It was the event of our walk, and we were proud to wear this badge

September 5. 


P. M. – To Ball's Hill.

The brink of the river is still quite interesting in some respects, and to some eyes more interesting than ever.

Though the willows and button-bushes have already assumed an autumnal hue, and the pontederia is extensively crisped and blackened, the dense masses of mikania, now, it may be, paler than before, are perhaps more remarkable than ever.

I see some masses of it, overhanging the deep water and completely concealing the bush that supports them, which are as rich a sight as any flower we have, — little terraces of contiguous corymbs, like mignonette (?).

Also the dodder is more revealed, also draping the brink over the water.

The mikania is sometimes looped seven or eight feet high to a tree above the bushes, a manifest vine, with its light-colored corymbs at intervals.

See the little dippers back.

Did I not see a marsh hawk in imperfect plumage? Quite brown, with some white midway the wing and tips of wings black?

What further adds to the beauty of the bank is the hibiscus, in prime and the great bidens.

Having walked through a quantity of desmodium under Ball's Hill , by the shore there (Marilandicum or rigidum), we found our pants covered with its seeds to a remarkable and amusing degree. These green scales closely covering and greening my legs reminded me of the lemna on a ditch. It amounted to a kind of coat of mail.

It was the event of our walk, and we were proud to wear this badge, as if he were the most distinguished who had the most on his clothes.
My companion expressed a certain superstitious feeling about it, for he said he thought it would not be right to walk intentionally amid the desmodium so as to get more of the ticks on us, nor yet to pick them off, but they must be carried about till they are rubbed off accidentally.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 5, 1860

Though the willows and button-bushes have already assumed an autumnal hue, the dense masses of mikaniaare perhaps more remarkable than ever. See August 2, 1860 ("Mikania begun, and now, perhaps, the river's brink is at its height. "); August 22, 1858 ("Now that the mikania begins to prevail the button-bush has done . . . and the willows are already somewhat crisped and imbrowned"); August 29, 1858 ("The mikania is apparently in prime or a little past."); September 20, 1859 ("The button-bushes by the river are generally overrun with the mikania.")

See the little dippers back. See September 8, 1859 ("See the black head and neck of a little dipper in mid stream, a few rods before my boat. It disappears, and though I search carefully, I cannot detect it again."); September 9, 1858 ("At length the walker who sits meditating on a distant bank sees the little dipper sail out from amid the weeds and busily dive for its food along their edge: Yet ordinary eyes might range up and down the river all day and never detect its small black head above the water."); September 27, 1860 ("I see a little dipper in the middle of the river.. . .It has a dark bill and considerable white on the sides of the head or neck, with black between it, no tufts, and no observable white on back or tail.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Little Dipper

Did I not see a marsh hawk in imperfect plumage? Quite brown, with some white midway the wing and tips of wings black? See April 10, 1853 ("Saw a pretty large narrow-winged hawk with a white rump and white spots or bars on under ( ?) side of wings. Probably the female or young of a marsh hawk."); April 13, 1854 (" A small brown hawk with white on rump — I think too small for a marsh hawk — sailed low over the meadow. [May it have been a young male harrier?]");  April 23, 1855 ("I have seen also for some weeks occasionally a brown hawk with white rump, flying low, which I have thought the frog hawk in a different stage of plumage; but can it be at this season? and is it not the marsh hawk? Yet it is not so heavy nearly as the hen-hawk -- probably female hen-harrier [i. e. marsh hawk]"); October 18, 1855 ("A large brown marsh hawk comes beating the bush along the river, and ere long a slate-colored one (male), with black tips, is seen circling against a distant wood-side."); May 14, 1857 ("See a pair of marsh hawks, the smaller and lighter-colored male, with black tips to wings, and the large brown female, sailing low") See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  the Marsh Hawk (Northern Harrier)

Having walked through a quantity of desmodium under Ball's Hill we found our pants covered with its seeds to a remarkable and amusing degree. See August 19, 1856 ("Some of these desmodiums, the paniculatum, Marilandicum, nudiflorum, rigidum, and Dillenii, are so fine and inobvious that a careless observer would look through their thin flowery panicles without observing any flower at all.");  August 26, 1856 ("These desmodiums are so fine and inobvious that it is difficult to detect them. I go through a grove in vain, but when I get away, find my coat covered with their pods. They found me, though I did not them.”); September 29, 1856 ("How surely the desmodium, growing on some rough cliff-side, or the bidens, on the edge of a pool, prophesy the coming of the traveller, brute or human, that will transport their seeds on his coat!"); October 2, 1852 ("I also find the desmodium sooner thus. . . than if I used my eyes alone.")

What further adds to the beauty of the bank is the great bidens. September 13, 1852 ("The great bidens in the sun in brooks affects me as the rose of the fall, the most flavid product of the water and the sun. They are low suns in the brook. The golden glow of autumn concentrated, more golden than the sun. . . . If I come by at this season, a golden blaze will salute me here from a thousand suns.")

Nature prepared for an infinity of springs.

November 10

November 10, 2023

P. M. – Sail to Ball's Hill with W. E. C. 

See where the muskrats have eaten much pontederia root. 

Got some donacia grubs for Harris, but find no chrysalids. 

The sight of the masses of yellow hastate leaves and flower-buds of the yellow lily, already four or six inches long, at the bottom of the river, reminds me that nature is prepared for an infinity of springs yet.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 10, 1854

Harris. Thaddeus William Harris 1795-1856: the librarian of Harvard University and one of Thoreau's professors. See  note to January 1, 1853 ("Sibley told me that Agassiz told him that Harris was the greatest entomologist in the world, and gave him permission to repeat his remark.")

