I saw, about west-northwest, a large Green Mountain, perhaps Mansfield Mountain.

July 15. 

Thursday. Continued the ascent of Lafayette, also called the Great Haystack. 

It is perhaps three and a half miles from the road to the top by path along winding ridge. At about a mile and a half up by path, the spruce began to be small. 

Saw there a silent bird, dark slate and blackish above, especially head, with a white line over the brows, then dark slate next beneath, white throat and reddish belly, black bill. A little like a nut hatch. Also saw an F. hyemalis on top of a dead tree. 

The wood was about all spruce here, twenty feet high, together with Vaccinium Canadense, lambkill in bloom, mountain-ash, Viburnum nudum, rhodora, Amelanchier oligocarpa, nemopanthes. 

As I looked down into some very broad and deep ravines from this point, their sides appeared to be covered chiefly with spruce, with a few bodkin points of fir here and there (had seen two days before some very handsome firs on low ground which were actually concave on sides  of cone), while the narrow bottom or middle of the ravine, as far up and down as trees reached, where, of course, there was most water, was almost exclusively hardwood, apparently birch chiefly. 

As we proceeded, the number of firs began to increase, and the spruce to diminish, till, at about two miles perhaps, the wood was almost pure fir about fourteen feet high; but this suddenly ceased at about half a mile further and gave place to a very dwarfish fir, and to spruce again, the latter of a very dwarfish, procumbent form, dense and flat, one to two feet high, which crept yet higher up the mountain than the fir, —over the rocks beyond the edge of the fir, -- and with this spruce was mixed Empetrum nigrum, dense and matted on the rocks, partly dead, with berries already blackening, also Vaccinium uliginosum. 

Though the edges all around and the greater part of such a thicket high up the otherwise bare rocks might be spruce, yet the deeper hollows between the rocks, in the midst, would invariably be filled with fir, rising only to the same level, but much larger round. These firs especially made the stag-horns when dead. 

The spruce was mostly procumbent at that height, but the fir upright, though flat-topped. In short, spruce gave place to fir from a mile and a half to a mile below the top, — so you may say firs were the highest trees, — and then succeeded to it in a very dwarfish and procum bent form yet higher up. 

At about one mile or three quarters below the summit, just above the limit of trees, we came to a little pond, maybe of a quarter of an acre (with a yet smaller one near by), the source of one head of the Pemigewasset, in which grew a great many yellow lilies (Nuphar advena) and I think a potamogeton. 

In the flat, dryish bog by its shore, I noticed the Empetrum nigrum (1), ledum (2), Vaccinium Oxycoccus, Smilacina trifolia, Kalmia glauca (3) (in bloom still), Andromeda calyculata (4) (and I think Polifolia), Eriophorum vaginatum, Vaccinium uliginosum (5), Juncus filiformis, four kinds of sedge (e. g. Carex pauciflora .9), C. irrigua with dangling spikes, and a C. lupulzna-like, and the Scirpus caespitosus (?) of Mt. Washington, brown lichens (q. v.), and cladonias, all low and in a moss-like bed in the moss of the bog; also rhodora of good size. 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 were quite dwarfish. 

The outlet of the pond was considerable, but soon lost beneath the rocks. A willow, rostrata-like but not downy, grew there. 

In the dwarf fir thickets above and below this pond, I saw the most beautiful linnaeas that I ever saw. They grew quite densely, full of rose-purple flowers, — deeper reddish purple than ours, which are pale, — perhaps nodding over the brink of a spring, altogether the fairest mountain flowers I saw, lining the side of the narrow horse track through the fir scrub. As you walk, you overlook the top of this thicket on each side. 

There also grew near that pond red cherry, Aster prenanthes (?) and common rue. 

We saw a line of fog over the Connecticut Valley. Found near summit apparently the Vaccinium angustifolium of Aitman (variety of Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum, Gray), bluets, and a broad-leaved vaccinium lower down (q. ‘12.). 

Just below top, reclined on a dense bed of Salix Uva-ursi, five feet in diameter by four or five inches deep, a good spot to sit on, mixed with a rush, amid rocks. This willow was generally showing its down.

We had fine weather on this mountain, and from the summit a good view of Mt. Washington and the rest, though it was a little hazy in the horizon. It was a wild mountain and forest scene from south-southeast round easterwardly to north-northeast. 

On the northwest the country was half cleared, as from Monadnock, -— the leopard-spotted land. I saw, about west-northwest, a large Green Mountain, perhaps Mansfield Mountain, though the compass was affected here. 

The Carex scirpoidea (?) grew at top, and it was surprising how many large bees, wasps, butterflies, and other insects were hovering and fluttering about the very apex, though not particularly below. What attracts them to such a locality.

Heard one white-throated sparrow above the trees, and also saw a little bird by the pond. Think I heard a song sparrow about latter place. Saw a toad near limit of trees, and many pollywogs in the pond above trees. 

