No dark pines in the horizon.

January 24. 

In Worcester. 

From 9 A. M. to 4 P. M., walked about six miles north west into Holden with Blake, returning by Stonehouse Hill.

 A very cold day. 

Less forest near Worcester than in Concord, and that hardwood. No dark pines in the horizon. 

The evergreen laurel is a common underwood, contrasting agreeably with the snow. Large, broad backed hills. 

De Quincey's “Historical and Critical Essays” I have not read (2 vols.). 

Saw a red squirrel out.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 24, 1854

In Worcester, walked about six miles north west into Holden with Blake. See Letters to Blake, January 21, 1854 ("I think to come and see you next week, on Monday, if nothing hinders. I have just returned from court at Cambridge, whither I was called as a witness, having surveyed a water-privilege, about which there is a dispute, since you were here.")

No dark pines in the horizon. See  August 15, 1853 ("It is a pleasure to look at the washed woods far away. You see every feature of the white pine grove with distinctness, — the stems of the trees, then the dark shade, then their fresh sunlit outsides.");  December 3, 1856 (“The pine forest's edge seen against the winter horizon.”); December 25, 1858 ("How full of soft, pure light the western sky now, after sunset! I love to see the outlines of the pines against it"); January 9, 1859 ("It is worth the while to stand here at this hour and look into the soft western sky, over the pines whose outlines are so rich and distinct against the clear sky.");January 19, 1859 ("It occurs to me that I know of no more agreeable object to bound our view, looking outward through the vista of our elm lined streets, than the pyramidal tops of a white pine forest in the horizon.")

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.")

Look for hard ice in the shade.

February 23. 

Fire & Ice February 23, 2019

P. M. — Walk to Quinsigamond Pond, where was good skating yesterday, but this very pleasant and warm day it is suddenly quite too soft. 

I was just saying to Blake that I should look for hard ice in the shade, or north side, of some wooded hill close to the shore, though skating was out of the question elsewhere, when, looking up, I saw a gentleman and lady very gracefully gyrating and, as it were, courtesying to each other in a small bay under such a hill on the opposite shore of the pond. 

Intervening bushes and shore concealed the ice, so that their swift and graceful motions, their bodies inclined at various angles as they gyrated forward and backward about a small space, looking as if they would hit each other, reminded me of the circling of two winged insects in the air, or hawks receding and approaching. 

I first hear and then see eight or ten bluebirds going over. Perhaps they have not reached Concord yet. One boy tells me that he saw a bluebird in Concord on Sunday, the 20th. 

I see, just caught in the pond, a brook pickerel which, though it has no transverse bars, but a much finer and slighter reticulation than the common, is very distinct from it in the length and form of the snout. This is much shorter and broader as you look down on it.

In Bell Pond (once Bladder Pond) on the same road, near to Worcester, they were catching little shiners, only, at most, two inches long, for perch bait. (The perch and pickerel they commonly catch at Quinsigamond are small.) They cut a round hole about three feet in diameter and let down a simple net, with only a stone to sink it in the bottom, then cast Indian meal or bits of cracker into the water, and the minnows swim forward after the bait, and the fisherman, without seeing them, pulls up the net at a venture.

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

One boy tells me that he saw a bluebird in Concord on Sunday, the 20th. See note to February 18, 1857 (“I am excited by this wonderful air and go listening for the note of the bluebird”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Bluebird in Early Spring.

A brook pickerel which, though it has no transverse bars, is very distinct from it in the length and form of the snout.  See April 21, 1858 ("Melvin says that those short-nosed brook pickerel are caught in the river also, but rarely weigh more than two pounds.”) and note to January 20, 1859 (“Among four or five pickerel in a “well” on the river, I see one with distinct transverse bars as I look down on its back, — not quite across the back, but plain as they spring from the side of the back, — while all the others are uniformly dark above.”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Pickerel

There are very few persons who do see much of nature.

February 22

Go to Worcester to lecture in a parlor.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 22, 1859

See February 22, 1852 ("Went to Plymouth to lecture or preach all day.")

On January 1, 1859 Thoreau had written Blake, "My last essay, on which I am still engaged, is called Autumnal Tints. I do not know how readable (i.e., by me to others) it will be.” Letters to Blake 105.