Got some donacia grubs for Harris. See January 19, 1854 ("[Dr, Harris] thinks that small beetle, slightly metallic, which I saw with grubs, etc., on the yellow lily roots last fall was. . . one of the Donasia (?).")

The muskrats have eaten much pontederia root. See December 26, 1859 ("So many of these houses being broken open, — twenty or thirty I see, — I look into the open hole, and find in it, in almost every instance, many pieces of the white root with the little leaf-bud curled up which I take to be the yellow lily root . . . Also I see a little coarser, what I take to be green leaf-stalk of the pontederia.")

The sight of the masses of yellow hastate leaves and flower-buds of the yellow lily reminds me that nature is prepared for an infinity of springs yet. See October 15, 1858 ("The yellow lily in the brook by the Turnpike is still expanding fresh leaves with wrinkled edges, as in the spring. "); March 7, 1853 ("Find the yellow bud of a Nuphar advena in the ditch on the Turnpike on E. Hosmer's land, bud nearly half an inch in diameter on a very thick stem, three fourths of an inch thick at base and ten inches long, four or five inches above the mud. This may have swollen somewhat during the warmest weather in the winter, after pushing up in the fall. And I see that it may, in such a case, in favorable locations, blossom at very early but irregular periods in the spring."); March 28, 1852 ("The yellow lily leaves are pushing up in the ditch beyond Hubbard's Grove, hard-rolled and triangular, with a sharp point with which to pierce the mud; green at the tips and yellow below. The leaf is rolled in from both sides to the midrib. This is, perhaps, to be regarded as the most obvious sign of advancing spring."); June 29, 1852 ("The great yellow lily, the spatter-dock, expresses well the fertility of the river."). See also October 30, 1853 ("Now, now is the time to look at the buds.”); December 1, 1852 ("At this season I observe the form of the buds which are prepared for spring,"); December 2, 1852 ("There is a certain resonance and elasticity in the air that makes the least sound melodious as in spring. It is an anticipation, a looking through winter to spring."); January 12, 1855 (" Well may the tender buds attract us at this season, no less than partridges, for they are the hope of the year, the spring rolled up. The summer is all packed in them.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Reminiscence and Prompting

Nature prepared for 

an infinity of springs –

yellow lily buds.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Nature prepared for an infinity of springs

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 ©  2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-541110

The aspect of the meadow is sky-blue and dark-blue.

February 27.

 2 P. M. — Thermometer 50.

February 27, 2015

February 27, 2020

To Abner Buttrick' s Hill. 

The river has been breaking up for several days and I now see great cakes lodged against each of the bridges, especially at Hunt's and the North Bridge, where the river flows with the wind. 

For a week or more you could not go to Ball's Hill by the south side of the river. The channel is now open, at least from our neighborhood all the way to Ball's Hill [ Yes , and upward as far as Cardinal Shore, the reach above Hubbard 's Bridge being open; thence it is mackerelled up to the pond], except the masses of ice moving in it; but the ice generally rests on the bottom of the meadows, — such as was there before the water rose, — and the freshet is for the most part covered with a thin ice except where the wind has broke it up. 

The high wind for several days has prevented this water from freezing hard. 

There are many cranberries washed far on to a large cake of ice which stretches across the river at Hunt's Bridge. The wind subsiding leaves them conspicuous on the middle of the cake. 

I noticed yesterday that the skunk-cabbage had not started yet at Well Meadow, and had been considerably frost-bitten. 

Heywood says that when the ground is regularly descending from the north to the railroad, a low fence a quarter of a mile off has been found to answer perfectly; if it slopes upward, it must be very near the road. 

I walk down the river below Flint's on the north side. 

The sudden apparition of this dark-blue water on the surface of the earth is exciting. I must now walk where I can see the most water, as to the most living part of nature. This is the blood of the earth, and we see its blue arteries pulsing with new life now. 

I see, from far over the meadows, white cakes of ice gliding swiftly down the stream, - a novel sight. They are whiter than ever in this spring sun. The abundance of light as reflected from clouds and the snow, etc., etc. is more springlike than anything of late. 

For several days the earth generally has been bare. I see the tawny and brown earth, the fescue- and lichen-clad hills behind Dakin's and A. Buttrick's. 

Among the radical leaves most common, and therefore early-noticed, are the veronica and the thistle, - green in the midst of brown and decayed; and at the bottom of little hollows in pastures, now perhaps nearly covered with ice and water, you see some greener leafets of clover. 

I find myself cut off by that arm of our meadow sea which makes up toward A. Buttrick's. The walker now by the river valley is often compelled to go far round by the water, driven far toward the farmers' door-yards.

I had noticed for some time, far in the middle of the Great Meadows, something dazzlingly white, which I took, of course, to be a small cake of ice on its end, but now that I have climbed the pitch pine hill and can overlook the whole meadow, I see it to be the white breast of a male sheldrake accompanied perhaps by his mate (a darker one). They have settled warily in the very midst of the meadow, where the wind has blown a space of clear water for an acre or two. The aspect of the meadow is sky-blue and dark-blue, the former a thin ice, the latter the spaces of open water which the wind has made, but it is chiefly ice still. Thus, as soon as the river breaks up or begins to break up fairly, and the strong wind widening the cracks makes at length open spaces in the ice of the meadow, this hardy bird appears, and is seen sailing in the first widened crack in the ice, where it can come at the water. 

Instead of a piece of ice I find it to be the breast of the sheldrake, which so reflects the light as to look larger than it is, steadily sailing this way and that with its companion, who is diving from time to time. They have chosen the opening farthest removed from all shores. As I look I see the ice drifting in upon them and contracting their water, till finally they have but a few square rods left, while there are forty or fifty acres near by. This is the first bird of the spring that I have seen or heard of.

