At Goose Pond.

April 30. 

Thursday. A. M. — Surveying for Farrar and Heywood by Walden. 

Hear a kingfisher at Goose Pond. 

Hear again the same bird heard at Conantum April 18th, which I think must be the ruby-crowned wren. 

As we stood looking for a bound by the edge of Goose Pond, a pretty large hawk alighted on an oak close by us. It probably has a nest near by and was concerned for its young. 

The larch plucked yesterday sheds pollen to-day in house, probably to-day abroad. 

Balm-of-Gilead plucked yesterday, not yet (nor on May 1st) in house.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal April 30, 1857

Hear a kingfisher at Goose Pond. See April 23, 1854 (“A kingfisher with his crack, — cr-r-r-rack.”); April 24, 1854 ("The kingfisher flies with a crack cr-r-r-ack and a limping or flitting flight from tree to tree before us ”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. The Kingfisher

Hear again the same bird heard at Conantum April 18th, which I think must be the ruby-crowned wren. See April 26, 1860 ("Hear the ruby-crowned wren in the morning, near George Heywood’s.”); May 6, 1855 ("Hear at a distance a ruby(?)-crowned wren, so robin-like and spirited. After see one within ten . . . feet of me as if curious. I think this the only Regulus I have ever seen.”); see also note to April 20, 1859 ("My ruby-crowned or crested wren”).  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau: the ruby-crowned or crested wren. and  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Winter Birds

It probably has a nest near by . . . See note to April 30, 1855 ( It must have a nest there. “)

The larch plucked yesterday sheds pollen to-day See .April 27, 1856 (The female flowers are now fully expanded and very pretty, but small. I think it will first scatter pollen to-morrow. ");April 29, 1855 ("The crimson female flowers are now handsome but small. ") and note to May 1, 1856 ("I judge that the larch blossomed ...”). See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Larch

A sudden and decided progress in the season.

April 29. 

Purple finch sings on R. W. E.'s trees. 

P. M. — To Dugan Desert. 

At Tarbell's watering-place, see a dandelion, its conspicuous bright-yellow disk in the midst of a green space on the moist bank. It is thus I commonly meet with the earliest dandelion set in the midst of some liquid green patch. It seems a sudden and decided progress in the season. 

On the pitch pines beyond John Hosmer's, I see old cones within two feet of the ground on the trunk, — sometimes a circle of them around it, — which must have been formed on the young tree some fifteen years ago. 

Sweet-fern at entrance of Ministerial Swamp. 

A partridge there drums incessantly. C. says it makes his heart beat with it, or he feels it in his breast. 

I find that that clayey-looking soil on which the baeomyces grows is a very thin crust on common sand only. 

I have seen that pretty little hair-cap moss (Pogonatum brevicaule?) for a fortnight out at least; like little pine trees; the staminate pretty, cup-shaped and shorter. 

A steel-blue-black flattish beetle, which, handled, imparted a very disagreeable carrion-like scent to fingers. 

Miles's Pond is running off. The sweet-gale, willows, etc., which have been submerged and put back, begin to show themselves and are trying to catch up with their fellows. 

I am surprised to see how some blackberry pastures and other fields are filling up with pines, trees which I thought the cows had almost killed two or three years ago; so that what was then a pasture is now a young wood-lot. 

A little snow still lies in the road in one place, the relic of the snow of the 21st.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 29, 1857

See a dandelion, its conspicuous bright-yellow disk in the midst of a green space on the moist bank. See April 29, 1852 ("F. Wheeler, Jr., saw dandelions in bloom the 20th of April. Garfield's folks used them for greens . They grew in a springy place behind Brigham' s in the Corner.") April 29, 1855 ("Dandelions out yesterday, at least.");April 29, 1859 ("First observe the dandelion well out in R. W. E.'s yard"). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Dandelion in Spring

C. says it makes his heart beat with it, or he feels it in his breast. See April 25, 1854 ("The first partridge drums in one or two places, as if the earth's pulse now beat audibly with the increased flow of life. It slightly flutters all Nature and makes her heart palpitate.”)

A black creature crossing the road.

April 28. 

A. M. — Surveying for Willard Farrar by Walden.

April 28, 2017

While standing by my compass over the supposed town bound beyond Wyman's, Farrar having just gone along northeast on the town line, I saw with the side of my eye some black creature crossing the road, reminding me of a black cat two thirds grown. Turning, I saw it plainly for half a minute. It crossed to my side about twenty-five feet off, apparently not observing me, and disappeared in the woods. It was perfectly black, for aught I could see (not brown), some eighteen or twenty inches or more in length from tip to tip, and I first thought of a large black weasel, then of a large black squirrel, then wondered if it could be a pine marten. I now try to think it a mink; yet it appeared larger and with a shorter body. It had a straight, low, bushy tail about two inches thick, short legs, and carried its tail and legs about on the same level. It was nearly, if not quite, as large as a muskrat. Has the mink such a tail?





Looking for an "old pine stump" mentioned in a deed and digging into a hillock with our hands to discover it, we turned up, amid the red dish virgin mould, — quite turned to soil, — a large body of short, chunked, yellowish ants, say five twelfths (?) of an inch long, with their white larvae (?). I perceived at more than a foot distant a very strong penetrating scent, yet agreeable and very spicy. It reminded me at first of the cherry pectoral; but it was not that; it was very strong lemon-peel. 