On February 22 Thoreau delivered his Autumnal Tints lecture in Worcester in Blake's parlors located either at Lake School at one Warren block on Pearl Street, or in Blakes's house at 3 Bowdoin Street. While reading the section of the lecture dealing with Scarlet Oak leaves, Thoreau displayed a very "large & handsome one" on a white ground, which was said did him "great service with the audience." See Thoreau's Lectures after Walden. 293 

Afterwords HDT says he was criticized for assuming his audience had not seen so much of the autumnal tints as they had. "But after reading it I am more than ever convinced that they have not seen much of them, — that there are very few persons who do see much of nature."  February 26, 1859  Probably a reference to one of the themes of his lecture, "The scarlet oak must, in a sense, be in your eye when you go forth".  See note to November 4, 1858 ("You will see, if you are prepared to see it, — if you look for it")

A phoebe's nest under the shelter rock at Lee's Cliff

June 29.


A. M. — Up Assabet with Blake. 

Allium Canadense in house and probably in field.

The river is now whitened with the down of the black willow, and I am surprised to see a minute plant abundantly springing from its midst and greening it, — where it has collected in denser beds against some obstacle as a branch on the surface, — like grass growing in cotton in a tumbler. 

P. M. — Walk to Lee's Cliff. 

Small rough sunflower, the common, at Bittern Cliff. 

Where I took shelter under the rock at Lee's Cliff, a phoebe has built her nest, and it now has five eggs in it, nearly fresh.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 29, 1857

Surprised to see a minute plant abundantly springing from its midst and greening it, like grass growing in cotton in a tumbler. See June 26, 1860 ("Young black willows have sprouted and put forth their two minute round leafets where the cottony seeds have lodged in a scum against the alder.")

Small rough sunflower, the common, at Bittern Cliff. See August 1, 1852 ("The small rough sunflower (Helianthus divaricatus) tells of August heats; also Helianthus annuus, common sunflower.")

Where I took shelter under the rock at Lee's Cliff . . . See May 29, 1857 ("The drops fall thicker, and I seek a shelter ...under a large projecting portion of the Cliff, where there is ample space above and around, and I can move about as perfectly protected as under a shed.")

At Lee's Cliff a phoebe has built her nest. . .five eggs in it, nearly fresh. . .See May 5, 1860 ("At Lee's a pewee (phoebe) building. . . .Think how many pewees must have built under the eaves of this cliff since pewees were created and this cliff itself built!!"); June 20, 1856  ("Five young phoebes in a nest . . .just ready to fly."); June 25, 1855 ("A phoebe’s nest, with two birds ready to fly."). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Phoebe

A Passage to New York

The Commonwealth

October 24.

I spent the afternoon of Friday*(it seems some months ago) in Worcester, but failed to see Blake, he having "gone to the horse-race" in Boston; to atone for which I have just received a letter from him, asking me to stop at Worcester and lecture on my return. 

I called on  Brown and Higginson; in the evening came by way of Norwich to New York in the steamer Commonwealth, and, though it was so windy inland, had a perfectly smooth passage, and about as good a sleep as usually at home.

H. D. Thoreau, to Sophia, *[October 24, 1856]

The cedar swamp, source of Assabet.

June 17
(avesong)

June 17. 

Go to Blake’s. Indigo-bird on his trees. 

A. M. — Ride with him and Brown and Sophia round a part of Quinsigamond Pond into Shrewsbury. 

The southerly end of the pond covered for a great distance with pads of yellow and white lily. Measured one of the last: nine and seven eighths inches long by nine and six eighths, with sharp lobes, etc., and a. reddish petiole. Small primrose well out; how long?

The cedar swamp, source of Assabet, must be partly in Grafton, as well as Westboro near railroad, according to a farmer in Shrewsbury. 

P. M. —Went to Rev. Horace James’s reptiles (Orthodox). He had, set up, a barred owl, without horns and a little less than the cat owl. Also a large lobe-footed bird which I think must have been a large grebe, killed in Fitchburg. 