C. saw a skater-insect on E. Hubbard's Close brook in woods to-day.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 27, 1860

The river has been breaking up for several days . . .  The channel is now open, at least from our neighborhood all the way to Ball's Hill. Compare  February 27, 1856 ( the river has been frozen solidly for seven weeks.") and February 27, 1852 ("The main river is not yet open but in very few places, but the North Branch, which is so much more rapid, is open near Tarbell's and Harrington's, where I walked to-day, and, flowing with full tide bordered with ice on either side, sparkles in the clear, cool air, This restless and now swollen stream has burst its icy fetters, and as I stand looking up it westward for half a mile, where it winds slightly under a high bank, its surface is lit up here and there with a fine-grained silvery sparkle which makes the river appear something celestial"). See also A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau,  Ice out

I noticed yesterday that the skunk-cabbage had not started yet at Well Meadow, and had been considerably frost-bitten. See February 13, 1851 ("Saw in a warm, muddy brook in Sudbury, quite open and exposed, the skunk-cabbage spathes above water. The tops of the spathes were frost- bitten, but the fruit sound. There was one partly expanded.The first flower of the season; for it is a flower. I doubt if there is [a] month without its flower. Examined by the botany all its parts, the first flower I have seen. The Ictodes fætidus.");  February 18, 1851 (" See the skunk-cabbage in flower.”); March 18, 1860 (“Skunk-cabbage, now generally and abundantly in bloom all along under Clamshell.”); March 21, 1858 (“The skunk-cabbage at Clamshell is well out, shedding pollen. The date of its flowering is very fluctuating.”); March 26, 1857 (“At Well Meadow Head, am surprised to find the skunk-cabbage in flower, . . .The first croaking frogs, the hyla, the white maple blossoms, the skunk-cabbage, and the alder’s catkins are observed about the same time.”); March 30, 1856 ("I am surprised to see the skunk cabbage, with its great spear-heads open and ready to blossom (i. e. shed pollen in a day or two)"); April 7, 1855 ("The skunk-cabbage open yesterday, — the earliest flower this season.")

White cakes of ice gliding swiftly down the stream are whiter than ever in this spring sun. The abundance of light as reflected from clouds and the snow, etc., etc. is more springlike than anything of late. See March 1, 1855 ("Banks of snow by the railroad reflect a wonderfully dazzling white due to the higher sun.")

The sudden apparition of this dark-blue water on the surface of the earth is exciting. I must now walk where I can see the most water, as to the most living part of nature. See February 12, 1860 ("Where the agitated surface of the river is exposed,[I see] the blue-black water.That dark-eyed water, especially when I see it at right angles with the direction of the sun, is it not the first sign of spring? How its darkness contrasts with the general lightness of the winter! It has more life in it than any part of the earth's surface. It is where one of the arteries of the earth is palpable, visible. . . .It excites me to see early in the spring that black artery leaping once more through the snow-clad town. All is tumult and life there, not to mention the rails and cranberries that are drifting in it. Where this artery is shallowest, i. e., comes nearest to the surface and runs swiftest, there it shows itself soonest and you may see its pulse beat. These are the wrists, temples, of the earth, where I feel its pulse with my eye. The living waters, not the dead earth. It is as if the dormant earth opened its dark and liquid eye upon us.") Compare March 12, 1854 ("A new feature is being added to the landscape, and that is expanses and reaches of blue water. This great expanse of deep-blue water, deeper than the sky, why does it not blue my soul as of yore? It is hard to soften me now. The time was when this great blue scene would have tinged my spirit more.")

This is the first bird of the spring that I have seen or heard of. See March 1, 1856 ("Singular that this hardy bird should have found this small opening, which I had forgotten, while the ice everywhere else was from one to two feet thick, and the snow sixteen inches on a level. , , , Ask the sheldrake whether the rivers are completely sealed up.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Merganser, Goosander)

A green light which advertises me of the lateness of the hour.

December 23. 

The third fine, clear, bright, and rather mild winter day.

P. M. — To Ball's Hill across meadow. 

The gardener at Sleepy Hollow says that they caught many small pouts and some pickerel that weighed half a pound (!) in the little pond lately dug there. I think this pond, say a third of an acre, was commenced about three years ago and completed last summer. It has no inlet and a very slight outlet, a shallow ditch that previously existed in the meadow, but in digging they have laid open two or three very deep spring-holes, and the pickerel were found in them. These fishes, no doubt, came up the shallow ditch. This proves that if you dig a pond in a meadow and connect it by the smallest rill or ditch with other water in which fishes live, however far off, the pond will be at once stocked with fishes. They are always ready to extend their territory. 


The Great Meadows are more than half covered with ice, and now I see that there was a very slight fall of snow last night. It is only betrayed here, having covered the ice about an eighth of an inch thick, except where there are cracks running quite across the meadow, where the water has oozed a foot or two each way and dissolved the snow, making conspicuous dark lines. 

In this slight snow I am surprised to see countless tracks of small birds, which have run over it in every direction from one end to the other of this great meadow since morning. By the length of the hind toe I know them to be snow buntings. 

Indeed, soon after I see them running still on one side of the meadow. I was puzzled to tell what they got by running there. Yet I [saw them] stopping repeatedly and picking up something. Of course I thought of those caterpillars which are washed out by a rain and freshet at this season, but I could not find one of them. It rained on the 18th and again the 20th, and over a good part of the meadow the top of the stubble left by the scythe rises a little above the ice, i. e. an inch or two, not enough to disturb a skater. The birds have run here chiefly, visiting each little collection or tuft of stubble, and found their food chiefly in and about this thin stubble. 

I examined such places a long time and very carefully, but I could not find there the seed of any plant whatever. It was merely the stubble of sedge, with never any head left, and a few cranberry leaves projecting. All that I could find was pretty often (in some places very often) a little black, or else a brown, spider (sometimes quite a large one) motionless on the snow or ice; and therefore I am constrained to think that they eat them, for I saw them running and picking in exactly such places a little way from me, and here were their tracks all around. Yet they are called graminivorous. 

