I realize how water predominates on the surface of the globe.

March 17.

 

March 17, 2019

6.30 a. m. — River risen still higher. 

It is seven and a half inches below the highest part of the truss and about fifteen and a half inches below the middle of the lower stone step of the railroad. It is not quite over Wood's road.

I hear a robin fairly singing. 

A great many musquash have been killed within a week. One says a cartload have been killed in Assa- bet. Perhaps a dozen gunners have been out in this town every day. They get a shilling apiece for their skins. One man getting musquash and one mink earned five or six dollars the other day. I hear their guns early and late long before sunrise and after sunset, for those are the best times. 

P. M. — To Flint's Bridge by water. 

The water is very high, and smooth as ever it is. 

It is very warm. I wear but one coat on the water. 

The town and the land it is built on seem to rise but little above the flood. This bright smooth and level surface seems here the prevailing element, as if the distant town were an island. 

I realize how water predominates on the surface of the globe. 

I am surprised to see new and unexpected waterlines, drawn by the level edge of the flood about knolls in the meadows and in the woods, — waving lines, rarely if ever recognized or thought of by the walker or any, which mark the boundary of a possible or probable freshet any spring. 

Even if the highest water-mark were indicated at one point, the surveyor could not, with any labor short of infinite, draw these lines for us which wind about every elevation of earth or rock. Yet, though this slight difference of level which the water so simply and effectually points out, is so unobservable by us ordinarily, no doubt Nature never forgets it for a moment, but plants grow and insects, etc., breed in conformity to it. 

Many a kingdom of nature has its boundaries parallel with this waving line. By these freshets, the relation of some field, usually far from the stream, to future or past deluge is suggested. I am surprised and amused, at least, to walk in such a field and observe the nice distinctions which the great water-level makes there. 

So plants and animals and thoughts have their commonly unseen shores, and many portions of the earth are, with reference to them, islands or peninsulas or capes, shores or mountains. 

We are stiff and set in our geography because the level of water is comparatively, or within short periods, unchangeable. We look only in the sea for islands and continents and their varieties. But there are more subtle and invisible and fluctuating floods which island this or that part of the earth whose geography has never been mapped. 

For instance, here is Mantatuket Rock, commonly a rocky peninsula with a low or swampy neck and all covered with wood. It is now a small rocky island, and not only the swampy neck but a considerable portion of the upland is blotted out by the flood, covered and concealed under water; and what surprises me is that the water should so instantly know and select its own shore on the upland, though I could not have told with my eye whether it would be thirty feet this way or as many that. 

A distinction is made for me by the water in this case which I had never thought of, revealing the relation of this surface to the flood ordinarily far from it, and which I now begin to perceive that every tree and shrub and herbaceous plant growing there knew, if I did not. 

How different to-day from yesterday! Yesterday was a cool, bright day, the earth just washed bare by the rain, and a strong northwest wind raised respectable billows on our vernal seas and imparted remarkable life and spirit to the scene. 

To-day it is perfectly still and warm. Not a ripple disturbs the surface of these lakes, but every insect, every small black beetle struggling on it, is betrayed; but, seen through this air, though many might not notice the difference, the russet surface of the earth does not shine, is not bright. 

I see no shining russet islands with dry but flushing oak leaves. The air is comparatively dead when I attend to it, and it is as if there were the veil of a fine mist over all objects, dulling their edges. Yet this would be called a clear day. 

These aerial differences in the days are not commonly appreciated, though they affect our spirits. 

When I am opposite the end of the willow-row, seeing the osiers of perhaps two years old all in a mass, they are seen to be very distinctly yellowish beneath and scarlet above. They are fifty rods off. 

Here is the same chemistry that colors the leaf or fruit, coloring the bark. It is generally, probably always, the upper part of the twig, the more recent growth, that is the higher-colored and more flower or fruit like. So leaves are more ethereal the higher up and further from the root. In the bark of the twigs, indeed, is the more permanent flower or fruit. 

The flower falls in spring or summer, the fruit and leaves fall or wither in autumn, but the blushing twigs retain their color throughout the winter and appear more brilliant than ever the succeeding spring. They are winter fruit. It adds greatly to the pleasure of late November, of winter, or of early spring walks to look into these mazes of twigs of different colors. 

As I float by the Rock, I hear rustling amid the oak leaves above that new water-line, and, there being no wind, I know it to be a striped squirrel, and soon see its long-unseen striped sides flirting about the instep of an oak. Its lateral stripes, alternate black and yellowish, are a type which I have not seen for a long time, or rather a punctuation-mark, the character to indicate where a new paragraph commences in the revolution of the seasons. Double lines.

I find by measurement that there is from two to three inches fall in the middle between the piers of Flint's Bridge, on the two sides of the bridge, supposing the planking to be level; but there is much more close to the abutments, for the water is very conspicuously heaped up in the middle in each case, or between each two piers, thus : —   If you look from above, it is somewhat thus: — 

If I land now on any knoll which is left dry above the flood, an island in the meadow, and its surface is broken, I am pretty sure to find Indian relics. They pitched their wigwams on these highest places, near water. 

I was speaking yesterday of the peculiarity of our meadow-bays in time of flood, — a shore where there are no shore-marks; for in time trees, rocks, etc., arrange themselves parallel with the water's edge, and the water by its washing makes for itself a strand, washing out the soil from the bank and leaving the sand and stones, and paths of animals and men conform to the permanent shore, but in this case all is abrupt and surprising. 

Rocky islands covered with green lichens and with polypody half submerged rise directly from the water, and trees stand up to their middles in it. Any eye would perceive that a rock covered with green lichens quite down to the water's edge was something unusual.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 17, 1859


I hear a robin fairly singing. See March 12, 1854 ("I hear my first robin peep distinctly at a distance. No singing yet.”); March 18, 1858 (“The robin does not come singing, but utters a somewhat anxious or inquisitive peep at first.”) See also note to  March 17, 1858 ("Sitting under the handsome scarlet oak beyond the hill, I hear a faint note far in the wood which reminds me of the robin. Again I hear it; it is he, — an occasional peep.”)

It is very warm. I wear but one coat on the water. See March 17, 1854 ("A remarkably warm day for the season; too warm while surveying without my great coat; almost like May heats.”)