The Concord River at Lowell

September 9.

In Lowell.-- My host says that the thermometer was at 80° yesterday morning, and this morning is at 52º. 

Sudden coolness.

Clears up in afternoon, and I walk down the Merrimack on the north bank.

I see very large plants of the lanceolate thistle, four feet high and very branching.

Also Aster cordata with the corymbosus.

Concord River has a high and hard bank at its mouth, maybe thirty feet high on the east side; and my host thinks it was originally about as high on the west side, where now it is much lower and flat, having been dug down.

There is a small isle in the middle of the mouth.

There are rips in the Merrimack just below the mouth of the Concord.

There is a fall and dam in the Concord at what was Hurd's factory, — the principal fall on the Concord, in Lowell, — one at a bleachery above, and at Whipple's, — three in all below Billerica dam.

  

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, September 9, 1860

The character of the river valley changes about at Hill's Bridge.

June 24. 

To Billerica dam, surveying the bridges. 

Another foggy [sic], amounting from time to time to a fine rain, and more, even to a shower, though the grass was thickly covered with cobwebs in the morning. Yet it was a condensed fog, I should say. Its value appeared to be as a veil to protect the tender vegetation after the long rainy and cloudy weather.

The 22d, 23d, and 24th, I have been surveying the bridges and river from Heard's Bridge to the Billerica dam. 

I hear of two places in Wayland where there was formerly what was called a hay bridge, but no causeway, at some narrow and shallow place, a hundred years ago or more. Have looked after all the swift and the shallow places also. The testimony of the farmers, etc., is that the river thirty to fifty years ago was much lower in the summer than now. 

Deacon Richard Heard spoke of playing when a boy on the river side of the bushes where the pads are, and of wading with great ease at Heard's Bridge, and I hear that one Rice (of Wayland or Sudbury), an old man, remembers galloping his horse through the meadows to the edge of the river. 

The meadow just above the causeway on the Wayland side was spoken of as particularly valuable. 

Colonel David Heard, who accompanied me and is best acquainted of any with the details of the controversy, — has worked at clearing out the river (I think about 1820), — said that he did not know of a rock in the river from the falls near the Framingham line to perhaps the rear of Hubbard's in Concord. 

The grass not having been cut last year, the ice in the spring broke off great quantities of pipes, etc., immense masses of them, which were floated and drifted down against the causeways and bridges; and there they he still, almost concealing any green grass, like a raft on the meadows, along the south side the causeways. 

The inhabitants of Wayland used a good deal for mulching trees. One told me that at Sherman's Bridge they stretched quite across the river above the bridge, so that a man "could walk across on them," — perhaps "did walk across on them," — but on inquiring of one who lived by the bridge I learned that "a dog could not have walked across on them." 

Daniel Garfield, whom I met fishing on the river, and who has worked on Nine-Acre Corner and Lee's Bridges for fifty years or more, could remember one year when Captain Wheeler dug much mud from the river, when the water was so low that he could throw out pickerel on each side outside the bushes (where the pads now are). 

Says that his old master with whom he lived in Lincoln when he was young told him that he wheeled the first barrow-load at the building of Lee's Bridge and road, and that if he were alive now he would be a good deal over a hundred years old. Yet Shattuck says that bridge was a new bridge in 1660. 

Ebenezer Conant remembers when the Canal dam was built, and that before that it used to be dry at midsummer outside the bushes on each side. 

Lee says that about 1819 the bridge near him was rebuilt and the mud-sills taken up. These are said to remain sound an indefinite while. When they put in a new pile (Buttrick the carpenter tells me) they find the mortise in the mud-sill and place it in that. 

Deacon Farrar says that he can remember Lee's Bridge seventy-five years ago, and that it was not a new bridge then. That it is sometimes obstructed by hay in the spring. That he has seen a chip go faster up-stream there than ever down. His son said this was the case considerably further up in the meadows toward Rice's, and he thought it the effect of Stow River backing up. 

Deacon Farrar thought the hay bridge called Farrar's Bridge was for foot-passengers only. 

I found the water in Fair Haven Pond on the 22d twelve to thirteen feet deep in what I thought the channel, but in Purple Utricularia Bay, half a dozen rods from the steep hill, twenty-two and a half feet was the most I found. 

John Hosmer tells me that he remembers Major Hosmer's testifying that the South Bridge was carried up-stream, before the court, at the beginning of the controversy. 

Simonds of Bedford, who is measuring the rapidity of the current at Carlisle Bridge, says that a board with a string attached ran off there one hundred yards in fifteen minutes at the height of water (in May, and pretty high), when the Commissioners were here. That he has found it to be swiftest just after the water has begun to fall. 

The character of the river valley changes about at Hill's Bridge. The meadows are quite narrow and of a different character, — higher and firmer, — a long hill bounds the meadow, and almost the river, on the west for a good way, and high land on the east, and the bottom is harder and said to be often rocky (?). The water was about four and a half feet deep — sounded with a paddle and guessed at — at the Fordway, and at that stage so swift and strong that you could not row a boat against it in the swiftest part of the falls.

July 22d, the average depth of water at the Fordway was two feet, it having fallen in Concord two feet nine and three fourths inches since June 23d; so that the water fell possibly as much in this month at the Fordway as at Concord, — I think surely within half a foot as much.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 24, 1859

It takes the rest of the day to row back against the wind.

October 9.

 

October 9, 2013

A high wind south of westerly. Set sail with W. E. C. down the river. 

