The river is quite low,

November 6. 

The river is quite low, about four inches lower than the hub [?] I used in the summer, or lower than before, this year. 

Yet there is more water in the mill-streams; the mill-wheels are supplied now which were stationary in the summer. 

C. thinks that he saw bats last evening.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  November 6, 1859

The river is quite low . . . lower than before this year. See November 26, 1858 ("I begin to suspect . . . that this rise and fall extending through a long series of years is not peculiar to the Walden system of ponds, but is true of ponds generally, and perhaps of rivers, though in their case it may be more difficult to detect."). Compare October 19, 1857 ("The river is very high for the season and all over the meadow in front of the house, and still rising."); October 27, 1853 ("The river still rises, — more than ever last night, owing to the rain")

The mill-wheels are supplied now which were stationary in the summer. See August 26, 1859 ("Mill-wheels that have rested for want of water begin to revolve again.")

C. thinks that he saw bats last evening. See November 1, 1855 (''Returning in the twilight, I see a bat over the river.")

A pearly skiff set afloat by the industrious millers

August 11.

 A. M. — Up Assabet to stone bridge. 

This river is so shallow that you can easily push up it with a paddle, but the other is commonly too deep for this. 

As I paddle up this stream this forenoon, the river gently rising as usual in the forenoon (in consequence of raising the gates of the various mill-ponds on and near to it, which had been shut in the night), I meet with many a clam which comes floating down in midstream, nicely poised on the water with its pearly concave side uppermost. 

These have been opened and left by the musquash during the night on the shore, or often on rocks in the stream, and now the water rising gently sets them afloat, as with care you can float an iron pot. 

But soon a stronger wind or eddy will cause the water to break over them and they will at once sink to the bottom. Last night it lay half buried in mud and sand at the bottom. 

The musquash has devoured its tenant, and now it floats seaward, a pearly skiff set afloat by the industrious millers. I met with as many as a dozen of them coming down the stream this forenoon, the valves at an angle of 45°, sometimes a single valve, but the least touch of my oars would sink them. 

The musquash are eating clams quite fast there. Those lately opened are generally quite small. Is it be cause of the season or the stream? 

When I raked the river the other day, all the clams I caught had closed their shells on the teeth of the rake which entered them, just as they catch sea clams with a pointed stick.

Those singular eggs which I saw at the Falls of Concord River in July (vide August 8) are far more numerous at the Assabet stone bridge, and many are hatched. They are sprinkled all over the stones of the arch just within it on the sides, and overhead, but extending only few feet under the bridge on either side.

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

Those singular eggs which I saw at the Falls of Concord River in July (vide August 8) are far more numerous at the Assabet stone bridge, and many are hatched. See August 8, 1859 ("I find the same curious eggs (which I saw at the Fordway on the 22d) on the rocks and trees on the Assabet . . . They are not yet hatched."); July 22, 1859 ("distinct white spots, looking like white paint . . . three fourths to one inch in diameter of an oval or circular form")

August 11.  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, August 11

 

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 © 2009-2021

Low-water plants.

August 1. 

August 1, 2019

6 a.m. — River is at summer level. 

This being Monday morning, the river is probably lower than at any other time in the week. 

Am surprised to see in water opposite between Monroe's and Dodd's the Myriophyllum ambiguum var. natans, amid the Bidens Beckii. It must have been out (under water) a fortnight. A pretty sprig of pectinate leafets above the capillary-leafed and slimy mass. 

The B. Beckii (just beginning to bloom) just shows a few green leafets above its dark and muddy masses, now that the river is low. 

Evidently the above two and lilies, cardinal-flowers, etc., depend on the state of the river in June. After a very wet June I think there is less bloom on them. Some years the first two are not noticed at all. 

We have now got down to the water milfoil and the B. Beckii. These might be called low-water plants. 

The bottom is occasionally — though quite rarely in Concord — of soft shifting sand, ripple-marked, in which the paddle sinks, under four or five feet of water (as below the ash tree hole), and few weeds grow on such a shallow. 