The "Library of Entertaining Knowledge" says that the odor of the wood ant will suffocate a frog dropped among them. Are not these the American "wood ant"?

Icy cold northwest wind, and snow whitening the mountains.

H.. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 28, 1857


A large body of short, chunked, yellowish ants, say five twelfths (?) of an inch long, with their white larvae (?). I perceived at more than a foot distant a very strong penetrating scent, yet agreeable and very spicy. See May 19, 1857 (“Digging again to find a stake in woods, came across a nest or colony of wood ants, yellowish or sand-color, a third of an inch long, with their white grubs, now squirming, still larger, and emitting that same pungent spicy odor . . .”)

Icy cold northwest wind, and snow whitening the mountains. See April 28, 1858 ("Blustering northwest wind and wintry aspect. "); April 28, 1855 ("The wind is strong from the northwest"); See also  April 26, 1860 ("the cold weather of yesterday; the chilling wind came from a snow-clad country.")

The sky overcast with wet-looking clouds.

April 27.

I hear the prolonged che che che che che, etc., of the chip-bird this morning as I go down the street. 

It is a true April morning with east wind, the sky overcast with wet-looking clouds, and already some drops have fallen. It will surely rain to-day, but when it will begin in earnest and how long it will last, none can tell. 

The gardener makes haste to get in his peas, getting his son to drop them. He who requires fair weather puts off his enterprises and resumes them in his mind many times in the forenoon, as the clouds fall lower and sprinkle the fields, or lift higher and show light streaks. He goes half a mile and is overtaken by thick sprinkling drops, falling faster and faster. He pauses and says to himself, this may be merely a shower, which will soon be over, or it may come to a steady rain and last all day. He goes a few steps further, thinking over the condition of a wet man, and then returns. Again it holds up and he regrets that he had not persevered; but the next hour it is stiller and darker, with mist beneath the investing cloud, and then commences a gentle, deliberate rain, which will probably last all day. So he puts on patience and the house. 

I dig up those reddish-brown dor-bugs in the garden. They stir a little. 

Ricketson frequents his shanty by day and evening as much as his house, but does not sleep there, partly on account of his fear of lightning, which he cannot overcome. His timidity in this respect amounts to an idiosyncrasy. I was awaked there in a thunder-storm at midnight by Ricketson rushing about the house, calling to his sons to come down out of the attic where they slept and bolting in to leave a light in my room. His fear of death is equally singular. The thought of it troubles him more perhaps than anything else. He says that he knows nothing about another life, he would like to stay here always. He does not know what to think of the Creator that made the lightning and established death.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 27, 1857


I hear the prolonged che che che che che, etc., of the chip-bird. See April 27, 1852 (“Heard also a chipping sparrow (F. socialis)”); April 12, 1858 ("Hear the huckleberry-bird and, I think, the Fringilla socialis.”).  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Chipping Sparrow (Fringilla socialis ).

A sermon on economy of fuel

April 26.

April 26, 2015

Riordan's cock follows close after me while spading in the garden, and hens commonly follow the gardener and plowman, just as cowbirds the cattle in a pasture. 

I turn up now in the garden those large leather- colored nymphs. 

P. M. — Up Assabet to White Cedar Swamp. 

See on the water over the meadow, north of the boat's place, twenty rods from the nearest shore and twice as much from the opposite shore, a very large striped snake swimming. It swims with great ease, and lifts its head a foot above the water, darting its tongue at us. 

A snake thus met with on the water appears far more monstrous, not to say awful and venomous, than on the land. It is always something startling and memorable to meet with a serpent in the midst of a broad water, careering over it. But why had this one taken to the water? Is it possible that snakes ever hibernate in meadows which are subject to be overflown?

This one when we approached swam toward the boat, apparently to rest on it, and when I put out my paddle, at once coiled itself partly around it and allowed itself to be taken on board. It did not hang down from the paddle like a dead snake, but stiffened and curved its body in a loose coil about it.

This snake was two feet and eleven inches long; the tail alone, seven and a quarter. There [were] one hundred and forty-five large abdominal plates, besides the three smaller under the head, and sixty-five pairs of caudal scales. The central stripe on the back was not bright-yellow, as Storer describes, but a pale brown or clay-color; only the more indistinct lateral stripes were a greenish yellow, the broad dark-brown stripes being between; beneath greenish. Beneath the tail in centre, a dark, somewhat greenish line. 

This snake was killed about 2 p. m.; i. e., the head was perfectly killed then; yet the posterior half of the body was apparently quite alive and would curl strongly around the hand at 7 p. m. It had been hanging on a tree in the meanwhile.

I have the same objection to killing a snake that I have to the killing of any other animal, yet the most humane man that I know never omits to kill one.

I see a great many beetles, etc., floating and struggling on the flood.

We sit on the shore at Wheeler's fence, opposite Merriam's. At this season still we go seeking the sunniest, most sheltered, and warmest place. C. says this is the warmest place he has been in this year.

We are in this like snakes that lie out on banks. In sunny and sheltered nooks we are in our best estate. There our thoughts flow and we flourish most. 

