Twenty-four pitch pine cones

February 28.


P. M. — To White Pond. 

I see twenty-four cones brought together under one pitch pine in a field, evidently gnawed off by a squirrel, but not opened. 

Rice says he saw a whistler (?) duck to-day.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 28, 1858

I see twenty-four cones brought together under one pitch pine. See February 28, 1860 ("I take up a handsomely spread (or blossomed) pitch pine cone, but I find that a squirrel has begun to strip it first, having gnawed off a few of the scales at the base. The squirrel always begins to gnaw a cone thus at the base."); see also January 22, 1856 ("I count the cores of thirty-four cones on the snow there, and that is not all. Under another pine there are more than twenty, and a well-worn track from this to a fence post three rods distant, under which are the cores of eight cones and a corresponding amount of scales. . . . They have gnawed off the cones which were perfectly closed. ")

Rice says he saw a whistler. See March 23, 1859 ("As we sail upward toward the pond, we scare up two or three golden-eyes, or whistlers, showing their large black heads and black backs, and afterward I watch one swimming not far before us and see the white spot, amid the black, on the side of his head.")  March 27, 1858 ("Among them [sheldrakes], or near by, I at length detect three or four whistlers, by their wanting the red bill, being considerably smaller and less white, having a white spot on the head, a black back, and altogether less white, and also keeping more or less apart and not diving when the rest do.") See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,,the Goldeneye (Whistler)

I see a snow bunting, though it is pleasant and warm.

February 27.
A. M. — To Hill. 

The hedges on the Hill are all cut off.

The journals think they cannot say too much on improvements in husbandry. It is a safe theme, like piety. But for me, as for one of these farms brushed up, — a model farm, — I had as lief see a patent churn and a man turning it. It is simply a place where somebody is making money.

I see a snow bunting, though it is pleasant and warm.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 27, 1858

I see a snow bunting, though it is pleasant and warm. See February 1, 1857 ("Warm as it is, I see a large flock of snow buntings on the railroad causeway."). Compare January 2, 1856 ("They have come with this deeper snow and colder weather. ") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snow Bunting

Ice at Walden

February 25. 

Ice at Walden eleven inches thick and very soggy, sinking to a level with the water, though there is but a trifling quantity of snow on it. Does it not commonly begin to be soggy even thus early, and thick, sinking deeper? 

I hear of sudden openings in ponds — as at Cochituate — this year.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 25, 1858

Ice at Walden eleven inches thick. See February 18, 1858 (“I find Walden ice to be nine and a half plus inches thick, having gained three and a half inches since the 8th”); February 8, 1858 (“I am surprised to find that Walden ice is only six inches thick, or even a little less, and it has not been thicker.”) See  also. February 24, 1857 (“Walden is still covered with thick ice, though melted a foot from the shore.”); February 16, 1856 (“Near the shore in one place it was twenty-two inches.”)

On the side of the meadow moraine just north of the boulder field.

February 24. 

February 24, 2018

I see, at Minot Pratt’s, rhodora in bloom in a pitcher with water andromeda. 

Went through that long swamp northeast of Boaz’s Meadow. Interesting and peculiar are the clumps, or masses, of panicled andromeda, with light-brown stems, topped uniformly with very distinct yellow brown recent shoots, ten or twelve inches long, with minute red buds sleeping close along them. This uniformity in such masses gives a pleasing tinge to the swamp's surface. Wholesome colors, which wear well. 

I see quite a number of emperor moth cocoons attached to this shrub, some hung round with a loose mass of leaves as big as my two fists.

What art in the red-eye to make these two adjacent maple twigs serve for the rim of its pensile basket, in weaving them! Surely it finds a place for itself in nature between the two twigs of a maple. 

On the side of the meadow moraine just north of the boulder field, I see barberry bushes three inches in diameter and ten feet high. What a surprising color this wood has! It splits and splinters very much when I bend it. I cut a cane and, shaving off the outer bark, it is of imperial yellow, as if painted, fit for a Chinese mandarin.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 24, 1858

I see, at Minot Pratt’s, rhodora in bloom in a pitcher. See May 17, 1853 (“The rhodora is peculiar for being, like the peach, a profusion of pink blossoms on a leafless stem.”); May 18, 1857 ("Pratt says he saw the first rhodora . . . out yesterday")

Boaz's Meadow. See November 11, 1857 ("That cellar-hole off northwest of Brooks Clark’s is where Boaz Brown used to live, and the andromeda swamp behind is “Boaz's (pronounced Boze's) meadow,” says Jacob Farmer, who has seen corn growing in the meadow. "); November 18, 1857 ("There is the meadow behind Brooks Clark’s . . .. The stream which drains this empties into the Assabet at Dove Rock. A short distance west of this meadow, but a good deal more elevated, is Boaz's meadow, whose water finds its way, naturally or artificially, northeast ward around the other.")