Evidently the hill at Hemlocks would be a flowing sand-hill, if it were not held together by the hemlocks.  

The common cat-tail (about five feet high by rail road, beyond the South Bridge) has no interval between the two kinds of flowers, but mine of yesterday has, and yet it is much larger than the common. Can it, then, be the Typha angustifolia, which is described as smaller and rare? 

I see a kingbird hovering within six inches above the potamogetons, front of Cheney's, and repeatedly snapping up some insects, perhaps a devil's-needle.

The west edge of the Rock above Island is eleven and a half inches above summer level. Now, at 5 P. M., the river has risen an inch and a half since 6 A. M., though we have not had a drop of rain for three days, and then but a few drops, and it fell three quarters of an inch between yesterday (Sunday) morning and this morning. Is this rise owing to the water let on from various mill-ponds this Monday morning?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 1, 1859

The B. Beckii (just beginning to bloom) just shows a few green leafets above its dark and muddy masses, now that the river is low. See August 2, 1856 ("Very common now are the few green emerald leafets of the Bidens Beckii, which will ere long yellow the shallow parts.")

The common cat-tail has no interval between the two kinds of flowers, but mine of yesterday has, and yet it is much larger than the common See July 31, 1859 ("Above the Sudbury causeway, I notice again that remarkable large and tall typha, apparently T. latifolia (yet there is at least more than an inch interval between the two kinds of flowers, judging from the stump of the sterile bud left on).")

I see a kingbird hovering within six inches above the potamogetons, front of Cheney's, and repeatedly snapping up some insects, perhaps a devil's-needle. See August 6, 1858 ("If our sluggish river, choked with potamogeton, might seem to have the slow-flying bittern for its peculiar genius, it has also the sprightly and aerial kingbird to twitter over and lift our thoughts to clouds as white as its own breast.")

Concord Bank has suspended.

October 15. 

October 15, 2017

Rain at last, and end of the remarkable days. 

The springs and rivers have been very low. Millers have not water enough to grind their grists. 

There has been a great fall of leaves in the night on account of this moist and rainy weather; but hardly yet that touch that brings down the rock maple. The streets are thickly strewn with elm and buttonwood and other leaves, feuille-morte color. 

Some elms and butternuts are quite bare. Yet the sugar maples in our streets are now in their prime and show unexpectedly bright and delicate tints, while some white maples by the river are nearly bare. I see, too, that all locusts did not become crisp and fall before this without acquiring a bright color. In the churchyard they are unwithered, just turning a pale yellow. 

How many plants are either yellow or scarlet! Not only maples, but rose bushes, hazel bushes, etc., etc. Rue is a conspicuous pale yellow for a weed. 

I saw the other day a cricket standing on his head in a chocolate-colored (inside) fungus, only his tail-yards visible. He had sunk a well an inch deep, and was even then sinking it, perpendicularly, unconscious of what was going on above. 

The ten days — at least — before this were plainly Indian summer. They were remarkably pleasant and warm. The latter half I sat and slept with an open window, though the first part of the time I had a little fire in the morning. These succeeded to days when you had worn thick clothing and sat by fires for some time. 

Our staghorn sumach has just become a very rich scarlet. So, apparently, has the large one at Mrs. Simmonds's. They are later than the others; a yellower scarlet, almost orange. 

It is another example of the oddity of the Orientals that yellow “is in the east a regal color, more especially so in China, where it is exclusively royal.” (Field on Colors, 139.) Further west it was purple, regal and imperial. 

The river lower this morning than before this year.

Concord Bank has suspended.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 15, 1857

Rain at last, and end of the remarkable days. See October 11, 1857 ("This is the seventh day of glorious weather.")

A great fall of leaves in the night on account of this moist and rainy weather. See October 15, 1856 ("Large fleets of maple and other leaves. . .came down in a shower with yesterday morning's frost. “): October 15, 1853 (“[H]ow the leaves come down in showers after this touch of the frost!.”)

