The graves of trees

October 20. 

I examine Ebby Hubbard's old oak and pine wood. The trees may be a hundred years old.

The very oldest evidences of a tree are a hollow three or four feet across, - the grave of an oak that was cut or died eighty or a hundred years ago there. 

It is with the graves of trees as with those of men, - at first an upright stump (for a monument), in course of time a mere mound, and finally, when the corpse has decayed and shrunk, a depression in the soil.

The only other ancient traces of trees are perhaps the semi conical mounds which had been heaved up by trees which fell in some hurricane.

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

The trees may be a hundred years old. See January 22, 1852 ("I love to look at Ebby Hubbard's oaks and pines on the hillside from Brister's Hill. Am thankful that there is one old miser who will not sell nor cut his woods.”);  December 3, 1855 ("I see one or two more large oaks in E. Hubbard’s wood lying high on stumps, waiting for snow to be removed. I miss them as surely and with the same feeling that I do the old inhabitants out of the village street.”); November 2, 1860 ("Ebby Hubbard's [wood]was never cut off but only cut out of.")