Panicled andromeda, with light-brown stems, topped uniformly with very distinct yellow brown recent shoots . . . with minute red buds sleeping close along them. See November 23, 1857 ("The panicled andromeda is upright, light-gray, with a rather smoother bark, more slender twigs, and small, sharp red buds lying close to the twig"); December 11, 1855 ("I thread the tangle of the spruce swamp, admiring . . . the great yellow buds of the swamp-pink, the round red buds of the high blueberry, and the fine sharp red ones of the panicled andromeda."); January 25, 1858 ("The round red buds of the blueberries; the small pointed red buds, close to the twig, of the panicled andromeda; the large yellowish buds of the swamp pink."); February 13, 1858 (" I observed that the swamp was variously shaded, or painted even, like a rug, with the sober colors running gradually into each other, by the colored recent shoots of various shrubs which grow densely, as the red blueberry, and the yellowish-brown panicled andromeda")  See also February 17, 1854 ("In these swamps, then, you have three kinds of andromeda. The main swamp is crowded with high blueberry, panicled andromeda, prinos, swamp-pink, etc.. . . and then in the middle or deepest part will be an open space not yet quite given up to water, where the Andromeda calyculata and a few A. Polifolia reign almost alone. These are pleasing gardens.")

Emperor moth cocoons attached to this shrub, some hung round with a loose mass of leaves. See February 19, 1854 (“The light ash-colored cocoons of the A. Promethea, with the withered and faded leaves wrapped around them so artfully and admirably secured by fine silk wound round the leaf-stalk and the twig they are taken at a little distance for a few curled and withered leaves left on.”)

What art in the red-eye to make these two adjacent maple twigs serve for the rim of its pensile basket. See January 13, 1856 ("What a wonderful genius it is that leads the vireo to select the tough fibres of the inner bark, instead of the more brittle grasses, for its basket, the elastic pine-needles and the twigs, curved as they dried to give it form, and, as I suppose, the silk of cocoons, etc., etc., to bind it together with!"); May 27, 1854 ("I find the pensile nest of a red-eye between a fork of a shrub chestnut near the path.")  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Red-eyed Vireo

On the side of the meadow moraine just north of the boulder field.  See November 3, 1857 (“Follow up the Boulder Field northward, and it terminates in that moraine.”); March 8, 1855 (“I cross through the swamp south of Boulder Field toward the old dam.”); April 21, 1852 ("In the pasture beyond the brook, where grow the barberries, huckleberries, — creeping juniper, etc., are half a dozen huge boulders, which look grandly now in the storm, covered with greenish-gray lichens, alternating with the slatish-colored rock. Slumbering, silent, . . .I look down on some of them as on the backs of oxen. A certain personality, or at least brute life, they seem to have."); November 3, 1857 (" It would be something to own that pasture with the great rocks in it")

February 24. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 24

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,

On the side of the meadow moraine just north of the boulder field.

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

The most wintry day of the winter.

February 20.

Snows all day. The most wintry day of the winter; yet not more than three inches on a level is fallen. 

We hear the names of the worthies of Concord, — Squire Cuming and the rest,—but the poor slave Casey seems to have lived a more adventurous life than any of them. Squire Cuming probably never had to run for his life on the plains of Concord.

H.. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 20, 1858

The most wintry day of the winter. See February 19, 1858 ("Coldest morning this winter by our thermometer, -3° at 7.30.")

Coldest morning this winter.

February 19. 

Coldest morning this winter by our thermometer, -3° at 7.30. 

The traveller is defended and calloused. He deals with surfaces, has a greatcoat on. But he who stays at home and writes about homely things gives us naked and tender thoughts and sentiments.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 19, 1858


Coldest morning this winter by our thermometer. See January 23, 1857 ("I may safely say that -5° has been the highest temperature to-day .”);.January 9, 1856 ("Probably it has been below zero for the greater part of the day."); February 6, 1855 ("They say it did not rise above -6° to-day.")

Walden ice.

February 18. 

I find Walden ice to be nine and a half plus inches thick, having gained three and a half inches since the 8th. 

The Rubus hispidus (sempervirens of Bigelow) is truly evergreen. 

There has been so little snow this winter that I have noticed it the more, — red, glossy, and, as it were, plaited. 

I see the ice, three inches thick, heaved up tentwise eighteen inches or more in height, near the shore, yet where the water is too deep for the bottom to have been heaved, as if some steam had heaved it. 

At Brister's further spring, the water which trickles off in various directions between and around little mounds of green grass half frozen, when it reaches the more mossy ground runs often between two perpendicular walls of ice, as at the bottom of a cañon, the top of these perfectly square-edged banks being covered with the moss that originally covered the ground (otherwise undisturbed) and extending several feet on each side at the same level. These icy cliffs are of a loose crystalline composition, with many parallel horizontal seams, as if built up. I suppose that the water flows just under the moss, and, freezing, heaves it one stage; then the next night, perchance, new water, flowing underneath, heaves the whole another stage; and so on, steadily lifting it up. 

Far from here, I see the surface of weeds and mud lifted up in like manner where there is no cañon or rill, but a puddle. 

George Minott tells me that he, when young, used often to go to a store by the side of where Bigelow's tavern was and kept by Ephraim Jones, – the Goodnow store. That was probably the one kept by my old trader. 

Told me how Casey, who was a slave to a man — Whitney — who lived where Hawthorne owns, —the same house, — before the Revolution, ran off one Sunday, was pursued by the neighbors, and hid him self in the river up to his neck till nightfall, just across the Great Meadows. He ran through Gowing's Swamp and came back that night to a Mrs. Cogswell, who lived where Charles Davis does, and got something to eat; then cleared far away, enlisted, and was freed as a soldier after the war. 