By and by we shall seek the shadiest and coolest place. How well adapted we are to our climate! In the winter we sit by fires in the house; in spring and fall, in sunny and sheltered nooks; in the summer, in shady and cool groves, or over water where the breeze circulates. Thus the average temperature of the year just suits us. Generally, whether in summer or winter, we are not sensible either of heat or cold. 

A great part of our troubles are literally domestic or originate in the house and from living indoors. I could write an essay to be entitled "Out of Doors," — undertake a crusade against houses. What a different thing Christianity preached to the house-bred and to a party who lived out of doors! 

Also a sermon is needed on economy of fuel. 

What right has my neighbor to burn ten cords of wood, when I burn only one? Thus robbing our half-naked town of this precious covering. Is he so much colder than I? It is expensive to maintain him in our midst. If some earn the salt of their porridge, are we certain that they earn the fuel of their kitchen and parlor? One man makes a little of the driftwood of the river or of the dead and refuse (unmarketable!) [wood] of the forest suffice, and Nature rejoices in him.

Another, Herod-like, requires ten cords of the best of young white oak or hickory, and he is commonly esteemed a virtuous man. He who burns the most wood on his hearth is the least warmed by the sight of it growing. Leave the trim wood-lots to widows and orphan girls. Let men tread gently through nature. Let us religiously burn stumps and worship in groves, while Christian vandals lay waste the forest temples to build miles of meeting-houses and horse-sheds and feed their box stoves. 

The white cedar is apparently just out. The higher up the tree, the earlier. 

Towed home an oak log some eighteen feet long and more than a foot through, with a birch withe around it and another birch fastened to that.

Father says he saw a boy with a snapping turtle yesterday.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  April 26, 1857

I have the same objection to killing a snake that I have to the killing of any other animal, yet the most humane man that I know never omits to kill one. Compare May 28, 1854 ("The inhumanity of science concerns me, as when I am tempted to kill a rare snake that I may ascertain its species.”) and April 22, 1857 (“Near Tall's Island, rescue a little pale or yellowish brown snake that was coiled round a willow half a dozen rods from the shore . . . ”)

At this season still we go seeking the sunniest, most sheltered, and warmest place . . .Compare October 26, 1852 ("At this season we seek warm sunny lees and hillsides . . .where we cuddle and warm ourselves in the sun as by a fire, where we may get some of its reflected as well as direct heat.")

One man makes a little of the driftwood of the river . . . Another . . .requires ten cords of the best of young white oak or hickory . . .See March 18, 1857 ("While Emerson sits writing [in] his study this still, overcast, moist day, Goodwin is paddling up the still, dark river. Emerson burns twenty-five cords of wood and fourteen tons of coal; Goodwin perhaps a cord and a half, much of which he picks out of the river.")

Up Assabet to White Cedar Swamp. . . .The white cedar is apparently just out. See April 26, 1856 ("The white cedar gathered the 23d does not shed pollen in house till to-day, and I doubt if it will in swamp before to-morrow."); April 23, 1856 ("The white cedar swamp consists of hummocks, now surrounded by water, where you go jumping from one to another.”); April 24, 1855 ("The sprigs of red cedar, now full of the buff-colored staminate flowers, like fruit, are very rich . . . [Its pollen] is a clear buff color, while that of the white cedar is very different, being a faint salmon.”); April 23, 1855 ("The anthers of the larch are conspicuous, but I see no pollen. White cedar to-morrow."); April 24, 1854 ("Up Assabet, and thence to Cedar Swamp. . . The white cedar female blossoms are open.")

Wild, scudding wind-clouds in the north, spitting cold rain or sleet, with the curved lines of falling rain beneath..

April 25.

Saturday. P. M. — Down Turnpike to Smith's Hill and return by Goose Pond. 

Saw a large old hollow log with the upper side [gone], which [made] me doubt if it was not a trough open at the ends, and suggested that the first trough was perhaps such a hollow log with one side split off and the ends closed. 

It is cool and windy this afternoon. 

Some sleet falls, but as we sit on the east side of Smith's chestnut grove, the wood, though so open and leafless, makes a perfect lee for us, apparently by breaking the force of the wind. A dense but bare grove of slender chestnut trunks a dozen rods wide is a perfect protection against this violent wind, and makes a perfectly calm lee. 

I find that I can very easily make a convenient box of the birch bark, at this season at least, when the sap is running, to carry a moss or other thing in safely. I have only to make three cuts and strip off a piece from a clear space some ten inches long, and then, rolling it up wrong side outward, as it naturally curls backward as soon as taken off (the dry side shrinking, the moist swelling) and so keeps its place, I bend or fold the ends back on it, as if it were paper, and so close them, and, if I please, tie it round with a string of the same bark. This is resilient or elastic, and stands out from a plant, and also is not injured by moisture like paper. When the incision is made now, the crystalline drops of sap follow the knife down the tree. This box dries yellow or straw-colored, with large clouds of green derived from the inner bark. 

The inner bark of the Betula populifolia just laid bare is green with a yellow tinge; that of the B. papyracea is buff. The undermost layer of the outer bark of the last, next to the inner bark, is straw-colored and exceedingly thin and delicate, and smoother to the lips than any artificial tissue. 

