The river, now that it is so clear and sunny, is better than any aquarium

August 8. 

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

I perceive that rocks on the bottom stretch across from Mantatuket Point to the Island, and probably make the ancient core of the shoals and islands, and the river has cut through above and between them and made them islands, just as it at high water cuts off and makes an island of Mantatuket Rock itself; i.e., the shallows below the junction are to be considered as the point of the hill, at least the rocky portion of them. 

I find the same curious eggs (which I saw at the Fordway on the 22d) on the rocks and trees on the Assabet, always on the upright, or steep, sides of rocks in the water or on bare-barked (or perhaps denuded of bark) trees on the edge of the river and overhanging it. Are they to be found up the main stream? They are not yet hatched.

Peetweets take their flight over the water, several together, apparently the old with their young now grown, the former (?) uttering a peculiarly soft rippling call. That is, it is not now a sharp, ringing note. 

The river, now that it is so clear and sunny, is better than any aquarium. Standing up and pushing gently up the stream, or floating yet more quietly down it, I can, in some places, see the secrets of half the river and its inhabitants,

• the common and familiar bream with the dusty light reflected from its fins,
•  the vigorous looking perch, tiger-like among fishes (I notice that many of the perch are poised head downward, peeping under the rocks), 
• the motionless pickerel with reticulated back and sides, as it were the seed-vessel of a water-plant, eyes set far back. 

It is an enchanter’s wand ready to surprise you with life. 

The weeds are as indispensable to the fishes as woods and shrubbery to us. I saw a perch conceal himself from my sight under a tuft of weeds at the bottom not much wider than its own length. That potamogeton (is it P. Robbinsii?) growing in dense beds under water, all immersed in shallow places, like a bed of brown and muddy ostrich-feathers, alternating with darker beds of Bidens Beckii, which show but a particle of green above the surface (I think of the latter in the South Branch), —what concealment these afford to turtles, frogs, fishes, etc.! The potamogetons are so thick in some places in the main stream that a frog might hop quite across the river on them without getting in over his head. 

Rice has had a little experience once in pushing a canal-boat up Concord River. Says this was the way they used to get the boat off a rock when by chance it had got on to one. If it had run quite on, so that the rock was partly under the main bottom of the boat, they let the boat swing round to one side and placed a stout stake underneath, a little aslant, with one end on the bottom of the river and the other ready to catch the bows of the boat, and while one held it, perhaps, the other pushed the boat round again with all his force, and so drove it on to the stake and lifted it up above the rock, and so it floated off.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 8, 1859

Rocks on the bottom stretch across from Mantatuket Point to the Island. See March 17, 1859; ("Mantatuket Rock, commonly a rocky peninsula with a low or swampy neck and all covered with wood . . .is now a small rocky island")

The river, now that it is so clear and sunny, is better than any aquarium. See August 8, 1854 ("This is a day of sunny water.. . .I look down a rod and see distinctly the fishes and the bottom."); see also July 18, 1854 ("On all sides, as I float along, the recesses of the water and the bottom are unusually revealed, and I see the fishes and weeds and shells. I look down into the sunny water. "); July 30, 1856 ("The water is suddenly clear.”); July 28, 1859 ("The season has now arrived when I begin to see further into the water . . “);. July 27, 1860 ("The water has begun to be clear and sunny, revealing the fishes and countless minnows of all sizes and colors”).

Peetweets the old with their young now grown, the former uttering a peculiarly soft rippling call. That is, it is not now a sharp, ringing note. See June 21, 1855 ("Peetweets make quite a noise calling to their young with alarm."); July 2, 1860 ("the alarm note of the peetweets, concerned about their young."); July 6, 1856 ("hear the distressed or anxious peet of a peetweet, and see it hovering over its young, half grown"); August 22, 1853 ("A peetweet flew along the shore and uttered its peculiar note")

This was the way they used to get the boat off a rock. Compare July 18, 1859 ("If you get on to a rock in the river, rock the boat, while you keep steadily pushing, and thus there will be moments when the boat does not rest on the rock at all, and you will rapidly get it off.")

August 8. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 8

 

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