I sat and slept with an open window. See October 10, 1856 (“”These are the finest days in the year, Indian summer. . . . I lie with window wide open under a single sheet most of the night.”); October 31, 1854 ("Sat with open window for a week.”)

The river lower this morning than before this year. See October 15, 1856 (“River lower than for some months. ”)

Concord Bank has suspended. See October 14, 1857 ("Banks built of granite, after some Grecian or Roman style, with their porticoes and their safes of iron, are not so permanent, and cannot give me so good security for capital invested in them, as the heads of withered hardhack in the meadow."); See also Panic of 1857 - Wikipedia

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, 

 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

Harvest Days--the seventh day of glorious weather.

October 11.

Sunday. P. M. — Up Assabet.

River lower than before since winter at least; very low.

Another frost last night, although with fog, and this afternoon the maple and other leaves strew the water, and it is almost a leaf harvest.

I see some fine clear yellows from the Rhus Toxicodendron on the bank by the hemlocks and beyond.

The osmunda ferns are generally withered and brown except where very much protected from frost. The O. regalis is the least generally withered of them.

The onoclea is much later and still generally green along the bank, or faded white here and there.

Looking at the reflection of the bank by the Hemlocks, the reflected sun dazzles me, and I approach nearer to the bank in order to shut it out (of course it disappears sooner in the reflection than the substance, because every head is raised above the level of the water), and I see in the reflection the fine, slender grasses on the sharp or well-defined edge of the bank all glowing with silvery light, a singularly silvery light to be seen in the water, and whose substance I can not see to advantage with my head thus high, since the sun is in the way.

This is the seventh day of glorious weather. Perhaps, these might be called Harvest Days. Within the week most of the apples have been gathered; potatoes are being dug; corn is still left in the fields, though the stalks are being carried in.

Others are ditching and getting out mud and cutting up bushes along fences, – what is called “brushing up,” — burning brush, etc.

These are cricket days.

The river is so low that I run against several rocks, which I must have floated over three or four days ago, and I see many snags and water-logged trunks on the bottom or partly exposed, which were then invisible.

It is remarkable how many trees — maple and swamp white [oak], etc. — which stand on the bank of the river, being undermined by the water or broken off by the ice or other cause, fall into the stream and finally sink to the bottom and are half buried there for many years. A great deal of wood, especially of the kinds named, is thus lost. They last longer there probably than in favorable localities out of water. I see still the timber foundation of an old dam just above Spencer Brook, extending across the river on the bottom, though there has been nothing above water within my recollection. The large black oaks in front of Prescott Barrett's are one by one falling into the river, and there are none to succeed them. They were probably left to skirt the stream when the other wood was cut, and now, when they are undermined, there are none behind to supply their places.

Mr. Conant of Acton tells me that there was a grist mill built over the river there by Sam Barrett's grandfather, and that he remembers going to it when he was fourteen. He went in at the Lee house and crossed the river by a bridge at the mill. He says that it is as much as sixty years since the mill was standing. Minott thinks it is not quite so long since. He remembers the bridge there, not a town one, nor strong enough for a horse and cart. Thinks the mill was discontinued because Dr. Lee complained of its flowing his wood land. They used to stop with their carts this side and carry their bags back and forth over the bridge on their shoulders. Used a small and poor road across to Lee's farm.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  October 11, 1857

River lower than before since winter at least. See October 15, 1856 ("River lower than for some months")

Another frost last night, although with fog, and this afternoon the maple and other leaves strew the water, and it is almost a leaf harvest.. See October 12, 1855 ("The leaves fallen last night now lie thick on the water next the shore, concealing it, —fleets of dry boats . . ."); October 12, 1858 ("There are many maple, birch, etc., leaves on the Assabet, in stiller places along the shore, but not yet a leaf harvest"); 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 winteryish.")

The seventh day of glorious weather. See October 10, 1857 ("The sixth day of glorious weather, which I am tempted to call the finest in the year , so bright and serene the air and such a sheen from the earth, so brilliant the foliage, so pleasantly warm . . . Certainly these are .the most brilliant days in the year, ushered in, perhaps, by a frosty morning, as this."); October 10, 1856 (“”These are the finest days in the year, Indian summer.")