Whitney's boy threw snow balls at him the day before, and finally C., who was chopping in the yard, threw his axe at him, and W. said he was an ugly nigger and he must put him in jail. 

He may have been twenty years old when stolen from Africa; left a wife and one child there. Used to say that he went home to Africa in the night and came back again in the morning; i. e., he dreamed of home. Lived to be old. Called Thanksgiving “Tom Kiver.”

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 18, 1858

Winter sky

February 17. 

February 17, 2018

Perhaps the peculiarity of those western vistas was partly owing to the shortness of the days, when we naturally look to the heavens and make the most of the little light, when we live an arctic life, when the woodchopper's axe reminds us of twilight at 3 o'clock p. m., when the morning and the evening literally make the whole day, when I travelled, as it were, between the portals of the night, and the path was narrow as well as blocked with snow. Then, too, the sun has the last opportunity to fill the air with vapor.

I see on the Walden road that the wind through the wall is cutting through the drifts, leaving a portion adhering to the stones. 

It is hard for the traveller when, in a cold and blustering day, the sun and wind come from the same side. To-day the wind is northwest, or west by north, and the sun from the southwest. 

The apothecium of lichens appears to be a fungus, — all fruit. 

I saw Patrick Riordan carrying home an armful of fagots from the woods to his shanty, on his shoulder. How much more interesting an event is that man's supper who has just been forth in the snow to hunt, or perchance to steal, the fuel to cook it with! His bread and meat must be sweet. 

It was something to hear that the women of Waltham used the Parmelia saxatilis ( ?) in dyeing. 

If you would read books on botany, go to the fathers of the science. Read Linnaeus at once, and come down from him as far as you please. I lost much time reading the florists. It is remarkable how little the mass of those  interested in botany are acquainted with Linnaeus. 

His "Philosophia Botanica," which Rousseau, Sprengel, and others praised so highly, — I doubt if it has ever been translated into English. It is simpler, more easy to understand, and more comprehensive, than any of the hundred manuals to which it has given birth. A few pages of cuts representing the different parts of plants, with the botanical names attached, is worth whole volumes of explanation. 

According to Linnaeus's classification, I come under the head of the Miscellaneous Botanophilists, — " Botanophili sunt, qui varia de vegetabilibus tradiderunt, licet ea non proprie de scientiam Botanicam spectant," — either one of the Biologi (Panegyrica plerumque exclamarunt) or Poetae.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 17, 1852

The peculiarity of those western vistas. See January 11, 1852 ("The glory of these afternoons, though the sky may be mostly overcast, is in the ineffably clear blue, or else pale greenish-yellow, patches of sky in the west just before sunset. The whole cope of heaven seen at once is never so elysian. Windows to heaven, the heavenward windows of the earth. “); January 17, 1852 (“In proportion as I have celestial thoughts, is the necessity for me to be out and behold the western sky sunset these winter days. . . .Those western vistas through clouds to the sky show the clearest heavens, clearer and more elysian than if the whole sky is comparatively free from clouds.”); February 10, 1852 (“We have none of those peculiar clear, vitreous, crystalline vistas in the western sky before sundown of late. There is perchance more moisture in the air. Perhaps that phenomenon does not belong to this part of the winter.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Western Sky

The apothecium of lichens appears to be a fungus, — all fruit. See March 5, 1852 ("The minute apothecium of the pertusaria, which the woodchopper never detected, occupies so large a space in my eye at present”)

The morning and the evening literally make the whole day. See December 11, 1854 (“The day is short; it seems to be composed of two twilights merely”)

A few pages of cuts representing the different parts of plants, with the botanical names attached, is worth whole volumes of explanation. See March 12, 1852 (“I have learned in a shorter time and more accurately the meaning of the scientific terms used in botany from a few plates of figures at the end of the “Philosophia Botanica,” with the names annexed , than a volume of explanations or glossaries could teach .”)

I come under the head of the miscellaneous botanophilists:(“Lovers of botany are those who have handed down various things about plants although they look at these things not exclusively concerning the knowledge of botany." ) [On Feb 3 Thoreau had checked out Linnaeus' Philosophia botanica by Carl von Linnaeus from Harvard Library (Companion to Thoreau’s Correspondence, 290).]

A tuft of hair on each ear and a ruff under the throat.

February 15. 

To Cambridge and Boston. 

Saw, at a menagerie, a Canada lynx, said to have been taken at the White Mountains. It looked much like a monstrous gray cat standing on stilts, with its tail cut down to five inches, a tuft of hair on each ear and a ruff under the throat.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 15, 1858

February 14. February 15. February 16

Saw, at a menagerie, a Canada lynx . . .with its tail cut down to five inches, a tuft of hair on each ear and a ruff under the throat.  See September 29, 1856 ("Dr. Reynolds told me the other day of a Canada lynx (?) killed in Andover, in a swamp, some years ago."); October 20, 1857 ("It is worth the while to have a Skinner in the town; else we should not know that we had wildcats.");September 11, 1860 ("George Melvin came to tell me this forenoon that a strange animal was killed on Sunday. . . From his description I judged it to be a Canada lynx . . . I measured the stuffed skin carefully . . . Tail stout and black at the abrupt end, 5 inches . . . tuft on ear ( black and thin ) , 1½ inches . . .Ears, without  broadly edged with black half an inch or more wide  the rest being a triangular white. There was but a small muffler, chiefly a triangular whitish and blackish tuft on the sides of the face or neck, not noticeably under the chin."); September 13, 1860 ("They who have seen this generally suppose that it got out of a menagerie; others that it strayed down from far north. They call it Canada lynx."); October 17, 1860 ("While the man that killed my lynx (and many others) thinks it came out of a menagerie, and the naturalists call it the Canada lynx, and at the White Mountains they call it the Siberian lynx, - in each case forgetting, or ignoring ,that it belongs here, - I call it the Concord lynx.") 