The red maples are now red and also yellow and reddening. The white maples are green and silvery, also yellowing and blushing. The birch is yellow; the black willow brown; the elms sere, brown, and thin; the bass bare. The button-bush, which was so late, is already mostly bare except the lower part, protected. The swamp white oak is green with a brownish tinge; the white ash turned mulberry. The white maples toward Ball's Hill have a burnt white appearance; the white oak a salmon-color and also red. Is that scarlet oak rosed? Huckleberries and blackberries are red. Leaves are falling; apples more distinctly seen on the trees; muskrat-houses not quite done. 

This wind carries us along glibly, I think six miles an hour, till we stop in Billerica, just below the first bridge beyond the Carlisle Bridge, — at the Hibiscus Shore. 

I collect some hibiscus seeds and swamp white oak acorns, and we walk on thence, a mile or more further, over scrubby hills which with a rocky core border the western shore, still in Billerica, at last not far above the mills. 

At one place, opposite what I once called Grape Island (still unchanged), I smell grapes, and though I see no vines at first, they being bare of leaves, at last find the grapes quite plenty and ripe and fresh enough on the ground under my feet. Ah! their scent is very penetrating and memorable. 

Did we not see a fish hawk? 

We find ourselves in an extensive wood here, which we do not get out of. 

It takes the rest of the day to row back against the wind.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 9, 1853

I smell grapes, . . . their scent is very penetrating and memorable. See September 4, 1853 ("The fragrance of a grape-vine branch, with ripe grapes on it, which I have brought home, fills the whole house. This fragrance is exceedingly rich, surpassing the flavor of any grape."); September 8, 1854 ("I partly smell them out. . . .I bring home a half-bushel of grapes to scent my chamber with. As I paddle home with my basket of grapes in the bow, every now and then their perfume was wafted to me in the stern, and I think that I am passing a richly laden vine on shore.”):  September 13, 1856 (“. . . 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.”) 

December on the Concord: a Mink.

December 2.

Started in boat before 9 A.M. down river to Billerica with W.E.C.  I do not remember when I have taken a sail or a row on the river in December before. 

  December 2, 2017

We had to break the ice about the boat-house for some distance. Still no snow. The banks are white with frost. The air is calm, and the water smooth.

Some parts of the meadow are covered with thin ice, through which we row, and the waves we make in the river nibble and crumble its edge, and produce a rustling of the grass and reeds, as if a muskrat were stirring. 

The distant sounds of cars, cocks, hounds, etc., as we glide past N. Barrett's farm, remind me of spring. 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. 

There goes a muskrat. He leaves so long a ripple behind that in this light you cannot tell where his body ends, and think him longer than he is. 

Above the bridge on the road from Chelmsford to Bedford we see a mink, slender, black, very like a weasel in form. He alternately runs along on the ice and swims in the water, now and then holding up his head and long neck looking at us. 

Not so shy as a muskrat.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 2, 1852

I do not remember when I have taken a sail or a row on the river in December before. See December 27, 1852 ("Not a particle of ice in Walden to-day. Paddled across it. I took my new boat out. Flint's and Fair Haven being frozen up. Ground bare. River open"); December 28, 1852 ("Brought my boat from Walden in rain. No snow on ground.") See also November 26, 1857 ("Got my boat up this afternoon. . . .One end had frozen in.”); November 26, 1858 ("Got in boat on account of Reynolds’s new fence going up (earlier than usual”); November 29, 1860 ("Get up my boat, 7 a. m. Thin ice of the night is floating down the river.”); November 30, 1855 (“Got in my boat. River remained iced over all day.”); December 2, 1854 ("Got up my boat and housed it, ice having formed about it."); December 2, 1856 ("Got in my boat, which before I had got out and turned up on the bank."); December 5, 1853 ("Got my boat in."); December 8, 1855 ("Still no snow, — nor ice noticeable. I might have left my boat out till now."); December 10, 1859 ("Get in my boat, in the snow. The bottom is coated with a glaze”); ) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Boat in. Boat out.

 The waves we make in the river nibble and crumble its edge, and produce a rustling of the grass and reeds, as if a muskrat were stirring.  See November 14, 1855 ("The motion of my boat sends an undulation to the shore, which rustles the dry sedge half immersed there, as if a tortoise were tumbling through it. ")

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. See December 2, 1859 ("The crowing of cocks and other sounds remind you of spring, such is the state of the air.") See also December 1, 1852 (“The year looks back toward summer, and a summer smile is reflected in her face”)

There goes a muskrat. He leaves so long a ripple behind. See March 28, 1858 ("Sitting on the top of the Cliffs, I look through my glass at the smooth river and see the long forked ripple made by a musquash swimming along over the  meadow.")

Above the bridge . . .we see a mink, slender, black. See November 13, 1855 (“Going over Swamp Bridge Brook at 3 P. M., I saw in the pond by the roadside, a few rods before me, the sun shining bright, a mink swimming . . . It was a rich brown fur . . . not black as it sometimes appears, especially on ice.”);  November 17, 1855 ("Mink seem to be more commonly seen now.”); November 27, 1855 ("A mink skin which he showed me was a darker brown than the one I saw last (he says they changed suddenly to darker about a fortnight since); and the tail was nearly all black.”); April 15, 1858 ("I looked round and saw a mink under the bushes within a few feet. It was pure reddish-brown above, with a blackish and somewhat bushy tail, a blunt nose, and somewhat innocent-looking head. It crept along toward me and around me, within two feet.")

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