Who saw the otter?

May 9. 

Another fine day. 

6 a. m. — On water. 

Maryland yellow-throat. Aspen leaves one inch over.

Hear stake-driver. Black and white creeper's fine note. Er-te-ter-twee, or evergreen-forest note. Golden-crowned thrush note. Kingbird. 

P. M. To Gilson's Mill, Littleton. 

George Brooks points to an old house of which one half the roof only has been shingled, etc., etc., and says he guessed it to be a widow's dower from this, and on inquiry found it so. 

Went to Gilson's tumble-down mill and house. He appeared, licking his chaps after dinner, in a mealy coat, and suddenly asked in the midst of a sentence, with a shrug of his shoulders, 

"Isn't there something painted on my back ?" 

There were some marks in red chalk they used to chalk the bags with, and he said he thought he had felt his son at the mill chalking his back. He feared he was making an exhibition before strangers. 

The boy speared fishes, chiefly suckers, pouts, etc. A fire in a hand-crate carried along the bank of the brook (Stony Brook). He had lately speared a sucker weighing five and a quarter pounds, which he sold; went back and forth some twenty-five rods and found the suckers less shy at last than at first. 

Saw otter there. 

I saw many perch at the foot of the falls. 

He said that they and trout could get up five or six feet over the rocks there into the pond, it being a much broken fall.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 9, 1857

Hear stake-driver. See May 9, 1853 ("At sundown paddled up the river. The pump-like note of a stake-driver from the fenny place across the Lee meadow."); April 24, 1854 ("I hear the loud and distinct pump-a-gor of a stake-driver. Thus he announces himself."); May 12, 1855 ("A distant stake-driver"); May 20, 1856 ("See and hear a stake-driver in the swamp. It took one short pull at its pump and stopped.")

Saw otter there. Consider. Did Thoreau, while visiting the falls at Littleton, see an otter? Or is he recounting a second-hand story about Gilson the miller's son? See March 31, 1857 ("The existence of the otter, our largest wild animal, is not betrayed to any of our senses (or at least not to more than one in a thousand)!"); April 6, 1855 ("it reminds me of an otter, which however I have never seen."); February 20, 1855 (among the quadrupeds of Concord, the otter is "very rare."); January 30, 1854 ("How retired an otter manages to live! He grows to be four feet long without any mortal getting a glimpse of him,");  January 21, 1853 ("Otter are very rare here now.”); and the Natural History of Massachusetts (1842) ("The bear, wolf, lynx, wildcat, deer, beaver, and marten have disappeared ; the otter is rarely if ever seen here at present; and the mink is less common than formerly..")

Scarlet berry season.

September 28. 

P. M. — To old mill-site behind Ponkawtasset.

Black or purplish-black

poke berries hanging around

the bright-purple stems.

(poison)

Poke berries in the sprout-land east of the red huckleberry still fresh and abundant, perhaps a little past prime. I never saw so many. The plants stand close together, and their drooping racemes three to five inches long, of black or purplish-black berries , almost crowd one another, hanging around the bright-purple, now for the most part bare, stems.

I hear some birds about, but see none feeding on the berries. I could soon gather bushels there. 

The arum berries are still fresh and abundant, perhaps in their prime. A large cluster is two and a half inches long by two wide and rather flattish. One, which has ripened prematurely, the stalk being withered and drooping, resembles a very short thick ear of scarlet corn. This might well enough be called snake-corn. These singular vermilion-colored berries, about a hundred of them, surmount a purple bag on a peduncle six or eight inches long. 

It is one of the most remarkable and dazzling, if not the handsomest, fruits we have. These were by violet wood-sorrel wall. 

How many fruits are scarlet now! — barberries, prinos, etc.