One inch of snow.

February 14.


About one inch of snow falls.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 14, 1858

See November 18, 1855 ("About an inch of snow fell last night."); January 14, 1860 ("About an inch more snow fell this morning."); February 9, 1858 ("Begins to snow at noon, and about one inch falls, whitening the ground.");  February 13, 1859 ("A dry, powdery snow about one inch deep, from which, as I walk toward the sun, this perfectly clear, bright afternoon, at 3.30 o’clock, the colors of the rainbow are reflected from a myriad fine facets.")

How often vegetation is either yellow or red!

February 13.

Last night said to have been a little colder than the night before, and the coldest hitherto.

P. M. – Ride to Cafferty's Swamp.

The greatest breadth of the swamp appears to be northeasterly from Adams's. There is much panicled andromeda in it, some twelve feet high, and, as I count, seventeen years old, with yellowish wood. I saw three tupelos in the swamp, each about one foot in diameter and all within two rods.

In those parts of the swamp where the bushes were not so high but that I could look over them, I observed that the swamp was variously shaded, or painted even, like a rug, with the sober colors running gradually into each other, by the colored recent shoots of various shrubs which grow densely, as the red blueberry, and the yellowish-brown panicled andromeda, and the dark-brown or blackish Prinos verticillatus, and the choke-berry, etc.

Standing on a level with those shrubs, you could see that these colors were only a foot or so deep, according to the length of the shoots. So, too, oftener would the forests appear if we oftener stood above them.

How often vegetation is either yellow or red! as the buds of the swamp-pink, the leaves of the pitcher-plant, etc., etc., and to-day I notice yellow-green recent shoots of high blueberry.

Observed a coarse, dense-headed grass in the meadow at Stow's old swamp lot. What did the birds do for horsehair here formerly?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 13, 1858

The red blueberry. See November 6, 1853 (“The remarkable roundish, plump red buds of the high blueberry.”); November 23, 1857 (“You distinguish it by its gray spreading mass; its light-gray bark, rather roughened; its thickish shoots, often crimson; and its plump, roundish red buds.”); November 20, 1857 ("the bright-crimson shoots of high blueberry . . . have a very pretty effect, a crimson vigor to stand above the snow.")

The yellowish-brown panicled andromeda. See November 23, 1857 ("The panicled andromeda is upright, light-gray, with a rather smoother bark, more slender twigs, and small, sharp red buds lying close to the twig."); December 6, 1856 ("The rich brown fruit of the panicled andromeda growing about the swamp, hard, dry, inedible, suitable to the season. The dense panicles of the berries are of a handsome form, made to endure, lasting often over two seasons, only becoming darker and gray")

How often vegetation is either yellow or red! as the buds of the swamp-pink See December 1, 1852 (“The large bright yellowish and reddish buds of the swamp-pink,"); December 11, 1855 ("The great yellow buds of the swamp-pink, the round red buds of the high blueberry, and the fine sharp red ones of the panicled andromeda"); January 25, 1858 ("The round red buds of the blueberries; the small pointed red buds, close to the twig, of the panicled andromeda; the large yellowish buds of the swamp pink.")

The leaves of the pitcher-plant. See September 28, 1851 ("These leaves are of various colors from plain green to a rich striped yellow or deep red. No plants are more richly painted and streaked than the inside of the broad lips of these."); November 11, 1858 ("In the meadows the pitcher-plants are bright-red"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Pitcher Plant

The nostrils of the earth, white with the frozen earth’s breath.

February 12. 

 the nostrils of the earth, white with the frozen earth’s breath. 

Colder than yesterday morning; perhaps the coldest of the winter. 

P. M. — To Ledum Pond. 

Those small holes in the ground, – musquash, mice, etc., – thickly beset with crystals of frost, remind me of the invisible vapor issuing thence which may be called Earth’s breath, though you might think it were the breath of a mouse. 

In cold weather you see not only men's beards and the hair about the muzzles of oxen whitened with their frozen breath, but countless holes in the banks, which are the nostrils of the earth, white with the frozen earth’s breath. 

About the ledum pond-hole there is an abundance of that abnormal growth of the spruce. Instead of a regular, free, and open growth, you have a multitude of slender branches crowded together, putting out from the summit or side of the stem and shooting up nearly perpendicularly, with dense, fine, wiry branchlets and fine needles, which have an impoverished look, altogether forming a broom-like mass, very much like a heath. 

