Saturday. 9 A. M.--To Wayland by boat.
E. Wood has added a pair of
ugly wings to his house, bare of trees and painted white, particularly
conspicuous from the river. You might speak of the alar extent of this house,
monopolizing so much of our horizon; but alas ! it is not formed for flight,
after all.
The water is considerably rough to-day, and higher than usual at
this season.
The black willows have started, but make no show of green.
The
button-bushes are yet apparently dead.
The green buds of yellow lilies are
bobbing up and down, already showing more or less yellow; this the most forward
sign in the water. The great scalloped platters of their leaves have begun to
show themselves on the surface, and the red round leaves of the white lily, now
red above as well as below.
A myriad of polygonums, potamogetons, and
pontederias are pushing up from the bottom, but have not yet reached the surface.
Dandelions and houstonias, etc., spot the meadows with yellow and white.
The still dead-looking willows and button-bushes are alive with red-wings, now
perched on a yielding twig, now pursuing a female swiftly over the meadow, now
darting across the stream. No two have epaulets equally brilliant. Some are
small and almost white, and others a brilliant vermilion. They are handsomer
than the golden robin, methinks.
The yellowbird, kingbird, and pewee, beside
many swallows, are also seen. But the rich colors and the rich and varied notes
of the blackbirds surpass them all.
Passing Conantum under sail at 10 o’clock,
the cows in this pasture are already chewing the cud in the thin shade of the
apple trees, a picture of peace, already enjoying the luxury of their green
pastures.
I was not prepared to find the season so far advanced.
The breeze
which comes over the water, sensibly cooled or freshened by it, is already
grateful.
Suddenly there start up from the riverside at the entrance of Fair
Haven Pond, scared by our sail, two great blue herons, — slate color rather, —
slowly flapping and undulating, their projecting breast-bones very visible, —
or is it possibly their necks bent back? — their legs stuck out straight behind.
Getting higher by their flight, they straight come back to reconnoitre us. Land
at Lee’s Cliff, where the herons have preceded us and are perched on the oaks,
conspicuous from afar, and again we have a fair view of their flight.
We
find here, unexpectedly, the warmth of June. The hot, dry scent, or say warm
and balmy, from ground amid the pitch pines carpeted with red needles, where a
wiry green grass is springing up, reminds us of June and of wild pinks.
Under
the south side of the Cliff, vegetation seems a fortnight earlier than
elsewhere. Not only the beautiful little veronicas (serpyllifolia) are
abundantly out, and cowslips past their prime, columbines past prime, and
saxifrage gone to seed, some of it, and dandelions, and the sod sparkling with
the pure, brilliant, spotless yellow of cinquefoil, also violets and
strawberries, but the glossy or varnished yellow of buttercups (bulbosus, also
abundant, some days out) spots the hillside.
The south side of these rocks is
like a hothouse where the gardener has removed his glass. The air, scented with
sweet briar, may almost make you faint in imagination. The nearer the base of
the rock, the more forward each plant.
The trees are equally forward, red and
black; leaves an inch and a half long and shoots of three inches. The prospect
from these rocks is early-June-like. You notice the tender light green of the
birches, both white and paper, and the brown-red tops of the maples where their
keys are.
Close under the lee of the button-bushes which skirt the pond, as I
look south, there is a narrow smooth strip of water, silvery and contrasting
with the darker rippled body of the pond. Its edge, or the separation between
this, which I will call the polished silvery border of the pond, and the dark
and ruffled body, is not a straight line or film, but an ever-varying,
irregularly and finely serrated or fringed border, ever changing as the breeze
falls over the bushes at an angle more or less steep, so that this moment it is
a rod wide, the next not half so much. Every feature is thus fluent in the
landscape.
Again we embark, now having furled our sail and taken to our oars.
The air is clear and fine-grained, and as we glide by the hills I can look into
the very roots of the grass amid the springing pines in their deepest valleys.
The wind rises, but still it is not a cold wind. There is nothing but slate-colored
water and a few red pads appearing at Lily Bay.
