In the Garden of Hope

At the wishing well
on the cell phone
wanting to make a joke:

"I'm waiting for my brother," i explain,
"at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center..."

then tear up and choke,
"...in the Garden of Hope."


ZPHX 7/17/09

Stream dynamics and ecology of the Assabet

July 16 and 18. 

Afternoons, I sounded the Assabet as far up as the stone bridge. 

This bridge, as I see by the town records, was talked about (i. e. the building) in 1807, and was probably built that year or the next (though E. Wood says that the Turnpike Company, who then proposed to build it, did not fulfill their contract). Shattuck's date, 1802, is wrong. 

Accordingly, by building this narrow bridge here, twenty-five feet in width, or contracting the stream to about one fourth its average width, the current has been so increased as to wash away about a quarter of an acre of land which rises a dozen or fourteen feet above water (or at least an acre four feet in depth) and dig a hole six times the average depth of the stream, twenty-two and a half feet deep, or considerable, i. e. three feet, deeper than any place in the main stream from Sudbury Causeway to Atkins's boat-house bend, and all this in fifty years.

Yet the depth under the bridge is only two and a half feet plus. It falls in four rods from two and a half to twenty-two and a half. A considerable island has been formed there, at least three feet and a half above low water, composed of sand, and, two or three rods lower, are deposited the stones, generally larger than a hen's egg, without sand, forming bars and islands quite distinct from the former. 

This is much the swiftest place on the stream thus far and deeper than any for twenty-five miles of [the] other stream, and consequently there is a great eddy, where I see cakes of ice go round and round in the spring, and, as usual, the shoal water and islands formed by the ruins of the bank and of the bottom are close by. As usual, the shoal water is produced by the rapidity of the current close by.

The sand and gravel are deposited chiefly in the immediate neighborhood of the swiftest water, the swift water producing an eddy. Hence, apparently, the sandy islands at the junction of the rivers, the sand-bar at the swift place on the Assabet, etc.

Contract the stream and make it swift, and you will wear a deep hole and make sand-bars and islands below. 

The stream is remarkably different from the other. It is not half so deep. It is considerably more rapid. The bottom is not muddy but sandy and occasionally stony. Though far shallower, it is less weedy than the other. In the above distance weeds do not anywhere grow quite across it. A shallowness of two and a half feet does not necessarily bring in weeds, and for long distances three feet is clear of weeds. This is owing, perhaps, not only to the greater swiftness of the current, but to the want of mud under the sand. 

The banks and bars are peculiar. They are commonly composed of a fine sand mixed with sawdust, shavings, etc., in which the black willow loves to grow. I know of no such banks on the main stream. 

Again there are comparatively few of the large floating potamogetons here. (I do not remember any of the very largest species.) The weeds are chiefly bur-reeds and a slenderer potamogeton and an immersed species (I speak of weeds in the middle). 

You wonder what makes the difference between this stream and the other. It seems impossible that it should be a geological difference in the beds of the streams so near together. Is it not owing simply to the greater swiftness of this stream? 

Does not this produce a sandy and gravelly and stony bottom, and so invite a different fauna and flora? I suspect that a fall of two or three inches more in a mile will produce a different fauna and flora to some extent, — the fresh-water sponge, the wood tortoise, the sucker, the kingfisher, the stone-heaps. 

It is remarkable how the stones are separated from the sand at the Eddy Bridge and deposited in a bar or islands by themselves a few rods lower down. The sand bar there, partly under water, looks exactly like a snow drift. It is a narrow, sharp ridge, extending southwest from the island, with deep water on each side. The sand carried round by the eddy falls there where the ice is observed to loiter most. The large stones are perhaps swept away by a stronger current beneath.

The bars and banks of this stream are peculiar, i. e. of fine sand without mud. This indicates a fall and swifter water, and consequently it is on such a stream the mills are built and sawdust and shavings are mixed with such sand to form the bank. 

One such bank at the swift place has been recently raised four or five feet above the present level by freshets. It is apparently advancing down-stream.  What is deposited by the eddy occasioned by the narrows is building it up, and so the stream is being narrowed further down. 

Eddies are the great builders of sand-bars and islands and banks. Any agent that stops the progress of the water downward builds up the bottom in some place. At the bottom of the deep hole at Eddy Bridge, I felt several water-logged trunks of trees and saw some, which probably were carried round and round by the eddy until they became water-logged and sank.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 16, 1859

Birding at Fair Haven Pond

July 10.