There is, apparently, more of the Andromeda Polifolia in that swamp than anywhere else in Concord.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 12, 1858

About the ledum pond-hole there is an abundance of that abnormal growth of the spruce. See February 4, 1858 ("There are many small spruce thereabouts, with small twigs and leaves, an abnormal growth, reminding one of strange species of evergreen from California, China, etc. ")

There is, apparently, more of the Andromeda Polifolia in that swamp than anywhere else in Concord.See February 4, 1858  ("The A. Polifoliais very abundant about the pond-hole."); November 15,1857 ("At C. Miles Swamp [f]ind plenty of Andromeda Polifolia ... ")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 12

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 water in the pitcher-plant leaves is frozen.

February 11. 

At 8 P. M. it is 11° and windy. 

I think it is the coldest day of this winter. The river channel is now suddenly and generally frozen over for the first time. 

P. M. — To Hill. 

The water in the pitcher-plant leaves is frozen, but I see none burst. They are very tightly filled and smooth, apparently stretched. 

The leaves of the round-leaved pyrola, so exposed this winter, look not only dark but as if frozen. I am not sure that they are stiffened however. 

I see that the hemlock leaves also have this frozen or frozen thawed, cadaverous look, dark and slightly imbrowned, especially the most exposed twigs, while some sheltered ones are still a bright green. The same is the case even with the white pines and, as far as I observe, other evergreens. 

There is a change in their leaves with cold weather, corresponding to the reddening and darkening of checkerberry and pyrola leaves. They change, though they do not fall, and are to some extent affected, even as those trees which, like the oaks, retain a part of their leaves during the winter in a withered state; i. e., they have begun to wither or be killed. 

I have often before noticed that the pines, when cold weather came, were of a darker and duller green, somewhat like a frozen apple. In the hemlock, at least, there is a positive tendency to redness. The evergreens, then, though they do not fall the first year, lose their original summer greenness; they are changed and partially killed by the cold, like pyrola and checkerberry and lambkill, and even, in a degree, like oak leaves. Perhaps the pitch pine is the least affected. 

Cut a club of celtis wood. It is hard but, I think, brittle. The celastrus (waxwork) is a soft, spongy, and flexible wood, though of very slow growth. You can easily sink your knife into it. I count twenty-five rings in the heart-wood of one which is not quite an inch in diameter. In the sap there is no evidence of rings at all.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 11, 1858

11° and windy. I think it is the coldest day of this winter. Compare January 23, 1857 ("I may safely say that -5° has been the highest temperature to-day.”) January 9, 1856 ("Probably it has been below zero for the greater part of the day."); February 6, 1855 ("They say it did not rise above -6° to-day.”); February 11, 1855 (“Smith’s thermometer early this morning at -22°; ours at 8 A. M. -10°.”)

The water in the pitcher-plant leaves is frozen.  See November 16, 1852 ("At Holden's Spruce Swamp. The water is frozen in the pitcher-plant leaf.")

The river channel is now suddenly and generally frozen over for the first time. Compare January 20, 1857 ("The river has been frozen everywhere except at the very few swiftest places since about December 18th, and everywhere since about January 1st.”)

Cold and windy.

February 10. 

February 10, 2018

Grows cold toward night, and windy.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 10, 1858

Grows cold toward night, and windy. See February 13, 2016 (“Grew cold again last night, with high wind. . . . I think a high wind commonly follows rain or a thaw in winter.”)

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 © 2009-2022

A sketch of the old Concord jail.

February 9.

A. M. — To old Hunt house with Thatcher. 

The stairs of the old back part are white pine or spruce, each the half of a square log; those of the cellar in front, oak, of the same form. There is no ridge-pole whatever, —not even a board,—but a steep roof; and some of the rafters are oak saplings, hewn and showing a good deal of bark, and scarcely three inches diameter at the small end; yet they have sufficed. 

Saw at Simon Brown's a sketch, apparently made with a pen, on which was written, “Concord Jail, near Boston America,” and on a fresher piece of paper on which the above was pasted, was written, “The jail in which General Sir Archld Campbell & Wilson were confined when taken off Boston in America by a French Privateer.” A letter on the back side, from Mr. Lewis of Framingham to Mr. Brown, stated that he, Lewis, had received the sketch from the grandson of Wilson, who drew it. 

You are supposed to be in the jail-yard, or close to it westward, and see the old jail, gambrel-roofed, the old Hurd house (partly) west of the graveyard, the graveyard, and Dr. Hurd house, and, over the last and to the north of it, a wooded hill, apparently Windmill Hill, and just north of the Hurd house, beyond it, apparently the court-house and schoolhouse, each with belfries, and the road to the Battle-Ground, and a distant farmhouse on a hill, French’s or Buttrick's, perhaps.

Begins to snow at noon, and about one inch falls, whitening the ground.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 9, 1858


The old Hunt house. See February 17, 1857 ("To the old Hunt house."); December 20, 1857 ("The cellar stairs at the old Hunt house are made of square oak timbers . . ."); and note to  February 1, 1851 ("Adam Winthrop, a grandson of the Governor, who sold this farm to Hunt in 1701. I saw the old window")

The jail in which General Sir Archld Campbell & Wilson were confined. See Sir Archibald Campbell of Inverneill; sometime prisoner of war in the jail at Concord, Massachusetts ("A picture of the old wooden jail, which is said to be a drawing made by Campbell, hangs in the Concord Public Library and shows the building as it appeared in Revolutionary times.")

Begins to snow at noon, and about one inch falls, whitening the ground. See February 9, 1856 ("Half an inch of snow fell this forenoon")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  February 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 ©  2009-2023

Old growth blueberry bushes.

