A stream meanders as much in a zigzag as serpentine manner.

August 29.

The 25th and 26th I was surveying Tuttle's farm.

The northeast side bounds on the Mill Brook and its tributary and is very irregular.

I find, after surveying accurately the windings of several brooks and of the river, that their meanders are not such regular serpentine curves as is commonly supposed, or at least represented. 

They flow as much in a zigzag as serpentine manner.

The eye is very much deceived when standing on the brink, and one who had only surveyed a brook so would be inclined to draw a succession of pretty regular serpentine curves.

But, accurately plotted, the regularity disappears, and there are found to be many straight lines and sharp turns.

I want no better proof of the inaccuracy of some maps than the regular curving meanders of the streams, made evidently by a sweep of the pen.

No, the Meander no doubt flowed in a very crooked channel, but depend upon it, it was as much zigzag as serpentine.

This last brook I observed was doubly zigzag, or compoundly zigzag; i. e., there was a zigzag on a large scale including the lesser.

To the eye this meadow is perfectly level.

Probably all streams are (generally speaking) far more meandering in low and level and soft ground near their mouths, where they flow slowly, than in high and rugged ground which offers more obstacles.

The meadow being so level for long distances, no doubt as high in one direction as another, how, I asked myself, did the feeble brook, with all its meandering, ever find its way to the distant lower end?

What kind of instinct conducted it forward in the right direction?

How unless it is the relict of a lake which once stood high over all these banks, and knew the different levels of its distant shores?

How unless a flow which commenced above its level first wore its channel for it?

Thus, in regard to most rivers, did not lakes first find their mouths for them, just as the tide now keeps open the mouths of sluggish rivers?

And who knows to what extent the sea originally channelled the submerged globe?

Walking down the street in the evening, I detect my neighbor’s ripening grapes by the scent twenty rods off; though they are concealed behind his house, every passer knows of them.

So, too, ever and anon I pass through a little region possessed by the fragrance of ripe apples.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 29, 1853

Probably all streams are far more meandering in low and level and soft ground near their mouths. See July 18, 1852 ("Thus by a natural law a river, instead of flowing straight through its meadows, meanders from side to side and fertilizes this side or that. . . The river has its active and its passive side, its right and left breast."); March 24, 1855 ("Rivers appear to have traveled back and worn into the meadows of their creating, and then they become more meandering than ever. Thus in the course of ages the rivers wriggle in their beds, till it feels comfortable under them. "); July 7, 1859 ("I learn from measuring on Baldwin's second map that the river . . . winds most in the broad meadows. The greatest meander is in the Sudbury meadows."); July 22, 1859 ("It is remarkable how the river, even from its very source to its mouth, runs with great bends or zigzags regularly recurring and including many smaller ones, first northerly, then northeasterly, growing more and more simple and direct as it descends, like a tree; as if a mighty current had once filled the valley of the river, and meandered in it according to the same law that this small stream does in its own meadows. ")


I detect my neighbor’s ripening grapes by the scent twenty rods off. See August 29, 1859 ("The very earliest ripe grapes begin to be scented in the cool nights "); see also  August 27, 1859 ("The first notice I have that grapes are ripening is by the rich scent at evening from my own native vine against the house"); August 30, 1853 ("Grapes are already ripe; I smell them first."); September 8, 1854 ("The grapes would no doubt be riper a week hence, but I am compelled to go now before the vines are stripped. I partly smell them out.");  September 8, 1858 (“Gather half my grapes, which for some time have perfumed the house.”); September 12, 1851 ("How autumnal )is the scent of ripe grapes now by the roadside!");September 13, 1856 ("Up Assabet. Gather quite a parcel of grapes, quite ripe.. . . the best are more admirable for fragrance than for flavor. Depositing them in the bows of the boat, they fill all the air with their fragrance, as we row along against the wind, as if we were rowing through an endless vineyard in its maturity.");October 9, 1853 ("I smell grapes, . . . their scent is very penetrating and memorable."