Bluets numerous and fully out at the Smith hillside between trough and Saw Mill Brook Falls. 

Got to-day unquestionable Salix humilis in the Britton hollow, north of his shanty, but all there that I saw (and elsewhere as yet) [are] pistillate. It is apparently now in prime, and apparently the next to bloom after the various larger and earlier ones, all which I must call as yet S. discolor. This S. humilis is small-catkined and loves a dry soil. 

A correspondent of the Tribune of April 24th, 1857, who signs "Lyndeborough, N. H., April 15, 1857. J. Herrick," says that he taps his sugar maples four feet from the ground so that cattle may not disturb the buckets, and that the sap will run as freely from the topmost branch as from a root. 

"Any one may learn this fact from the red squirrel, who, by the way, is a famous sugar maker, and knows when to tap a tree and where to do it. He performs his tapping in the highest perpendicular limbs or twigs, and leaves the sun and wind to do the evaporating, and in due season and pleasant weather you will see him come round and with great gusto gather his sirup into his stomach." 

The dense, green, rounded beds of mosses in springs and old water-troughs are very handsome now, — intensely cold green cushions. 

Again we had, this afternoon at 2 o'clock, those wild, scudding wind-clouds in the north, spitting cold rain or sleet, with the curved lines of falling rain beneath. The wind is so strong that the thin drops fall on you in the sunshine when the cloud has drifted far to one side. 

The air is peculiarly clear, the light intense, and when the sun shines slanting under the dark scud, the willows, etc., rising above the dark flooded meadows, are lit with a fine straw-colored light like the spirits of trees. 

I see winkle fungi comparatively fresh, whose green and reddish-brown and pale-buff circles above turn to light and dark slate and white, and so finally fade all to white. 

The beds of fine mosses on bare yellow mouldy soil are now in fruit and very warmly red in the sun when seen a little from one side. 

No pages in my Journal are so suggestive as those which contain a rude sketch. 

Suppose we were to drink only the yellow birch sap and mix its bark with our bread, would not its yellow curls sprout from our foreheads, and our breath and persons exhale its sweet aroma? What sappy vigor there would be in our limbs! What sense we should have to explore the swamps with!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 25, 1857

I find that I can very easily make a convenient box of the birch bark . . . See April 13, 1857 ("I peeled a white birch, getting a piece of bark about ten inches long. I noticed that the birch sap was flowing. This bark at once curled back so as to present its yellow side outward. I . . . tied it round with a strip of birch bark, making a very nice and airy box for the creature, which would not be injured by moisture, far better than any paper, . . .")

Again we had, this afternoon at 2 o'clock, those wild, scudding wind-clouds in the north, spitting cold rain or sleet.  See December 14, 1859( "Snow-storms might be classified. .. . there is sleet, which is half snow, half rain.")

Suppose we were to drink only the yellow birch sap. See April 16, 1857 ("Get birch sap, — two bottles yellow birch and five of black birch. ")

Would not its yellow curls sprout from our foreheads. See  January 4, 1853 ("This is like a fair, flaxen haired sister of the dark-complexioned black birch, with golden ringlets."); February 18, 1854 ("The curls of the yellow birch bark form more or less parallel straight lines up and down on all sides of the tree, like parted hair blown aside by the wind, or as when a vest bursts and blows open."); January 26, 1858 ("The yellow birch . . .might be described as a tree whose trunk or bole was covered with golden and silver shavings glued all over it and dangling in curls. ")

A New England landscape.

April 24. 

Sail to Ball's Hill. 

The water is at its height, higher than before this year. I see a few shad-flies on its surface. 

Scudding over the Great Meadows, I see the now red crescents of the red maples in their prime round about, above the gray stems. 

The willow osiers require to be seen endwise the rows, to get an intense color. 

The clouds are handsome this afternoon : on the north, some dark, windy clouds, with rain falling beneath

   





— but it is chiefly wind; 

southward, those summer clouds in numerous isles, light above and dark-barred beneath. 

Now the sun comes out and shines on the pine hill west of Ball's Hill, lighting up the light-green pitch pines and the sand and russet-brown lichen-clad hill. That is a very New England landscape. Buttrick's yellow farmhouse near by is in harmony with it. 

The little fuzzy gnats are about. I see a vertical circular cobweb, more than a foot in diameter, nearly filled with them, and this revealed the existence of the swarms that had filled the air on all sides. If it had been as many yards wide as it was inches, it would probably have been just as full. 