Wilson says that he has seen them feeding on the seeds of aquatic plants on the Seneca River, clinging to their heads. I think he means wool-grass. Yet its seeds are too minute and involved in the wool. Though there was wool-grass hereabouts, the birds did not go near it. To be sure, it has but little seed now. If they are so common at the extreme north, where there is so little vegetation but perhaps a great many spiders, is it not likely that they feed on these insects ?

It is interesting to see how busy this flock is, exploring this great meadow to-day. If it were not for this slight snow, revealing their tracks but hardly at all concealing the stubble, I should not suspect it, though I might see them at their work. Now I see them running briskly over the ice, most commonly near the shore, where there is most stubble (though very little); and they explore the ground so fast that they are continually changing their ground, and if I do not keep my eye on them I lose the direction. 

Then here they come, with a stiff rip of their wings as they suddenly wheel, and those peculiar rippling notes, flying low quite across the meadow, half a mile even, to explore the other side, though that too is already tracked by them. Not the fisher nor skater range the meadow a thousandth part so much in a week as these birds in a day. They hardly notice me as they come on. Indeed, the flock, flying about as high as my head, divides, and half passes on each side of me. Thus they sport over these broad meadows of ice this pleasant winter day. The spiders lie torpid and plain to see on the snow, and if it is they that they are after they never know what kills them. 

I have loitered so long on the meadow that before I get to Ball's Hill those patches of bare ice (where water has oozed out and frozen) already reflect a green light which advertises me of the lateness of the hour. You may walk eastward in the winter afternoon till the ice begins to look green, half to three quarters of an hour before sunset, the sun having sunk behind you to the proper angle. Then it is time to turn your steps homeward. 

Soon after, too, the ice began to boom, or fire its evening gun, another warning that the end of the day was at hand, and a little after the snow reflected a distinct rosy light, the sun having reached the grosser atmosphere of the earth. These signs successively prompt us once more to retrace our steps. 

Even the fisherman, who perhaps has not observed any sign but that the sun is ready to sink beneath the horizon, is winding up his lines and starting for home; or perhaps he leaves them to freeze in. In a clear but pleasant winter day, I walk away till the ice begins to look green and I hear it boom, or perhaps till the snow reflects a rosy light. 

I ascended Ball's Hill to see the sun set. How red its light at this hour! I covered its orb with my hand, and let its rays light up the fine woollen fibres of my glove. They were a dazzling rose-color. It takes the gross atmosphere of earth to make this redness. 

You notice the long and slender light-brown or grayish downy racemes of the clethra seeds about the edges of ponds and pond-holes. The pods contain many very minute chaffy-looking seeds. 

You find in the cluster of the sweet-fern fruit now one or two rather large flattish conical hard-shelled seeds with a small meat. 

The pinweed — the larger (say thymifolia) — pods open, showing their three pretty leather-brown inner divisions open like a little calyx, a third or half containing still the little hemispherical or else triangular red dish-brown seeds. They are hard and abundant. 

That large juncus (paradoxus-like ?) of the river meadows — long white-tailed seed — just rising above the ice is full of seed now, glossy, pale-brown, white-tailed, chaffy to look at. 

The wool-grass wool is at least half gone, and its minute almost white [ ? ] seed or achenium in it; but a little is left, not more than the thirtieth of an inch long. It looks too minute and involved in the wool for a snow bunting to eat. The above plants are all now more or less recurved, bent by the cold and the blasts of autumn. 

The now bare or empty heads of the liatris look somewhat like dusky daisies surmounted by a little button instead of a disk. The last, a stiff, round, parchment-like skin, the base on which its flowerets stood, is pierced by many little round holes just like the end of a thimble, where the cavities are worn through, and it is convex like that. It readily scales off and you can look through it. 

I noticed on the 18th that the plumes of the pine which had been covered with snow and glaze and were then thawed and wet with the mist and rain were very much contracted or narrowed, — and this gave a peculiar and more open character to the tree.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 23, 1859

By the length of the hind toe I know them to be snow buntings. See. March 2, 1858 (" Their track is much like a small crow’s track, showing a long heel and furrowing the snow between with their toes")  See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snow Bunting

You may walk eastward in the winter afternoon till the ice begins to look green, half to three quarters of an hour before sunset, the sun having sunk behind you to the proper angle. Then it is time to turn your steps homeward. See January 7, 1856 (“ It is probably a constant phenomenon in cold weather when the ground is covered with snow and the sun is low, morning or evening, and you are looking from it.”); December 25, 1858 (“The sun getting low now, say at 3.30, I see the ice green, southeast.”); January 10, 1859 ("About half an hour before sunset this intensely clear cold evening (thermometer at five -6°), I observe all the sheets of ice (and they abound everywhere now in the fields), when I look from one side about at right angles with the sun’s rays, reflect a green light. This is the case even when they are in the shade"); January 19, 1859 ("To-night I notice, this warm evening, that there is most green in the ice when I go directly from the sun. There is also considerable when I go directly toward it, but more than that a little one side; but when I look at right angles with the sun, I see none at all.") ; January 20, 1859 ("The green of the ice and water begins to be visible about half an hour before sunset. Is it produced by the reflected blue of the sky mingling with the yellow or pink of the setting sun?"). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The hour before sunset

I ascended Ball's Hill to see the sun set. See June 5, 1854 ("I have come to this hill to see the sun go down, to recover sanity and put myself again in relation with Nature."); August 14, 1854 ("I have come forth to this hill at sunset to see the forms of the mountains in the horizon, — to behold and commune with something grander than man.”)

