Tracing a musquash-trail.

August 2. 

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

Landed at the Bath-Place and walked the length of Shad-bush Meadow. 

I noticed meandering down that meadow, which is now quite dry, a very broad and distinct musquash-trail, where they went and came continually when it was wet or under water in the winter or spring. These trails are often nine or ten inches wide and half a dozen deep, passing under a root and the lowest overhanging shrubs, where they glided along on their bellies underneath everything. 

I traced one such trail forty rods, till it ended in a large cabin three feet high, with blueberry bushes springing still from the top; and other similar trails led off from it on opposite sides. Near the cabin they had burrowed or worn them out nine or ten inches deep, as if this now deserted castle had been a place of great resort. 

Their skins used to be worth fifty cents apiece. 

I see there what I take to be a marsh hawk of this year, hunting by itself. It has not learned to be very shy yet, so that we repeatedly get near it. What a rich brown bird! almost, methinks, with purple reflections. 

What I have called the Panicum latifolium has now its broad leaves, striped with red, abundant under Turtle Bank, above Bath-Place.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 2, 1858

A distinct musquash-trail. See August 23, 1854 ("I improve the dry weather to examine the middle of Gowing's Swamp. . . . This is marked by the paths of muskrats, which also extend through the green froth of the pool. ")

Panicum latifolium has now its broad leaves, striped with red. See June 25, 1858 ("Just south the wall at Bittern Cliff, the Panicum latifolium, hardly yet, with some leaves almost an inch and a half wide.")

A marsh hawk of this year, not learned to be very shy yet, so that we repeatedly get near it. What a rich brown bird! almost, methinks, with purple reflections. See August 8, 1858. ("Saw yesterday a this year’s (?) marsh hawk, female . . .I took it to be a young bird, it came so near and looked so fresh. It is a fine rich-brown, full-breasted bird, with a long tail.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  the Marsh Hawk (Northern Harrier)