Saw on a small oak slanting over water in a swamp, in the midst of a mass of cat-briar, about ten feet from the ground, a very large nest, of that hypnum (?) moss, in the form of an inverted cone, one foot across above and about eight inches deep, with a hole in the side very thick and warm; probably a mouse-nest, for there were mouse droppings within.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 24, 1857

I see the now red crescents of the red maples in their prime . . . above the gray stems. See April 24, 1854 ("The first red maple blossoms — so very red over the water — are very interesting. ") See also April 26, 1855 ("The blossoms of the red maple (some a yellowish green) are now most generally conspicuous and handsome scarlet crescents over the swamps. "); April 26, 1860 ("I have noticed their handsome crescents over distant swamps commonly for some ten days. At height, then, say the 21st. "); April 28, 1855 (" The abundant wholesome gray of the trunks and stems beneath surmounted by the red or scarlet crescents.”) note to May 1, 1856 ("Looking over the swamps a quarter of a mile distant, you see dimly defined crescents of bright brick red above and amid a maze of ash-colored branches.”) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red Maple

That is a very New England landscape. Buttrick's yellow farmhouse near by is in harmony with it. See  February 9, 1858 (“A distant farmhouse on a hill, French’s or Buttrick's, perhaps.”); May 12, 1857 ("It reminded me of many a summer sunset, of many miles of gray rails, of many a rambling pasture, of the farmhouse far in the fields, its milk-pans and well-sweep, and the cows coming home from pasture.”). Compare August 26, 1856 ("What is a New England landscape this sunny August day? A weather-painted house and barn, with an orchard by its side, in midst of a sandy field surrounded by green woods, with a small blue lake on one side.”); June 15, 1859 (“A regular old-fashioned country house, long and low, one story unpainted, with a broad green field, half orchard, for all yard between it and the road, — a part of the hill side, — and much June-grass before it. This is where the men who save the country are born and bred.”)

The little fuzzy gnats are about. See April 21, 1855 ("All the button-bushes, etc., etc., in and about the water are now swarming with those minute fuzzy gnats about an eighth of an inch long. The insect youth are on the wing. The whole shore resounds with their hum wherever we approach it, and they cover our boat and persons. They are in countless myriads the whole length of the river. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Fuzzy Gnats (tipulidæ)

About ten feet from the ground . . . a mouse-nest. See November 15, 1857 ("A little Mus leucopus, panting with fear and with its large black eyes upon me . . . It will thus make its nest at least sixteen feet up a tree, improving some cleft or hollow, or probably bird's nest, for this purpose. These nests, I suppose, are made when the trees are losing their leaves") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse

The yellow farmhouse

nearby the light-green pitch pines

lit up by the sun.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A New England landscape.

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt570424

All nature is my bride.

April 23. 

I saw at Ricketson's a young woman, Miss Kate Brady, twenty years old, her father an Irish man, a worthless fellow, her mother a smart Yankee. The daughter formerly did sewing, but now keeps school for a livelihood. She was born at the Brady house, I think in Freetown, where she lived till twelve years old and helped her father in the field. There she rode horse to plow and was knocked off the horse by apple tree boughs, kept sheep, caught fish, etc., etc. 

I never heard a girl or woman express so strong a love for nature. 

She purposes to return to that lonely ruin, and dwell there alone, since her mother and sister will not accompany her; says that she knows all about farming and keeping sheep and spinning and weaving, though it would puzzle her to shingle the old house. There she thinks she can "live free.” 

I was pleased to hear of her plans, because they were quite cheerful and original, not professedly reformatory, but growing out of her love for "Squire's Brook and the Middleborough ponds.” 

A strong love for outward nature is singularly rare among both men and women. 

The scenery immediately about her homestead is quite ordinary, yet she appreciates and can use that part of the universe as no other being can. Her own sex, so tamely bred, only jeer at her for entertaining such an idea, but she has a strong head and a love for good reading, which may carry her through. I would by no means discourage, nor yet particularly encourage her, for I would have her so strong as to succeed in spite of all ordinary discouragements. 

It is very rare that I hear one express a strong and imperishable attachment to a particular scenery, or to the whole of nature, — I mean such as will control their whole lives and characters. Such seem to have a true home in nature, a hearth in the fields and woods, whatever tenement may be burned. The soil and climate is warm to them. 

They alone are naturalized, but most are tender and callow creatures that wear a house as their outmost shell and must get their lives insured when they step abroad from it. They are lathed and plastered in from all natural influences, and their delicate lives are a long battle with the dyspepsia. 

The others are fairly rooted in the soil, and are the noblest plant it bears, more hardy and natural than sorrel. The dead earth seems animated at the prospect of their coming, as if proud to be trodden on by them. It recognizes its lord. Children of the Golden Age. Hospitals and almshouses are not their destiny. 

When I hear of such an attachment in a reasonable, a divine, creature to a particular portion of the earth, it seems as if then first the earth succeeded and rejoiced, as if it had been made and existed only for such a use. These various soils and reaches which the farmer plods over, which the traveller glances at and the geologist dryly describes, then first flower and bear their fruit. Does he chiefly own the land who coldly uses it and gets corn and potatoes out of it, or he who loves it and gets inspiration from it? 

How rarely a man's love for nature becomes a ruling principle with him, like a youth's affection for a maiden, but more enduring! 

All nature is my bride. 

That nature which to one is a stark and ghastly solitude is a sweet, tender, and genial society to another. 

They told me at New Bedford that one of their whalers came in the other day with a black man aboard whom they had picked up swimming in the broad Atlantic, without anything to support him, but nobody could understand his language or tell where he came from -- he was in good condition and well-behaved. My respect for my race rose several degrees when I heard this, and I thought they had found the true merman at last. 

"What became of him?" I inquired. 

"I believe they sent him to the State Almshouse," was the reply. 