Take boat at Fair Haven Pond and paddle up to Sudbury Causeway, sounding the river. Today, like yesterday, is very hot, with a blue haze concealing the mountains and hills, looking like hot dust in the air.

Hearing a noise, I look up and see a pigeon woodpecker pursued by a kingbird, and the former utters loud shrieks with fear. We scare up eight or a dozen wood ducks, already about grown. The meadow is quite alive with them. See many young birds now, -- blackbirds, swallows, kingbirds, etc., in the air. Even hear one

link from a bobolink.

The bottom of Fair Haven Pond is very muddy. I can generally thrust a pole down three feet into it, and it may be very much deeper.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 10, 1859

July 10. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 10

  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

It will alter the map of the river in one year.

July 9. 

Paddle up river and sound a little above Fair Haven Pond. 

See young kingbirds which have lately flown perched in a family on the willows,
--- the airy bird, lively, twittering.


The water having gone down, I notice a broad red base to the bayonet rush, apparently the effect of the water, even as the maples (of both kinds) and the polygonums are reddened. The bayonet rush is not quite out. 

I see, at length, where the floated meadow (on Hubbard's meadow) came from last spring, — from opposite Bittern Cliff, and some below. There is a pond created in the meadow there, some five rods by four and three to three and a half feet deep, water being eleven and a half inches above summer level, — a regular oval pond, where nothing rises above water, but I see pontederia grass-like leafets springing up all over the bottom. The piece taken out here probably contained no button-bushes. So much of the meadow which has been moved [?] is thus converted into a pool. 

Close by, south, are still larger scars, where masses of button-bush thicket have been ripped up. No doubt some of those on Hubbard's meadow came from here. The water where they stood is about the same depth as in the other place. 

I see a piece of floated button-bush on the south side of Fair Haven Pond, west of the old boat place of Baker Shore, which is twelve rods long by one rod wide, and, in two or three pieces [sic] where it is several thicknesses, it is full three feet thick of solid earth. The whole is set in a straight line separating the meadow in the rear from the pond, forming, in fact, just such a brink there as exists in perfection on the west side of the pond. 

This might be called brink-bush, or drift-bush, river-fence. It is the floating fencing-stuff of the river. Possibly that (in the spring) island south of the mouth of Well Meadow Brook, and even the large island in the pond, had its beginning thus, not only willows but maples and alders having at length sprung up on it and built it up. 

The next day (10th) I see, just above Sherman's Bridge, on the east side, a piece, some eight rods long by one rod wide, arranged as a brink separating a meadow from the river in the same manner, and, a quarter of a mile higher up on the same side, a more or less broken piece which I estimated by my eye to be five rods by twelve, the largest mass or collection of the kind moved together that I ever saw. I have seen six pieces moved last March, or spring, which contained all together more than half an acre. There was more than a quarter of an acre in the last piece alone. 

The button-bush and black willow generally grow together, especially on the brink of the stagnant parts of the river. (Very little comparatively in the great Sudbury meadow and in our Great Meadows.) Perhaps they are there carried off by the ice. They stand generally in line (sometimes half a dozen rods wide) on the brink of the river, separating it from some (commonly narrow) meadow behind, and at high water are a distinct line of separation, rising above the surface and indicating the summer boundary. 


The best example is at Fair Haven Pond, west side. It is often pretty deep water quite up to the bushes, or there are pads, etc., outside them. There they stand in massive and regular straight or curving lines, and you suppose that they have stood there for ages. But I have seen twelve rods together (i. e. in one piece) of such fence, the whole width of it transplanted half a mile to some shore where there was none, and forming a fence to the pond or river there.


We are accustomed to refer changes in the shore and the channel to the very gradual influence of the current washing away and depositing matter which was held in suspension, but certainly in many parts of our river the ice which moves these masses of bushes and meadow is a much more important agent. It will alter the map of the river in one year. 


The whole shore for forty rods on the east side below Bittern Cliff was stripped of its button-bushes and willows, etc., etc., last spring, and as I floated over the river there to-day, I could not at first account for the remarkable breadth of the river there, like a bay. I got a very novel impression of the size of the river, though it is now low water. In fact the width of the river has been increased fully three or four rods for more than forty rods in length, and is three to four feet deep on that side now. 