The averge depth of the Concord River

July 14. 

July 14, 2014

P. M. — Sounded river from Ball's Hill (i. e. off Squaw [?] Harbor) to Atkins's boat-house corner. 

The river, in all the above distance, nowhere washes the base of an isolated (i. e. to except long, lowish hill- banks like Clamshell, etc.) steep hill, without a greater depth off it. The average depth between Sudbury Causeway and Atkins's boat-house bend at wall, or for fifteen miles two hundred and eighty-two rods, is eight and one eighth feet. 

There extends from Tarbell Hill to Skelton Bend what I will call the Straight Reach, a mile and a third long and quite straight. This is the finest water view, making the greatest impression of size, of any that I know on the river. It is very broad, deep, and clear of weeds. Average depth 11+ feet (and at highest water some 19 feet). The bottom is almost everywhere muddy. No weeds in the middle. 

Measuring on the plan by Baldwin, it is three to four hundred feet wide. The depth is also very uniform, varying but little (in the thread) from the average 11 + (except a deep hole and channel at the commencement off Tarbell Hill).

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 14, 1859

Large waves are not so easily formed on account of friction.

April 28.

April 28, 2019

8.30 a. m. — Row to Carlisle Bridge with Blake and Brown. 

See black ducks and sheldrakes still. 

The first myrtle-bird that I have noticed. 

A small hawk, perhaps pigeon hawk. 

A gull. 

Sit on Ball's Hill. The water partly over the Great Meadows. The wind is northeast, and at the western base of the hill we are quite sheltered; yet the waves run quite high there and still further up the river, — waves raised by the wind beyond the hill, — while there are very slight waves or ripples over the meadow south of the hill, which is much more exposed, evidently because the water is shallow there and large waves are not so easily formed on account of friction. 

S. Higginson brought me the arbutus in bloom on the 26th, one twig only out. 

See a shad-fly, one only, on water. 

A little snake, size of little brown snake, on pine hill, but uniformly grayish above as far as I could see. 

E. Emerson's Salamandra dorsalis has just lost its skin.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 28, 1859


The first myrtle-bird that I have noticed. See April 28, 1855 ( ("There are a great many myrtle-birds here, — they have been quite common for a week.");  April 28, 1858 (“I see the myrtle-bird in the same sunny place, south of the Island woods, as formerly.”)

Ball’s Hill. See March 16, 1859 (“As we look over the lively, tossing blue waves for a mile or more eastward and northward, our eyes fall on these shining russet hills, and Ball's Hill appears in this strong light at the verge of this undulating blue plain, like some glorious newly created island of the spring, just sprung up from the bottom in the midst of the blue waters. ”)

See a shad-fly, one only, on water. See April 24, 1857 (“Sail to Ball's Hill. The water is at its height, higher than before this year. I see a few shad-flies on its surface.”). Compare May 1, 1854 ("The water is strewn with myriads of wrecked shad-flies, erect on the surface, with their wings up like so many schooners all headed one way.”)

A little snake, size of little brown snake, on pine hill, but uniformly grayish above. See October 29, 1857  (“I see evidently what Storer calls the little brown snake (Coluber ordinatus). . . . Above it is pale-brown, with a still lighter brown stripe running down the middle of the back”)

E. Emerson's Salamandra dorsalis has just lost its skin. See April 18, 1859 (“Ed. Emerson shows me his aquarium.. . .Two salamanders, . . . One some four inches long, with a carinated and waved (crenated) edged tail as well as light-vermilion spots on the back, evidently the Salamandra dorsalis. (This I suspect is what I called S. symmetrica last fall.) (This is pale-brown above.)”); December 5, 1858 (“How singularly ornamented is that salamander! Its brightest side, its yellow belly, sprinkled with fine dark spots, is turned downward. Its back is indeed ornamented with two rows of bright vermilion spots, but these can only be detected on the very closest inspection.”); December 3, 1858 ("brown (not dark-brown) above and yellow with small dark spots beneath, and the same spots on the sides of the tail; a row of very minute vermilion spots, not detected but on a close examination, on each side of the back; the tail is waved on the edge (upper edge, at least); has a pretty, bright eye. Its tail, though narrower, reminds me of the pollywog.")

The colors of the world.

April 24. 

April 24, 2017

6 a. m. — Water has fallen an inch and a half since last night, — which is at a regular rate. 

Now that the sun shines and the sky is blue, the water is a dark blue which in the storm was light or whitish. It follows the sky's, though the sky is a lighter blue.

The lilac buds have looked as forward as any for many weeks. 

2 p. m. — To Carlisle Bridge via Flint's Bridge, bank of river, rear of Joel Barrett's, returning by bridle-road. 

The elms are now fairly in blossom. 

It is one of those clear, washing days, — though the air is cold, — such as succeed a storm, when the air is clear and flowing, and the cultivated ground and the roads shine. 

Passed Flint's road on the wall. 

Sorrel is well under weigh, and cinquefoil. 

White oaks still hold their leaves. 

The pitch pine is a cheerful tree at this season, with its lively yellow-green in the sunshine, while the landscape is still russet and dead-grass colored.

Sitting by the road beyond N. Barrett's, the colors of the world are: 

• overhead a very light blue sky, darkest in the zenith, lightest in the horizon, with scattered white clouds seeming thickest in the horizon;

• all around the undulating earth a very light tawny color, from the dead grass, with the reddish and gray of forests mingled with evergreen;

• and, in the lap of earth, very dark blue rippled water, answering to the light blue above; 

• the shadows of clouds flitting over all below;

• the spires of woods fringing the horizon on every side, and, nearer, single trees here and there seen with dark branches against the sky. T

• this tawny ground divided by walls and houses, white, light slate, and red sprinkled here and there. 