Could anything have been more ridiculous? That he should be beholden to Massachusetts for his support who floated free where Massachusetts with her State Almshouse could not have supported herself for a moment. They should have dined him, then accompanied him to the nearest cape and bidden him good-by. 

The State would do well to appoint an intelligent standing committee on such curious [sic], in behalf of philologists, naturalists, and so forth, to see that the proper disposition is made of such visitors.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 23, 1857

All nature is my bride. See January 26, 1852 ("Let us preserve, secure, protect the coincidence of our life with the life of nature.”);  May 6, 1854 (“All that a man has to say or do that can possibly concern mankind, is in some shape or other to tell the story of his love, — to sing; and, if he is fortunate and keeps alive, he will be forever in love. This alone is to be alive to the extremities.”); August 29, 1854 (“My mistress is at a more respectful distance, for, by the coolness of the air, I am more continent in my thought and held aloof from her, while by the genial warmth of the sun I am more than ever attracted to her.”); December 1, 1856 ("I love and could embrace the shrub oak with its scanty garment of leaves rising above the snow . . . I felt a positive yearning toward one bush this afternoon. There was a match found for me at last. I fell in love with a shrub oak.”);January 23, 1858 (" I do not see that I can live tolerably without affection for Nature. If I feel no softening toward the rocks, what do they signify?"); August 30, 1856 (“[T]here are square rods in Middlesex County as purely primitive and wild as they were a thousand years ago, which have escaped the plow and the axe and the scythe and the cranberry-rake, little oases of wildness in the desert of our civilization, wild as a square rod on the moon, supposing it to be uninhabited. I believe almost in the personality of such planetary matter, feel something akin to reverence for it, can even worship it as terrene, titanic matter extant in my day. We are so different we admire each other, we healthily attract one another. I love it as a maiden”); May 27, 1859 ("The dark river, now that shades are increased, is like the dark eye of a maiden.”); also Walking("All good things are wild and free.”).

To hear the surging of the waves and to feel the great billows toss us.

April 22. 

April 22, 2017

Wednesday. Fair again. To Great Sudbury Meadow by boat. 

The river higher than before and rising. C. and I sail rapidly before a strong northerly wind, — no need of rowing upward, only of steering, — cutting off great bends by crossing the meadows. We have to roll our boat over the road at the stone bridge, Hubbard's causeway, (to save the wind), and at Pole Brook (to save  distance). 

It is worth the while to hear the surging of the waves and their gurgling under the stern, and to feel the great billows toss us, with their foaming yellowish crests. 

The world is not aware what an extensive navigation is now possible on our overflowed fresh meadows. It is more interesting and fuller of life than the sea bays and permanent ponds. 

A dozen gulls are circling over Fair Haven Pond, some very white beneath, with very long, narrow-pointed, black- tipped wings, almost regular semicircles like the new moon. As they circle beneath a white scud in this bright air, they are almost invisible against it, they are so nearly the same color. What glorious fliers! 

But few birds are seen; only a crow or two teetering along the water's edge looking for its food, with its large, clumsy head, and on unusually long legs, as if stretched, or its pants pulled up to keep it from the wet, and now flapping off with some large morsel in its bill; or robins in the same place; or perhaps the sweet song of the tree sparrows from the alders by the shore, or of a song sparrow or blackbird. The phoebe is scarcely heard. Not a duck do we see! 

All the shores have the aspect of winter, covered several inches deep with snow, and we see the shadows on the snow as in winter; but it is strange to see the green grass burning up through in warmer nooks under the walls. 

We pause or lay to from time to time, in some warm, smooth lee, under the southwest side of a wood or hill, as at Hubbard's Second Grove and opposite Weir Hill, pushing through saturated snow like ice on the surface of the water. There we lie awhile amid the bare alders, maples, and willows, in the sun, see the expanded sweet-gale and early willows and the budding swamp pyrus looking up drowned from beneath. 

As we lie in a broad field of meadow wrack, — floating cranberry leaves and finely bruised meadow-hay, — a wild medley — countless spiders are hastening over the water. We pass a dozen boats sunk at their moorings, at least at one end, being moored too low. 

Near Tall's Island, rescue a little pale or yellowish brown snake that was coiled round a willow half a dozen rods from the shore and was apparently chilled by the cold. Was it not Storer's "little brown snake?" It had a flat body. 

Frank Smith lives in a shanty on the hill near by. 

At the Cliff Brook I see the skunk-cabbage leaves not yet unrolled, with their points gnawed off. 

Some very fresh brown fungi on an alder, tender and just formed one above another, flat side up, while those on the birch are white and flat side down. They soon dry white and hard. This melting snow makes a great crop of fungi. 

Turritis stricta, nearly out (in two or three days).

Observed the peculiar dark lines on a birch (Betula populifolia) at the insertion of the branches, regular cones like volcanoes in outline, the part included grayish-brown and wrinkled, edged by broad heavy dark lines. There are as many of these very regular cones on the white ground of a large birch as there are branches. They are occasioned by the two currents of growth, that of the main trunk and that of the branch (which last commenced several inches lower near the centre of the tree), meeting and being rucked or turned up at the line of contact like a surge, exposing the edges of the inner bark there, decayed and dark, while the bark within the lines approaches the darker color of the limb. The larger were six or seven inches high by as much in width at the bottom. You observe the same manner of growth in other trees. That portion of the bark below the limb obeys the influence of the limb and endeavors to circle about it, but soon encounters the growth of the main stem. There are interesting figures on the stem of a large white birch, arranged spirally about it. 

