Friday, July 13, 2018

Descending Mt. Washington

July 12.

Monday. It having cleared up, we shouldered our packs and commenced our descent, by a path about two and a half or three miles to carriage-road, not descending a great deal.

The prevailing under-plants at first, as we descended, were Oxalis Acetosella (abundantly in bloom), Cornus Canadensis, Clintonia borealis, chiogenes, Vaccinium Camdense, gold-thread, Listera cordata, Smilacina bifolia. Solidago thyrsoidea, large and prevalent, on more open and grassy parts, from top of ravine to base of mountain, where it was in prime, three feet high and spikes eighteen inches long.

Trees, at first, fir and spruce; then canoe birches increased, and after two miles yellow birch began. Half-way down the mountain, on the road, saw a whiteweed and one Alsine ernlandica.

It [is] surprising how much of that white froth, the nidus of an insect, there was on the grass and weeds on and about the mountains. They were white with it. Carex trisperma (?), three-quarters down.

Hear the oven-bird near base.

Dined by Peabody River, three quarters of a mile south of Glen House.

Found Lonicera ciliata in fruit there  and saw a little white pine, and Alnus incana was common, and that large, fragrant Aster macrophyllus (?) was budded.

I had noticed that the trees at the ravine camp -— fir and spruce — did not stand firmly. Two or three of us could have pulled over one thirty feet high and six or seven inches thick. They were easily rocked, lifting the horizontal roots each time, which reminded me of what is said about the Indians sometimes bending over a young tree, burying a chief under its roots, and letting it spring back for his monument and protection.

W. said they had found the fir the best material for bridge planking in his town, outlasting other woods!

In the afternoon we rode along, three of us, northward and northwestward on our way round the mountains, going through Gorham. We camped about a mile and a half west of Gorham, by the roadside, on the bank of Moose River.

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


July 12. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, July 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 © 2009-2021

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