The note was so incessant that at length you only noticed when it ceased.

July 10.

Saturday.

July 10, 2013

Wentworth says he once collected one hundred pounds of spruce gum and sold it at Biddeford for forty cents per pound. Says there are “sable lines” about here. They trap them, but rarely see them. His neighbor, who lives on the hill behind where we camped on the 6th, has four hours more sun than be. He can, accordingly, make hay better, but W. beats him in corn.

The days are about forty minutes longer on top of Mt. Washington than at seashore, according to guide-book. The sun set to us here at least an hour earlier than usual.

This ravine at the bottom of which we were, looking westward up it, had a rim somewhat like that of the crater of a volcano. The head of it bore from camp about N. 65° W., looking nearer than it was; the highest rock, with the outline of a face on it on the south rim, S. 32° W.; a very steep cliff on the opposite side, N. 20° W.; and over the last we judged was the summit of Mt. Washington.

As I understood Wentworth, this was in Pingree’s Grant; the Glen House in Pinkham’s Grant.

To-day and yesterday clouds were continually drifting over the summit, commonly extending about down to the edge of the ravine. When we looked up that way, the black patch made by our fire looked like a shadow on the mountainside.

When I tasted the water under the snow arch the day before, I was disappointed at its warmth, though it was in fact melted snow; but half a mile lower it tasted colder. Probably, the ice being cooled by the neighbor hood of the snow, it seemed thus warmer by contrast.

The only animals we saw about our camp were a few red squirrels. W. said there were striped ones about the mountains.

The Fringilla hyemalis was most common in the upper part of the ravine, and I saw a large bird of prey, perhaps an eagle, sailing over the head of the ravine. The wood thrush and veery sang regularly, especially morning and evening.

But, above all, the peculiar and memorable songster was that Monadnock-like one, keeping up an exceedingly brisk and lively strain. It was remarkable for its incessant twittering flow. Yet we never got sight of the bird, at least while singing, so that I could not identify it, and my lameness prevented my pursuing it. I heard it afterward, even in the Franconia Notch. It was surprising for its steady and uninterrupted flow, for when one stopped, another appeared to take up the strain. It reminded me of a fine corkscrew stream issuing with incessant lisping tinkle from a cork, flowing rapidly, and I said that he had pulled out the spile and left it running. That was the rhythm, but with a sharper tinkle of course. It had no more variety than that, but it was more remarkable for its continuance and monotonousness than any bird’s note I ever heard. It evidently belongs only to cool mountainsides, high up amid the fir and spruce. I saw once flitting through the fir-tops restlessly a small white it. Sometimes they appeared to be attracted by our smoke. The note was so incessant that at length you only noticed when it ceased.

The black flies were of various sizes here, much larger than I noticed in Maine. They compelled me most of the time to sit in the smoke, which I preferred to wearing a veil. They lie along your forehead in a line, where your hat touches it, or behind your ears, or about your throat (if not protected by a beard), or into the rims of the eyes, or between the knuckles, and there suck till they are crushed. But fortunately they do not last far into the evening, and a wind or a fog disperses them. I did not mind them much, but I noticed that men working on the highway made a fire to keep them off. I find many of them accidentally pressed in my botany and plant book. A botanist’s books, if he has ever visited the primitive northern woods, will be pretty sure to contain these specimens of the black fly. Anything but mosquitoes by night. Plenty of fly-blowing flies, but I saw no ants in the dead wood; some spiders.

In the afternoon, Hoar, Blake, and Brown ascended the slide on the south to the highest rock. They were more than an hour getting up, but we heard them shout distinctly from the top. Hoar found near the edge of the ravine there, between the snow there and edge, Rhododendron Lapponicum, some time out of bloom, growing in the midst of empetrum and moss; Arctostaphylos alpina, going to seed; Polygonum Mm'parum, in prime;  and Salix herbacea, a pretty, trailing, roundish-leaved willow, going to seed, but apparently not so early as the S. Uva-ursi.

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

The peculiar and memorable songster was that Monadnock-like one. . . so incessant that at length you only noticed when it ceased.   See June 4, 1858 ("At 6 A. M. we began to descend [Monasnock. Near the upper edge of the wood, I heard, as I had done in ascending, a very peculiar lively and interesting strain from some bird, which note was new to me.") [Likely the winter wren. See Notes on New England Birds 363-364.]

July 10. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 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 © 2009-2021