The river has risen several inches since morning, so that we push over Hubbard Bridge causeway, where we stuck in the morning.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 22, 1857

We have to roll our boat over the road at the stone bridge .See April 22, 1852 ("The water is over the road at Flint's Bridge, so that there is now only the Boston road open") and note to May 28, 1854 (“This spring the arches of the stone bridge were completely concealed by the flood, and yet at midsummer I can sail under them without lowering my mast.”)

The sweet song of the tree sparrows from the alders by the shore, See April 22, 1855 ("Tree sparrows still . . .  about with their buntingish head and faint chirp.") See also  April 27, 1855 (" I hear the sweet warble of a tree sparrow in the yard") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Tree Sparrow

It is worth the while to hear the surging of the waves and their gurgling under the stern, and to feel the great billows toss us . . . See April 29, 1856 (“They gurgle under my stern, in haste to fill the hollow which I have created. The waves seem to leap and roll like porpoises, with a slight surging sound when their crests break, and I feel an agreeable sense that I am swiftly gliding over and through them . . .It is pleasant, exhilarating, to feel the boat tossed up a little by them from time to time.”); April 14, 1856 ("The boat, tossed up by the rolling billows, keeps falling again on the waves with a chucking sound which is inspiriting. “);  May 8, 1854 (“I feel exhilaration, mingled with a slight awe, as I drive before this strong wind over the great black-backed waves, cutting through them, and hear their surging and feel them toss me.”); April 10, 1852 ("It is pleasant, now that we are in the wind, to feel the chopping sound when the boat seems to fall upon the successive waves which it meets at right angles or in the eye of the wind.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Sailing

Rescue a little pale or yellowish brown snake that was coiled round a willow half a dozen rods from the shore.  See  April 2, 1857 (" I see a toad, which apparently hopped out from under a fence last evening, frozen quite hard in a sitting posture. Carried it into Boston in my pocket, but could not thaw it into life."); April 12, 1858 (“We came upon a partridge standing on the track, between the rails over which the cars had just passed. She had evidently been run down, but. . . was apparently more disturbed in mind than body. I took her up and carried her one side to a safer place.”);July 23, 1856 ("Saw . . . a small bullfrog in the act of swallowing a young but pretty sizable apparently Rana palustris, . . . I sprang to make him disgorge, but it was too late to save him. "); August 28, 1854 (“The meadow is drier than ever, and new pools are dried up. The breams, from one to two and a half inches long, lying on the sides and quirking from time to time. . . — pretty green jewels, dying in the sun. I saved a dozen or more by putting them in deeper pools.”); December 31, 1857 ("Found . . .a bull frog. . . It was evidently nearly chilled to death and could not jump, though there was then no freezing. I looked round a good while and finally found a hole to put it into,") See also April 26, 1857 ("I have the same objection to killing a snake that I have to the killing of any other animal, yet the most humane man that I know never omits to kill one."); April 29, 1858 ("Noticed a man killing, on the sidewalk by Minott's, a little brown snake")

At the Cliff Brook I see the skunk-cabbage leaves not yet unrolled, with their points gnawed off. 
See April 22, 1855 ("The leaves of the skunk-cabbage, unfolding in the meadows, make more show than any green yet. ") See also  April 8, 1859 ("The skunk-cabbage leaf-buds, which have just begun to unroll, also have been extensively eaten off as they were yet rolled up like cigars. These early greens of the swamp are thus kept down. Is it by the rabbit?") and  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Skunk Cabbage

If it did not melt so fast, would be a foot deep.

April 21. 

Tuesday. 

Mr. Loomis writes me that he saw two barn swallows in Cambridge April 1st! 

I have the Corema conradii from Plymouth, in bloom. 

It snows hard all day. If it did not melt so fast, would be a foot deep. As it is, is about three inches on a level.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  April 21, 1857


It snows hard all day. If it did not melt so fast, would be a foot deep. See April 22, 1857 ("All the shores have the aspect of winter, covered several inches deep with snow, and we see the shadows on the snow as in winter") and note to April 2, 1861 ("A drifting snow-storm, perhaps a foot deep on an average.”)

Friday at dusk we walk to the view in a drizzle the trails are wet and muddy. Jane is unable to find the bloodroot  she saw the other day in bloom on the ledge on the way up. The hermit thrush loudly sounds it's vreeen  note but does not sing Sitting at the view I notice lights, seemingly like streetlights, along S. Dorset St. But as I watch they all go out at once. After a few minutes I look back and they are back on. They are not along the street as I now see the street is marked  beyond by cars headlights. The hammock is broken loose from one of its trees and is caught in the branches of another. I untangle it and hook it back up to a rope  already tied around the tree. I help hang a windchime that fell.  There must have been a big breeze here. We go down the ridge trail longer and steeper than I remember to the head of the Moosetrail where we walk back into our land. The stream from our middle wetland is flowing down the trail. All the streams look beautiful in the dark under the headlamp. We go back up Beech Lane then over the "saddle" and eventually bushwhack to the head of the rocky trail seen in the distance by the light there.  She tells me the light can be seen farther away than expected. Down the hill trying to avoid slipping in the mud or stepping in the water the endorphins kick in at the main trail and we walk home elated in the rain

At the main trail walk
home elated in the rain,
endorphins kicked in.

