The sturdy white oak near the Derby railroad bridge

February 10. 

Up railroad to Assabet and return via Hollowell place. The river has risen again, and, instead of ice and snow, there is water over the ice on the meadows. This is the second freshet since the snows. The ice is cracked, and in some places heaved up in the usual manner. 

The sturdy white oak near the Derby railroad bridge has been cut down. It measures five feet and three inches over the stump, at eighteen inches from the ground.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 10, 1854

The sturdy white oak near the Derby railroad bridge. See April 19, 1852 ("That oak by Derby's is a grand object, seen from any side. It stands like an athlete and defies the tempests in every direction. It has not a weak point. It is an agony of strength. Its branches look like stereo typed gray lightning on the sky. But I fear a price is set upon its sturdy trunk and roots for ship-timber, for knees to make stiff the sides of ships against the Atlantic billows. Like an athlete, it shows its well- developed muscles");  December 22, 1852 ("A rambling, rocky, wild, moorish pasture, this of Hunt's, with two or three great white oaks to shade the cattle, which the farmer would not take fifty dollars apiece for, though the ship-builder wanted them."); See also  March 25, 1853 ("Measured a white oak in front of Mr. Billings's new house, about one mile beyond Saxonville,-twelve and one twelfth feet in circumference at four feet from the ground (the smallest place within ten feet from the ground), fourteen feet circumference at ground, and a great spread."); May 19, 1856 ("Returning, stopped at Barrett’s sawmill . . . He was sawing a white oak log. . . Said that about as many logs were brought to his mill as ten years ago, — he did not perceive the difference, — but they were not so large, and perhaps they went further for them"); October 29, 1860 ("I am surprised to find on this[E. Hubbard’s ] hill (cut some seven or eight years ago) many remarkably old stumps wonderfully preserved, especially on the north side the hill, — walnuts, white oak and other oaks, and black birch. One white oak is eighteen and a half inches in diameter and has one hundred and forty-three rings. This is very one-sided in its growth, the centre being just four inches from the north side, or thirty - six rings to an inch. Of course I counted the other side.Another, close by, gave one hundred and forty-one rings, another white oak fifteen and a half inches in diameter had one hundred and fifty-five rings. It has so smooth (sawed off) and solid, almost a polished or marble-Like, surface that I could not at first tell what kind of wood it was. Another white oak the same as last in rings, i. e. one hundred and fifty-five, twenty-four inches in diameter. All these were sound to the very core, so that I could see the first circles. . . For aught that appeared, they might have continued to grow a century longer. The stumps are far apart, so that this formed an open grove,"); November 13, 1860 ("On the Moore and Hosmer lot, cut in’52 (I think), west of railroad, south of Heywood’s meadow, an oak stump fifteen and a half inches in diameter, ninety three rings; another, white oak, fourteen and a half inches in diameter, ninety-four rings . . .It was a good hundred years since that old stump was cut . . .A white oak standing by the fence west of Spanish Brook dam on Morse’s lot, circumference six feet and two twelfths at three feet."); Novemberf 28 28, 1860 ("On the plain just north of the east end of G. M. B.'s oaks, many oaks were sawed off about a year ago . . . One white oak, 17 inches diameter, has 100 rings.A second, 16 1/2 inches diameter, also 100 rings.")

Cutting old trees. 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. ... It concerns us all whether these proprietors choose to cut down all the woods this winter or not"); March 11, 1852 (The woods I walked in in my youth are cut off. Is it not time that I ceased to sing?").

Old growth specimens. In 1860, as part of his study of forest succession HDT was to measure old trees in detail. See October 19, 1860 (" I can easily find in countless numbers in our forests, frequently in the third succession, the stumps of the oaks that were cut near the end of the last century. Perhaps I can recover thus generally the oak woods of the beginning of the last century." October 20, 1860 ("[At Hubbard's wood] 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."); November 1, 1860 ("Measure some pine stumps on Tommy Wheeler's land, about that now frosty hollow, cut ... four years ago. One, having 164 rings, sprang up at least one hundred and sixty-eight years ago, or about the year 1692, or fifty-seven years after the settlement, 1635"); November 13, 1860 ("A white birch (Betula alba) west edge of Trillium Wood, two feet seven inches circumference at three feet"); November 14, 1860 ("The red maple on south edge of Trillium Wood is six feet three inches in circumference at three feet"); December 1, 1860 ("Measure a great red maple near the south end of E. Hubbard's swamp, dividing in two at the ground, the largest trunk 7 feet and 10 inches at three feet") ; see also January 27, 1856 ("The white maple at Derby’s Bridge measures fifteen feet in circumference at ground,").

See also November 10, 1860 (Inches Wood); November 5, 1860 (Blood's oak lot.) and November 2, 1860 (Wetherbee's old oak lot).

February 10. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 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 © 2009-2024