A flock of vireo-like, somewhat yellowish birds, very neat, white beneath and olive above, in garden.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 28, 1856


Poke, arum ... See August 23, 1853 ("Poke stems are now ripe. . . .Their stems are a deep, rich purple with a bloom, contrasting with the clear green leaves. Its stalks, thus full of purple wine, are one of the fruits of autumn.");  August 28, 1856 ("See the great oval masses of scarlet berries of the arum now in the meadows."); September 2, 1853 (" The dense oval bunches of arum berries now startle the walker in swamps. They are a brilliant vermilion .”); September 3, 1853  ("Now is the season for those comparatively rare but beautiful wild berries which are not food for man."); September 27, 1852 ("The arum berries are now in perfection, cone-shaped spikes an inch and a half long, of scarlet or vermilion- colored, irregular, somewhat pear-shaped berries springing from a purplish core.")

How many fruits are scarlet now! See September 28, 1851 ("The swamp is bordered with the red-berried alder, or prinos,") See also August 22, 1852 ("Perhaps fruits are colored like the trillium berry and the scarlet thorn to attract birds to them.")

September 28.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, September 28

The arum berries 

are still fresh and abundant –

perhaps in their prime. 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Scarlet berry season.

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

When Mill Brook had more water

February 29.

Minott told me this afternoon of his catching a pickerel in the Mill Brook once, — before the pond was drawn off, when the brook had four or five times as much water as now, — which weighed four pounds. Says they stayed in it all winter in those days. This was near his land up the brook. He loves to recall his hunting days and adventures, and I willingly listen to the stories he has told me half a dozen times already. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 29, 1856

The stories he has told me half a dozen times already. See October 2, 1857 (The chief incidents in Minott's life must be more distinct and interesting to him now than immediately after they occurred, for he has recalled and related them so often that they are stereotyped in his mind.”)

The month of the crusted snow.

February 28

P. M. —To Nut Meadow. 

How various are the talents of men! From the brook in which one lover of nature has never during all his lifetime detected anything larger than a minnow, an other extracts a trout that weighs three pounds, or an otter four feet long. How much more game he will see who carries a gun, i. e. who goes to see it! Though you roam the woods all your days, you never will see by chance what he sees who goes on purpose to see it. 

February 28, 2021

I go on the crust which we have had since the 13th, i. e. on the solid frozen snow, which settles very gradually in the sun, across the fields and brooks. 

The very beginning of the river’s breaking up appears to be the oozing of water through cracks in the thinnest places, and standing in shallow puddles there on the ice, which freeze solid at night. The river and brooks are quite shrunken. The brooks flow far under the hollow ice and snow-crust a foot thick, which here and there has fallen in, showing the shrunken stream far below. The surface of the snow melts into a regular waved form, like raised scales. 

Miles is repairing the damage done at his new mill by the dam giving way. He is shovelling out the flume, which was half filled with sand, standing in the water. His sawmill, built of slabs, reminds me of a new country. He has lost a head of water equal to two feet by this accident. Yet he sets his mill agoing to show me how it works. 

What a smell as of gun-wash when he raised the gate! He calls it the sulphur from the pond. It must be the carburetted hydrogen gas from the bottom of the pond under the ice. It powerfully scents the whole mill. A powerful smelling-bottle.

How pleasant are the surroundings of a mill! Here are the logs (pail stuff), already drawn to the door from a neighboring hill before the mill is in operation. The dammed-up meadow, the melted snow, and welling springs are the serf he compels to do his work. He is unruly as yet, has lately broken loose, filled up the flume, and flooded the fields below. He uses the dam of an old mill which stood here a hundred years ago, which now nobody knows anything about. The mill is built of slabs, of the worm-eaten sap-wood. The old dam had probably been undermined by muskrats. It would have been most prudent to have built a new one. Rude forces, rude men, and rude appliances.   

That strong gun-wash scent from the mill-pond water was very encouraging. I who never partake of the sacrament make the more of it. 