20170421

Arbor-vitae in bloom.

April 20. 

Arbor-vitae? apparently in full bloom.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 20, 1857


See April 19, 1856 ("The arbor-vita: by riverside behind Monroe’s appears to be just now fairly in blossom."); April 21, 1858 (“The arbor-vitae is apparently effete already.”): April 26, 1855 ("Wheildon’s arbor-vitae well out, maybe for a week.")

See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, April 20

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 ©  2009-2023

The beaked hazel below the little pine at Blackberry Steep.

April 18.

P. M. — To Conantum. 

Hear the huckleberry-bird, also the seringo. 

The beaked hazel, if that is one just below the little pine at Blackberry Steep, is considerably later than the common, for I cannot get a whole twig fully out, though the common is too far gone to gather there. The catkins, too, are shorter.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 18, 1857

Hear the huckleberry-bird. See  April 18, 1855 ("The rush sparrows tinkle now at 3 P. M. far over the bushes, and hylodes are peeping in a distant pool."); .April 18, 1859 ("Hear a field sparrow."); April 15, 1856 ("I hear the note of the Fringilla juncorum (huckleberry-bird) from the plains beyond. "); April 27, 1852 ("Heard the field or rush sparrow this morning (Fringilla juncorum), George Minott's "huckleberry-bird.""); June 10, 1856 ("I hear the huckleberry-bird now add to its usual strain a-tea tea tea tea tea."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Field Sparrow (Fringilla juncorum)

. . .also the seringo. See April 22, 1856 ("The seringo also sits on a post, with a very distinct yellow line over the eye,and the rhythm of its strain is ker chick | ker che | ker-char—r-r-r-r | chick, the last two bars being the part chiefly heard."). See also note to June 26, 1856 (" saw, apparently, the F. Savanna near their nests (my seringo note), restlessly flitting about me from rock to rock within a rod. Distinctly yellow-browed and spotted breast, not like plate of passerina.")

The beaked hazel . . . is considerably later than the common . . .See April 9, 1854 (" The beaked hazel stigmas out; put it just after the common."') See also note to March 31, 1853 ("The catkins of the hazel are now trembling in the wind and much lengthened, showing yellowish and beginning to shed pollen."); and April 7, 1854 ("The hazel stigmas are well out and the catkins loose, but no pollen shed yet. "); April 13, 1855 ("The common hazel just out. It is perhaps the prettiest flower of the shrubs that have opened. . . . They know when to trust themselves to the weather."); April 11, 1856 ("The hazel sheds pollen to-day; some elsewhere possibly yesterday.")

It rains about every other day now

April 17.

Rain. It rains about every other day now for a fortnight past.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 17, 1857

Rain. It rains about

every other day now

for a fortnight past.

Compare April 17, 1856 ("We have had scarcely any rain this spring ...”); see April 22, 1856 (“These rain-storms -- this is the third day of one -- characterize 'the season, and belong rather to winter than to summer.”); April 14, 1859 ("The seventh rain storm (as I reckon), beginning with the 18th of March.")

The Walden Pond Society.

April 16. 

At Concord. 

Get birch sap, — two bottles yellow birch and five of black birch,— now running freely, though not before I left Concord. 

Meanwhile I hear the note of the pine warbler. 

Last night was very cold, and some ditches are frozen this morning. 

This is Fast-Day. I think if you should tap all the trees in a large birch swamp, you would make a stream large enough to turn a mill. 

About a month ago, at the post-office, Abel Brooks, who is pretty deaf, sidling up to me, observed in a loud voice which all could hear, 

“Let me see, your society is pretty large, ain’t it ?” 

“Oh, yes, large enough,” said I, not knowing what he meant.  

“There ’s Stewart belongs to it, and Collier, he's one of them, and Emerson, and my boarder ” (Pulsifer), “and Charming, I believe, I think he goes there.” 

“You mean the walkers; don’t you?” 

“Ye-es, I call you the Society. All go to the woods; don’t you ?” 

“Do you miss any of your wood?” I asked. 

“No, I hain’t worried any yet. I believe you ’re a pretty clever set, as good as the average,” etc., etc.

Telling Sanborn of this, he said that, when he first came to town and boarded at Holbrook’s, he asked H. how many religious societies there were in town. H. said that there were three, -- the Unitarian, the Orthodox, and the Walden Pond Society. I asked Sanborm with which Holbrook classed himself. He said he believes that he put himself with the last.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 16, 1857

Get birch sap, — two bottles yellow birch and five of black birch,— now running freely . . .See April 11, 1856 ("Now is apparently the very time to tap birches of all kinds.”)

Meanwhile I hear the note of the pine warbler. See note to April 16 1856 ("I see a pine warbler, . . . Its note is . . .a very rapid and continuous trill or jingle which I remind myself of by wetter wetter wetter wetter wet’, emphasizing the last syllable.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Pine Warbler