Ball's Hill and the rest are deep sunk in the flood. 

The level water-line appears to best advantage when it appears thus to cut the trees and hills. It looks as if the water were just poured into its basin and simply stood so high. No permanent shore gives you this pleasure.

Saw the honey-bees on the staminate flowers of the willow catkins by the roadside (such as I described April 23d), with little bottles of the yellow pollen, apparently, as big as pin-heads on their thighs. With these flowers, then, come bees. Is there honey in staminate flowers? 

The innocent odor of spring flowers, flavorless, as a breakfast. They will be more spiced by and by.

Went over the cladonia hills toward Tarbell's.

A small tree, an oak for instance, looks large on a bare hilltop. 

The farmers, whom the storm has delayed, are busily plowing and overhauling their manure. 

Observed the ants at work on a large ant-heap. They plainly begin as soon as the snow is off and the ground thawed. 

Gold-thread, an evergreen, still bright in the swamps.

The rattlesnake-plantain has fresh leaves. 

A wall running over the top of a rocky hill, with the light seen through its chinks, has a pretty effect. 

The sparrows, frogs, rabbits, etc., are made to resemble the ground for their protection; but so is the hawk that preys on them; but he is of a lighter color beneath, that creeping things over which he hovers may confound him with the sky. The marsh hawk is not easily distinguished from the meadow or the stems of the maples. 

The water is still over the causeway on both sides of Carlisle Bridge for a long distance. It is a straight flood now for about four miles. Fortunately for the bridge the wind has not been very high since the flood was at its height. 

The leaves of the hardhack, curled up, show their white under sides. 

On the bridle-road observed the interesting light-crimson star-like flowers of the hazel, the catkins being now more yellowish. 

This is a singular and interesting part of Concord, extensive and rather flat rocky pastures without houses or cultivated fields on any but this unused bridle-road, from which I hear the frogs peep. These are Channing's "moors." He went in on this road to chop, and this is the scene of his "Woodman." 

Heard again (in the village) that vetter-vetter-vetter- vetter-vef, or tchi-tchi-tchi-tchi-tchi-tchi-tchi' very rapidly repeated, which I heard April 23d, and perhaps the same that I saw April 17th (described April 18th). I am pretty sure it is the pine warbler, yellow beneath, with faint olivaceous marks on the sides, olivaceous above, tail forked, about the size of a yellow-bird. 

I have not seen the fox-colored sparrow for some weeks.

Thought I saw a loon on Walden yesterday.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 24, 1852

The pitch pine is a cheerful tree at this season, with its lively yellow-green in the sunshine, , while the landscape is still russet and dead-grass colored. See April 24, 1857 ("Now the sun comes out and shines on the pine hill west of Ball's Hill, lighting up the light-green pitch pines and the sand and russet-brown lichen-clad hill. That is a very New England landscape.")See also April 11, 1852 ("The light of the setting sun on the pitch pines on Fair Haven and Bear Hill lights them up warmly.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Pitch Pine.

The leaves of the hardhack, curled up, show their white under sides. See April 24, 1860 ("The meadow-sweet and hardhack have begun to leaf.”)

Saw the honey-bees on the staminate flowers of the willow catkins . . . with little bottles of the yellow pollen, apparently, as big as pin-heads on their thighs. See April 9, 1853 (“Bees also in the female willows, of course without pellets. It must be nectar alone there.”); April 17, 1855 (“A bee curved close on each half-opened catkin, intoxicated with its early sweet, —one perhaps a honey-bee, — so intent on its sweets or pollen that they do not dream of flying. Various kinds of bees — some of the honey bees — have little yellow masses of pollen on their thighs; some seem to be taking it into their mouths”) 

Willows now in bloom 

resound with the hum of bees 

this warm afternoon. 

April 28, 1860

See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Bees

The interesting light-crimson star-like flowers of the hazel. See April 9, 1856 ("the stigmas already peep out, minute crimson stars"); April 11, 1856 ("the crimson stigmas of the hazel, like little stars peeping forth") April 13, 1855 ("many minute, but clear crystalline crimson stars at the end of a bare and seemingly dead twig.")

I am pretty sure it is the pine warbler, yellow beneath, with faint olivaceous marks on the sides, olivaceous above, tail forked, about the size of a yellow-bird. See April 9, 1856 ("Its bright yellow or golden throat and breast, etc., are conspicuous at this season, — a greenish yellow above, with two white bars on its bluish-brown wings. It sits often with loose-hung wings and forked tail.");  August 18, 1856 ("Clear-yellow throat and breast, greenish-yellow head, conspicuous white bar on wings, white beneath, forked tail, bluish legs. Can it be pine warbler? The note, thus faint, is not like it.")

I have not seen the fox-colored sparrow for some weeks. See April 24, 1855 ("Have not seen the F. hyemalis for a week.,"); April 17, 1855 ("A sudden warm day, like yesterday and this, takes off some birds and adds others. It is a crisis in their career. The fox-colored sparrows seem to be gone"). See also   A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Fox-colored Sparrow.

Thought I saw a loon on Walden yesterday. See October 8, 1852 ("At length, having come up fifty rods off, he uttered one of those prolonged unearthly howls, as if calling on the god of loons to aid him, and immediately there came a wind from the east and rippled the surface, and filled the whole air with misty rain.")

A new season has come.

March 16. 

6 a. m. — The water is just over the slanting iron truss, four feet from its east end, and still rising. 

P. M. — Launch my boat and sail to Ball's Hill. It is fine clear weather and a strong northwest wind. 

What a change since yesterday! Last night I came home through as incessant heavy rain as I have been out in for many years, through the muddiest and wettest of streets, still partly covered with ice, and the rain water stood over shoes in many places on the sidewalks. I heard of several who went astray in this water and had adventures in the dark. You require india-rubber boots then. 