You cannot tell, of any clump or row of button-bushes, whether it grew up where it stands or was thus set out there. I have seen these masses, sunk in midstream, produce a small weedy spot the same year, and possibly a large mass might thus form an extensive shallow and weedy place or island. 

Potamogetons begin to prevail at five and a half feet in sluggish water (at summer level), though they will still be visible when the water rises higher, rising with it. They appear at four and a half, if more rapid, and are densest at three feet, if the stream is not exceedingly rapid. The kalmiana lily grows to seven and a half feet (summer level) where it is sluggish (and is still atop when it is a foot or two deeper), and you see this, the heart-leaf, utricularia, and potamogeton, all together, in five feet [of] water (also in same place when a foot or two higher). 

The front-rank polygonum grows outside the pontederia, next to the potamogeton, and, near the causeway bridge, in Wayland, reaches (except four or five feet) quite across the river (three feet [of] water). 

We have not only the Assabet uniting with the main stream about in the middle of the township, but three highways thus raying out in different directions, — as great an amount of river within these limits as could well be. Neither stream runs direct through the town. The main stream runs first northerly or northwesterly and then northeasterly, and perhaps this is as convenient for sailing in flat-bottomed boats as any arrangement could be, the prevailing winds being northwest and southwest, but sailing is much affected by hills, woods, etc. 

To-day, July 9th, water is eleven and a half inches above summer level.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 9, 1859

See young kingbirds which have lately flown perched in a family on the willows, — the airy bird, lively, twittering. See July 5, 1856 ("A kingbird’s nest in fork of a button-bush five feet high on shore (not saddled on); three young just hatched and one egg."); 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.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,the Eastern Kingbird

The ice which moves these masses of bushes and meadow is a much more important agent. It will alter the map of the river in one year. See February 28, 1855 ("This is a powerful agent at work.”); June 22, 1859 ("One who is not almost daily on the river will not perceive the revolution constantly going on.”)

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

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

Canon of Desolation.

July 8. 

This morning, Bradley and I go out to climb, and gain an altitude of more than two thousand feet above the river, but still do not reach the summit of the wall.

After dinner, we pass through a region of the wildest desolation. The canon is very tortuous, the river very rapid, and many lateral canons enter on either side. These usually have their branches, so that the region is cut into a wilderness of gray and brown cliffs. In several places, these lateral canons are only separated from each other by narrow walls, often hundreds of feet high, but so narrow in places that where softer rocks are found below, they have crumbled away, and left holes in the wall, forming passages from one canon into another.

Piles of broken rock lie against these walls; crags and tower shaped peaks are seen every where; and away above them, long lines of broken cliffs, and above and beyond the cliffs are pine forests, of which we obtain occasional glimpses, as we look up through a vista of rocks.

The walls are almost without vegetation; a few dwarf bushes are seen here and there, clinging to the rocks, and cedars grow from the crevices— not like the cedars of a land refreshed with rains, but ugly clumps, like war clubs, beset with spines. We are minded to call this the Canon of Desolation.


John Wesley Powell, Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries, July 8, 1869

Tacking in a sea of grass

July 6.

Grass now for a week or more has been seriously in the way of the walker, but already I take advantage of the few fields that are mowed. It requires skillful tacking, a good deal of observation, and experience to get across the country now.

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

Tacking . . . to get across the country.... See July 4, 1860 ("We are wading and navigating at present in a sort of sea of grass, which yields and undulates under the wind like water"); July 8, 1851 ("The yellow, waving, rustling rye extends far up and over the hills on either side, leaving only a narrow and dark passage at the bottom of a deep ravine . ... These long grain-fields which you must respect, - must go round, - occupying the ground like an army.")

Grass now for a week

or more seriously in the

way of the walker.

A frog reckons that he knows where the brook is.

July 4. 

P. M. — To Fair Haven Pond, measuring depth of river.

Walking beside a ditch or brook, you see alarmed frogs launching themselves a considerable distance into the brook. They spring upward to clear all intervening obstacles, and seem to know pretty well where the brook is. 

A frog reckons that he knows where the brook is.

The deepest place I find in the river to-day is off Bittern Cliff, answering to the bold shore. There is an uninterrupted deep and wide reach of the river from Fair Haven Pond to Nut Meadow Brook.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, July 4, 1859