He distinguished the Rana halecina in the alcohol by more squarish (?) spots. Showed me the horned frog (?), (or toad ?); also alive in bottle, with moss and water, the violet-colored salamander (S. venenosa) with yellow spots (five or six inches long), probably same I found in stump at Walden; and, in spirits, smaller, the S. erythronota, with a conspicuous red back. What looked like mine, or the common one in springs here, was Triton niger. I think he said Holbrook made the water ones tritons and land ones salamanders. Another small one, all red, with spots; another with a line of red spots on each side; and others. 

He finds a variety of Emys guttata with striated scales (mentioned by Holbrook and Storer). Saw a common box turtle shell with initials in sternum. One thought that what ever was cut in the scale was renewed in the new scale. Saw, in spirits, the Heterodon platyrhinus from Smithfield, R. I., flat-snouted, somewhat like a striped snake; and a very small brown snake. James gave me some of the spawn of a shellfish from a string of them a foot long.

At Natural History Rooms, a great cone from a southern pine and a monstrous nutshell from the East Indies (?); seed of the Lodoicea Sechellarum, Seychelles Islands.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 17, 1856

 The cedar swamp, source of Assabet, must be partly in Grafton, as well as Westboro near railroad, according to a farmer in Shrewsbury. Compare See June 10, 1853 ("We continued on, round the head of “Cedar Swamp,” and may say that we drank at the source of it or of Saw Mill Brook, where a spring is conducted through a hollow log to a tub for cattle. . . .What shall this great wild tract over which we strolled be called? ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cedar Swamps

The colors of a summer duck

November 9.

7 A. M. — Grass white and stiff with frost. 

9 A. M. — With Blake up Assabet. 

A clear and beautiful day after frost. 

Looking over the meadow westward from Merrick’s Pasture Shore, I see the alders beyond Dodd’s, now quite bare and gray (maple-like) in the morning sun (the frost melted off, though I found a little ice on my boat-seat), —that true November sight, — ready to wear frost leaves and to transmit (so open) the tinkle of tree sparrows. 

How wild and refreshing to see these old black willows of the river-brink, unchanged from the first, which man has never cut for fuel or for timber! Only the muskrat, tortoises, blackbirds, bitterns, and swallows use them. 

Two blackbirds fly over pretty near, with a chuck, —either red-wings or grackles, but I see no red. See a painted tortoise and a wood tortoise in different places out on the bank still! 

See in the pool at the Hemlocks what I at first thought was a brighter leaf moved by the zephyr on the surface of the smooth dark water, but it was a splendid male summer duck, which allowed us to approach within seven or eight rods, sailing up close to the shore, and then rose and flew up the curving stream. 

We soon overhauled it again, and got a fair and long view of it. It was a splendid bird, a perfect floating gem, and Blake, who had never seen the like, was greatly surprised, not knowing that so splendid a bird was found in this part of the world. There it was, constantly moving back and forth by invisible means and wheeling on the smooth surface, showing now its breast, now its side, now its rear. 

It had a large, rich, flowing, green burnished crest, —a most ample head-dress, —two crescents of dazzling white on the side of the head and the black neck, a pinkish(?)-red bill (with black tip) and similar irides, and a long white mark under and at wing point on sides; the side, as if the form of wing at this distance, light bronze or greenish brown; but, above all, its breast, when it turns into the right light, all aglow with splendid purple (?) or ruby (?) reflections, like the throat of the hummingbird. It might not appear so close at hand. 

This was the most surprising to me. What an ornament to a river to see that glowing gem floating in contact with its waters! As if the hummingbird should recline its ruby throat and its breast on the water. Like dipping a glowing coal in water! It so affected me. 

It became excited, fluttered or flapped its wings with a slight whistling noise, and arose and flew two or three rods and alighted. It sailed close up to the edge of a rock, by which it lay pretty still, and finally sailed fast up one side of the river by the willows, etc., off the duck swamp beyond the spring, now and then turning and sailing back a foot or two, while we paddled up the opposite side a rod in the rear, for twenty or thirty rods. 

At length we went by it, and it flew back low a few rods to where we roused it. It never offered to dive. We came equally near it again on our return. Unless you are thus near, and have a glass, the splendor and beauty of its colors will not be discovered. 