February 8.

 P. M. — To Walden and Goose Pond. 

The ground is so completely bare this winter, and therefore the leaves in the woods so dry, that on the 5th there was a fire in the woods by Walden (Wheeler’s), and two or three-acres were burned over, set probably by the engine. Such a burning as commonly occurs in the spring. 

The ice which J. Brown is now getting for his ice house from S. Barrett’s is from eight to nine plus inches thick, but I am surprised to find that Walden ice is only six inches thick, or even a little less, and it has not been thicker. You can almost drive an axe through it at one blow. In many places about the shore it is open a dozen feet wide, as when it begins to break up in the spring. 

I observe, as usual, the shore heaved up near where my house was. It is evidently the result of its thawing. It is lifted up with an abrupt, nearly perpendicular edge nearly a foot high (but looks as if it had been crowded up by the ice), while the part under water probably has not been frozen, or has not been thawed. But in the water close to the shore I observe singular dimples in the sand, sometimes perfectly circular tunnels, etc., as if a stone had been turned round and round and then lifted out. Perhaps this ridge thus lifted up remains somewhat loose through the summer, not falling entirely back, and the next winter, therefore, freezes yet deeper and is heaved up yet higher, and so gains a little from year to year. Thus a pond may create a barrier for itself along an adjacent meadow. When it thus lifts up the shore, it lifts the trees with it, and they are upset.

 At Little Goose Pond, where I am surprised to find the ice no thicker than at Walden, I raked in the middle and brought up the branches of white pines two inches thick, but perfectly sound, four rods or more from the shore. The wood has been cut about seventeen years on one side, and at least twelve or fourteen on the other, pines that formerly fell into the pond. They would long since decayed on land.

I walked about Goose Pond, looking for the large blueberry bushes. I see many which have thirty rings of annual growth. These grow quite on the edge, where they have escaped being cut with the wood, and have all the appearance of age, gray and covered with lichens, commonly crooked, zigzag, and intertwisted with their neighbors,— so that when you have cut one off it is hard to extract it, —and bending over nearly to the ice, with lusty young shoots running up straight by their sides. I cut one, which measured eight and a half inches in circumference at the butt, and I counted pretty accurately forty-two rings. From another I cut a straight and sound club, four feet long and six and a half inches in circumference at the small end. It is a heavy and close-grained wood. 

This is the largest of the Vaccinieoa which grows here, or is described in Gray’s Botany. Some may have borne fruit before I was born, or forty and odd years ago. Older than my cultivated fruit trees. Nobody could tell me what kind of wood it was. 

The biggest panicled andromeda that I saw thereabouts was only a little more than an inch in diameter and apparently not half as old. It has a much more yellow wood, with a twist to its grain. 

Mrs. Monroe says that her mother respected my grandfather very much, because he was a religious man. She remembers his calling one day and inquiring where blue vervain grew, which he wanted, to make a syrup for his cough, and she, a girl, happening to know, ran and gathered some.

H. D. Thoreu, Journal, February 8, 1858

The ground is so completely bare this winter.  See February 8, 1857 ("The snow is gone off very rapidly in the night, and much of the earth is bare, and the ground partially thawed. ")

Two or three-acres were burned over, set probably by the engine. Such a burning as commonly occurs in the spring. See April 4, 1856 ("Already I hear of a small fire in the woods in Emerson’s lot, set by the engine, the leaves that are bare are so dry.")

The ice which J. Brown is now getting for his ice house from S. Barrett’s is from eight to nine plus inches thick, but I am surprised to find that Walden ice is only six inches thick. See January 27, 1854 ("Cut this afternoon a cake of ice out of Walden and brought it home in a pail, another from the river, and got a third, a piece of last year's ice from Sam Barrett's Pond, at Brown's ice-house, and placed them side by side . . .”); January 23, 1856 ("Brown is filling his ice-house. The clear ice is only from one and a half to four inches thick; all the rest, or nearly a foot, is snow ice, ")

I walked about Goose Pond, looking for the large blueberry bushes. See December 27, 1857 ("I cut a blueberry bush this afternoon, a venerable looking one bending over Goose Pond, . . . some of those old gray blueberry bushes which overhang the pond-holes have attained half the age of man.")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 8

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

Little mounds or tufts of yellowish or golden moss in the young woods look like sunlight on the ground.

February 7.

Aunt Louisa has talked with Mrs. Monroe, and I can correct or add to my account of January 23d. She says that she was only three or four years old, and that she went to school, with Aunt Elizabeth and one other child, to a woman named Turner, somewhere in Boston, who kept a spinning-wheel a-going while she taught these three little children.

She remembers that one sat on a lignum-vitae mortar turned bottom up, another on a box, and the third on a stool; and then repeated the account of Jennie Burns bringing her little daughter to the school, as before.

I observed yesterday in that oak stump on the ditch bank by Trillium Wood (which I counted the rings of once) that between the twentieth and twenty-seventh ' rings there was only about three sevenths of an inch, though before and after this it grew very fast and seven spaces would make nearly two inches. The tree was growing lustily till twenty years old, and then for seven years it grew only one fourth or one fifth part as fast as before and after. I am curious to know what happened to it.