Boiled tea for our dinner by the little pond, the head of the Pemigewasset. Saw tracks in the muddy bog by the pond-side, shaped somewhat like a small human foot sometimes, perhaps made by a bear. We made our fire on the moss and lichens, by a rock, amid the shallow fir and spruce, burning the dead fir twigs, or “deer’s-horns.” 

I cut off a flourishing fir three feet high and not flattened at top yet. This was one and a quarter inches in diameter and had thirty four rings. One, also flourishing, fifteen inches high, had twelve rings at ground. One, a dead one, was twenty nine inches in circumference, and at four feet from ground branched horizontally as much as five feet each way, making a flat top, curving upward again into stag horns, with branches very large and stout at base. 

Another fir, close by and dead, was thirty  inches in circumference at ground and only half an inch in diameter at four and a half feet. 

Another fir, three feet high, fresh and vigorous, without a flat top as yet, had its woody part an inch and an eighth thick (or diameter) at base (the bark being one eighth inch thick) and sixty-one rings. There was no sign of decay, though it was, as usual, mossy, or covered with lichens. 

I cut off at ground one of the little procumbent spruce trees, which spread much like a juniper, but not curving upward. This rose about nine inches above the ground, but I could not count the rings, they were so fine. (Vide piece.) 

The smallest diameter of the wood is forty-one eightieths of an inch. The number of rings, as near as I can count with a microscope, taking much pains, is about seventy, and on one side these are included within a radius of nine fortieths of an inch, of which a little more than half is heart-wood, or each layer on this side is less than one three-hundredth of an inch thick. The bark was three fortieths of an inch thick. It was quite round and easy to cut, it was so fresh. 

If the fir thirty inches in circumference grew no faster than that an inch and an eighth in diameter, then it was about five hundred and forty-nine years old. If as fast as the little spruce, it would be nearly fourteen hundred years old. 

When half-way down the mountain, amid the spruce, we saw two pine grosbeaks, male and female, close by the path, and looked for a nest, but in vain. They were remarkably tame, and the male a brilliant red orange, —neck, head, breast beneath, and rump,—blackish wings and tail, with two white bars on wings. (Female, yellowish.) 

The male flew nearer inquisitively, uttering a low twitter, and perched fearlessly within four feet of us, eying us and pluming himself and plucking and eating the leaves of the Amelanchier oligocarpa on which he sat, for several minutes. The female, meanwhile, was a rod off. 

They were evidently breeding there. Yet neither Wilson nor Nuttall speak of their breeding in the United States. 

At the base of the mountain, over the road, heard (and saw), at the same place where I heard him the evening before, a splendid rose-breasted grosbeak singing. I had before mistaken him at first for a tanager, then for a red-eye, but was not satisfied; but now, with my glass, I distinguished him sitting quite still, high above the road at the entrance of the mountain-path in the deep woods, and singing steadily for twenty minutes. 

It was remarkable for sitting so still and where yesterday. It was much richer and sweeter and, I think, more powerful than the note of the tanager or red-eye. It had not the hoarseness of the tanager, and more sweetness and fullness than the red-eye. Wilson does not give their breeding-place. Nuttall quotes Pennant as saying that some breed in New York but most further north. They, too, appear to breed about the White Mountains. 

Heard the evergreen-forest note on the sides of the mountains often. 

Heard no robins in the White Mountains. 

Rode on and stopped at Morrison’s (once Tilton’s) Inn in West Thornton. 

Heracleum lanatum in Notch and near, very large, some seven feet high. 

Observed, as we rode south through Lincoln, that the face of cliffs on the hills and mountains east of the river, and even the stems of the spruce, reflected a pink light at sunset.

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

Two pine grosbeaks, male and female, . . .the male a brilliant red orange, —neck, head, breast beneath, and rump,—blackish wings and tail, with two white bars on wings. See December 24, 1851 (“Saw also some pine grosbeaks, magnificent winter birds . . .with red or crimson reflections, more beautiful than a steady bright red would be. The note I heard, a rather faint and innocent whistle of two bars.”)

A splendid rose-breasted grosbeak singing. See May 25, 1854 ("Hear and see . . . the rose-breasted grosbeak, a handsome bird with a loud and very rich song, in character between that of a robin and a red-eye. . . . Rose breast, white beneath, black head and above, white on shoulder and wings.”); May 24, 1855 (“Hear a rose-breasted grosbeak. At first think it a tanager, but soon I perceive its more clear and instrumental — should say whistle, if one could whistle like a flute; a noble singer, reminding me also of a robin; clear, loud and flute-like; . . . Song not so sweet as clear and strong.”); May 21, 1856 (“What strong colored fellows, black, white, and fiery rose-red breasts! Strong-natured, too, with their stout bills. A clear, sweet singer, like a tanager but hoarse somewhat, and not shy.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Rose-breasted Grosbeak

July 15. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau July 15

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