After leaving Rice’s harbor the
wind is with us again. What a fine tender yellow green from the meadow-grass
just pushed up, where the sun strikes it at the right angle! How it contrasts
with the dark bluish-green of that rye, already beginning to wave, which covers
that little rounded hill by Pantry Brook! Grain waves earlier than grass.
How
flat the top of the muskrat’s head as he swims, and his back, even with it, and
then when he dives he ludicrously shows his tail. They look gray and brown,
rabbit, now.
At Forget-me not Spring the chrysosplenium beds are very large,
rich and deep, almost out of bloom. I find none of the early blackberry in
bloom. It is mostly destroyed. Already we pluck and eat the sweet flag and
detect small critchicrotches. The handsome comandra leaves also are prominent.
In the woods which skirt the river near Deacon Farrar’s swamp, the Populus
grandidentata, just expanding its downy leaves, makes silvery patches in the
sun. It is abundant and truly silvery.
The paper birch woods at Fair Haven
present this aspect : there is the somewhat dense light green of aspens (tremuliformis)
and paper birches in the foreground next the water, both of one tint, and occasionally
a red maple with brownish-red top, with — equally advanced, aye, more fully
expanded, intermixed or a little higher up-very tall and slender amelanchiers (Botryapium),
some twenty-five feet high, on which no signs of fruit, though I have seen them
on some; some silvery grandidentata, and red and black oaks (some
yellowish, some reddish, green), and still reddish-white oaks, just starting;
and green pines for contrast, showing the silvery under sides of their leaves
or the edges of their dark stages (contrasting with their shaded under sides).
These are the colors of the forest-top, — the rug, looking down on it.
Tufts of
coarse grass are in full bloom along the riverside, — little islets big
enough to support a fisherman.
Again we scare up the herons, who, methinks,
will build hereabouts. They were standing by the water side. And again they
alight farther below, and we see their light-colored heads erect, and their
bodies at various angles as they stoop to drink. And again they flap away with
their great slate-blue wings, necks curled up (?) and legs straight out behind,
and, having attained a great elevation, they circle back over our heads, now
seemingly black as crows against the sky, — crows with long wings, they might be
taken for, — but higher and higher they mount by stages in the sky, till heads
and tails are lost and they are mere black wavelets amid the blue, one always
following close behind the other. They are evidently mated. It would be worth
the while if we could see them oftener in our sky.
Some apple trees are fairly
out.
What is that small slate-colored hawk with black tips to wings?
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 14, 1853
Red-wings, now perched on a yielding twig, now pursuing a female swiftly over the meadow, now darting across the stream. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Red-wing in Early Spring
May 10, 1853 ("The P. grandidentata which have flowered show no leaves yet; only very young ones, small downy leaves now"); May 13, 1852 (" The female Populus grandidentata, whose long catkins are now growing old, is now leafing out. The flowerless (male ?) ones show half-unfolded silvery leaves."); May 15, 1854 ("The large P. grandidentata by river not leafing yet."); May 17, 1858 ("The Populus grandidentata now shows large, silvery, downy, but still folded, leafets.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Big-toothed Aspen (Populus grandidentata)
The yellowbird, kingbird, and pewee, beside many swallows, are also seen. See May 10, 1853 (" New days, then, have come, ushered in by the warbling vireo, yellowbird, Maryland yellow-throat, and small pewee, and now made perfect by the twittering of the kingbird and the whistle of the oriole amid the elms, which are but just beginning to leaf out, ")
It would be worth the while if we could see them oftener in our sky. See April 22, 1852 ("It would affect our thoughts, deepen and perchance darken our reflections, if such huge birds flew in numbers in our sky. Have the effect of magnetic passes.")
What is that small slate-colored hawk with black tips to wings? See April 24, 1853 ("Marsh (?) hawk, with black tips of wings."); March 27, 1855 ("Marsh hawk, male. Slate-colored; beating the bush; black tips to wings and white rump."); 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") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Marsh Hawk (Northern Harrier)