P. M. —To Cliffs through Wheeler’s pasture on the hill.

This new pasture, with gray stumps standing thickly in the now sere sward, reminds me of a graveyard. And on these monuments you can read each tree’s name, when it was born (if you know when it died), how it throve, and how long it lived, whether it was cut down in full vigor or after the infirrnities of age had attacked it.

I am surprised to find the epigaea on this hill, at the northwest corner of C. Hubbard’s (?) lot, i. e. the large wood. It extends a rod or so and is probably earlier there than where I have found it before. Some of the buds show a very little color. The leaves have lately been much eaten, I suspect by partridges.

Little mounds or tufts of yellowish or golden moss in the young woods look like sunlight on the ground.

If possible, come upon the top of a hill unexpectedly, perhaps through woods, and then see off from it to the distant earth which lies behind a bluer veil, before you can see directly down it, i. e. bringing its own near top against the distant landscape.

In the Fair Haven orchard I see the small botrychium still fresh, but quite dark reddish. 

The bark of the Populus grandidentata there is a green clay-color.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 7, 1858

Aunt Louisa has talked with Mrs. Monroe.  See January 23, 1858 ("Mrs. William Monroe told Sophia last evening that she remembered her (Sophia’s) grandfather very well,")

Epigaea repens: trailing arbutus. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Epigaea

Populus grandidentata: big-tooth aspen. A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,the Big-toothed Aspen (Populus grandidentata)

In the Fair Haven orchard I see the small botrychium still fresh, but quite dark reddish. See April 2, 1859 ("I see the small botrychium still quite fresh in the open pasture, only a reddish or leathery brown, — some, too, yellow. It is therefore quite evergreen and more than the spleenworts.")

Yellowish or golden moss in the young woods look like sunlight on the ground. Compare October 25, 1853 ("The ground is strewn with pine-needles as sunlight.")

Little mounds of truth,

yellowish or golden moss:

sunlight on the ground.

zphx

Apple blossom buds.

February 6.

Observed some buds on a young apple tree, partially unfolded at the extremity and apparently swollen. Probably blossom-buds.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 6, 1853

See February 6, 1856 ("The down is just peeping out from some of the aspen buds")

February  6. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 6

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, I love you like I love the sky

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 © 2009-2022

Goose grass

February 5. 

P. M. — To Boaz’s Meadow. 

There is a plenty of that handsome-seeded grass which I think Tarbell called goose grass in the meadow south of the roadway, at Boaz’s Meadow, also in the meadows far north in the woods, and some in Minot Pratt’s meadow.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 5, 1858

Boaz's Meadow. See November 11, 1857 ("That cellar-hole off northwest of Brooks Clark’s is where Boaz Brown used to live, and the andromeda swamp behind is “Boaz's (pronounced Boze's) meadow,” says Jacob Farmer, who has seen corn growing in the meadow. "); November 18, 1857 ("There is the meadow behind Brooks Clark’s . . .. The stream which drains this empties into the Assabet at Dove Rock. A short distance west of this meadow, but a good deal more elevated, is Boaz's meadow, whose water finds its way, naturally or artificially, northeast ward around the other.")

Another new plant anticipated. Naming Ledum Swamp.

February 4. 

P. M. – To C. Miles Swamp. 

Discover the Ledum latifolium, quite abundant over a space about six rods in diameter just east of the small pond-hole, growing with the Andromeda calyculata, Polifolia, Kalmia glauca, etc. 

The A. Polifolia is very abundant about the pond-hole, some of it very narrow-leaved and dark, even black, above, as if burnt. 

The ledum bears a general resemblance to the water andromeda, with its dark reddish-purplish, or rather mulberry, leaves, reflexed; but nearer it is distinguished by its coarseness, the perfect tent form of its upper leaves, and the large, conspicuous terminal roundish (strictly oval) red buds, nearly as big as the swamp pink's, but rounded. The woolly stem for a couple of inches beneath the bud is frequently bare and conspicuously club-shaped. The rust on the under sides of the leaves seems of a lighter color than that of Maine. The seed-vessels (which open at the base first) still hold on. 

This plant might easily be confounded with the water andromeda by a careless observer. When I showed it to a teamster, he was sure that he had seen it often in the woods, but the sight of the woolly under side staggered him. 

There are many small spruce thereabouts, with small twigs and leaves, an abnormal growth, reminding one of strange species of evergreen from California, China, etc. 

I brought some home and had a cup of tea made, which, in spite of a slight piny or turpentine flavor, I thought unexpectedly good. 

An abundance of nesaea on the east edge of the pond-hole (call it Ledum Pond-hole); and is that a lysimachia mingled with it?

The ledum does not grow amid the maples, nor, indeed, does the A. Polifolia, Kalmia glauca, nor even the water andromeda abundantly. It bears no more shade than that of the spruce trees, which do not prevail over the above-named shrubbery. 