That duck was all jewels combined, showing different lustres as it turned on the unrippled element in various lights, now brilliant glossy green, now dusky violet, now a rich bronze, now the reflections that sleep in the ruby’s grain. 

Found a good stone jug, small size, floating stopple up. I drew the stopple and smelled, as I expected, molasses and water, or something stronger (black-strap?), which it had contained. Probably some meadow-haymakers’ jug left in the grass, which the recent rise of the river has floated off. It will do to put with the white pitcher I found and keep flowers in. Thus I get my furniture. 

Yesterday I got a perfectly sound oak timber, eight inches square and twenty feet long, which had lodged on some rocks. It had probably been the sill of a building. As it was too heavy to lift aboard, I towed it. As I shall want some shelves to put my Oriental books on, I shall begin to save boards now.

The highest law gives a thing to him who can use it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 9, 1855

As I shall want some shelves to put my Oriental books on, I shall begin to save boards now. See November 16, 1855 ("A part of to-day and yesterday I have been making shelves for my Oriental books, which I hear to-day are now on the Atlantic in the Canada.")

Reflections in a bubble.

June 3, 2016
(avesong)

June 3.

To Fair Haven with Blake and Brown. 

A very warm day, without a breeze. 



A kingbird's nest in a fork of a black willow. 

Going up Fair Haven Hill, the blossoms of the huckleberries and blueberries impart a sweet scent to the whole hillside.

On the pond we make bubbles with our paddles on the smooth surface, in which little hemispherical cases we see ourselves and boat, small, black and distinct, with a fainter reflection on the opposite side of the bubble (head to head). These last sometimes a minute before they burst.  

Cross to Baker Farm and Mt. Misery. To-day, having to seek a shady and the most airy place, at length we are glad when the east wind rises, ruffles the water and cools the air, and wafts us homeward. 

How many times have  other similar bubbles, now burst, reflected here the Indian, his canoe and paddle with the same faithfulness that they now image me and my boat.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 3, 1854

A kingbird's nest in a fork of a black willow. June 2, 1854 ("Are these not kingbird days, when, in clearer first June days full of light, this aerial, twittering bird flutters from willow to willow and swings on the twigs, showing his white-edged tail?"); June 6, 1857 (" A kingbird's nest, with two of its large handsome eggs, very loosely set over the fork of a horizontal willow by river, with dried everlasting of last year, as usual, just below Garfield's boat. Another in black willow south of long cove (east side, north of Hubbard's Grove) and another north of said cove. "); June 8, 1858 (" A kingbird's nest with three eggs, lined with some hair, in a fork — or against upright part — of a willow, just above near stone bridge") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Kingbird

The blossoms of the huckleberries and blueberries impart a sweet scent to the whole hillside. See "The Whortleberry Family," December 30, 1860 ("The flowers have an agreeable sweet and berry-promising fragrance . . . In May and June all our hills and fields are adorned with a profusion of the pretty little more or less bell-shaped flowers of this family, commonly turned toward the earth and more or less tinged with red or pink and resounding with the hum of insects, each one the fore runner of a berry the most natural, wholesome, palatable that the soil can produce.")

Image in bubbles. See March 19, 1852 ("Standing with Channing on the brink of the rill . . .I observe our images three quarters of an inch long and black as imps appearing to lean toward each other on account of the convexity of the bubbles."); January 6, 1853 ("When I lie down on it [the ice] and examine it closely, I find that the greater part of the bubbles which I had thought were within its own substance are against its under surface . . .— perfect spheres, apparently, and very beautiful and clear, in which I see my face through this thin ice.") See aslo September 14, 1854("Now our oars leave a broad wake of large bubbles, which are slow to burst.”); June 7, 1857 (“Now I notice many bubbles left on the water in my wake, as if it were more sluggish or had more viscidity than earlier. Far behind me they rest without bursting.”)

How can that depth be 

fathomed where a man may see 

himself reflected?

August 17, 1851 

June 3. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 3

Day without a breeze. 

A kingbird's nest in a fork 

of a black willow. 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Reflections in a Bubble

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

tinyurl.com/hdt-540603