back, erect his hair, and spit like a cat. In the twilight of the evening the animal was accustomed to pace back and forth to the full extent of his limits, ever and anon uttering a short, piercing shriek, which made the valley reverberate for half a mile or more in every direction. Mrs. Swisshelm says these sounds were the shrillest, and at the same time the most mournful she ever heard. They might, perhaps, be likened to the scream of a woman in an agony of terror." He once sprang at her, but was brought up by his chain. When preparing to spring, his eyes were "green and blazing, and the tip of his tail moving from side to side." 

This paper describes "a full-grown royal tiger, measuring four feet seven inches from the nose to the insertion of the tail. . . . Unlike the miserable wretches we see in our menageries, etc." 

The Brattleboro paper makes the panther four feet eleven inches, so measured!! 

I hear that a Captain Hurd, of Wayland or Sudbury, estimates the loss of river meadow-hay this season in those two towns on account of the freshet at twelve hundred tons.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 4, 1856

Water milkweed flying. Its pods small, slender, straight, and pointed perfectly upright; seeds large with much wing. See July 11, 1856 ("The water milkweed, or Asclepias pulchra. "); July 16, 1851 ("I see the yellow butterflies now gathered in fleets in the road, and on the flowers of the milkweed (Asclepias pulchra) by the roadside, a really handsome flower."); November 5, 1858 ("Water milkweed has been discounting some days, with its small upright pods.");   December 30, 1855 ("By the river are conspicuous the now empty and spread pods of the water milkweed, gray-brown without, silky—white within.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Milkweed

The hibiscus gone to seed, and pods opened showing the seed. See  August 17, 1852 ("It [the hibiscus] is so delicate and peculiar. I do not think of any flower just like it . . . It is a singular, large, delicate, high-colored flower with a tree-like leaf."); September 5, 1860  ("What further adds to the beauty of the bank is the hibiscus, in prime.")

The Brattleboro paper makes the panther four feet eleven inches. See September 9, 1856 ("The most interesting sight I saw in Brattleboro was the skin and skull of a panther (Felis concolor) (cougar, catamount, painter, American lion, puma) . . . The Brattleboro newspaper says its body was "4 feet 11 inches in length, and the tail 2 feet 9 inches; the animal weighed 108 pounds."

The loss of river meadow-hay this season. See September 30, 1856 "Speaking of the meadow-hay which is lost this year, Minott said that the little they had got since the last flood before this was good for nothing.")

Water milkweed pods –

small slender straight and upright.

Seeds large with much wing.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Water milkweed flying.

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-561004

It takes the rest of the day to row back against the wind.

October 9.

 

October 9, 2013

A high wind south of westerly. Set sail with W. E. C. down the river. 

The red maples are now red and also yellow and reddening. The white maples are green and silvery, also yellowing and blushing. The birch is yellow; the black willow brown; the elms sere, brown, and thin; the bass bare. The button-bush, which was so late, is already mostly bare except the lower part, protected. The swamp white oak is green with a brownish tinge; the white ash turned mulberry. The white maples toward Ball's Hill have a burnt white appearance; the white oak a salmon-color and also red. Is that scarlet oak rosed? Huckleberries and blackberries are red. Leaves are falling; apples more distinctly seen on the trees; muskrat-houses not quite done. 

This wind carries us along glibly, I think six miles an hour, till we stop in Billerica, just below the first bridge beyond the Carlisle Bridge, — at the Hibiscus Shore. 

I collect some hibiscus seeds and swamp white oak acorns, and we walk on thence, a mile or more further, over scrubby hills which with a rocky core border the western shore, still in Billerica, at last not far above the mills. 

At one place, opposite what I once called Grape Island (still unchanged), I smell grapes, and though I see no vines at first, they being bare of leaves, at last find the grapes quite plenty and ripe and fresh enough on the ground under my feet. Ah! their scent is very penetrating and memorable. 

Did we not see a fish hawk? 

We find ourselves in an extensive wood here, which we do not get out of. 

It takes the rest of the day to row back against the wind.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 9, 1853

I smell grapes, . . . their scent is very penetrating and memorable. See September 4, 1853 ("The fragrance of a grape-vine branch, with ripe grapes on it, which I have brought home, fills the whole house. This fragrance is exceedingly rich, surpassing the flavor of any grape."); September 8, 1854 ("I partly smell them out. . . .I bring home a half-bushel of grapes to scent my chamber with. As I paddle home with my basket of grapes in the bow, every now and then their perfume was wafted to me in the stern, and I think that I am passing a richly laden vine on shore.”):  September 13, 1856 (“. . . 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.”) 

We find ourselves here

in an extensive wood and

we do not get out.