But to-day I see the children playing at hop-scotch on those very sidewalks, with a bed marked in the dry sand. So rapid are the changes of weather with us, and so porous our soil. 

With a strong wind we sail over the Red Bridge road. The water is falling over the lower side of the road as over a dam. For the road really operates as a dam, the water being much lower on the east side. 

A new phase of the spring is presented; a new season has come. By the soaking rain and the wind of yesterday especially, the remaining snow and ice has been almost entirely swept away, and the ice has been broken, floated off, and melted, and much frost taken out of the ground; and now, as we glide over the Great Meadows before this strong wind, we no longer see dripping, saturated russet and brown banks through rain, hearing at intervals the alarm notes of the early robins, — banks which reflect a yellowish light, — but we see the bare and now pale-brown and dry russet hills. 

The earth has cast off her white coat and come forth in her clean-washed sober russet early spring dress. As we look over the lively, tossing blue waves for a mile or more eastward and northward, our eyes fall on these shining russet hills, and Ball's Hill appears in this strong light at the verge of this undulating blue plain, like some glorious newly created island of the spring, just sprung up from the bottom in the midst of the blue waters. 

The fawn-colored oak leaves, with a few pines intermixed, thickly covering the hill, look not like a withered vegetation, but an ethereal kind, just expanded and peculiarly adapted to the season and the sky. 

Look toward the sun, the water is yellow, as water in which the earth has just washed itself clean of its winter impurities; look from the sun and it is a beautiful dark blue; but in each direction the crests of the waves are white, and you cannot sail or row over this watery wilderness without sharing the excitement of this element. 

Our sail draws so strongly that we cut through the great waves without feeling them. And all around, half a mile or a mile distant, looking over this blue foreground, I see the bare and peculiarly neat, clean- washed, and bright russet hills reflecting the bright light (after the storm of yesterday) from an infinite number of dry blades of withered grass. 

The russet surfaces have now, as it were, a combed look, — combed by the rain. And the leather-color of withered oak leaves covering Ball's Hill, seen a mile or two off in the strong light, with a few pines intermixed, as if it were an island rising out of this blue sea in the horizon. 

This sight affects me as if it were visible at this season only. What with the clear air and the blue water and the sight of the pure dry withered leaves, that distant hill affects me as something altogether ethereal. 

After a day of soaking rain, concluded with a double rainbow the evening before, — not to mention the rain of the evening, — go out into the sparkling spring air, embark on the flood of melted snow and of rain gathered from all hillsides, with a northwest wind in which you often find it hard to stand up straight, and toss upon a sea of which one half is liquid clay, the other liquid indigo, and look round on an earth dressed in a home spun of pale sheeny brown and leather-color. 

Such are the blessed and fairy isles we sail to! 

We meet one great gull beating up the course of the river against the wind, at Flint's Bridge. (One says they were seen about a week ago, but there was very little water then.) Its is a very leisurely sort of limp ing flight, tacking its way along like a sailing vessel, yet the slow security with which it advances suggests a leisurely contemplativeness in the bird, as if it were working out some problem quite at its leisure. As often as its very narrow, long, and curved wings are lifted up against the light, I see a very narrow distinct light edging to the wing where it is thin. Its black- tipped wings. 

Afterwards, from Ball's Hill, looking north, I see two more circling about looking for food over the ice and water. 

There is an unexpected quantity of ice in that direction, not on the channel, but the meadows east of it, all the way from Ball's Hill to Carlisle Bridge, — large masses, which have drifted from the channel and from above, for there the wind has blown more directly across the river. These great masses have been driven and wedged one against another, and ground up on the edges. 

This first sight of the bare tawny and russet earth, seen afar, perhaps, over the meadow flood in the spring, affects me as the first glimpse of land, his native land, does the voyager who has not seen it a long time. 

But in a week or two we get used to it. 

I look down over Tarbell's Bay, just north of Ball's Hill. Not only meadows but potato and rye fields are buried deep, and you see there, sheltered by the hills on the northwest, a placid blue bay having the russet hills for shores. This kind of bay, or lake, made by the freshet — these deep and narrow "fiords" — can only be seen along such a stream as this, liable to an annual freshet. 

The water rests as gently as a dewdrop on a leaf, laving its tender temporary shores. It has no strand, leaves no permanent water-mark, but though you look at it a quarter of a mile off, you know that the rising flood is gently overflowing a myriad withered green blades there in succession. 

There is the magic of lakes that come and go. The lake or bay is not an institution, but a phenomenon. You plainly see that it is so much water poured into the hollows of the earth


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 16, 1859

I see the children playing at hop-scotch on those very sidewalks. See February 25, 1860 ("I noticed yesterday in the street some dryness of stones at crossings and in the road and sidewalk here and there, and even two or three boys beginning to play at marbles, so ready are they to get at the earth.") March 19, 1858 ("One or two boys are out trying their skiffs, even like the fuzzy gnats in the sun, and as often as one turns his boat round on the smooth surface, the setting sun is reflected from its side.") March 30, 1860("The boy's sled gets put away by degrees, or when it is found to be in the way, and his thoughts are directed gradually to more earthy games. There are now water privileges for him by every roadside."); April 10, 1856 ("Some fields are dried sufficiently for the games of ball with which this season is commonly ushered in. I associate this day, when I can remember it, with games of baseball played over behind the hills in the russet fields toward Sleepy Hollow,") See also February 9, 1854 ("The voices of the school-children sound like spring"); April 24, 1859 ("So boys fly kites and play ball or hawkie at particular times all over the State. A wise man will know what game to play to-day, and play it."); November 2, 1857 ("How contagious are boys' games! A short time ago they were spinning tops, as I saw and heard, all the country over. Now every boy has a stick curved at the end, a hawkie (?), in his hand")