How simple the machinery of the mill! Miles has dammed a stream, raised a pond or head of water, and placed an old horizontal mill-wheel in position to receive a jet of water on its buckets, transferred the motion to a horizontal shaft and saw by a few cog wheels and simple gearing, and, throwing a roof of slabs over all, at the outlet of the pond, you have a mill. 

A weight of water stored up in a meadow, applied to move a saw, which scratches its way through the trees placed before it. So simple is a sawmill. A millwright comes and builds a dam across the foot of the meadow, and a mill-pond is created, in which, at length, fishes of various kinds are found; and muskrats and minks and otter frequent it.

The pond is like a weight wound up.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  February 28, 1856

You never will see by chance what he sees who goes on purpose to see it. See 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."); November 4, 1858 ("You will see, and much more, if you are prepared to see it  – if you look for it  . . . 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. He will keep himself supplied by firing up his chimney. The geese fly exactly under his zenith, and honk when they get there.");  Compare August 5, 1851 ("The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”); August 21, 1851 ("You must walk sometimes perfectly free, not prying nor inquisitive, not bent upon seeing things"); November 18 1851 ("The chopper who works in the woods all day is more open in some respects to the impressions they are fitted to make than the naturalist who goes to see them. He really forgets himself, forgets to observe, and at night he dreams of the swamp, its phenomena and events. Not so the naturalist; enough of his unconscious life does not pass there. A man can hardly be said to be there if he knows that he is there, or to go there if he knows where he is going. The man who is bent upon his work is frequently in the best attitude to observe what is irrelevant to his work."); September 13, 1852 ("I must walk more with free senses. I must let my senses wander as my thoughts, my eyes see without looking. Carlyle said that how to observe was to look, but I say that it is rather to see, and the more you look the less you will observe. Be not preoccupied with looking. Go not to the object; let it come to you. What I need is not to look at all, but a true sauntering of the eye.”); March 23, 1853 ("Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at Nature directly, but only with the side of his eye.”); June 14, 1853 ("You are in that favorable frame of mind described by De Quincey, open to great impressions, and you see those rare sights with the unconscious side of the eye, which you could not see by a direct gaze before.”); December 11, 1855 ("I saw this familiar fact at a different angle. It is only necessary to behold thus the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair’s breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance. To perceive freshly, with fresh senses, is to be inspired.”); April 13, 1860 (“It distinctly occurred to me that, perhaps, if I came against my will, as it were, to look at the sweet-gale as a matter of business, I might discover something else interesting.”)

I go on the crust which we have had since the 13th . . . across the fields and brooks.  See February 13, 1856 ("This fall of 42° from 8.30 A. M. yesterday to the same time to-day has produced not a thin and smooth, but a very firm and thick, uneven crust, on which I go in any direction across the fields.); February 14, 1856 ("I can now walk on the crust in every direction at the Andromeda Swamp;"); February 25, 1856 ("The crust still bears, and I leave the railroad at Andromeda Ponds and go through on crust to Fair Haven."); See also February 9, 1851 ("Now I travel across the fields on the frozen crust . . . It is easier to get about the country than at any other season."); February 9, 1852 ("This is our month of the crusted snow."); February 14, 1852   ("Latterly we have had, i.e. within a week, crusted snow, made by thaw and rain."); February 17, 1854 ("In the early part of winter there was no walking on the snow, but after January. . . you could walk on the snow-crust pretty well."); February 19, 1855 ("Rufus Hosmer says that in the year 1820 there was so smooth and strong an icy crust on a very deep snow that you could skate everywhere over the fields and for the most part over the fences."); February 29, 1852 ("From Pine Hill, looking westward, I see the snowcrust shine in the sun as far as the eye can reach.")_

The carburetted hydrogen gas from the bottom of the pond under the ice. See July 9, 1857 ("Am surprised to find how much carburetted hydrogen gas there is in the beds of sawdust by the side of this stream."); July 14, 1857 ("Set fire to the carburetted hydrogen from the sawdust shoal with matches, and heard it flash.")

Across fields and brooks

I go on the crust, on the 

solid frozen snow.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The month of the crusted 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 ©  2009-2026

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