As usual with the finding of new plants, I had a presentiment that I should find the ledum in Concord. It is a remarkable fact that, in the case of the most interesting plants which I have discovered in this vicinity, I have anticipated finding them perhaps a year before the discovery.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 4, 1858

Discover the Ledum latiforium ....The rust on the under sides of the leaves seems of a lighter color than that of Maine. See July 25, 1857 (“Here [at Kimeo], among others, were the . . . Oxalis Acetosella, still occasionally in flower; Labrador tea (Ledum latifolium), out of bloom; Kalmia glauca, etc., etc., close to the track. ”); August 24, 1857 (“We waded into Coos Swamp on the south side the turnpike [at Natick] to find the ledum, but did not succeed. ”); June 19, 1856 (“Looked at a collection of the rarer plants made by Higginson and placed at the Natural History Rooms. Among which noticed ...Ledum latifolium, from White Mountains, rather 'broader—leafed than mine from Maine.”)  ~~ Recently reclassified from the genus Ledum, labrador-tea (Rhododendron groenlandicum) is a diminutive shrub of cool, wet swamps, spruce forests, and muskeg. It is recognized by its clusters of tiny white flowers and its folded-under leaves with brown hairs on the undersides. This shrub is named Labrador-tea because its aromatic leaves were commonly brewed as a tea by northern native Americans. Moose browse the leaves and twigs. ~ Go Botany

The A. Polifolia is very abundant about the pond-hole, some of it very narrow-leaved and dark, even black, above, as if burnt. See February 12, 1858 ("There is, apparently, more of the Andromeda Polifolia in that swamp than anywhere else in Concord."); November 15,1857 ("At C. Miles Swamp [f]ind plenty of Andromeda Polifolia ... where you can walk dry-shod in the spruce wood”). See also July 14, 1853 (“Saw something blue, or glaucous, in Beck Stow's Swamp to-day; approached and discovered the Andromeda Polifolia, in the midst of the swamp at the north end, not long since out of bloom.): February 17, 1854 ("In the open part of Gowing's Swamp I find the Andromeda Polifolia. Neither here nor in Beck Stow's does it grow very near the shore.)

This plant might easily be confounded with the water andromeda by a careless observer. See August 19, 1856 (“a careless observer would look through their thin flowery panicles without observing any flower at all.”)

There are many small spruce thereabouts, with small twigs and leaves, an abnormal growth, See November 15,1857 ("At C. Miles Swamp .. where you can walk dry-shod in the spruce wood”); February 12, 1858 ("About the ledum pond-hole there is an abundance of that abnormal growth of the spruce. . . , which have an impoverished look, altogether forming a broom-like mass, very much like a heath."); June 13, 1858 ("I see a song sparrow's nest here in a little spruce just by the mouth of the ditch."); August 8, 1858 ("The peculiar plants of [Ledum] swamp are, then, as I remember, these nine: spruce, Andromeda Polifolia, Kalmia glauca, Ledum latifolium, Gaylussacia dumosa var. hirtella, Vaccinium Oxycoccus, Platanthera blephari glottis, Scheuchzeria palustris, Eriophorum 'vaginatum.");' September 6, 1858 ("That swamp is a singularly wild place, without any natural outlet. I hear of a marsh hawk’s nest there this summer. I see great spiders there of an uncommon kind, whose webs —the main supporting line — stretch six feet in the clear from spruce to spruce, as high as my head, with a dense web of the usual form some fifteen inches in diameter beneath."); October 23, 1858 ("The spruce is changed and falling, but is brown and inconspicuous. A man at work on the Ledum Pool, draining it, says that. . . he had found three growths of spruce, one above another, there.")

It is a remarkable fact that, in the case of the most interesting plants which I have discovered in this vicinity, I have anticipated finding them perhaps a year before the discovery. See  July 14, 1853 (“Saw something blue, or glaucous, in Beck Stow's Swamp to-day; approached and discovered the Andromeda Polifolia, in the midst of the swamp at the north end, not long since out of bloom. This is another instance of a common experience. When I am shown from abroad, or hear of, or in any [way] become interested in, some plant or other thing, I am pretty sure to find it soon. Within a week R. W. E. showed me a slip of this in a botany, as a great rarity which George Bradford brought from Watertown. I had long been interested in it by Linnaeus's account. I now find it in abundance.”); January 9, 1855 (“Make a splendid discovery this afternoon. Walking through Holden’s white spruce swamp, I see peeping above the snow-crust some slender delicate evergreen shoots very much like the Andromeda Polifolia, amid sphagnum, lambkill, Andromeda calyculata, blueberry bushes, etc., though there is very little to be seen above the snow. It is, I have little doubt, the Kalmia glauca var. rosmarinifolia.”);  September 2, 1856 (“It commonly chances that I make my most interesting botanical discoveries when I am in a thrilled and expectant mood, perhaps wading in some remote swamp where I have just found something novel and feel more than usually remote from the town. Or some rare plant which for some reason has occupied a strangely prominent place in my thoughts for some time will present itself. My expectation ripens to discovery. I am prepared for strange things.”); November 4, 1858 ("We cannot see any thing until we are possessed with the idea of it, and then we can hardly see anything else. In my botanical rambles I find that first the idea, or image, of a plant occupies my thoughts, though it may at first seem very foreign to this locality, and for some weeks or months I go thinking of it and expecting it unconsciously, and at length I surely see it, and it is henceforth an actual neighbor of mine. This is the history of my finding a score or more of rare plants which I could name.”); August 22, 1860 ("I never find a remarkable Indian relic but I have first divined its existence, and planned the discovery of it. Frequently I have told myself distinctly what it was to be before I found it.”); and note to July 2, 1857 ("We find only the world we look for.")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 4

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