The earth has cast off her white coat and come forth in her clean-washed sober russet early spring dress.  See March 5, 1855 ("This strong, warm wind, rustling the leaves on the hillsides, this blue haze, and the russet earth seen through it, remind me that a new season has come.");See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Brown Season

Launch my boat and sail to Ball's Hill. It is fine clear weather and a strong northwest wind. . . .in each direction the crests of the waves are white, and you cannot sail or row over this watery wilderness without sharing the excitement of this element. See  March 16, 1854 (“See and hear honey-bees about my boat in the yard, attracted probably by the beeswax in the grafting-wax which was put on it a year ago. It is warm weather. A thunder-storm in the evening.”);March 16, 1860 (“The ice of the night fills the river in the morning, and I hear it go grating downward at sunrise. As soon as I can get it painted and dried, I launch my boat and make my first voyage for the year up or down the stream, on that element from which I have been de barred for three months and a half.”) See also March 8, 1855 (“This morning I got my boat out of the cellar and turned it up in the yard to let the seams open before I calk it. The blue river, now almost completely open, admonishes me to be swift.”); March 9, 1855 (“Painted the bottom of my boat.”); March 12, 1854 (“A new feature is being added to the landscape, and that is expanses and reaches of blue water. . . .Toward night the water becomes smooth and beautiful. Men are eager to launch their boats and paddle over the meadows.”); March 15, 1854 (“Paint my boat.”);; March 17, 1857 (“This morning it is fair, and I hear the note of the woodpecker on the elms (that early note) and the bluebird again. Launch my boat.”); March 18, 1854 (“Took up my boat, a very heavy one, which was lying on its bottom in the yard, and carried it two rods.”); March 19, 1855 (“A fine clear and warm day for the season. Launch my boat.”); March 19, 1858 ("Another pleasant and warm day. Painted my boat afternoon.”); March 20, 1855 ("A flurry of snow at 7 A. M. I go to turn my boat up.”);  March 22, 1854 ("Launch boat and paddle to Fair Haven. Still very cold.”); March 22, 1858 ("Launch my boat and row down stream.”)

Nature works by contraries

February 11. 

P. M. — To Ball’s Hill over ice. 

February 11, 2019

Among the common phenomena of the ice are those triangular points of thick ice heaved up a couple of feet where the ice has recently settled about a rock. The rock looks somewhat like a dark fruit within a gaping shell or bur. 

Also, now, as often after a freshet in cold weather, the ice which had formed around and frozen to the trees and bushes along the shore, settling, draws them down to the ground or water, often breaking them extensively. It reminds you of an alligator or other evil genius of the river pulling the trees and bushes which had come to drink into the water. 

If a maple or alder is unfortunate enough to dip its lower limbs into the freshet, dallying with it, their fate is sealed, for the water, freezing that night, takes fast hold on them like a vise, and when the water runs out from beneath, an irresistible weight brings them down to the ground and holds them there. Only the spring sun will soften the heart of this relentless monster, when, commonly, it is too late. How the ice far in the meadows, thus settling, spreads the clumps — of willows, etc., on every side! 

Nature works by contraries. That which in summer was most fluid and unresting is now most solid and motionless. If in the summer you cast a twig into the stream it instantly moved along with the current, and nothing remained as it was. Now I see yonder a long row of black twigs standing erect in mid-channel where two months ago a fisherman set them and fastened his lines to them. They stand there motionless as guide-posts while snow and ice are piled up about them. 

Such is the cold skill of the artist. He carves a statue out of a material which is fluid as water to the ordinary workman. His sentiments are a quarry which he works. 

I see only the chain of sunken boats passing round a tree above the ice. 

The south side of Ball’s Hill, which is warm and half bare, is tracked up with partridges, and I start several there. So is it next Sunday with the Hill shore, east of Fair Haven Pond. These birds are sure to be found now on such slopes, where only the ground and dry leaves are exposed. 

The water lately went down, and the ice settled on the meadows, and now rain has come, and cold again, and this surface is alternate ice and snow. 

Looking from this hill toward the sun, they are seen to be handsomely watered all over with alternate waves of shining ice and white snow-crust, literally “watered” on the grandest scale, —this palace floor.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  February 11, 1859

The south side of Ball’s Hill, which is warm and half bare, is tracked up with partridges, and I start several there.See February 11, 1855 ("The dog scares up some partridges out of the soft snow under the apple trees in the Tommy Wheeler orchard."); February 11, 1856 ("See a partridge by the riverside, opposite Fair Haven Hill, which at first I mistake for the top of a fence-post above the snow, amid some alders. . . .Within three rods, I see it to be indeed a partridge, to my surprise, standing perfectly still, with its head erect and neck stretched upward. It is as complete a deception as if it had designedly placed itself on the line of the fence and in the proper place for a post. It finally steps off daintily with a teetering gait and head up, and takes to wing")


I see only the chain of sunken boats passing round a tree above the ice. See December 15, 1856 (“I observe B 's boat left out at the pond, as last winter. When I see that a man neglects his boat thus, I do not wonder that he fails in his business. It is not only shiftlessness or unthrift, but a sort of filthiness to let things go to wrack and ruin thus.”); January 5, 1856 ("Boats . . . half filled with ice and almost completely buried in snow, so neglected by their improvident owners . . ."); April 22, 1857 (“We pass a dozen boats sunk at their moorings, at least at one end, being moored too low.”).

Looking from this hill toward the sun . . . waves of shining ice and white snow-crust. See February 29, 1852 (" From Pine Hill, looking westward, I see the snowcrust shine in the sun as far as the eye can reach . . . Where day before yesterday was half the ground bare, is this sheeny snow-crust to-day.")